Jewish Power Is Not a Scandal

On May 13, 1939, the MS St. Louis set sail from Hamburg carrying 937 passengers, almost all of them Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. Cuba refused to let the ship land. The United States and Canada were unwilling to admit the passengers. Temporary refuge was eventually arranged in Western Europe, but after Nazi Germany conquered much of the continent, 254 of those passengers were murdered in the Holocaust.

That story has become a symbol of Jewish helplessness: Jews begging for refuge, Jewish organizations pleading for mercy, democratic governments finding reasons to say no.

It is worth remembering that American Jews were not indifferent. They raised money, lobbied officials, negotiated, and tried to save lives. But they were operating from a position of limited power in a country shaped by isolationism, restrictive immigration laws, Depression-era fear, and antisemitism.

They could appeal.
They could argue.
They could weep.
But they could not compel.

That is the difference between helplessness and agency.

When Participation Becomes Suspicious

Today, American Jews are in a very different position. We vote. We organize. We donate. We build institutions. We challenge candidates. We support allies. We oppose those who minimize antisemitism, excuse terrorism, abandon Israel, or treat Jewish safety as a negotiable inconvenience.

In other words, we do what every serious community in American democracy does: we participate.

And yet, from both the left and the right, Jewish political agency is increasingly treated not as citizenship, but as scandal.

This is where the conversation often becomes distorted. Not every pro-Israel donor is Jewish. Not every Jew agrees with every pro-Israel organization. Jewish political agency is not reducible to one PAC, one party, one candidate, or one strategy. American Jews argue with each other constantly, often passionately, about Israel, foreign policy, campaign spending, American democracy, and the moral responsibilities of power.

But when Jewish or pro-Israel participation is treated as uniquely suspect, something older and uglier enters the room.

The Massie Race and a Moral Bright Line

That tension was visible this week in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District, where Republican incumbent Thomas Massie was defeated in the GOP primary by Ed Gallrein, a Trump-backed challenger supported by pro-Israel forces. The race was widely described as one of the most expensive House primaries in American history, with reporting putting total spending at roughly $32 million to $33 million. Gallrein defeated Massie by about 10 points.

The race should not be flattened into a single-issue referendum. Trump’s feud with Massie, intra-Republican discipline, libertarian isolationism, foreign policy, and campaign spending all converged. Massie had alienated President Trump and much of the Republican establishment on several fronts.

But Israel was plainly part of the story.

Massie had long opposed foreign aid, including aid to Israel. More significantly, in November 2023, he was the only member of the House to vote against a resolution reaffirming Israel’s right to exist. The vote was 412 to 1, with one member voting present. The resolution reaffirmed the State of Israel’s right to exist, recognized that denying Israel’s right to exist is a form of antisemitism, rejected calls for Israel’s destruction, and condemned the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel.

For many Jews and pro-Israel Americans, this was not an obscure procedural matter. It was a clarifying moment.

Can a member of Congress refuse to affirm the legitimacy of the world’s only Jewish state and still expect Jewish voters and their allies to shrug politely?

Apparently not.

To critics, the lesson of Massie’s defeat is that pro-Israel political power has become too strong. To many Jews, the lesson is different: after generations of discovering what happens when Jewish safety depends on other people’s indifference, Jews and their allies have learned to act while there is still time to matter.

Influence, Advocacy, and Selective Alarm

There is nothing wrong with debating campaign finance, lobbying, super PACs, or outside spending. Those are fair questions. Jews debate them too.

It is legitimate to ask whether any outside spending—left, right, corporate, union, ideological, or pro-Israel—distorts local representation. It is legitimate to ask whether fear can make a community’s politics too narrow. It is legitimate to criticize a PAC, a candidate, a strategy, or a policy position.

What is not legitimate is to treat Jewish advocacy as inherently sinister, uniquely coercive, or somehow less democratic than every other community’s effort to protect its interests.

When labor unions spend money, that is organizing. When environmental groups spend money, that is advocacy. When business interests spend money, that is politics as usual. When gun-rights groups or abortion-rights groups target candidates, nobody is confused about why.

