When is enough, enough?

I’ll just own it: I’m channeling my inner Aaron Sorkin right now, specifically President Josiah Edward Bartlet’s introductory monologue, when he says that he never should have gotten on that damn bicycle when he was angry. I’m sure that I shouldn’t write this when I’m also fuming (Jed – President Bartlet – ended up hitting a tree), but I’m going to ignore that piece of self-advice.

Last week, the National Association of Independent Schools held its People of Color Conference (PoCC) in Denver, during which a keynote speaker – Dr. Suzanne Barakat, an assistant clinical professor at the School of Medicine and Executive Director of the University of California, San Francisco Health and Human Rights Initiative – offered that Zionism developed when, “some European Jews decided that the solution to solving antisemitism in Europe and Russia was the establishment of a state in Palestine.” (The quote is from a letter written to NAIS on December 11 in response to Dr. Barakat’s address, signed by Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of ADL; Paul Bernstein, the CEO of Prizmah, the Center for Jewish Day Schools; Ted Deutch, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee; and Eric Fingerhut, CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America. In it, the signatories said that Dr. Barakat presented a “patent erasure of the millennia-old connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel and a flattening of Jewish identity, excluding MENA Jews who also yearned to return to their ancient homeland.”)

According to Jewish Insider, the letter added that, “a Jewish student stated that he and his peers ‘felt so targeted, so unsafe, that we tucked our Magen Davids in our shirts and walked out as those around us glared and whispered.’ It also took Dr. Barakat and other presenters to task for the misleading usage of the term “genocide,” and it unequivocally stated that “the vast majority of the Jewish community is Zionist…” and that “Anti-Zionism fuels antisemitism.”

Yes – yes – and yes. But while there are genuinely thoughtful and deeply Jewishly committed people arguing that we should not cede NAIS’ territory to the Dr. Barakats of the world and their sympathizers (knowing or inexcusably ignorant), I’m just not won over by that argument any longer. Somewhat comparable to, but not an exact analogy with, those who say that Jewish students should – dafka – continue to enroll in the Ivies, to make sure that other voices are heard in the quad and in the classroom; that the misuse of “genocide” and “colonialist” can only be countered by knowledgeable and proud Jewish – and, Gd willing, other – voices.

I have no doubt that there are Jewish students and Jewish parents who continue to support and enroll in certain schools because they see the benefit of attaining an education at – let’s pull a random example – Columbia or Harvard or U. Penn. There are still Jewish and Jewishly-inclined donors who continue to support, with millions of dollars, certain schools because they genuinely believe that support will make an educational and societal difference. Kol hakavod – and good luck.

But – and here’s the quiet part out loud (the angry part that got President Bartlet to skid into a tree) – I’m wondering if too many of us are still caught in a self-designed trap of, please-accept-me Diasporic Judaism. Some combination of Peretz’ Bontshe Shveig, who just can’t get himself to complain – about anything – and some stubborn need (still) to be accepted into their neighborhood, their law firms, their country clubs. Their professional associations.

I hesitate (though clearly, not enough) to go there, because I know people of exceptional character who are not registering their Jewish Day Schools with NAIS out of a weakness of Jewish identity, and yet I’m still plagued by the thought that some of us continue to think, in some deep recesses of our Jewish subconscious, that hanging out with them is some form of anti-ghettoizing, that we’ve made it if we’re at that conference, or belong to that organization, or go to that school. It’s the plot line of a dozen coming-of-age, made for TV movies, in which the not-quite-cool-enough teens sell their soul so they can sit at you-know-who’s table, while they inevitably forget their former (and real) friends. The denouement of this genre: they end up recognizing that their “acceptance” was never real anyway, and – because “cool” is actually about being a mesnch – their former friends welcome them back, after a bit of groveling and self-awareness.

When the price of admission is to either stay silent (and tuck in that Magen David) or to all but sign a declaration renouncing four thousand years of Jewish history (we get to sit at their table as long as the first sentence we utter is some form of I-am-not-a-Zionist), maybe that price is too high.

There are ostensibly one hundred Jewish Day Schools with membership in the NAIS. Would it be ceding rhetorical territory to the Dr. Barakats if they turned in their too-expensive memberships, or would it say that there actually are boundaries, that hate speech – can we just call it what it is? – should not, cannot, be tolerated. The argument is a cliché by now, but the exercise is still valid: substitute a bastardization of any other ethnic or faith community’s identity and count how long it would take for an avalanche of protests to fall – and not solely from the targeted community, but from all corners, from all allies. I’m no longer working in a day school, so forgive me if I missed the chorus of voices opposing what was said at the conference, but all I’ve heard is a deafening silence.

The President of NAIS, Debra Wilson, issued a statement replying to the letter signed by Fingerhut, Deutsch, Bernstein and Greenblatt. I’ve read an excerpt reported by Jewish Insider – which was plenty for me – that fell abysmally short of a meaningful response. “Gaslighting” was how a respected colleague from my day school days, whose school is part of NAIS, characterized it. However it’s described, will it be enough to placate, to win a little more time and a lot more Jewish forbearance?

An anecdote that has stayed with me for over twenty years since my experience as a Mandel Jerusalem Fellow: we spent a week in the UK, meeting and speaking with leaders of the British Jewish community. It was fascinating to hear from people whose families counted themselves as thoroughly British, who had been in the UK literally for centuries; with glaring exceptions, this was clearly not the American Jewish experience. The topic of antisemitism, and of the distinct nature of British antisemitism, was raised. One of the presenters, who spoke proudly about the centuries-old contribution of British Jewry to his country, said with a touch of sadness but with no apparent irony, that, “maybe if we’re here for a little longer, we’ll be accepted.”