Oren Jacobson
The Progressive Movement, Israel and Antisemitism: Exploring What’s Happening and Why
Oren Jacobson - The Progressive Movement, Israel, and Antisemitism: Exploring What’s Happening and Why
- Good evening everybody, and welcome back to Lockdown University. It is my great pleasure to introduce Oren Jacobson, who’s going to be in conversation with Carly this evening. This week launches a week long focus on antisemitism, and I’m thrilled to say this has been an amazing collaboration, calling it Shine the Light, of almost 65 different organisations. And I just want to say a huge congratulations to you, Carly and to your team, and to all the other organisations for this incredible, really this incredible collaboration. I’m looking forward to hearing from Oren, and before I do that, I’m going to introduce him. Oren Jacobson is a civic entrepreneur, thought leader, and policy advisor focused on helping communities and organisations build the strength and capacity necessary to address systematic challenges. His civic advocacy spans local to international engagement, and he has advised global Jewish institutions and supported global corporations as a subject matter expert on antisemitism. To help deepen understanding and build bridges, Oren co-founded Project Shema, which helps Jewish students, leaders, and organisations navigate the difficult conversations surrounding Israel and antisemitism in social justice spaces, and provide social justice centred antisemitism education to public and private institutions. So on that note, I’m going to hand over to both of you, and we look forward to hearing this evening’s presentation. Thank you.
[Oren] Thank you, Wendy.
Thank you very much, Wendy. So to start off with, I just wanted to introduce a little bit about Shine A Light, and build on what Wendy said. So today is the first day of Shine A Light on antisemitism, and you can visit the website at shinelighton.com. So Shine A Light is a national initiative to spotlight antisemitism through education, community partnerships, workplace engagement, and community advocacy. It’s fueled by an unprecedented coalition of over 60 American, Jewish, and non-Jewish organisations from across the US and Canada. And Shine a Light draws from the inspiration of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, to encourage Jews and allies to speak up about antisemitism, and send a message that one single light can dispel the darkness. We’re very proud of the huge number of partners that have come together on this, and very appreciative to all of the foundations and organisations who’ve worked with us to help bring this to the fore. So, Oren, I wanted to start off with a little bit about your background because it might feel a little counterintuitive that someone who describes themselves as a progressive leader has also chosen to tackle engaging around antisemitism, anti-Zionism in the progressive space in America. So perhaps you can tell us a little bit more about that, and as our audience may not be able to see yet, you’re also a kippah wearing Jew so I suspect you are… There you go, you are an unusual sight in the progressive world in America.
Yeah, certainly when I walk into a room at this point in time, that quickly invites some conversations, many of which are totally fine, and some of which can be a little bit, you know, distressing or frustrating, or a little bit less than ideal. So yeah, so I describe myself as a progressive in the way any one word can define the way I think about domestic politics in particular, I would use that word. I’ve been proud to help build the largest leadership development organisation in the country in the progressive movement over the last kind of seven to 10 years. And, you know, part of who I am is really the story of us as a community. My grandfather was one of the 10% of Polish Jews to survive World War II. He’s from a town called Lublin, Poland, and there were about 40,000 Jews in his hometown. Fewer than 300 survived. So for me, I internalised that story. I internalised that story in two ways. The first was that I had an obligation to stand up for our community, and the second was that I had an obligation to stand up for all those who were attacked for what I call the crime of being who you are. And so that drove me into social justice activism in America. But to me, there is nothing contradictory at all with fighting antisemitism and being a progressive, or with frankly fighting those or challenging those who demonise the existence of a Jewish state on this Earth, and demonise a Jew who believes in the right of Jewish national self-determination in some portion of this land. In fact, I would argue there is nothing progressive about advocating for the erasure of a Jewish state, or in demonising Jews who believe that state has a right to exist, which by the way, says absolutely nothing about the policies or the support of a policy of a government in that statement.
So let’s dig a little deeper on that. What are some of the uncomfortable questions that you might get asked when you enter a room, and how do you go about challenging them?
Yeah, so I mean, the uncomfortable questions are the ones we’ve all heard of. Like, you know, immediately because I’m a Jew, because I’m visibly Jewish, right? There are questions about Israeli policy that are put onto me right away. Do you believe it, do you support X? Whether it’s occupation or you can go into sort of more loaded language like, you know, genocide, or ethnic cleansing, or apartheid, or any of these things. And so the assumption that it’s okay to even ask me when I walk in the door to do some piece of advocacy that has nothing to do with Jewishness or Israel is inherently problematic. So the question about how I approach it is really dependent on what the relationship is with the individual in the space. If it’s somebody who is, you know, unknown to me, I always invite them to meet with me afterwards to discuss these matters and sort of redirect the conversation back onto why it is that I’m there and say I’m happy to talk about this, but I’m not here today because of that. I’m here today because I care about this, and if you want to have a conversation about that, that’s fine, but as a Jew, I should be able to be in this space without having to answer questions about the Israeli government.
So that leads me into a recent example of one such space where you would’ve hoped, as a Jew, you could voice your opinions, but the organisation involved felt that they wanted to prevent what they called Zionist organisations. But in this case, it was actually Jewish organisations that happen to believe Israel has a right to exist, from voicing an opinion on anything else. Now for the Americans joining us, they will realise I’m talking about the Sunrise DC movement, but for the rest of the world, perhaps you can introduce this recent issue and explain a little bit more.
Yeah, so the context is this, there’s an organisation in America called the Sunrise Movement, and it’s really a youth-led national movement that operates in sort of a distributed way. Meaning that each chapter operates independent of the other chapters, and really independent of the national entity. But in theory, they’re all working on tackling climate change. That’s sort of the central impetus of this movement. And a few weeks ago, or a month ago, whatever the timing is at this point, there was supposed to be a voting rights rally in Washington DC, and the reason that voting rights is important to this conversation is that you can’t really tackle climate change if you don’t have voting rights for everybody. And so the DC chapter of the Sunrise Movement decided that it wasn’t going to participate in this voting rights rally, and more broadly, in a coalition with, quote-unquote, Zionist organisations, and they explicitly named three Jewish organisations with a long history of working in domestic social justice movements in their statements saying that they wouldn’t be there, they wouldn’t support, they wouldn’t speak and moving forward, they wouldn’t be in coalition with any, quote-unquote, Zionist organisations. So that’s the background context in that particular story. It should be noted that there were organisations in this coalition who were not Jewish, but who also openly support the right of Jewish national self-determination in Israel. And of course those organisations were not named in that statement.
So how did you engage with this issue when it happened?
So the unfortunate piece is that right away, because of my work and history inside of the progressive movement, I knew that the average non-Jewish progressive wouldn’t immediately see this as anti-Semitic. Now that might come as a surprise to people, but I think it’s really important to remember that most people don’t actually know what Zionism is, and most people don’t actually know what anti-Zionism is and that doesn’t matter how you define it. Meaning if you define it the way Jews do or Palestinians do. Most people don’t actually know what it means. And so if you take one more step back from that, you should also understand that most progressives and most non-Jews in general, I don’t think really have a good idea of what it means to be a Jew, let alone what antisemitism is, or how antisemitism works. So to assume that someone is going to immediately see a word that we think is loaded and as a dog whistle as antisemitic, I think was a faulty assumption. And so my response is actually I wrote in a Twitter thread that went viral and then an op-ed that has been pretty widely distributed, was to reach out to people that I knew, including by the way, some folks who work in national staff of the Sunrise Movement to provide context to why it is that we would see that as anti-Semitic. But in doing that, I start at the beginning, which is what does it mean to be a Jew? Because if you think of Jews as a religious community, then you won’t inherently see anti-Zionism as a problem in any way, shape, or form because anti-Zionism in the way that some progressives or some people who claim to be progressive define it, is not an objection to a religion. It’s an objection to a political movement. And so you really have to do a lot of unpacking and educating to help people understand why that’s so problematic because they don’t understand what the language means in the first place, let alone what antisemitism is.
So when you deal with colleagues who are actually looking to understand this better, you know, progressive colleagues who will come to you and say, is this anti-Semitic? How do you help break that question down?