But when Jews and pro-Israel allies organize around Israel, antisemitism, Iran, Jewish security, or the safety of Jewish students, too many people suddenly rediscover their deep concern for “influence.”

The concern may be sincere in some cases. But when alarm over political money appears only when Jews or pro-Israel advocates organize effectively, the selectivity deserves scrutiny.

What History Taught Us

The truth is simple: American Jews learned from history.

We learned from the St. Louis that goodwill is not a policy. We learned from the Holocaust that silence is not neutrality. We learned from generations of exclusion that access matters. And we learned from the creation of the State of Israel that Jewish life changes when Jews are no longer entirely dependent on the kindness, courage, or convenience of others.

Beneath the policy arguments is something more human: memory in the body.

Families remember doors closing. Grandparents remember names that disappeared. Parents remember teaching children what to do when a synagogue needs police protection. Students remember looking around campus and wondering which friends would still stand beside them after October 7.

Political agency, for many Jews, is not a taste for power. It is the refusal to be voiceless when safety is at stake.

Israel and the End of Total Dependence

Israel’s establishment in 1948 transformed Jewish history. It did not end danger, antisemitism, war, moral complexity, or Jewish disagreement. It did something more basic: it gave the Jewish people sovereign agency.

In 1950, Israel enacted the Law of Return, declaring that every Jew has the right to come to Israel as an immigrant. The world that turned away the St. Louis was a world in which Jews had nowhere that was required to take them in. Israel changed that.

That reality affects American Jewish politics. For many American Jews, support for Israel is not a hobby, not a foreign-policy abstraction, and not a tribal reflex. It is bound up with memory, family, peoplehood, refuge, and the hard-earned knowledge that Jewish vulnerability is not theoretical.

October 7 made that painfully clear again. The aftermath also reminded Jews that antisemitism can appear in more than one costume: religious, racial, nationalist, revolutionary, academic, populist, and occasionally wearing a very expensive lapel pin.

Why These Races Matter

So yes, American Jews care about political races.

We care whether candidates understand antisemitism. We care whether they can distinguish criticism of Israeli policy from demonization of Jewish peoplehood. We care whether they recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization, whether they support Israel’s right to defend itself, whether they oppose Iran’s threats, and whether they take seriously the intimidation of Jewish students and institutions here at home.

That is not sinister.

That is citizenship.

A democratic community is allowed to ask: Who hears us? Who dismisses us? Who stands with us when it costs something? Who treats Jewish safety as a footnote? Who understands that Israel is not merely a foreign-policy issue for Jews, but part of a living historical wound and a living historical answer?

Other communities ask these questions. Jews are allowed to ask them too.

The Discomfort With Jewish Agency

The criticism now coming from both sides reveals something important. Many people were more comfortable with Jewish vulnerability than Jewish agency.

A helpless Jewish community earns sympathy. A politically organized Jewish community earns suspicion. Dead Jews are mourned. Living Jews with PACs, lawyers, donors, voters, institutions, and a sovereign state are apparently more complicated.

But Jewish agency is not a threat to democracy. It is an expression of democracy.

The proper response to Jewish political participation is not conspiracy, resentment, or moral panic. It is more participation by others. Argue. Organize. Vote. Persuade. Build coalitions. Make your case.

That is the American system: maddening, imperfect, noisy, and still miraculous.

Power, Memory, and Responsibility

The Jewish community should use power carefully, ethically, and with humility. No community is above criticism. No organization should be immune from scrutiny. No political strategy is automatically wise because it is motivated by fear or memory.

Power does not become pure because Jews use it. Fear does not always produce wisdom. Historical trauma can clarify, but it can also narrow. A serious community must be able to protect itself and examine itself at the same time.

But neither should Jews apologize for having learned the central lesson of modern Jewish history: if the issues are existential to us, we have a responsibility to show up.

In 1939, Jews stood at the gates and asked to be saved.

Today, American Jews stand inside the democratic arena and argue for ourselves, for Israel, for Jewish safety, and for the values we believe protect a free society.

That journey—from pleading at the shore to participating in power—is not something to hide.

It is something history required Jews to learn.

And like all power, it must be used with care, humility, memory, and moral seriousness.