How Can I Be Antisemitic? I Know a Guy Named "Schwartz"!

A candidate for the Michigan Democratic Party Chairmanship, Al "BJ" Williams, is in hot water after saying that the Democratic Party is "not the Jewish party."

“This is not the Jewish party, this is the Democratic Party,” Williams told the group, according to the Detroit News. “There are more voices than just Zionists in this party. There are more voices than just Jewish Americans within this party. There are more voices than just those anti-Arab American voices within this party.”

Unsurprisingly, this has led to a chorus of condemnations from Michigan Democrats (Jewish and not). Reportedly, both of the organizations which hosted the event Williams made his remark at, the People's Coalition and Arab American Democratic Caucus, have endorsed Williams' main rival, former state senator Curtis Hertel. As one leader of the People's Coalition, Rima Mohammad, put it, "“If that’s what Al thinks we want to hear as Palestinians, he is completely wrong."

Williams is, unsurprisingly, in damage control mode, insisting that his remarks were (say it with me now) "taken out of context." The right context is Williams' belief that "no single group should dominate the party’s identity," which, um, isn't really better.

But speaking of better, here's Williams' other big play to prove he isn't an antisemite: he knows a guy named Schwartz! Who's (probably) Jewish!

[E]arlier this week on Instagram, his campaign attempted to counter what they called “false claims of being an anti-Semite” by trumpeting an endorsement from a man named Michael Schwartz, who the Williams campaign identified only as an “attorney.” In a video accompanying the post, Schwartz — who never explicitly identifies himself as Jewish — called the antisemitism allegations "baloney."

Remember when Roy Moore tried to refute antisemitism allegation by telling us his attorney was a Jew, and people spent weeks trying to figure out who was Moore's Jewish buddy, and then it turned out the guy was Messianic? Definitely giving off some of those vibes (though I'll harbor a guess that this Schwartz is at least actually Jewish).

Hertel, in addition to the aforementioned endorsements from the Arab American Democratic Caucus and People's Coalition, also boasts the support of (among others) Michigan's incumbent Governor, Lieutenant Governor, both Senators, and the party's Black, Jewish, Bangladeshi American, Yemeni, and Veterans caucuses.

People Hate Mourning Jews

It is hard for me to see a picture of Kfir Bibas and not see my baby.

The news that Kfir Bibas and his family were murdered by Hamas is, of course, wrenching. And for me, at least, it intersected with two of my greatest fears. Of course, there is the fear of harm befalling my son or another a loved one. But there is also the more specific worry, which I've discussed before, of having a loved one die "politically" -- that is, in a context where their death inevitably becomes part of a broader political dispute. It is both unavoidable and unspeakably cruel that Kfir Bibas' death are part of politics now -- the politics of Hamas' depravity, the politics of the horrors of the Israel/Gaza War, the politics of the future of Israel and Palestine where, God willing, nobody will have to experience what the Bibas family has endured.

And it is not just the Bibas family, but the entire Jewish world, who is mourning Kfir's death. And, because we are Jews, that means that some people -- sometimes other Jews -- will tell us we are mourning Kfir wrong.

One way we might be "wrong" is if we have the temerity to focus, for even a short spell, just on the Bibas family. Don't we know others have suffered too? Are you saying that Jewish lives matter more? How tribal, how cloistered, how gauche, to not use this moment to make a statement about the universal value of all human life.

But another way we might be "wrong" is if we do mourn Kfir Bibas by reference to the universal value of all human life -- and in particular, of both Israeli and Palestinian life.

The New Jewish Narrative's statement mourning the deaths of Oded Lifschitz and Ariel, Kfir, and Shiri Bibas spoke in this register. It described the Bibas family as "distinct symbols of the human cost of this conflict," and averred that their "tragic deaths are a painful reminder of the unspeakable loss that this war has wrought." They juxtaposed Ariel and Kfir alongside Hind Rajab and infants in Al-Nasr Hospital. They concluded by renewing their commitment to "a future where children on both sides of the fence grow up safe, free from the horrors of war."

I am not the Bibas family, and I do not purport to speak for them. I can only speak for my own grief, and for me this was a message that spoke to my grief. But I've seen other Jews who were aghast by this statement, who were furious that NJN would use such universalist tones rather than concentrate solely and exclusively on the Bibas children.

Their complaint styles itself as one objecting to "All Lives Mattering", but notice that this isn't quite right. The NJN did not, anywhere in its statement, reproach those who decided this week to speak specifically and distinctively about the Bibases. They did not say that there was something improper or tribal or provincial about having that focus, or that Jews have some unique obligation to transcend their Jewishness and speak solely in universalist tones. They just chose, as an expression of its own Jewish voice, that they would make this universal connection. For them, the way to mourn Jewishly is to draw out this more expansive desire that Jewish children and Palestinian children be free from the horrors of war. If that is "All Lives Mattering", then any project of political solidarity and fellowship is, and I can hardly imagine a more short-sighted and self-destructive commitment than that.

When choosing that framing is presented not as a choice at all but as an implacable obligation, there is a problem. But when choosing that framing is presented as an impermissible option that betrays Jewish peoplehood, there is a problem as well. That Jews (or anyone else) are not obligated to always frame their suffering in universal tones does not mean that Jews should be forbidden from electing, of our own volition, to draw out those connections. The latter move is just as stifling as the former.

When I see a picture of Kfir Bibas, I see my baby, whom I love and cherish and would be shattered if he came into any danger or peril. And I know that every baby has parents who feel the exact same way, who would be shattered in the same way -- and how could I wish such a horrible fate upon any parent? When I imagine how horrible it would be for me, I imagine how horrible it would be for them, and my instinct is to think on ways to avert the horrors for us. If, God forbid, something did happen to my family, I hope nobody would begrudge me for concentrating specifically on my family. But I also hope that if I chose to rededicate myself to trying to prevent similar tragedies from befalling other families and other communities not mine, that that choice would not be begrudged either.

They're The Same Picture

The JTA has an interesting profile on a "new" right-wing Zionist organization, Betar ("new" in quotes because it claims to be a resurrection of a much older Zionist outfit active before Israel's founding). Betar has distinguished itself by its "confrontational" approach -- meaning that it engages in acts of vandalism and violence, and openly calls for things like ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the expansion of Israel's borders well beyond the West Bank and Gaza and into modern Jordan, Egypt, and Syria.

Critical readers will spot a lot of commonalties between Betar and the more hardline elements of the pro-Palestinian movement. Most obviously, Betar uses almost identical rhetorical maximalism -- compare "We don't want two states, we want all of it" heard at pro-Palestinian protests with Betar's recent statement "We don’t want peace. We don’t want co-existence" -- and simply asks listeners to "choose a side". Pick your preferred ethnic cleanser and cleansee.

But there are some other commonalities. Perhaps the most important one to flag is that Betar hates "moderate" Jews as much if not more than it hates Palestinians, and its definition of "moderate" includes many Jews whom external observers would view as hardliners. Consider Betar's confrontational relationship with Columbia professor Shai Davidai, who has organized aggressive (to say the least) counterprotests aimed at pro-Palestinian activism on campus and had to deal with a Betar element crashing his event:

Despite their tiny size, the Betar contingent immediately worried Davidai. Most of them were young men, he recalled; several covered their faces; one had a flag of the Jewish Defense League, an extremist group that the United States has designated as a terrorist organization. “All they did was scream ‘F— Gaza,’ ‘Gaza is ours,’ ‘Here’s a beeper for you,’ ‘Deport them all,’ ‘ICE, ICE, ICE,’” he said. “Just violent rhetoric.”

Davidai is no stranger to provocation: Last fall, Columbia barred him from campus after months of his vocal criticisms of the university’s handling of antisemitism. Yet he views Betar as a serious obstacle to the movement he was trying to build, not least because they were adapting the same tactics as the pro-Palestinian side: expressing support for a terror group and hiding their faces as they did so.

“I think it’s hypocritical to spend 16 months blaming all protesters who are in this Free Palestine movement for not policing their own protesters, but then let hatred and violence take root in yours,” Davidai said. “I said, ‘Look, you’re doing exactly what we’re telling them not to do….’  At some point I asked them, ‘Go do your thing, but don’t be associated with us.’ They refused.”

After the rally, Betar and its followers began targeting him online. On Instagram he blasted them for only joining counter-protests, while never showing up to rallies for Israeli hostages. The rhetoric has only escalated from there, as Betar has mobilized its followers against him, in public and private. “You will be disrupted at all future speeches,” Torossian messaged Davidai on WhatsApp, according to communications shared with JTA. “You are a radical.”

Davidai has also urged his followers against supporting any further killings or mass expulsions in Gaza, a stark contrast to Betar’s own stated views. Yet in the comments, many of Davidai’s own followers have begun taking Betar’s side, accusing him of naively trying to make peace with the enemy.

