Tonight, over 300 young Jews with IfNotNow marched on the Trump Hotel in Washington, DC, to protest a Hanukah party hosted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The group has led protests against Trump’s pick of Steve Bannon over the past two weeks that saw over 2,500 young Jews in over a dozen cities. And again, the intense display of twitter love via #JewishResistance made it trend on Twitter.
The tone deaf (or sycophantic) event hosted by the Conference of Presidents, as it is called, suffered the boycott of eight of its own members, including its largest member by far, the Union for Reform Judaism. “This decision is tone deaf at best, naked sycophancy at worst,” said URJ President Rick Jacobs in a statement.The Conference of Presidents purports to represent all American Jews — though the total membership of the Reform movement alone is as large as most of the other conference members combined.
The other members who rejected the event were the Central Conference of American Rabbis (the rabbinic wing of the Reform movement), the National Council of Jewish Women, Americans for Peace Now, Jewish Women International, HIAS, Ameinu and the Workmen’s Circle.