Guest post by Mollie Leibowitz.

“It could have been any one of us.”

My classmate read aloud the opening of the email from the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles as we drove downtown to join one of the many anti-ICE protests in front of the Federal Building on June 10th. In his email, the Federation’s President and Chief Executive Officer Rabbi Noah Farkas recounts recent antisemitic attacks and appeals to the Jewish public to help combat antisemitism in Los Angeles.

Rabbi Farkas continues, “our protection rests on two pillars: our city and ourselves.” He’s right, no one is going to protect us but ourselves. But who constitutes “ourselves?” I disagree with whom he seemingly excludes from this group.

My classmates and I were driving downtown from Hebrew Union College, where we are participating in the Summer Beit Midrash program focusing on Israel. We had just finished a session about the use of B’nei Yisrael in the Torah and what it might mean to be a “child of Israel” amongst the children of Israel.

B’nei Yisrael is often used to distinguish the Israelites from the other nations of the land. The first time B’nei Yisrael appears is after Jacob wrestles with [something or someone] at Peniel and the socket of his hip is dislodged in the struggle. “Therefore, the Children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve that is on the socket of the thigh until this day” (Genesis 32:33). Our medieval commentators remark that this naming serves as a reminder of the glory that bound the Israelites together in the Torah and that will continue to bind Jews together across the world today.

To be a member of B’nei Yisrael is to be a part of this Jewish “ourselves,” yet Jews have a long history of emphatic disagreement and mutual disownment. I’m not sure the B’nei Yisrael of the Torah ever felt a true obligation to protect one another: not when Moses took them out of Egypt, not when they married Midianite women, not when Korah rebelled, not when David tried to fight with the Philistines against King Saul, against the kingdom David would soon inherit.

Instead, the people in the Torah who do fight for the safety of the Israelites, who put the lives of B’nei Yisrael over their own, are the very people excluded by the distinction of B’nei Yisrael, the people of the other nations: Shifra and Puah, the Egyptian midwives who delivered Israelite babies despite Pharaoh’s decree, and Bilam, the non-Israelite prophet who refused to curse the Israelites at the Moabite King Balaak’s orders.

So why do we insist that only Jews can and will protect “ourselves”?

For Rabbi Farkas to send this email out last week, without mentioning the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles or the recent increase in ICE raids across the country, was to send a message that antisemitism and Jewish security are separate issues from the fascism descending upon our country. This is frankly false.

As civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer said, “no one is free until everyone is free”; our freedoms are dependent on one another. Jews won’t be free from antisemitism until nationalism dissolves and borders are demolished, until immigrants are free to live without the fear of deportation, until Palestinians are free from zionism, until until until. When Rabbi Farkas said, “it could have been any one of us,” he meant it could have been any one of us Jews falling victim to an antisemitic attack. But the opening line of his email could be spoken interchangeably by any group in the United States facing violence today.

Though there are Jews I do not feel obligated to (for moral and political reasons), and many Jews who certainly do not feel obligated to me (for the same reasons), as long as we are B’nei Yisrael in our sacred texts, our fates are undoubtedly connected. However, by using “ourselves” exclusively for Jews, we are withdrawing from our potential coalition partners, which makes all of us more vulnerable to fascism, unprotected. If we can hold Jews with whom we do not agree in our B’nei Yisrael, what is stopping us from bringing in non-Jews who share the aim: to make the world a safer, more joyful, more connected place.

If we expect to defeat antisemitism, we must expand who we understand to be a member of B’nei Yisrael, who we are bound to. Now, more than ever, we must turn towards our non-Jewish community members in need and use our voices and our bodies to protect them—and fight like hell while doing it.

Mollie Leibowitz is an educator, artist, and Master of Educational Leadership student at the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles.