Before I could respond to Philip Weiss’ latest post on the dwindling progressive Jewish face in national politics, Matt Stoller on myDD joined in on this conversation about the face of Jewish national politics with the resounding call that “AIPAC Doesn’t Represent Me, or Most Jews”.
Weiss raises a number of important points, and interestingly enough ties it to his own Jewish roots, which some of us lament doesn’t happen often enough, and some of us would say ties into the very fact that he’s upset about: “In my generation, the prominent Jewish presence in American life is no longer progressive.”
Well, maybe if more of us actually talked about our Jewish identity explicitly in doing our work, that would be a good first step, but of course, there’s more that needs to be done.
In fact, I couldn’t agree with Stoller more when he says:

I’ve thought for awhile that a PAC or organization targeted to Jews like me who want a progressive foreign policy would do really well. Of course that PAC would have to consistently called groups like AIPAC and Senators like Chuck Schumer and Joe Lieberman on their immoral and whiny bullshit. Judaism is a beautiful religion and culture and I am proud I am Jewish. It’s a large part of why I am progressive.

And I would add NOT just on international policy, but domestic policies as well.
It’s interesting to note in one of my last posts about the rise of secular Jewish educational programs throughout the country, and conversations similar to the one that Weiss and Stoller are participating in.
And I must wholeheartedly agree with Weiss that, when it comes to the some of the national jewish voices that exist today: “The press routinely characterizes the evangelical Christians as rightwing; and I think the press should characterize the Jewish presence as centrist.”
But still Weiss doesn’t directly take on the tension that progressive Jews have been dealing with for the past twenty or thirty years, and that is the tension between somewhat decent Jewish progressive politics on domestic politics and hawkish international policies and explicitly link it to Israel and Palestine. Nor does Weiss or Stoller do justice in acknowledging the number of groups that have been trying to breach this issue for generations, but have had tremendous difficulty in getting through.
It is true Kushner and many Jewish progressive people can see a distinction in looking at international politics from multiple perspectives, but it does seem that Kushner primarily gets the heat he does because he calls for human rights for Palestinians. It’s not even a “radical” call, to ask people to acknowledge that Palestinians are not only treated as second-class citizens, but are denied access to basic life necessities, including water sources, housing rights, land, education, and the list goes on and on.
Unfortunately, this ends up being a radical call and consistently gets shrouded, most notably by a conversation about defense and suicide bombers. A conversation that continues to not acknowledge or really address why people are bombing, or to really acknowledge that if you step on people long enough, yes they are going to fight back. We know this all too well–this is part of our history. We have fought back as well when people oppressed us. What we can’t acknowledge as well is when we are doing it to others, and that is exactly what is happening in Palestine. And I think organizations like Just Vision, and their latest film, Encounter Point, do a really good job of presenting the issues in new(er) ways that are refreshing and important to hopefully shifting this conversation.
And this conversational shroud has been part of what has turned the Jewish left into a bit of a dinosaur–of course, one cannot ignore the change in social and economic status due to economic policies like the GI Bill that have thus changed the political interests and party lines that some Jewish communities hold, but in all honesty, this isn’t enough. Many of us consistently wonder what has happened to the Jewish world. And while I believe there needs to be a stronger national Jewish voice that speaks for progressive domestic and international politics, I still wonder how it could hold all of the complexities that exist within Jewish communities, and the tensions even within Jewish progressive politics–particularly questions of leadership, race, gender and sexuality, and infusing real systemic social change work and policies into our call for tzedekah or tikkun olam. Maybe it’s time to heed the call.