Yeah, and let me say most of the people that I’ve engaged with over the course of my time in these movements, and by the way, that’s national engagement with grassroots organisers and activists, most of them are genuinely curious and want to know more. The vast majority of them don’t have any animus that I’ve experienced towards Jewish people or even towards Israel, but they’re not terribly well educated on these issues. And so for me, it really is about starting with what does it mean to be a Jew? When I get these calls or these text messages because people see all the fury on Twitter or whatever it is, I take a step back and we start with the question of what does it mean to be a Jew? And I start by explaining to them that Jewish identity is much more complex and nuanced than simply that of a religious community. Obviously we have a shared religion in Judaism, some of us are incredibly religious, some of us are totally secular, all of us are Jews, and we have an identity that is somewhat national or like, that of a people or an ethno-religion, right? That it’s beyond the question of just religion, and so the way that I try to help them understand is Jews are a people who have a shared religion, which is really critical because if you just think that we’re a religious community, then antisemitism is only that which attacks Judaism. When in fact, in modern times over the last several hundred years, the vast majority of the way antisemitism shows up is as anti Jew, not anti Judaism. And so you really have to start with those two basic principles to even get to the question of why refusing to be in coalition with a Zionist organisation, quote-unquote, would be anti-Semitic because it’s effectively targeting Jews simply because they are Jews who believe in Jewish national self-determination.
And what kind of responses do you get? Are people, you know, open to this discussion? Do you-
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Honestly, the vast majority of the people I talk to are more than open and understanding. What they’re looking for is context. They want to understand what the concern is. And most of them, if I wanted to distil like a very simple sentence into what most of them are looking for is, how do I hold a government accountable for policies which I think are harmful without engaging in acts of antisemitism? So the vast majority of people that I’ve met across this movement in America are looking for ways to engage in what they believe is fighting for justice for Palestinian people without attacking, harming Jews, or being anti-Semitic. So that’s really what a lot of them come to me for who are in relationship with me and know me in large part because I’ve shown up with them and for them in other spaces.
So in in recent studies, and I think you’ve just referenced this partly when you’ve talked about the modern day expressions of antisemitism, what these studies have shown whether it’s been AJC or ADL’s recent studies is confusion quite frankly. You know, that when you break down the ideas, actually most people come out on the side of, you know, 86% of people when asked feel that, you know, de-legitimizing the existence of the state of Israel is anti-Semitic. But actually, 25% of people believe that they should say they are anti antisemitism because, you know, you should be an anti-racist. So how much do you think of the problem here is the words and the language that the Jewish community and others have developed around antisemitism, and the complexity of this idea that we haven’t become very good at distilling?
Yeah, so I’m supportive of the idea that we ought to think about different language. I don’t know that I have a frame that I use more than any other. I often just talk about the fact that antisemitism is anti Jew, not anti Judaism as the way that I talk about it with peers ‘cause it’s the language they know as a starting point. So I would be supportive of using different language, whether it’s Jew hate or, you know, anti-Jewish racism. I don’t know, that’s not the space that I’ve spent too much time thinking about, but I sort of see the broader challenge as three things. As I said before, people don’t actually know what it means to be a Jew, right? So I’ve said this twice now in this conversation. If you think that Jews are a religious group, then you’ll automatically think that antisemitism is a religious bigotry. So if you don’t hear something targeting religion, you won’t perceive it as antisemitism. That’s sort of number one in my mind. The second is that most people don’t understand how antisemitism works, and especially in the American context, when we think about status, and power, and safety. In America, we think a lot about sort of the permanent cultural and structural power of white over non-white, in particular, Black in America. And so because Jews in America are typically identified as a white religious community, that means you have power and it’s hard to imagine how you could go from say, being on top in this story to being on bottom. And that is part of the other complexity is that antisemitism doesn’t work the way sort of anti-Black racism does.
Meaning, it surges and spikes, and the safety of Jews across a community and a society changes rapidly or can change rapidly. So that’s a second problem, meaning that lots of people in America, in particular, in the progressive movement in particular, think that there’s no way for someone who’s got status and safety and power in society to end up the victim of systemic oppression and violence. And then the third problem is, generally speaking, when you begin to define the struggle through the lens of white versus Black, white versus non-white, everything is about race, and then you place the context of sort of Jews in America in particular in modern America, meaning the last 30, 40, 50 years as the understanding of what it means to be a Jew anywhere else on earth, let alone a Jew at any other time in history. You look at a community in America particular that feels successful and privileged, you look at a country in Israel that seems powerful vis-a-vis the Palestinians and you say, what are you all so worried about? That plays into, by the way, stereotypes, old persistent stereotypes of Jewish power that it’s all built on top of, and that creates a really complicated factor that to be honest, Carly, I’m not sure in and of itself changing the language can fix. There’s a lot more work that needs to be done with people in my opinion.