There are some lessons to be learned here. One lesson is that there will always be someone more aggressive, confrontational, and hardline than you, and those actors will prove almost impossible to police. Moreover, they (in many ways correctly) view more "moderate" elements of their own community as their most important and salient competition and will ruthlessly try to attack and suppress those they deem "traitors" or "appeasers" in order to accumulate more power to themselves as the "authentic" voice of "true resistance" (this certainly characterizes how the BDS movement has been going after Standing Together, for instance). And finally, leaders of social groups that simultaneously play footsie with the sort of extreme rhetoric while assuaging themselves that of course their actual politics are humanitarian and egalitarian, they're just revving up a crowd or exaggerating for effect, will quickly learn that much of their base isn't in on the bit. They're in it for the hate, and when someone offers that hate better, they won't listen to your attempts to rein things back in.

There's also a very important lesson not to learn here. For some people, it is important to hear about groups like Betar so to disabuse any notions that calls for ethnic cleansing and political violence are only something "they" (the other side) does, whereas "our" movement is purely one of peace and coexistence. That illusion is dangerous and must be dispelled. But for others, the main function of groups like Betar is to give people a permission structure for their own counter-maximalism, because "this is what they're really like". If they're out there saying "Gaza is ours", what choice do we have but to fling them into the sea? If they're out there saying "Israel must be rooted out and destroyed", what choice do we have but to "transfer" them out of Gaza? There are a lot of people who just love the Betars or the Within Our Lifetimes of the world, and are constantly searching for examples of the genre. It's not because they agree with them. It's because their existence gives license to be as extreme and uncompromising and hateful as you want, because have you seen what they want?

The only way out of that trap is to recognize that it's the same picture. These organizations may have different preferred winners and losers, but they're fundamentally on the same side -- trying to convince you that the only choice there is to make is choosing your preferred extremism. And that is a false choice. As important as it is to name and shame these sorts of extremists, if you're main motivation in doing so is to validate your preconceived notion that this sort of extremism is the actual true authentic core of an entire people or culture, then you are not shaming anyone -- you are joining them.

The true enemy, as always, is anyone who rejects the equal dignity and democratic equality of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Anyone who rejects that there are two authentic nations whose homeland is in this territory. Anyone who rejects that there are two communities have legitimate claims to democratic self-determination. Anyone who rejects those premises is fundamentally on the same side, and the wrong side, no matter what flag they fly.

What Will Trump 2.0 Mean for the Jews?

Short answer: It will be terrible.

But of course, that's the short answer for a lot of people.

Nonetheless, I know more about the Jewish situation, so here's my best assessment of what the near-future will look like for Jews. I'll start with Israel (since, contrary to what some would have you believe, Israel contains many Jews and its future is relevant to discussions about Jews), and then shift over to the American Jewish community.

With Israel, the chalk pick has always been that Trump will allow Israel to do absolutely whatever it wants to Palestinians with gleeful abandon. And, to be sure, there are a lot of good reasons to lay money on that bet. But I think the range of plausible, if not necessarily probable, outcomes are wider than many people realize.

To begin, I think there is a good chance that upon Trump's inauguration Israel does end its war in Gaza (or at least transitions to something that it can say with a half-straight face constitutes ending the war). Trump wants it, and getting it might (fairly or not) instantly solidify the significant inroads Trump made amongst Muslim voters this election.

The real question is whether Bibi will give it to him. The answer to that question, as to literally every decision Israel has made for the past several years, depends entirely on Bibi's craven assessment of his personal self-interest. To that point though, I genuinely believe that Bibi does not care about Gaza. I mean that in the most bloodless way possible -- he does not care if Gaza rebuilds or is razed to the ground, he obviously does not care about Palestinian life, he does not care about some significant security posture, and he certainly does not care about the hostages. If Bibi wanted to, he could declare victory right now. He's not "doing" anything in Gaza anymore (other than killing and immiserating thousands upon thousands of people, of course), there's nothing he's trying to accomplish other than whatever he thinks will save his political skin.

So the question is whether he thinks giving Trump something to crow about will be in his interest. Obviously, I think Bibi benefits in many ways from sucking up to Trump. And because Bibi's supporters (in Israel and abroad) are hacks, dupes, or sycophants, they'll happily agree to any declaration of victory (whereas if something similar occurred under a Biden or Harris administration, they'd be raging about how Israel was "forced" to "surrender" before "the job was completed").

Beyond that, though, things get murkier. Again, the most likely scenario is that Trump lets Israel run riot for four years. But unlike some I never thought this was guaranteed. Trump is a mercurial sort; past alliances are no guarantee of future loyalty. He has certainly noticed that Jews have continued to oppose him despite what he's done for, er, "our country". And he also noticed the spike in support from prominent Arab and Muslim politicians -- there's a reason why Arabs and Muslims, and not Jews, got a positive shoutout in his victory speech. More broadly, the isolationist, nativist, and flat-out antisemitic branch of the Trumpist movement has always been present and continues to grow in influence. J.D. Vance tried to disaggregate abandoning Ukraine from abandoning Israel, but the underlying logic from an isolationist "America First" standpoint is the same. And while obviously there is an ideological affinity between the right-wing authoritarians running Israel and the right-wing authoritarians taking power here, when it comes down to brass tacks doesn't Trump have just as much in common with the murderous religious fanatics in Hamas, or the incompetent kleptocrats of Fatah?

All of which is to say, while I'm skeptical that Trump would go flat-out "pro-Palestine", it is not absolutely inconceivable that if the going ever gets tough he'll leave Israel to twist. It goes without saying, of course, that he'd make this decision for all of the worst reasons -- a mix of antisemitism, isolationism, xenophobia, and good-old-fashioned pettiness. Still, right-wing Jews who voted for Trump because he's "good for Israel" may well be wise to look out for leopards.

So that's my Israel story. What about American Jews? Unsurprisingly, it's going to be if anything even grimmer.

First and foremost, we will continue to see the rise of antisemitic harassment and targeting by a far-right that correctly sees Trump as an avatar and legitimator of their ideology. Antisemitic conspiracies -- regarding "globalists", "cultural Marxists", Soros money, and more -- will gain even more traction in the center of American public life. Bomb threats, vandalism, assaults, and more will remain facts of life for Jews nationwide. Christian dominionism will continue to crest and will continue to isolate and marginalize Jews in public spaces, and the nominal "religious liberty" turn of the Supreme Court will not deign to protect us or even recognize us as real Jews. Orthodox Jews, who have increasingly de facto seceded from the broader American Jewish community, will greet these developments with apathy at best and enthusiasm at worst -- they will happily sacrifice religious equality in the public schools most Jews (but not them) attend if it means more public money funneling into their private religious academies. More and more blatant public antisemitism will be tolerated, mainstreamed, and incorporated into centers of power. Indeed, "far-right antisemitism" will increasingly become an anachronistic term, because it won't be "far" from anything -- it will be near-and-dear to the epicenter of the Republican Party.

In terms of the left, at one level I think we will for better or worse see a partial ebbing of the centrality of anti-Israel protest as attentions shift and people's priorities turn inward. That said, I think we will still see significant targeting of Jews in "left" spaces -- such as college campuses -- for the simple reason that they are convenient and available targets. A lot of people are very angry, and the actors and institutions they really want to hurt are largely immune and out of reach. Jews are considerably more proximate and considerably more vulnerable, and punching a Jew (metaphorically or occasionally literally) is a lot more satisfying than punching your pillow. Indeed, while various campus protests and movements relating to Israel have had, let's say, a range of approaches towards how they oriented towards their mainline Jewish peers (i.e., those who are by no means Israel über alles but still have significant care and concern for Israel's future and believe in its legitimacy as a Jewish state), I expect over the next several years the center of gravity will shift further away from effective and nuanced organizing that at least conceptually could include mainstream but Israel-critical Jews, and more towards inchoate, exclusionary lashing out. This will be bad, and it will further isolate and alienate young Jews especially at a time when they desperately need solidarity and allyship.

Finally, there is the question of how the Jewish community is positioned to respond to all of this. Here I daresay Jews have never been weaker in our ability to effectively mobilize and defend ourselves in the public square. And on that point my story is one that can largely be told around the current status of the ADL.

In recent years, I've taken to analogizing the ADL to Hobbes' Leviathan: It is the giant, overbearing sovereign that we must nonetheless offer allegiance to because the anarchic alternative is too terrifying. 

Agree or disagree with the normative prescription, we may be about to test my prediction about what the alternative looks like. Because right now, the hegemon is crumbling.

In 2017, the ADL was able to position itself as a central pillar in the resistance to Trumpist predations, a focal point of mobilizing the political agency and priorities of Jews rightly terrified about what Trumpism meant for us and for our friends and neighbors. It certainly cannot do so now, not the least because it suffers from a terminal case of Washington Post syndrome. Jonathan Greenblatt has spent quite a bit of time cozying up to Trump and his cronies, and the effusive welcome he gave to Trump's victory (that saccharine congratulatory message was the last email I got from the ADL before I unsubscribed from their listserv) shows he is ready and eager to comply in advance. Even if it were welcome in the progressive organizing spaces that are going to try to rally against Trump, it's far from clear the ADL is even interested in participating this time. I can't imagine it's going to see a repeat of the donation wave it received after 2016.

Some have chalked up the ADL's position to the increasingly untenable position of the Jewish "center" (in quotes because "center" for Jews is still left-of-center for Americans). Certainly, increased polarization (inside and outside the Jewish world) has placed pressure on legacy mainline institutions. But I think this story gives the ADL too much credit -- it could have pivoted to stick with the Jewish center-of-gravity, it just decided not to. Nothing -- not campus protests, not BDS activism, not "drop the ADL" chants -- forced the ADL to call Elon Musk a modern-day Henry Ford (as a compliment!), and nothing forced them to just be okay with Donald Trump treating Hitler as a fount of inspiration. Its missteps and mistakes are choices, not compulsions.

But here's the thing: if the ADL no longer can serve as the focal point for Jewish self-advocacy, none of its competitors -- from J Street to JFREJ, IfNotNow to Ameinu, JVP to DMFI -- are anywhere close to being able to replace it.

For starters, none of them are comparably resourced. None have the penetration and influence at all levels of American political life that the ADL does (even after everything I said above, if my kid experienced antisemitism at a Portland school, I still have no idea who I'd reach out to other than the local ADL branch). When it comes to the security threats faced by synagogues contemplating another Colleyville, nobody out there can replace what the ADL offers -- and I'm sorry, but if you think the "safety through solidarity" chants are right now an adequate substitute you are divorced from reality.

And even if we could get past that, no other group can come close to claiming to be a comprehensive or umbrella representative of the American Jewish community writ large. An increasingly common critique of the ADL was that it is not truly "representative" of the entirety of the Jewish community because its staunch pro-Israel attitudes necessarily didn't include the anti-Zionist Jewish minority. I'm dubious that any group can truly be uniformly representative; I do think that for many years the ADL was sufficiently tied to the median American Jewish position that it could credibly claim the label. But however far that criticism applies to the ADL (now or throughout history), it applies tenfold to its leftward alternatives, all of which occupy even more partisan, provincial, and particularistic lanes of American Jewish life. That's not a criticism -- it's fine to have a point of view -- it's only to say that these groups necessarily cannot replace the ADL's role as a sufficiently unified voice of the Jewish community writ large. The ADL may or may not at any given point failed to satisfy its mandate of being a broad tent, but there's no disputing that essentially every alternative out there is self-consciously narrower, not broader, in who it purports to speak for.

So what we are looking at over the next several years is an American Jewish community that simultaneously is under unprecedented threat and is wracked by unprecedented internal division. What I expect to see, then, is that a depressingly large proportion of Jewish political action will take the form of fratricidal squabbling and internal jockeying for position. If the suzerain is falling, the border lord upstarts are going to race to annex as much territory as possible.

In fact, not only will Jewish organizations largely end up concentrating on fighting internal political battles, I also expect to see a crabs-in-a-bucket effect where different Jewish factions actively try to sabotage the ability of others to garner external influence. I noticed this a bit in the whirlwind attempt to kneecap Josh Shapiro as a Vice Presidential contender -- an anti-campaign that in its initial manifestation was largely pushed forward by other Jews. This endeavor was nominally justified by  Shapiro's Israel positions, but I don't think that really is the full explanation (in part because Shapiro's record on Israel is, if anything, arguably to the left of Tim Walz's). Rather, the problem was that if Shapiro became the VP nominee, he would immediately be positioned as perhaps the highest-profile emblem of what “Jews” (and Jewish liberals) are, and what they believe, in the public imagination. In a world of identity capitalism, where significant power flows from who is seen as "representing" a group, that possibility threatened the influence of competing factions of Jewish progressives whose views don’t align with Shapiro’s in a way that Walz could not replicate even if Walz’s substantive positions on Israel were materially indistinguishable from Shapiro’s. In short, while a VP candidate with Josh Shapiro's views on Israel would be acceptable to left-wing Jews (and indeed, more or less, that's what we got), a Jewish VP candidate with Josh Shapiro's would be a disaster because those Jews (correctly) understood that Shapiro's elevation would solidify the power of a rival faction internal to the Jewish community.

I expect to see this dynamic to be replicated and proliferated across all areas of Jewish political action. One faction's attempt to document campus antisemitism will be met with another's counter-letter decrying the initiative. Adopting one group's definition of antisemitism will lead to others' furious denouncements and demands to select an alternative. Even as external threats grow ever grimmer, Jews will relentless concentrate on our own internal power plays -- trying to grab space for ourselves and prevent the growth of our rivals.

Now again, maybe you think that the status quo hegemony of the ADL-type organizations was sufficiently awful that this transition is necessary and salutary, notwithstanding the growing pains. I won't argue the point here. But necessary or no, during the anarchic interregnum it's hard to imagine Jews being able to leverage much in the way of political influence. We are weak externally, and we are weak internally, and that is a very scary position to be in no matter how you slice it.

UPDATE: This post was already so long, I forgot one more point that's probably pretty obvious -- the Democratic Party is going to have a nasty fight over Israel in the near future. To some extent it will be about policy, but I think much of it will rhetorically take the form of debates over a tactical blame-game regarding who is responsible for losing the 2024 election. On one side there will be those who say that blind, lockstep support for Bibi's war on Gaza cost Democrats key voting blocs and possibly the election, and that we need to purge the party of people who thought defending genocide was a higher priority than keeping the presidency. On the other side will be those who believe that radical performative edgelording about refusing to commit to opposing an existential threat to American democracy was recklessly irresponsible, and that anybody who indulged in such antics should be shot into the sun as de facto Trumpist collaborators. I don't know who will (or should) win that fight, but it's going to be terrible too.

And precisely because the fight will focus on electoral tactics and not policy, it also is going to primarily end up being about securing factional gains rather than trying to recraft an Israel/Palestine policy that is sensible, broad-based, and genuinely attentive to and protective of the valid interests, fears, and aspirations of Jews/Israelis and Arabs/Palestinians alike. So even to the extent Democrats very much could use a genuine rethinking of our approach to Israel/Palestine -- one that recognizes that we're not going to snuggle Bibi into accepting Palestinian equality without swinging over into treating Jews and Israeli as inhuman invaders who need to be wiped off the map -- I think such efforts will be swamped by factional knife-fighting within the party.

"... But They're Doing Great" at UW

The University of Washington has just released a joint task force report on antisemitism and Islamophobia on its campus. I haven't read it cover-to-cover, but I have looked it over, and it seems to be an excellent and thoughtful report on an obviously touchy subject, for which the authors deserve kudos.*

There's a lot of interesting data to sift through, but there was one chart in particular that stood out to me, and not in a good way.

For those who can't read the chart, it asks a set of affected campus constituencies (e.g., Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims) how they assess the campus climate for themselves and all the other groups. The results were basically that each group said "things are awful for us and ours, but they're doing great!" So, for instance, when Israelis were asked this question, they overwhelmingly reported a hostile campus climate for Israelis and Jews, but generally reported that the campus was comfortable for Arabs, MENA people, Muslims, and Palestinians. Palestinian respondents reported the opposite -- they thought the campus climate was swell for Israelis and Jews, and terrible for Arabs, MENA people, Muslims and Palestinians.

I'll leave aside the first half of the equation ("things are awful for us") for now, though it's bad enough. One could I guess try to contest it if one wanted to, but I see little reason to doubt that the relevant communities are accurately reporting their own experiences in what has almost universally been characterized as a very rough year. But for the latter half of the finding ("... they're doing great") the polarization in responses is especially disturbing. 

The best case explanation I can think of is a failure of empathic imagination. Over many years, I've observed variations of this phenomenon where one's own lived experience of hurt and marginalization is paired with a decided conviction that everybody else is getting life fed to them on a silver platter. This certainly is part of my story around "Us Too-ism" -- everybody else supposedly can get a hostile speaker canceled at the first sign of discomfort, so why not us too? -- but it long predates it. Eight years ago I was writing about circumstances at Oberlin where both Jewish and Black students contrasted tepid community responses to discrimination targeting them with what they saw as "hypervigilant" reactions enjoyed by the other. That post in turn referenced a post almost ten years before that about the "pane of glass" which is obvious to someone standing in one position and invisible to their neighbor looking from a different vantage. We're all able to see the pane of glass standing as an obstacle in front of us, while blind to the pane of glass similarly blocking our neighbor.

