A lot of ink has been spilled about Linda Sarsour’s place on a panel tonight at the New School on anti-Semitism, and a prominent benefactor has threatened to withdraw funding for the New School as a result. A lot of the negative reactions have to do with who Linda Sarsour is, what she’s said about anti-Semitism in the past, and what she supports. And there is an up-swelling of bigotry and Islamophobia rearing its ugly head, for which as a public Muslim figure, Sarsour is an unfortunate lightning rod.

But a lot of the censure has much to do with who is considered to be an appropriate spokesperson for the Jews about a Jewish experience. In activist and leftist circles, it is taken for granted that the people most appropriate to define their struggles in life are the ones who experience it. Thus, it is expected to defer to Muslims when the topic is the experience or definition of Islamophobia, or African-Americans when the topic is anti-Blackness in America, or women when the topic is misogyny. Why are Jews not afforded the same deference? Who has the right to define what we suffer for our Jewishness, or to define what it is to be Jewish? Who are the gentiles that are perceived to be experts on us from the outside, and why are we deferring to them?

While some of the panelists are Jews, none of them are experts in the topic of anti-Semitism. There are no scholars in the field, nor activists whose focus is combatting anti-Semitism. The panel has two members of Jewish Voices for Peace, one member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and the Arab-American Association of New York. None of these groups focus on anti-Semitism. The issue then becomes not just who is on the panel, but why this panel exists at all.

The eventbrite page reads: “When antisemitism is redefined as criticism of Israel, critics of Israeli policy become accused and targeted more than the growing far-right. Join us for a discussion on how to combat antisemitism today.”  In addition to an unproven assertion that critics of anti-Semitism do not focus on far right purveyors of anti-Semitism, the framing of this event seems to focus less on defining anti-Semitism or combatting, but minimizing it and redefining it in the framework of the Israel-Palestine conflict. That is dangerous for those of us who live with the consequences— namely, Jews.

It’s no surprise then that ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt slammed the event, saying “Seriously there’s not a single Jewish organization that studies this issue and/or fights this disease (such as @adl_national) would take this panel seriously, let alone the institution that put it together.”

A panel like this may not be a total disaster. JFREJ released a PDF concerning antisemitism, a result of their earlier webinar (also featuring non-Jewish input!) and while there are issues with the document, including the historically inaccurate too-rosy view of Jewish life as second class citizens in the Muslim world or glossing over the prevalence of anti-Semitic rhetoric in anti-Zionist circles, it is still a decent bit of work. But it is unlikely that we will see even this caliber of result from this panel. What is far more probable is that anti-Semitism will be minimized and redefined to suit the political needs of the group in question, as will the fundamentals of Jewish history and identity.

Instead of wrestling with the difficulties presented by Zionism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism head on, we can expect this universally anti-Zionist (or at best, agnostic) panel to redefine the issues into non-existence, and thus write off the majority of Jewish opinion as wrong and misinformed— a misled people, acting against their own self-interest, an elitist opinion trotted out by those too out of touch to understand why people make the decisions they do, and what motivates them, for good or for ill.

The left often fails in anti-Semitism by refusing to look at Jews as a community. They are usually willing to go to bat for a Jewish person’s individual rights, but almost never for our communal rights. To justify this, they will redefine our identity, our history, our oppression, and ourselves. We are not permitted to speak for ourselves. At best, we get spokespeople we did not elect, speaking on behalf of others in our name, but not in our interests— as is the case here. As with the right wing, Jews are more useful as pawns than as people.

This is odious. It is also typical. Even JFREJ admits to anti-Semitism’s cyclical nature, and the forced re-definition of Jews and the pathological bigotry we faced in order to benefit the elites. Where this panel of non-experts will inevitably drop the ball is in their failure to realize that in their circles, they are those elites, and they are doing nothing more than pandering to the demands of a gentile majority, seeking to inflict their self-interested moralizing on our backs. And if we have to pay for their self-aggrandizing in our blood, then so be it. It’s a price they are willing to have us pay.

After all, it’s a price we’ve paid before.

Image via Wikimedia

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If you can’t wait until Jewcy‘s Purim Pun-A-Palooza to get in to the holiday spirit, this weekend you can start getting your Purim freak on with the freakiest of celebrations— the JFREJ Purim Spiel.

A step back: JFREJ is Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and most of the year they organize political and community actions— think marches, training, protests. A Purim spiel is the Jewish tradition of a comic play that retells the holiday story, often with music, satire, irreverence. And when you combine the two? You get this year’s performance: JEWS WITH THORNS: A Purimshpil & Masqurade Ball.

The spiel is the baby of JFREJ’s partner: the Afselokhis Spectacle Committee— a collective of local artists, visual, musical, theatrical, you name it (all paid for their work), as well as several political action groups, Jewish and not. (Yiddish performance artist Jenny Romaine is generally at the helm, and her partner in crime was the late, great, Adrienne Cooper.)

The project began in 2002, and past productions have included Giant Puppet Purim Ball Against the Death Penalty, Rehearsal for the Downfall of Shoeshine: An Immigrant Justice Purim Spectacular!, Roti and Homentaschn: The Palace Workers Revolt! A Purim Carnival Spectacular, Your Homentaschen Are Killing Me! A Purim Ball for the body, its resilience, its fragility, and its bounce!… you get the general idea.