And do you think there’s a turning point where, you know, kind of one of the phrases that you’re starting to hear in the US a little, and it leads into this, is that kind of the Jews are on the wrong side of history? You know, the Jewish community are white privilege as far as, you know, today’s anti-racism activists are concerned. And it doesn’t help if you talk about history and how the Jewish community got here or whatever else because, you know, the world has a short memory and, you know, there is a kind of shallow engagement around this space. You know, do you think there was a turning point that this occurred, and how do you think we start to push back and kind of have a more meaningful conversation around these issues?
Yeah, I was asked a similar question on a panel not too long ago sort of like, when did this all change or like, what happened? And so like, this energy has been moving and moving for a while, meaning it’s not, you know, it’s decades, not years. But really when Donald Trump was elected president, it set off a chain reaction inside the progressive movement that took some of these ideas from more of the edges of the movement, into the mainstream of the movement, and it really grounded a lot of our conversation inside of progressive spaces about the role of white supremacy, and systemic power, and systemic oppression, and privilege, and these types of things. And within that story, Jews obviously get defined as both white and privileged. And to be totally honest with you, I would define myself as someone who is privileged under these contexts. I think part of the challenge, part of the challenge is that when you define these things so rigidly, it’s easy to bucket groups of people in ways that are potentially harmful. And so I do think it’s right for Jews to have a long memory. I do think that we should think about the world not simply through our individual lived experiences. What I have, you know, gone through in 39 years of life as a Jew in America, I think I have an obligation to think, to consider what has been the last 40 years of Jews in other parts of the world, be it the UK, Israel, South Africa, Australia, wherever it is. I have to think about those things, France, Germany. I also think that I have to consider what it means to be a Jew at any other point in time in history because really if you put me down in any other point in time in history, the odds are that I would be living in an era that was hostile to somebody like me just because I am a Jew, and so I think we have no choice but to.
And to that end, I think that it’s on us to challenge those who treat the world as if it’s a post anti-Semitic world, and to not allow our lives or our history or concerns to be diminished or dismissed because for a tiny sliver of time, we’ve arrived at a place of relative status or safety on Earth. The last 70 years of Jewish life on Earth are the exception to the rule, and it’s fair for us to wonder whether or not that exception will continue. I also think that when I talk to my friends in particular in America about this, I have started saying to them, you can call me a white Jew if you want, but you better be talking about white Christian supremacy if you’re going to call me a white Jew. Otherwise, call me a Jew who benefits from white privilege or a Jew who presents as white because the white supremacists don’t accept me as a white person, and Jews aren’t responsible for creating the global structures of the western world. Moreover, you cannot understand the western world in particular if you don’t understand the role that antisemitism plays in the creation and sustaining of the modern western world. And unfortunately, if there is a blind spot in the progressive movement, and there are many blind spots in all movements, but one of them is the inability to see the role that antisemitism plays in creating the entire western world that they are, or that we are often critiquing. And so from my perspective, the question of wrong side of history, what I would say is this. I think the vast majority of American Jews continue to support movements for justice, and have strongly supported movements for justice in America for a really long time. I also think from my perspective, that it is important that American Jews speak out about policies which are harmful to the Palestinian people. And at the same time, we can do all of those things while also advocating for the fact that the Jewish people deserve justice too, the Jewish people deserve national self-determination too, the Jewish people deserve liberation too, and there is a distinct difference between those who are advocating for an end to the status quo, and for a different future for the Palestinian people, and I count myself amongst those people. From those who are advocating for an end to Jewish national self-determination on the face of this Earth, or somehow seek to demonise the state of Israel as a uniquely evil state, and therefore demonise a Jew who believes that the state of Israel has the right to exist offhand just because they believe the state of Israel has a right to exist. That’s a mouthful in the answer and it’s, you know, but it’s sort of the way that I think about all these things.