And so, perhaps, at UW. The Jewish and Israeli students feel lonely and isolated. They look over at the encampments and the teach-ins and the flag-wavings and think "how lucky they have it -- clearly, the community has their backs when they cry out." The Muslim and Arab and Palestinians students, meanwhile, feel hyperscrutinized and overpoliced. They observe the congressional hearings and the discipline meted out to protesters and think "how lucky they have it -- look how responsive the powers-that-be are to them when they claim injury!" Both groups feel as if they're walking on eggshells, both feel that the tremendous stress and strain they are under is being ignored. In concept, this shared vulnerability could be a vector for solidarity and compassion -- these feelings are commonalities, not distinctions. But the problem is this shared vulnerability isn't perceived as shared at all, but rather unique, and that further entrenches the feeling of loneliness.

And this, as I said, is what I'd consider the best case scenario. Another explanation for the polarized responses is that we're seeing, not a failure of imagination, but a motivated refusal to acknowledge the vulnerability of the "other side", in favor of a constructed image where their power can be contrasted with our weakness. I would not be the first to observe that there is a strand of contemporary politics that aggressively valorizes weakness and vulnerability as its own justification for political solidarity. Though sometimes identified with the identity politics left, there's actually no intrinsic political cadence to this -- the right makes this move all the time. Who can forget when Breitbart, playing off investigations into "Big Oil" or "Big Pharma", created an entire subsection of his website dedicated to resisting the overawing power of "Big Peace"(!)? And of course, the contemporary right contains no shortage of claims that it stands against the elites, the powerful, the globalist cabal -- all attempts to claim the mantle of weakness against the evils of strength.

The true cynic would point to this politics to explain why each group is so emphatic about its own vulnerability -- it wants to stay on the right side of the empathy line. As I said, I don't think one needs to go that far -- I think it is more than likely that each group is accurately recounting its own experiences about itself. The point is, though, that where vulnerability (or at least the perception thereof) is a political resource, it can become a strategic imperative to deny it to one's competitors. Acknowledging that a given community -- Jews and Israelis, or Palestinians and Muslims -- are in a vulnerable state means acknowledging them as valid subjects of empathic concern and legitimating some flow of solidaristic political resources in that direction. Denying that acknowledgment can obstruct that flow, and better maintain an asymmetry in who is worthy of care and concern. Even in circumstances where antagonism isn't that overt, where resources of care and concern are assumed to be scarce, there still will be the temptation to withhold that acknowledgment and try to direct the flow to oneself.

The reason why this is worse that the first explanation is that it isn't something that can be resolved just by expanded imaginative capacities. Again, it speaks to a motivated refusal to recognize the aforementioned joint vulnerability. It's not just ignorance, there are reasons behind it. The work of overcoming this refusal to extend empathy means, in a very real sense, insisting on sharing a political resource that feels very much in short supply with a group that may in important respects feel like a rival. That is not an easy task, least of all in present climates.

Which is the true explanation? To be honest, I suspect there's a little of column A and a little of column B. That does give me a little hope, because I still believe -- justifiably or not -- that there are enough people who won't run away from their expanded empathic imagination such that, once they're peeled away from their more fundamentalist fellows, a new core of solidarity can emerge. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. But I don't see much of an alternative.

* I also read a critique of the report issued by a small group of Jewish UW stakeholders (I actually read the critique before the original document). I'm not a member of the UW community myself, and so you can take what I say with a grain of salt. But to be perfectly honest I found the critique to be churlish, even petty, clearly partisan in its motivation, and ultimately not at all compelling. 

The overall theme of the critique was a contention that the report was intentionally suppressive of anti-Zionist/pro-Palestinian Jewish viewpoints and so generated skewed conclusions. That contention was extremely weakly supported -- it seemed to me that the critics came in spoiling for a fight and made a series of tendentious or stretched inferences to justify picking one. For example, a single passing mention of the IHRA antisemitism definition (which the report said it "took into consideration along with other definitions", and then never mentioned again) inspired a veritable temper tantrum by the critics and a demand that the university instead adopt the Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism as its preferred definition (ironic, since JDA at its inception insisted that it should not be used as a definition of antisemitism in official proceedings!). It also lambastes the report for "attacks" on DEI work, but there is no such attack -- the report actually recommends incorporating antisemitism education and training into existing DEI structures. One can contest the mechanisms through which that incorporation would occur, but this is not an "attack" in any sense -- so where on earth is this defensiveness coming from other than preloaded beliefs that reports such as this are presumptively part of an anti-DEI crusade?

Perhaps the most serious allegation contained in the critique is its speculation that the report authors skewed their focus groups toward pro-Israel identifying students. This is a very grave charge, but the critics give absolutely no concrete evidence to support it. Literally their only basis for making this claim was that "one focus group was held at UW Hillel (an organization with standards of partnership that explicitly disallow affiliation with Jews critical of the state of Israel)." That and that alone was sufficient for the critics to assert with confidence that "We know" (we know!) "that whatever steps were taken were not sufficient" to ensure proper representational diversity.

This is absurd on a multitude of levels. First, the critic's position apparently is that an attempt to connect with the UW Jewish community should have a blanket policy of refusal to work with Hillel (again, their complaint is that one focus group was held there), which is an absolutely wild claim to make and utterly incompatible with actually trying to get a deep cross-section of the UW Jewish community. Second, it's simply false to say Hillel's partnership standards "explicitly disallow affiliation with Jews critical of the state of Israel." The partnership standards aren't directed at students qua students to begin with, and they are a fair flight more specific than targeting those who are merely "critical of the state of Israel" -- an especially important distinction because the UW report is actually very good about recognizing the heterogeneity of Jewish views on Israel and expressly disaggregating those who are "critical of Israel" from those who are outright "anti-Israel" (in the sense of wanting Israel to cease its existence). At most, only the latter would find Hillel an exclusionary space, but the numbers suggest that this cadre is a small (though not non-existent) minority amongst Jewish students. 

Finally, and most damningly, the report clearly did speak to and incorporate the views of the anti-Israel minority. How do we know? Because the report (to its credit!) specifically delved into and devoted an entire section to experiences of marginalization by anti-Zionist Jews -- something one does not see every time one of these reports emerges but is absolutely appropriate given the subject matter. The report even says it included comments from "self-identified anti Zionist/anti-Israel Jews in proportion to their representation in the random sample of quotes provided to the task force co-chairs (18%)" -- that 18% figure is either equal to or if anything higher than (the report was fuzzy on this) the proportion of anti-Israel Jews in the UW Jewish community. Despite all of this effort, none of it is given any mention whatsoever in the critics' document. Perhaps they missed it. But it I think decisively belies the unsupported assertion that the report deliberately ignored the diversity of Jewish views on Israel at UW.

Ultimately, as someone who periodically does consulting work with university leaders on issues of antisemitism, I found this critique tremendously disheartening and frustrating. The report seemed unusually attentive to the diversity of views amongst Jews on matters relating to Israel, and seemed like a good faith attempt to accurately communicate the sentiments of the Jewish community as a whole. That even an effort like this was met with a response like that -- the near-reflexive at this point fuming about Zionist hegemony and suppression of dissident voices etc. etc. is, to be honest, a substantial deterrent in continuing that work forward. There's just no pleasing some people.

The Sermon Every Jew But Me Heard Every Week

One supposedly ubiquitous aspect of millennial Jewish upbringing that I do not at all relate to is the storyline where their Jewish education was a completely uncritical and unsophisticated "Israel right-or-wrong" drumbeat, one which eventually shattered upon the reality of going to college or meeting Palestinian friends or visiting Israel and the occupied territories. This story is omnipresent amongst Jews of my generation, and it just never resonated with me. I never felt like my Israel education was so inflexible, and so I never had the experience of it crashing into the real world.

The synagogue I grew up in was, admittedly, in many ways atypical. It wasn't especially liberal (no more so than is normal for a Jewish congregation, anyway), but its location in the DC suburbs meant it did have quite a few genuine experts on Israel and the Middle East (well beyond the armchair experts I imagine one can find in any synagogue pew). Their views were by no mean unchallengeable and the environment was certainly unabashedly "pro-Israel", but it did mean we perhaps avoided some of the more nakedly crude manifestations of pro-Israel politics.

This apparent idiosyncrasy in my upbringing has really jumbled my ability to connect with the zeitgeist. On the one hand, I hear the aforementioned tales of Rabbis giving these near-comical caricatures of the "true" contours of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and I can't help but be skeptical -- that's certainly not how I remember it. On the other hand, you hear it often enough and you have to think that maybe I'm just the weird one. While I certainly wouldn't characterize myself as detached from the organized Jewish community, it is the case that my connection to a synagogue has been sporadic in my adult life (if only because I moved around so much) -- so I have little in the way of comparison to juxtapose against the synagogue I grew up with.

But the imminent arrival of a little one in our family has finally prompted us to begin synagogue shopping in earnest, and over the high holidays we've been surveying various congregation's services. One congregation in particular checks a lot of our boxes -- a vibrant community, lots of young families, excellent early childhood resources, and we were excited to try out their services for the first time.

At the same time, I was seeing a flurry of posts and resources talking about how anti-Zionist or Israel-critical Jews were struggling to find welcoming Jewish communal spaces -- where could they go to high holiday services where they wouldn't be bombarded with hasbara defenses of the war in Gaza? And I will admit -- I was feeling skeptical. "Bombarded"? Come on. My own experiences made me exceptionally dubious that there would be much beyond the anodyne and unobjectionable. There'd probably be an Israeli flag on the bimah, and a prayer for the state of Israel, and statements of concern for the hostages and spiking antisemitism on college campuses. If that's what passes for an unwelcoming atmosphere, I'd say deal with it.

And so I attended services, which were quite lovely, and then the Rabbi stood to give his sermon. And it didn't take long for me to realize "oh, so this is the sermon that every Jew of my generation but me is talking about."

My first thought -- since I was synagogue-shopping and so had recently seen exactly how much it costs to join a synagogue -- was "I could just subscribe to Commentary and save a lot of money!" The second thought was to remember all the wonderful programs and suddenly understand why people join megachurches ("I may not agree with the pastor's politics, but my goodness what a preschool!"). I asked my wife her thoughts, and she said "honestly, I just tuned him out" (probably another regular facet of Jewish experience that I don't relate to -- the Rabbi at my childhood synagogue may well be the single most compelling orator I've ever met in my life).

In terms of the sermon itself, I'm not going to go to deep into the substantive details. The nicest thing I could say about the speech was that it was, at best, a good twenty-plus years out of date in speaking of an Israeli government that of course wants nothing more than peace, but alas must deal with the reality that the Palestinians will settle for nothing less than maximal and total victory. This does not, to say the least, aptly characterize the current Israeli government; much of the ideology the Rabbi imputed to Hamas and Hezbollah resonated just as strongly with Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, or yes, Netanyahu -- all of whom have proven entirely willing to sabotage prospects of peace for a chance at complete and utter dominion between the river and the sea.

At root, the sermon read as an attempt to rally a wavering audience to continue to back a war without end whose suffering has been immeasurable, because the belief that a peaceful solution can be achieved is just so much Western naivete. And it was made worse because the sermon did contain the periodic rhetorical gestures in a liberal direction -- a concession that the occupation is a problem here, a willingness to admit Bibi hasn't been perfect there. Hearing such sentiments expressed as brief asides amidst a sea of "we are fighting a culture of death" jeremiads made me understand why so many of my peers view such positions as meaningless smokescreens -- they were not actual concessions; they were balms meant to reassure the audience of its own virtue. And more broadly, if this was the Israel-outlook that I was exposed to as a teenager, then I absolutely would've gotten clobbered when reality hit in adulthood.

Again, I was not prepared for this. In fact, I had a different blog post ready to roll that was all about there being a spectrum of Jewish opinion out there and the broad tent had room for a variety of voices. The week before I had just been invited to give a talk at the Eastside Jewish Commons, and nobody had any qualms about my own harsh critiques of the Israeli government (and indeed on the bulletin board in the space I saw a posting for the Center for Jewish Non-Violence, advertising its work of "co-resistance and solidarity against Israeli occupation and apartheid."). I was planning to buttress that experience by reference to my High Holiday experience, which (I was already drafting in my mind) was a High Holiday experience, not a Bibi Netanyahu appreciation tour.

Now, to be sure, I'm still not convinced my initial instincts regarding communal pluralism were fully off-base. Leaving aside the wrongness of making judgments off of an n of 1, even at this very synagogue, the other Rabbi had just written a column about the importance of choosing peace even as her colleague was delivering an ode to the virtues of war. So one might say that Jews engaging in aggressive pro-war politicking is just as much part of a pluralism as Jews organizing to demand a ceasefire is. And again, as much as people say that any "whiff" of dissent results in an insta-purge from mainline Jewish spaces, I feel like I have dissented more than a whiff and I remain unpurged. So what am I doing that's so special? 

But nonetheless, I had a prediction of how I expected the High Holidays to go, and it was falsified. I could have just kept that to myself, of course -- none of you would have been the wiser. But it felt more honest to relay the experience.

Teshuva in Springfield

When I first saw a story about the Rabbi of Springfield, Ohio giving his views on the Trump campaign's racist invective targeting Haitian migrants, I was heartened at what I assumed would be a clarion call to stand by the stranger in our midst. Then I read the actual story, where the Rabbi instead echoes the hostility in the worst way -- contending that Haitians lack "Western civilized values", stating that "white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant" residents were being "disenfranchised", and contrasting today's immigrants from Jews whom, he said, "wanted to assimilate, they wanted to be good Americans" -- and I felt embarrassed and sad. As much as Ohio and national Jewish organizations might speak otherwise, this would be -- both locally and nationally -- seen as the paradigmatic "Jewish" take.

There has, however, been a modest update to this story, which I found a bit more heartening. The actual Jews in Springfield (it's a small community; this Rabbi commutes from Columbus) made clear that they did not endorse or accept these sentiments. They pushed their Rabbi to do better -- to issue an apology, to acknowledge his lack of knowledge of the actual circumstances of both the community and of their new Haitian neighbors, and to meet with representatives of the Haitian community,

“I was not well-informed on the situation with the Haitian immigrants,” [Rabbi Cary] Kozberg said. “Since the interview, I have learned much more about the immigration situation in Springfield. My opinions have definitely been modified.”

Kozberg made his statement alongside Temple Sholom’s president, Laurie Leventhal, who told the Observer that her rabbi made a “mistake” and would be pursuing teshuvah, or the Jewish process of repentance.

“We are not giving him a pass,” Leventhal said. “He has asked lots of questions and learned lots of stuff about what’s going on in Springfield, and he has changed his views. And that is how human beings grow. And that is what we are about. And I hope that you will not go on a witch-hunt and take a situation in a city that is so hurting and make it worse.”

This was coupled by additional moves by area Jewish organizations to express support for the Haitian community:

Viles Dorsainvil, a local Haitian community leader in Springfield and the executive director of the Haitian Community Health and Support Center, told JTA on Monday he hadn’t been aware of Kozberg’s comments and hasn’t received any communication from the rabbi. But he said he had been glad to receive a letter of support from the Dayton Jewish Federation, which the federation had sent to him on the same day JTA published Kozberg’s interview.

In their letter, the federation heads introduced themselves as “your Jewish neighbors to the west” and added, “It is a core tenet of our faith to ‘welcome the stranger.’ We, along with so many others of different faiths and cultures, whose ancestors made this journey before you over the decades, support your quest, and welcome you. We are sending all our virtual thoughts of goodwill your way, including our prayers for your safety.”

The letter was touching, Dorsainvil said. “We’re so happy that the Jewish community in Dayton reached out to us,” he said, adding that he, too, saw similarities between what Jewish immigrants to the United States experienced in the past and what Haitian migrants are currently experiencing. 

I'm not asking anyone to give Kozberg a prize here. For one, he hasn't really done anything yet. I'd also suggest that "Most people don’t know me as a racist" doesn't quite communicate the sentiment that Kozberg I think is trying to get across. And even amongst his congregants, there is a split between those who think his apology is "genuine", and those who more circumspectly "hope" that it is. The local Jewish news coverage indicates that Kozberg maybe has a bit more of a self-pitying streak than might otherwise be let on, quoting him repeatedly suggesting that the initial interview he did was a "politicized" and "taken out of context." I'd also note the congregation, even as they recoil against his "racist" statements, is standing by him as their Rabbi -- noting that they have a thirty-year history they're looking across whereas all the rest of us are only accounting for this past week. It is a fair note, and one that I hope we can remember with regard to other potential instances where someone imbricated in a particular small community spikes to prominence for acts of (real, genuine) bigotry and is not immediately met with exile.

But on the whole, what I'm really flagging and really heartened by is not Kozberg but the Springfield Jewish community. When someone they loved and who they were close to and who was their leader stepped out, they stepped up. They demanded accountability. They used their own voices to try and set things right. It's never fully possible to make these wounds whole. But I've seen far, far worse attempts than this, and I hope the project of Teshuva and repair continues to make amends and build new bonds in Springfield.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXXI: Trump Losing

Back in 2020, I suggested that Jews needed -- in the event that Trump lost his re-election bid -- to prepare for a "stabbed in the back" narrative. The fact that Jews consistently vote Democratic, I observed, would assuredly not make Republicans reconsider their arrogant assumption that they're the best friends of the Jews. The fact that Jews consistently vote Democratic would instead make Republicans fly into paroxysms of rage at the fact that the ungrateful Jews don't recognize what wonderful friends Republicans are.

