In the second episode of the comedy web series “Ac’tiv•ist,” Sam enjoys her campaign’s new-found success — until she meets the new volunteers.
Aspiring student organizer Samantha Rushbad grapples with the simultaneously inspiring, mind-numbingly banal, infuriatingly stupid, and downright absurd nature of campus activism as she starts a campaign to force her college to divest from Israel. As Sam steps ever-further into the labrynthine world of activism, she must also deal with her mother, love interest, teachers, and friends who fail to understand her activist life.
And yet, in the Biblical Pesach story, Rasha is not left behind. The entire Jewish community — the wise, the wicked, the simple, and those who don’t know how to ask — cross the red sea together. And together they wander for forty years, diasporic and free, a group filled with doubters and dissenters and rebels. In other words, questioning the Jewish community does not mean that we are separating ourselves from it. We question not from a place of distance but from a place of caring, engagement, and connection. And efforts to keep out the challengers, to blunt our teeth, are doomed to fail.
Well, that was awkward.
Just a few days after announcing that it had hired Simone Zimmerman to be its national Jewish outreach coordinator, the Bernie Sanders campaign suspended her position yesterday, in reaction to loud, right-wing criticism of her positions, activism, and language in opposing the Israeli occupation and its enablers. I had planned yesterday to take on her chorus of critics for their ethically compromised and sometimes farcical gotcha-combing of Zimmerman’s very public and proud paper trail. Now, I must add some serious, head-shaking, profound disappointment in the Sanders campaign for what really looks like management amateur hour.
Scene: Hebron, June 1997. Palestinian stone throwers clashing with IDF soldiers in the Old City. A friend and I who are living in Ramallah as
I have always felt a love for Israel and a deep compassion for the struggle of Palestinians, but in the past, I had found it difficult to find a space where I could stand in solidarity and bring my fully Jewish identity to my activism. In the IfNotNow movement we show up for ourselves by addressing anti-Semitism and working to liberate ourselves from personal and communal traumas. But our liberation is deeply bound up with the liberation of others, including the Palestinian people.
Monday’s protest vehemently affirmed the last of IfNotNow’s principles, which says, “We believe that we will win.”
“Perhaps it was only a matter of time before you became so out of touch.”
Solidarity of Nations – Achvat Amim is a 5 month volunteer experience, built and run by activists and educators, in Jerusalem that directly engages with the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on the core value of self-determination for all peoples.
A policy that truly defended the right to debate, or even just to listen curiously as others debate, would not require every local Hillel across the country to welcome Jewish Voices for Peace every time its name appeared on a proposed event.
Learning from my boys the importance of direct human connection and honesty, even in a remote area of Jordan.