Why Young Jews are Standing up to Trump — and Their Own Institutions
On Tuesday, more than 100 young Jews and allies sang, danced, and chanted inside Boston’s Faneuil Hall to protest the silence of Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) in the face of the racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism of the Trump administration. As part of IfNotNow and the growing #JewishResistance, we demonstrated that, if CJP refuses to act as moral leaders for the Jewish community, our generation will take matters into our own hands.
Our responsibility as Jewish Americans in this moment of crisis is not just to resist the Trump administration on principle, but also to ask tough questions about how the American Jewish community is contributing to oppression. By refusing to stand up to the appointments of Steven Bannon and David Friedman, and by failing to reject the Israeli occupation of Palestine, institutions like CJP undermine their own stated commitment to justice. As CJP responds to the #JewishResistance with hostility, young Jews keep rising up and the movement grows stronger.
Right now, defending our democracy is the responsibility of every American. Repealing the Affordable Care Act will be a death sentence for thousands. Deporting 3 million undocumented immigrants in a year will be disastrous for their families our communities. From Russian hacks to dismantling ethical oversight, Trump’s administration is poised to put many of our vital institutions and hard-won victories in jeopardy.
So why does it matter that we stand up as Jews? I have asked myself that question many times. While my mother is Jewish, I was raised in a secular family that valued fighting for justice over religion. I learned what it meant to stand up for what you believe in not from Rabbi Hillel’s three questions or from Sunday school lessons, but from friends and family, and from the work my parents did developing affordable housing and helping survivors of domestic violence. I learned that social justice is civic duty.
What I have recently realized is that standing up as a Jewish person is about making visible my community’s rich tradition of resistance. When I told my parents why I feel compelled to connect my political work to my Jewish identity, they reminded me that my grandfather did the same. I wish I could have met him; like another Jewish progressive we have come to know, his name was Bernie. Last month while rummaging through his old things, I found a plaque honoring him for his work as a lawyer representing the AFSCME that read, “Generations ago the scholar Hillel asked, ‘If we are only for ourselves, what are we?’ It is this truth and commitment which distinguished his life.” The sense of continuity I felt reading those words was humbling. The movement I had joined just a few months earlier, IfNotNow, also fashions its story around Hillel’s questions — an invitation to show up for ourselves and for others.
Showing up for ourselves is urgent. JCCs around the country reported bomb threats last week. White supremacists are planning an armed march on Jewish residents of Whitefish, Montana. Trump has appointed the anti-Semitic white supremacist Bannon as a chief political advisor. I have felt heartbroken and scared — not just as a queer person, or a woman, or a young person, or as an organizer, but as a Jewish person, too. Others feel the same: in November, nearly 4,000 Jews around the country took to the streets to demand that Trump fire Bannon.
Then there is the enormity of the need to show up for others. In addition to protecting targeted groups in the U.S., Jews must stand with Palestinians living under the Israeli occupation. This summer, I witnessed a small piece of the occupation while staying in the West Bank. I saw how Jewish trauma used as justification to oppress another people, and how Palestinian suffering was framed as an inevitable consequence of Jewish nationhood. It made me deeply angry. For 20 years, my Palestinian host family had watched from their back porch as illegal settlements encroached on their land, while some Israelis described that as unfortunate collateral or a mere distraction from the issue of Jewish security.
Days before Trump’s inauguration, the occupation may feel distant. But Trump’s administration is directly aligned with and supportive of Israel’s oppressive policies toward Palestinians and non-Ashkenazi Jews. The embodiment of this ideology is Friedman, Trump’s pick for Ambassador to Israel. Described by Judy Maltz in Haaretz as more conservative than PM Netanyahu, Friedman has said settlements are not an obstacle to peace and that he opposes a ban on construction in the West Bank. Friedman has also likened Jewish progressives to “kapos,” a reference to Jews who aided Nazis during the Holocaust. Rather than viewing Trump’s and Netanyahu’s administrations as unrelated, we must see them as intertwined in their shared espousal of Islamophobia, denial of Palestinian rights, and tenuous commitment to democracy.
Yesterday in Boston, and across the country this month, young Jews have demonstrated an understanding that we will never be free until all people are free. Until CJP and other institutions that claim to speak for us do the same, we will be the leaders they refuse to be. We will push them forward, toward an end to our community’s support for the occupation, and toward freedom and dignity for all.
