Jewschool’s decade-in-review series began with the best JewFilms of the 2000s, and Independent Minyanim, Social Justice, and the Jewish food movement, and continues with this roundup of the J Street phenomenon.
J Street enters a political arena fraught with peril from all sides. Treading the line between being too far left for the mainstream Jewish community to handle and being too far right to offer any new ideas, J Street’s directors have managed to balance themselves delicately in a position that is new and refreshing, but not threatening. They offer clear and straightforward analysis of Israeli-Palestinian politics, and are consistently true to their Jewish and humanitarian principles.
The clear message that we should take away from J Street’s success and ease of operation is that we are living in a different world, a world where differing viewpoints on complicated topics are no longer going to be acceptable justification for mudslinging and name-calling, a world where mutual peace and security depend on our ability to accept those viewpoints and hash them out.
J Street has proven itself able to listen to others, and to hold constructive dialogues, something that most Jews have never seen an organization interested in doing with regards to Israel. This truly represents a new era of Jewish politics.