And what actually happens in these plays? They are definitely better experienced than described, but let’s just say that Purim is about turning society on its head, and JFREJ got the memo. Imagine running with that, with an unapologetically political bite. Last year, Vashti was a deposed queer leader of her people. The year before, Esther went by ze/hir pronouns and literally donned white-face to subsume hir racial identity and blend in with privileged palace life. All this while maybe a local band plays, or a spoken-word artist pauses the narrative to deliver a poem. The sets are made of all sorts of found-objects and simple supplies. Glitter is probably involved.

The story follows the general trajectory of Purim; or at least the stock characters are there. Haman represents institutionalized evil (though who knows what form he takes any given year), and some other characters (though maybe not the ones you would expect) resist. While the play changes greatly year to year, there will be some constants. There will be puppets. There will be music. There will be radical politics, and don’t expect to be comforted just because you’re the member of any particular oppressed group. In short, it will be Brechtian AF. Lather, rinse, go to the after-party.

The after-party is a spectacle in and of itself. It’s decidedly adult; you’re just as likely to see someone wearing leather as dressed as a superhero. You’re also just as likely to run into queer gentile acquaintances as traditional Jewish friends. It’s definitely a open free space for experimentation of expression. If you have a costume idea not quite tznius enough for the Megillah reading next weekend, try it out here. If you just want to rock jeans and a t-shirt, go anyway, with an open mind.

If you want the quieter, chiller evening, sans party, check out the spiel’s dress rehearsal tonight (doors 7:30, show at 8). You’ll still get the full joy of the performance, but for better or worse, without the energy of a bunch of leftists crammed into a space together. If you want to go all-out (and you should), attend the event this Saturday night, March 4th, doors at 7:45, show at 8:30. If you have kids, consider the Sunday family Purim carnival, from 12 to 4 p.m. The location for all of these is East Midwood Jewish Center, 1625 Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn.

Be there, or be part of what the spiel has called the “white Christian hetero-patriarchy.”

Photos of this year’s play in rehearsal by Erik R. McGregor.

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As you might have heard, the Zionist Organization of America invited recent Trump hire (and all-around hateful shmuck) Steve Bannon to speak at their gala last night in Manhattan. In response, hundreds of Jews and allies (including Muslims) protested the event, launching what they called the “New Jewish Resistance.” (It trended on Twitter, so it’s catching.) Bannon was a no-show, though whether or not that was related to the protest was unclear.

But was remarkable wasn’t just how many people showed up, it’s who they were. The Left, Jewish and otherwise, loves to talk about unity when lots of us can’t stand each other for one reason or another. But last night, people who normally avoid being in the same room joined together to march. Honestly, it felt a bit like a pre-Chanukah miracle.

There were four main organizers of the event, and they fell across the spectrum of leftist Jewish activism. T’ruah, for example, is opposed to BDS, and Jewish Voice for Peace supports it. Jews for Racial and Economic Justice remains neutral, saying the issue falls outside their “focus area.” But perhaps the most interesting group was the youngest of the four major organizers: If Not Now.

If Not Now exists to organize all Jews against the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian territories to move existing American Jewish organizations to condemn the Occupation, as well as to stand against anti-Semitism. Sounds simple enough, right?

Well, in theory. Even a friend of mine who attended an If Not Now training expressed skepticism— one umbrella for all anti-Occupation Jews is a mighty big umbrella, spanning from pro-BDS anti-Zionists to liberal Zionists critical of specific Israeli policies and politicians, and an ensuing difference in philosophy on every facet of identity, from religiosity to secular politics.

For the brief period the protest was stationed in front of the hotel hosting the ZOA gala (the police threatened the assemblies with arrest if they didn’t keep moving after only a few minutes), the group sang “Hinei Ma Tov,” a song that celebrates Jewish unity. For a moment, that struck me as ironic— we were inherently divided, since one gathering of Jews had come to protest the actions of another. And then, during that song, of all times, a man who had been holding a JVP banner approached a man who was waving a small Israeli flag.

“Do you know what that flag represents?” He asked.

“That I support a Jewish state,” replied the other.

The anti-Zionist insisted that carrying the Israeli flag represents Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Zionist insisted that he dislikes the current administration. The first man said that carrying the Israeli flag would offend half the protestors. The second man tried to brush him off.

This argument, ensuing during a song about Jewish unity, should have reinforced that there’s a problem here. But the anecdote sticks out because it was the only one I witnessed. Protestors holding Zionist signs marched alongside people wearing BDS pins. Literally every person there had people there with whom they strongly disagree. But finally, after all that big talk, the idea that anti-Semitism, racism, and bigotry are monsters worth fighting before getting to other issues was at the fore.

Despite how scary the current national political climate is, the protest was a reminder that it’s also kind of exciting to see what’s next. And it’s not that the issues of Israeli policy and its relationship with the United States aren’t important and complicated, but the ability to acknowledge that while still fighting a common enemy felt, finally, like more than a line.

How the argument between the two protestors end, as hundreds sang in Hebrew, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity?”

“In four years,” said one of the men, “We can go back to arguing with one another.”

Photos by Dan Rosen via Flickr

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