Well, it took a little longer, but come 2024 Donald Trump is expressly laying this gauntlet down:

Speaking at antisemitism event on Thursday, Donald Trump doubled down on attacks on American Jews — those who do not vote for him.

He suggested that Jews would be to blame if he loses in November. He also said American Jews who vote for Democrats harm American interests, in an escalation of his standard rhetoric.

[....]

“I will put it to you very simply and gently. I really haven’t been treated right, but you haven’t been treated right, because you’re putting yourself in great danger, and the United States hasn’t been treated right,” he said. “The Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss if I’m at 40%. I mean, think of it, that means 60% voting for Kamala.”

Obviously, this sort of "the Jews betrayed us" narrative is extraordinarily dangerous, -- the stabbed-in-the-back narrative was central to how the Nazis whipped up an antisemitic frenzy that ultimately led to the Holocaust. And it's particularly scary given a MAGA base that's already primed towards White supremacism and extreme right-wing nationalism, and has been increasingly open in accepting and promoting antisemites of all stripes (oh hi, NC GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson, I didn't see you I totally did see you there, because the revelation that you called yourself a "Black Nazi" was only the latest iteration of an antisemitic record that was already widely known when you were nominated!).

The comments came at an event titled "Fighting Antisemitism". This might seem ironic, but I believe observers were missing the point: It's "Fighting Antisemitism" like "Fighting Irish" -- the promise of a more pugnacious, in-your-face style of antisemitism. Not limp-wristed Genteel Antisemitism or bookish and wordy Academic Antisemitism, but Fighting Antisemitism. That's the MAGA way.

Josh Shapiro Would Make a Fine VP and Probably Shouldn't Be Picked

There's a job opening for the position of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, and a list of possibilities is beginning to emerge. The main names I've seen floated are Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Governor, J.B. Pritzker, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

As far as I'm concerned, all of these are fine choices. None of them are blue dog quasi-GOPers. None of them are DSA-adjacent fire breathers. They're all solid, mainline Democrats with a lot to offer. Anecdotally, the name that seems to get the most enthusiasm in my circles is Senator Kelly; a poll of DNC delegates gave a plurality to Shapiro (albeit lagging significantly behind "undecided").

With respect to Shapiro, the case in favor is pretty obvious. He stomped to victory in the keystone key swing state of Pennsylvania in 2022, and remains quite popular in what is still a battleground state. He's generally done a good job a governor, and his out-and-proud Jewishness not only helps dissipates bad faith GOP grandstanding about protecting the Jews, it has also provoked plenty of "show us how you really feel" antisemitism on the part of Republicans whose love for "Jews" is matched only by their hatred for (actual, real-life) Jews. Plus, he provides a model of liberal religiosity which helps challenge the monopoly right-wing conservative Christians have sought to claim over the mantle of faith. It will not surprise you that I like Shapiro a lot, and his was the first name that came to mind for me when I thought of my preferred VP choice.

Unfortunately, Shapiro also seems to be getting the most amount of pushback of any VP contender from the single-issue (anti-)Israel voter crowd, who have tagged Shapiro has having an especially problematic pro-Israel outlook.

The entire dynamic surrounding the Biden-to-Harris switch and how it relates to the burbling pro-Palestinian sentiment amongst many younger Democrats is interesting. Over the past few months we saw quite a few people loudly aver they could never bring themselves to vote for "genocide Joe" because of the way in which he and his administration have enabled Israel's assault in Gaza. The closer we got to election day, the higher stakes this game of chicken became -- will they blink or will they actually usher in Trump 2.0 -- but now that Biden is off the ballot many of these persons seem to be happy to return to the Democratic column. Now, objectively speaking, Kamala Harris is part of the Biden administration and, minor rhetorical gestures aside, has not meaningfully separated herself from Biden's Israel policy -- if you genuinely believe that the Biden administration's policy regarding Israel is monstrous and unforgivable, Harris, as the second-highest ranking official in that administration, should be tainted too. Practically speaking, though, not having Biden be the name on the ballot has offered people who had perhaps overindulged in self-righteous chest thumping and consequently talked themselves into a corner a face-saving offramp. If they were fully genuine in what they say they believe about the Biden administration's choices being "unforgivable",* they'd be equally indignant about voting for Harris. That they're not suggests there was no small measure of performance going on, but for my part, I'm happy not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Welcome back.

But while this cadre may be willing to let bygones be bygones with Harris, many of them have seemingly decided that Shapiro is going to be the stand-in for the type of pro-Israel Democrat they cannot stand. Part of me recoils at this. Shapiro's positions actually don't seem that far off-line from those of his peers (he enforced an anti-BDS law that also exists in 37 other states?!?), and the effort to try and draw distinctions from how he has spoken of, e.g., antisemitism at pro-Palestine protests compared to how other analogous Democrats have spoken about it feels very thin. To be honest, the congealing anti-Shapiro backlash smacks of a very predictable and unlovely hyperpolicing of Jews-qua-Jews on Israel, whose every jot and tittle on the matter will be pored over with exacting and unforgiving scrutiny in a manner that just isn't imposed upon non-Jews. Non-Jews can have unacceptable positions on Israel, but only Jews become unacceptable for things like "her book has an Israeli in it." Shapiro is getting heightened scrutiny here not because his positions on Israel are significantly different from those of Kelly or Beshear or Cooper, but because he's a very visibly Jewish politician and so is presumed to need greater scrutiny.

That's not good. But even though it's not good, I think that for better or for worse it does give a good reason not to pick Shapiro as Harris' VP. Under circumstances where there are many good choices for the VP candidate, the fact that one in particular runs the risk of cheesing off a substantial contingent of wavering Democratic voters is reason enough not to choose him, regardless of whether the reason he runs that risk is "fair" or not. It'd be different if we were in a situation where there was a dearth of good options, or Shapiro was somehow the obvious best choice, or if the "anti-Shapiro" cadre was declaring itself ready to fight to the death over every remotely plausible mainstream Democratic choice or trying to sabotage any potential VP who wasn't all in on BDS. But we're not in that situation. The other Democratic alternatives to Shapiro are also good. Their positions on Israel are probably not that meaningfully distinct from Shapiro's. If I'm happy with a lot of people, and some people whose votes matter are particularly unhappy with one person, there's little reason not to pick someone that makes us all happy.

Throughout this electoral cycle, people in my position have insisted to fellow progressives that the importance of winning in 2024 is too important to take one's ball and go home the instant things don't go your way. That applies here too, but what it means right now -- when no VP has been picked -- is that it'd be unreasonable for me to die on the hill of picking Josh Shapiro for VP, even if I think he'd be a good pick, and even if I think the rationale upon which people are anti-Shapiro is wrongheaded or even pernicious. I may well be right. But winning in 2024 is more important than vindicating my correctness is. If Shapiro gets picked, I'll happily rally behind him and I hope everyone else does too. But there's no shame in Kamala Harris picking someone else if she thinks they will do a better job uniting the progressive community towards the goal of winning this November.

* On that note, I'll give, if not credit, then at least points for consistency to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who is one of the few Democrats who self-consciously declined to endorse Harris following Biden's withdrawal. Agree with it or not, her position was not a performance.

A Jewish Studies Purge at UC-Irvine?

There's a brewing controversy bubbling up at UC-Irvine, where Jewish students are protesting the decision to terminate the contract of a popular lecturer who had been teaching a class on Jewish Texts under the auspices of the campus' Center for Jewish Studies. The lecturer, Daniel Levine, is a Rabbi affiliated with the campus Hillel chapter. There are two open letters currently circulating in support of Levine and condemning his termination, you can read them here and here.

There are a lot of moving parts here, and situations like this almost always have lots of little nooks and nuances that can be hard for an outsider like myself to spot. But here's my best attempt to summarize what appears to be going on.

The Center for Jewish Studies is not an independent department at Irvine. It is run as a minor out of Irvine's humanities division and is specifically overseen by the Department of History. Levine is not a permanent member of the faculty, but he was by all accounts a popular teacher who was well-liked and respected by the campus' Jewish community. The official rationale for his non-renewal is that two new tenure-track hires with interests in Jewish Studies mean that his course can be taken over by permanent faculty members, offered every other year. The Jewish students counter that the new faculty members' specific subject-matter expertise does not seem tailored to the Jewish Texts course; further, they believe that Rabbi Levine would have been able to maintain teaching the class on a yearly (rather than biannual) basis.

