Progressive Jews and the Modern Left

By now, plenty of folks are familiar with the story of June’s Chicago Dyke March and its organizers’ decision to expel three queer Jews from the march for the high crime of carrying a pride flag overlaid with a white Star of David. And the overt anti-semitism those organizers displayed after being duly harangued for their ignorant, fearful conduct.
I’m not interested in getting into why what the Chicago Dyke March did was horrible — plenty of others already have — in large part because I’m a cis-het dude.
But the conflict over the March (rightly) started a series of discussions among activist friends of mine, along with activist friends of those activist friends. And folks, I’m here to report what a lot of you probably know damn well — that anti-semitism is alive and thriving on the modern activist Left.
I want to be precise here, though, because of two things. First: most among even the most radical, revolutionary types that I have regular occasion to talk to are as appalled by the anti-semitism as I am and most would be. And second: anti-semitism isn’t really a thing at all within the establishment Left — by this I mean the Democratic Party and the center-left. At least not in my experience.
Because I want to be clear about what I’m seeing. Jews are being called “hooknose”. People are talking about drinking “zio-tears”. Folks are talking about “international finance” and “the media”. But these are just some of the clearest, grossest examples. Far more pervasive is the idea that anti-semitism simply doesn’t exist. And the ones advancing this argument are invariably gentiles.
This kind of stuff only happens when you get out of the established progressive movement and into the more radical parts of the leftist grassroots. And it’s ugly in there. One fellow (and he was absolutely a white dude) went so far as to accuse an Israeli woman of lobbing a “blood libel” at the Palestinians when she brought up terrorist violence from Hamas.
Democrats don’t do that shit. People who call themselves “socialists” because they think it makes them sound edgy — that’s who does this shit.
And so, when I get into — or sit exhaustedly by and watch — conversations with these “radicals” who claim deep historical and sociological understanding of what it means to be Jewish in the contemporary West, everything becomes about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. EVERYTHING.
So I want to try something different. Something “radical”. I want to ask the Left to forget about the Israelis and the Palestinians for a second. Just forget about the policy of the Netanyahu government for a second and deal with me. I’m a Jew. I’m descended from people named Abramson and Hatkoff. My mom’s family’s from Belarus and Russia. They came over to the U.S. to get away from the Bolshevik Revolution. I’m a fourth (maybe fifth) generation American. And I’m a Jew. I had a bar mitzvah at a reform synagogue in the Bronx. I believe in God. I have a Tanakh in my bedroom. I’m a Yankee fan, and a politics nerd. I have a pretty big whiskey collection. I have a dog named Toby.
Do you want to ask me about Israel right now? Do you think that that’s really what this is all about, and that I’m just “skirting the issue” or something? Do you really, really want to talk about Israel right now?
Because that’s anti-semitism. That right there. That impulse to turn the Jew into Israel.
Because I am not a vehicle for your outrage over Israeli government policy.
You understanding me to be such a vehicle means you view me as something other than human. Which is racist. Full stop.
I’ve felt anti-semitism my whole life. I know what it feels like. It’s been easier on me growing up in the Bronx than it is on a lot of Jews, but I’ve been keenly aware of it since I’ve been old enough to be keenly aware of things. At 16, I went to Washington, D.C. on a nerdy “Young Leaders Conference” politics program thing. There I met a girl, and she was really, really cute. She was from Wisconsin, I think. Maybe Minnesota. She and I were flirting for a big chunk of the week, until one day towards the middle of the program I played lawyer in some moot court thing. I was assigned to argue that a church should be allowed to use public school space for some meeting or another. After the argument was over, I felt half the room getting really upset with me. In my teenage desire to be liked, I blurted out something to the effect of, “hey, it’s not like I love church so much, I was just playing the part. I mean, I’m Jewish!“ Rimshot. And half the room did think it was funny.
The other half — including that midwestern farm girl that I liked — did not think it was funny. And she never talked to me again.
That feeling — that “you’re not welcome here” feeling — Jews have been getting that vibe off of people in the West for millennia. When it gets really bad, that vibe comes with rifles and dogs. Sometimes, it comes with worse.
And the trick with anti-semitism is that there’s always a “reason” why the Jews aren’t welcome. The Nazis thought the Jews had engineered Germany’s economic woes after World War One. The Spanish Inquisitors were convinced that the Jews were somehow causing the bubonic plague. The English Crown in the 13th Century thought the Jews committed ritual murders of children as part of our Devil worship, which is why taxes were high, or … something.
But without comparing anybody to anything, it’s clear that Jews are no longer welcome in a lot of spaces on the Left. That there’s a “reason” doesn’t matter. What matters is that people are not welcome because they are Jewish. Just like those three queer Jews weren’t welcome at the Chicago Dyke March. They weren’t waiving an Israeli flag. They were waving a pride flag with a six-pointed star on it. Two interlocking triangles. That was enough.
Because Jewish iconography means this is now about Israel. Everything has to stop now, and you Jews need to leave. Because Israel. Because the economy. Because the media. Because … whatever. But you Jews definitely need to leave. Because “reason”.
What makes this whole story and its aftermath so disturbing in its lack of self-awareness is that that’s how prejudice always works. Of course it is. You find some construction that allows you to justify your discomfort. Bigots always have a quiverfull, ready to fire at you when confronted. First the “reason,” and then the justifications for why it’s okay this time. Then the justifications for the justifications. And it snowballs. It’s called scapegoating. Again — it’s been happening to the Jews in the West for millennia.
So I want the folks on the Left who think they have this whole “I’m not really an anti-semite because x” argument down to know that, as soon as you need to come up with an “x”, you’re already doing racist shit. This is why, in so many other contexts, progressives are working so hard to ask the marginalized community what counts and does not count as harmful instead of coming up with a definition and imposing it upon them.
The arguments that Judaism somehow “doesn’t count” in those calculations— that I should be required to bury or otherwise swallow parts of my identity because of some other thing — that’s not progressive. That’s anti-semitic. I thought progressives were supposed to be the ones that got that.
NOTE: No, I’m not getting into my views on Israel or the occupation here. Because THIS ISN’T ABOUT ISRAEL. And because demanding that Jews (and only Jews) “pass the Israel test” and publicly demonstrate themselves to be anti-Zionist or whatever else — to proclaim loyalty to the “acceptable” politics of the room before they are welcome — THAT’S ANTI-SEMITIC. That was the point of this whole essay. Didn’t you read it?