When Jewish Solidarity Stops Including Jews

A Jewish organization that says it is fighting antisemitism has accused a Jewish man of “fueling antisemitism” because he objected to an artist’s rhetoric about Israel and Zionism. That is the conflict at the heart of Bend the Arc’s recent attack on Robert Kraft—and the stakes are larger than one celebrity dispute.

The question is whether Jewish safety is still treated as a legitimate concern when the Jews expressing it are Zionists, politically inconvenient, or unwilling to accept the progressive consensus about Israel.

In a message directed at Kraft through an Instagram post, Bend the Arc wrote that his actions “fuel antisemitism,” accusing him of “twisting its definition to fit your own agenda.”

I read it once.

Then I read it again.

A Jewish organization dedicated, in its own words, to dismantling antisemitism was blaming a Jewish man for fueling antisemitism because he used his influence to impose consequences on an artist whose rhetoric about Israel and Zionism he evidently believed had crossed a line.

We need to talk about how upside down this has become.

Macklemore has freedom of speech. Of course he does.

Freedom of speech, however, has never meant freedom from criticism, disagreement, protest, lost business relationships, or other lawful consequences imposed by private actors. An artist has the right to say what he believes. Robert Kraft has the right to decide that he will not lend his resources or platform to that artist.

We can debate whether Kraft made the right decision. Jews can disagree about where criticism of Israel ends and antisemitism begins. We can argue about Zionism and Gaza and Netanyahu and the war and American policy until Mashiach comes.

That is not what disturbs me most about Bend the Arc’s post.

What disturbs me is the inversion of responsibility.

When Jews say, “This rhetoric frightens us. This rhetoric demonizes us. This rhetoric is contributing to a climate in which we increasingly feel unsafe,” the answer from a Jewish organization cannot simply be: Actually, your objection to it is what causes antisemitism.

That should stop us in our tracks.

I believed you when you said Jewish safety mattered

And perhaps this is what makes the post particularly painful.

After the murders of two Israeli Embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington and the attack on Jews gathering in Boulder, Bend the Arc issued a statement acknowledging the fear many Jews were experiencing.

They wrote of being afraid that “attacking Jewish people is becoming normalized.”

I believed them.

I still believe that fear deserves to be taken seriously.

But Jewish safety cannot mean only the safety of Jews whose politics make them acceptable in progressive spaces.

Jewish pluralism cannot mean that anti-Zionist Jews are entitled to have their understanding of antisemitism heard while Zionist Jews are told that expressing ours is itself dangerous.

And solidarity cannot mean standing alongside every vulnerable community except when standing alongside your own becomes politically inconvenient.

I want Bend the Arc to explain how these things fit together.

How do you warn that attacks against Jews are becoming normalized and then accuse a Jew of fueling antisemitism when he draws a boundary around rhetoric he believes contributes to precisely that climate?

This isn’t an argument that every criticism of Israel is antisemitic.

It isn’t.

It isn’t an argument that Palestinians don’t deserve dignity, freedom, safety and self-determination.

They do.

And it certainly isn’t an argument that Jewish organizations should march in ideological lockstep. Judaism has survived several thousand years of Jews arguing with other Jews. I suspect we can handle a few more.

The question is something different:

At what point does solidarity with everyone else become abandonment of your own people?

Who gets to define Jewish fear?

Bend the Arc describes itself as an organization fighting antisemitism. It teaches about antisemitism. It publishes guides about antisemitism. It asks Americans to listen when Jews describe the machinery by which antisemitism operates.

So here is what I cannot understand:

Why does that listening seem to stop when the Jews speaking are Zionists?

There is an increasingly common dynamic in some progressive spaces in which Jewish fear must first pass a political test before it is considered legitimate.

Were you sufficiently critical of Israel?

Did you condemn Netanyahu before describing what happened to you?

Have you established your concern for Palestinians before mentioning your concern for Jews?

Are you the right kind of Jew?

If not, perhaps what you experienced wasn’t really antisemitism. Perhaps you misunderstood. Perhaps you’re weaponizing the word. Perhaps calling attention to it is actually making antisemitism worse.

That should trouble every Jew, regardless of politics.

Because no minority community should have to earn permission to describe the hatred directed against it by first demonstrating the correct politics.

We are in the season of teshuvah

And maybe the timing of all this is what makes it hit me differently.

We are in the Yamim Noraim.

These are not supposed to be comfortable days.

Judaism does not ask us during this season merely to catalogue everybody else’s sins. It asks us to examine our own.

Ashamnu. Bagadnu.

We have been guilty. We have betrayed.

Teshuvah demands something extraordinarily difficult: the willingness to entertain the possibility that our certainty about our own righteousness has blinded us to harm we have caused.

So I have a question I genuinely hope the leaders of Bend the Arc will carry with them into synagogue this Yom Kippur:

Is it possible that in working so hard to demonstrate your solidarity with the progressive left, you have stopped extending that same instinctive solidarity to large numbers of your fellow Jews?

Not because those Jews are always right.

Not because Israel is always right.

Not because Robert Kraft is always right.

But because they are also part of the Jewish people.

They deserve to have their fear heard before it is explained away.

They deserve to object to rhetoric they experience as antisemitic without being accused of creating antisemitism themselves.

And they deserve Jewish organizations willing to stand beside them even when doing so complicates relationships with political allies.

That is what solidarity means.

It is easy to stand with people when doing so earns applause from the people around you.

The test is whom you are willing to stand beside when it costs you something.

This is where I get off

I have followed Bend the Arc despite disagreeing with many of its Israel positions.

That never bothered me.

I don’t need every Jewish organization to agree with me. In fact, I don’t want them to.

I want a Jewish community capacious enough to contain Jews of the right, left and center; Jews who protest Israeli governments and Jews who defend them; Jews who question Zionism and Jews like me for whom Zionism is an inseparable expression of our Judaism and our love for the Jewish people.

Disagreement is not betrayal.

But there comes a point when disagreement reveals something deeper.

This post crossed that point for me.

So I am unfollowing Bend the Arc.

Not because it criticizes Israel.

Not because it is progressive.

And not because I expect a Jewish organization to share my politics.

I am leaving because I no longer recognize my understanding of Jewish solidarity in what it is doing.

And that genuinely makes me sad.

Because an organization that believes Jewish safety is inseparable from the safety and dignity of other peoples is articulating something profoundly Jewish. Our tradition commands us again and again to care for the stranger, pursue justice and remember the vulnerability of others.

But also is one of the most important words in Jewish moral life.

Palestinians deserve safety and dignity.

And Jews do too.

Muslims deserve protection from Islamophobia.

And Jews deserve protection from antisemitism.

Progressive Jews deserve a place in the Jewish community.

And Zionist Jews do too.

We should never have to diminish someone else’s humanity to defend our own.

But neither should Jews be required to diminish our own pain, history, vulnerability or peoplehood in order to prove that we care about everyone else.

That isn’t solidarity.

And it isn’t the Judaism I know.

So as Yom Kippur approaches, I hope whoever wrote that post, whoever approved it, and those responsible for Bend the Arc’s direction spend some time with the question our tradition demands each of us ask:

Where have I missed the mark?

And perhaps one more:

Have I become so certain that I am standing on the side of justice that I stopped noticing whom I was leaving behind?

Teshuvah begins with being willing to ask.

There is still time.