But there's a bigger issue lurking. Among the demands of UC-Irvine pro-Palestine protesters has been for the university to cut ties with "Zionist" organizations and individuals. The chair of Irvine's history department, Susan Morrissey, is part of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine group which has endorsed these demands. The suspicion amongst the Jewish students is that Rabbi Levine was ousted from his position as a backdoor means of instantiating these demands. This fear is amplified by the fact that both of the new hires appear to be, at the very least, very sharp critics of Israel -- one was a leader of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, and both are signatories to a letter written three weeks after the October 7 attack demanding (among other things) "the end of all U.S. funding to Israel immediately." In essence, the students believe that Morrissey effectively instituted a purge -- replacing a Jewish Studies lecturer who was embedded in the campus Jewish community but (or perhaps, and therefore) was tainted by his association with Hillel and "Zionism" with alternatives who would be less effective in serving the Jewish community (and the community of students interested in the Jewish Studies minor) but were more ideologically congenial and aligned with the political demands of Prof. Morrissey and the pro-Palestine protesters.

None of the above is incontestable. The public explanations from the powers-that-be at Irvine might be entirely on the level. It is far from uncommon that the sorts of considerations that drive faculty hiring and teaching assignments (particularly at a large research university) do not align with what undergraduates believe or expect should motivate who ends up in the classroom. Other than the tidbits identified above, I have no specific knowledge regarding either of the two new tenure-track hires at Irvine; they may be able to cover Levine's class with aplomb. And certainly, there is nothing intrinsically odd about replacing an external part-time lecturer with a tenure-line faculty where possible.

Nonetheless, it is abundantly clear that the Jewish Studies contingent at Irvine has ample reason for both mistrust and discontent. From their vantage, they're losing a great teacher and community member with inadequate replacement, for reasons that seem inscrutable, in a context where their very discipline and their broader standing in the Irvine community seem to be threatened by powerful forces, including the very campus leaders who made the decision at issue here. When a powerful university actor says they support doing a thing (here, cutting ties with the "Zionists"), and then that actor does something that is to say the least compatible with that thing (terminating Levine's appointment), observers are entitled to infer that the thing happened for the reasons that the actor publicly articulated. That isn't dispositive, but its certainly probative, and nobody can or should fault the students for not buying that Morrissey is acting for neutral and purely professional reasons.

In essence, Morrissey put herself in a position where she lost the presumption of trust that might normally accord to decisionmakers in her role. No matter what the "truth" is (which may be unknowable), we have a situation where deep damage has been done to the Jewish Studies minor and the relationship between its overseers and the community it purports to serve. It is clear that, to say the least, the Jewish Studies community does not feel as if the powers-that-be who made the decision to terminate Levine and who are guiding the new direction of the Jewish Studies minor are receptive and responsive to the views of the most-affected stakeholders (maybe if they occupied someone's office? But alas, the hypocrisy trap....).

In any event, at minimum, the Jewish Studies students and the broader Jewish community at Irvine are entitled to more receptivity from Professor Morrissey; to believe that her orientation towards them is not one of hostility and that she views them as a stakeholder to be engaged with, not an obstacle to be overcome. If she cannot restore that relationship of trust, then it may indeed be better if the Center for Jewish Studies be moved into a different portfolio, with leadership that can do the job that she cannot.

Did You Hear? CUNY Branches Cancel Hillel Yom Ha'atzmaut Events

Two branches of the City University of New York system -- Kingsborough and Baruch -- have apparently canceled Israeli Independence Day events sponsored by local Hillel chapters, citing security risks. In the case of Baruch, administrators reportedly offered alternative venues to the Hillel chapter (which were declined), at Kingsborough, by contrast, the administration reportedly refused to make any arrangements to enable the event to go forward.

CUNY is a public university, so this raises the usual First Amendment problems. While every case is different, there are some clear overlaps between this case (in particular, the citation to "security" concerns) and the cancellation of pro-Palestinian speakers and events justified on similar logic (for example, at USC). This, of course, represents a golden opportunity for people to lob dueling hypocrisy charges at one another ("You were aghast when this happened at USC, but I don't hear you complaining now!" "Yeah, well you were apologizing for this when it happened at USC, but you're aghast now!"). I'm sure that will be a grand old time for everyone.

I do want to make one note on the relative coverage and penetration of this story compared to other free speech debacles related to Israel and Palestine on campus. I haven't seen this story covered outside of the Jewish press. That doesn't mean it won't be later, and I'm not generally a fan of the "...but you'll never see this reported in the mainstream media!" genre of commentary. In part, that's because I think there's massive selection bias in what we claim is over- or under-covered; in part, it's because I think virtually everyone massively overestimates how many stories break through to mass public consciousness at all. In reality, I think different stories gain traction in different media domains, such that a story which might tear through one sort of social or ideological circle might make barely a ripple in another.

That said, in many of the circles I reside in, there is essentially no knowledge that there are any cases of academic censorship of "pro-Israel" voices on campus at all. To be clear, I'm not saying that there are not numerous cases of academic freedom violations targeting pro-Palestinian speakers -- there are a slew of them. But the notion that this is a Palestine exception to academic freedom, rather than something which unfortunately happens in a host of other cases and contexts (including, in the right-slash-wrong environments, to pro-Israel speakers), speaks less to the reality of academic freedom and more to an epistemology of which cases get attention and which don't. There are many academics for whom the Steven Salaitas are known, while the Melissa Landas are not. In other domains and registers, there are different gaps.

Ultimately, it's a variant on "they would say it about Jews, they'd say it about other groups too." The claims of injustice are not wrong, but the claims of uniqueness very often are. How many times have we heard variations on "can you imagine if there was a mob of people harassing and making racist remarks towards any other minority group -- how would universities respond to that?" (As we saw at UCLA, the answer apparently is "they'd sit back and let said mob kick the crap out of their targets"). And at the same time, we've also heard plenty of iterations of "if a university dared cancel a pro-Israel event, it'd be on the front-page of every newspaper for the next month" (so far, no headlines).

So I'll all say is that, if you're of the bent that there's no meaningful suppression of pro-Israel speech in campus environments, and your informational ecosystem (other than me, I guess) didn't alert you to this cancellation at CUNY, you should consider how the former belief might be correlated with the latter lacuna. Other people might have different gaps, and they should contemplate what generates them as well.

On Loving "Campus Jews" While Hating Campus Jews, Part II

A few years ago, I wrote about how many external efforts to express "solidarity" with campus Jews facing antisemitism were defined by their obvious and overt disdain for, if not antagonism towards, campus Jews. What passes for "solidarity," too often, is intentionally and deliberately indifferent to the actual positions and desires of the students they're supposedly coming in to support. As I wrote then:

It is no revelation to say that Jews on campus experience their share of antisemitism, and deserve our support. But one of the more frustrating aspects of that reality is how that "support" often manifests in a fashion that is almost tauntingly unconcerned with what the Jews on campus actually want. "Support", too often, is not support at all -- it is a way for outsiders to exploit a headline or to ride their own hobbyhorses, and the campus Jews themselves are an afterthought....

[T]hose who drive the Hitler truck "in solidarity" do not at all care whether the Jews they "support" find their intervention all that supportive. By golly, Berkeley Jews are going to get this allyship whether they like it or not! And this is hardly an isolated event. Jewish students at the University of Michigan were livid at the Canary Mission putting their campus under the spotlight, complaining that it was making the environment for Jewish students on campus worse rather than better. No matter. Canary Mission's support for campus Jews is cheerfully indifferent to whether campus Jews feel supported.

Outside actors want to come in hyper-aggressive, but when campus Jews express frustration and try to say "you are not helping", they're met with dismissal verging on outrage. The outsiders love and support "campus Jews" as an abstraction, but they find the actual, flesh-and-blood campus Jews to be soft, weak-willed, squishy, and just overall contemptible.

Consider what happened recently at UCLA, where a group of pro-Israel counterdemonstrators (and if ever the phrase "outside agitators" was appropriate, here it is) assaulted a pro-Palestine encampment, leading to some of the most brutal and wide-scale incidents of violence we've seen over the past few weeks. While obviously chains of connection are at this stage blurry, it does seem that the counterprotesters were among the groups being supported by various external "pro-Israel" organizations. Unsurprisingly, the actual Jewish students at UCLA did not feel thankful or more secure by their "supporters" taking this action; to the contrary, it has decimated whatever social standing and moral credibility mainline Jewish students might have possessed with the broader UCLA community. And in the vein, UCLA students issued a statement that was a crystal-clear admonition to their putative "supporters":

We can not have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish community: stay off our campus. Do not fund any actions on campus. Do not protest on campus. Your actions are harming Jewish students.

The bold is original. And to be clear: the students who issued these statements are not aligned with the protesters. They identify as Zionists. They don't deny that there has been antisemitism amongst the protesters or on campus in general. That sort of very normie campus Jew is who is trying to communicate the message "you're not helping". And that, sadly, is exactly the sort of campus Jew who historically has been completely and utterly ignored by the rush of outsiders scrambling to demonstrate how much they care about "campus Jews".

In that vein, consider a recently announced academic boycott of Columbia University graduates by about a dozen federal judges, including Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho, on the grounds that Columbia has become an "incubator" of antisemitism. Is there any indication that Columbia's Jewish community wants "support" in this fashion? Is there any doubt that they view these judges' announcement as only making their position worse? No and no. But it doesn't matter, because this line of criticism assumes that Judge Ho and company want to help Columbia's Jewish community, when the truth is absolutely the opposite.  The abstract choice to "defend" campus Jews is paired with a palpable disdain for the campus' Jewish community.

This is at least the second time that Judge Ho has led an academic boycott campaign targeting universities on speech grounds (he sure does love BDS!), and much of what I said the last time applies here as well. It's serendipitous, but also no coincidence, that my introduction to my post about Ho's boycott "on behalf of" (but also targeting) Yale conservatives was a story about my own experience enduring harassment that began as misbegotten "solidarity" with me as a Berkeley Jewish student. The troll in question came to hate me because I was a Jew who didn't hate my time at Berkeley, and the only possible explanation for that sentiment in their eyes was that I was a self-hating Jew. 

Here too, one might find it strange that the very students these judges purport to be protecting -- beleaguered Jewish students attending Columbia -- are also covered by the boycott pledge. But this is intentional -- Ho et al fundamentally view any Jew who decides to attend Columbia for any reason as a traitor who deserves what's coming to them. What was then a parallel now is a traced-over line: the "solidarity" with campus Jews actually a thinly veiled form of contempt for any Jew who even slightly deviates from the orthodoxy James Ho wishes to impose upon the Jewish community.

There are, as always, many reasons why a Jewish (or non-Jewish) student might choose to attend to Columbia. Maybe there is a particular program they want to study in, or professor they wish to work with. Maybe they're curious to learn from people whose views are radically different than their own. Maybe they're inspired by the recent election of an Israeli as student body president of one of Columbia's colleges. Maybe they simply don't find the atmosphere as toxic as a bunch of Texas federal judges infer from afar. 

Ot maybe some of them just agree with what one Jewish student said in response to others who urged her to leave Columbia in the face of antisemitism: "It’s very important to stand our ground and show them they can’t force Zionist Jewish students out of their campus."

To any Jewish student who has thought along that line, who has said that they're not going let the risk of bullying or bad actors stop them from getting the best education possible, Judge Ho has a loud and clear message: "Get fucked." He doesn't care about you. He thinks you're absolute scum. In this, he shares a commonality with many of the outsiders who say they're supporting "campus Jews" while raining contempt upon campus Jews. Every Jewish student in America can and should internalize that message loud and clear.

The Other Reason American Jews Are Distancing Themselves from Israel

The topic of American Jews and Israel growing apart is an omnipresent one in Jewish circles -- a fear I've seen raised for as long as I can remember. Obviously, we're hearing more about it now, particularly as younger Jewish voices become increasingly prominent in protests against Israel and Israel's war in Gaza. But the fear is not new, and there is a familiar rhythm to it.

But while the discussion about the growing gap between American and Israeli Jewry almost inevitably is framed against the backdrop of Gaza and the occupation and settlements, I want to make an entry to this discussion that has nothing to do with Palestine, but whose impact is I think very important and very underrated. Admittedly, given all that's happening in Palestine, that feels almost absurdly self-centered. All I can say to that is that the fraying connection between American Jews and Israel is an important topic, and this is an underdiscussed element of that topic. I offer it not to the exclusion of explanations that are premised on genuine moral or political sentiments about Palestine, but as a complement to them.

So, without further throat-clearing, here is my claim as to one reason American Jews are increasingly distancing themselves from Israel: 

The Israeli establishment is increasingly deeply, openly contemptuous of American Jews.

Again, we can bracket everything having to do with Palestine and Palestinians. There's plenty to talk about there, but I won't talk about here. Whenever one talks about diaspora Jewish grievances against Israel, one is immediately met with the claim that the diaspora has no claim to speak on matters of "security" in a country they don't live in. There's plenty one could say to that, but fine, we'll leave "security" aside.

Instead, we'll start with a fact that has nothing to do with security: most American Jews are not Orthodox. We're Reform or Conservative (if affiliated at all). But these denominations of Judaism -- the denomination most American Jews identify with -- are not treated equally in Israel. Indeed, they are subject to heaps of contempt, scarcely recognized as Jews at all.

This has tangible consequences. We talk a lot about interfaith families, but there are many Jewish families whose status as Jews in Israel is in doubt. What happens when their matrilineal lineage might be traced back to a woman who had the temerity to convert under the oversight of the Jewish community most American Jews live in? Non-Orthodox conversions are barely recognized even for purposes of the law of return, and that begrudging acceptance doesn't extend to other aspects of Jewish personhood. How insulting, for American Jews to be told that the way we're Jewish isn't good enough to be fully recognized as Jewish in the eyes of Israel.

Insulting -- that's too mild. I can speak for myself here: my wife is Jewish. Her conversion was done under the auspices of the Jewish tradition through which I've lived my entire life. She lives a Jewish life. She celebrates Jewish holidays. She volunteers for Jewish non-profits. As far as I'm concerned, she's as Jewish as I am. To question her Judaism necessarily -- can only -- be based off a denigration of my Judaism. To hear that my Jewish wife, and through her our Jewish children, would not be treated as fully Jewish in a Jewish state is fury-inducing. Every time I think about it, I am filled with rage. How many of us are in similar circumstances? How many of us see our or our loved one's disrespected as Jews by the state that claims our fidelity on the basis of shared peoplehood?

There's more: half of all Jews are forbidden from praying as equals at one of our religion's holiest sites. Try to hold an important religious rite -- your child's Bar Mitzvah, say -- at the Western Wall, and you risk being attacked by an angry mob. It is very much in the realm of argument that the median American Jewish family would face more official, state-sponsored discrimination as Jews in Israel than they would in America.

And that doesn't get into the constant thumbs in the eye the Israeli government seemingly loves to give to the American Jewish people. Netanyahu's speech before Congress. Bragging that they prefer the support of Evangelical Christians over diaspora Jews. The constant ooze of contempt and disdain is impossible to ignore.

A few days ago, a college friend of mine wrote a post about the increasing gap between American Jewish sentiment and pro-Israel politics leaving Zionism with "nowhere to go". He has always been anti-Zionist, and so was of course delighted at the development. But one observation he made for why the trend seemed to be accelerating was that American Jews were increasingly discovering they simply had nothing in common with Israeli Jews. We're fundamentally two different peoples. There's no special bond between us, no particular reason to care more about them (or them us) beyond whatever general humanistic feeling we might have to any other group of people half the world away.

He said this with triumph. Many others will view it mournfully. And to some extent I think he necessarily overstates the case, if only because familial ties unite many (though not all) of us. Even for the rest of us, the severing of a sense of peoplehood is grave and painful, and won't be done easily. As much as some pretend otherwise, diaspora Jews disassociating themselves from Israel is not a free action. It hurts. The whole point of bonds like this is that they persist and endure through difficult and challenging times; they are not meant to be transitory expressions of instrumental alignment. But when a member of your family (literal or figurative) doesn't treat as if you are special, as if you are a member of a special circle of care and concern, that exerts a continual and powerful centrifugal force. Eventually, it will pull (some of? all of?) us apart.

And this problem is not one that can be resolved by the normal proposed solutions. It isn't a matter of young Jews lacking "education" on what's happening in the Middle East. It isn't caused by Jews lacking connection to their Jewish heritage (unless we buy into the notion that Reform and Conservative Jews Don't Count). It isn't attributable to a desire to "fit in" with the cool crowd or following the latest social media trend. It can't be laid at the feet of "Critical Race Theory" or "intersectionality" or whatever buzzword will be screamed across Algemeiner headlines next week. The brute truth is that American Jews are being hammered, again and again and again, with just how little the Israeli establishment thinks of us.

I'm not saying anything especially new here. Six years ago I wrote in the Forward that "Israel doesn't care what American Jews think." (the median social media response I got from Israelis to that column was "you're damn right we don't, and also, fuck you for saying so."). And again, I'm not trying to discount the degree to which Israel's unjust treatment of Palestinians under occupation genuinely, legitimately, and viscerally offends many Jews. 

But what I speak of here is a powerful negative force, and it is not getting better. And at any time, but perhaps especially under times of strain and stress, such a force will have its predictable effects.