So to go a little further on that, you know, the progressive movement, if you look at some of the recent issues that they’ve been focused on, be it COP 26 and the anti-Israel messaging that could be seen at the climate change protest, despite the fact that Israel is responsible for naught 0.2% of climate damage, or the Kyle Rittenhouse demonstrations that happened, you know, made their way across New York. And one of the key points of one of the speeches was solely about the destruction of the state of Israel or the anti-vaxxer movement. You know, the kind of obsession with an end to Israel has bled in. Now you could argue it’s a small minority with a loud megaphone, but it’s still a kind of a worldview that is that Jews in the streets of America are seeing, you know, if you want to go and join a climate protest. Let’s continue the Sunrise DC example like, you know, are you even welcome?
So what I would say is if you’re going to go to one of these large protests, there’s a decent chance that you’re going to run into a sign or in some cases a speaker who is going to say something that I would think is either problematic at best, or anti-Semitic at worse. I think that’s sort of a known reality at this point in time. But by and large, I think that we’re still welcome in these spaces, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been plenty of examples in which Jews have been pushed out or made to feel unwelcome, and I have unfortunately the suspicion that that is going to become, that those types of events are going to become more commonplace in the near term. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the long term, but I think it’s going to be more commonplace. I have never found myself pushed out of one of these spaces. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been challenged or asked some really pointed and uncomfortable questions, but I’ve never found myself pushed out. I wouldn’t stay in a space that was systemically antisemitic.
Yeah, that’s what I wanted to ask. So maybe you haven’t found yourself pushed out, but have you found a moment where you’ve walked away?
Walked away from relationships, not entities or causes. That’s because I’ve never been a part of an entity. So like if I was a member of Sunrise DC right now, I would no longer be a member of Sunrise DC. That’s an easy one for me. I’ve walked away from relationships, and I’ve also stayed in relationships where the conversations were difficult and imperfect, but we’re working together because I think that relationships are that way, meaning they’re imperfect and we hurt each other, and I think each of us has to make a decision about whether or not the people we’re engaging with we think are genuine actors who care about Jewish life, or are disingenuous actors with an agenda. And part of the problem inside of progressive spaces I would say right now is there are a lot of genuine actors who do care about Jews who are adopting the ideas of disingenuous actors who don’t.
And, you know, in terms of what the Jewish community can actually do about this. You know, as you say, one of the things I used to find fascinating in the UK is that what a lot of kind of diehard labour activists who were involved under the Jeremy Corbyn era would claim is that, you know, the Jewish community all voted conservative anyway, which was total lot of rubbish as the Jewish community had helped found the party and actually statistically, were much more likely to vote for the Labour Party, and as you say, care about social justice movements. But when this is what the Jewish community is confronted with and as you’ve said, you know, frankly you think it’s probably going to get worse and not better, what actually can be done about it because these don’t seem inviting spaces and, you know, you are obviously very articulate on this issue. You feel equipped to have these discussions and to go in knowing you are going to face this stuff. But for your average person who really just wants to be a part of the climate change movement, you know, where do they go with this?
Yeah, so a couple thoughts. Number one, at this point in time, the Democratic Party itself has not reached a point that the Labour Party itself reached. Meaning, there’s not a Jeremy Corbyn sitting atop of the Democratic Party who buys all of these ideas and tolerates all these ideas. The voices inside of the party who are promoting this type of rhetoric are not in control of and do not represent anywhere near a majority of the party, and I think that’s a really important distinction because it will play a role in how this unfolds. Meaning, will the Democratic party go the way of labour? Or will you just have some spaces in the progressive movement, which are not the elected spaces where this happens? As I said, by and large, most of the places that you’ll walk into, this isn’t going to be an issue, it just may become more of an issue as we go, and it’s been growing slowly. There’s a chance I guess that the Sunrise DC issue will help stop the spread, and there’s also a chance it’ll have no impact whatsoever and you’ll see more pressure to do with it. What I think the community should do is this. Number one, we have to focus on empowering our own people to be allies for ourselves. Meaning, making sure that we have the skills and confidence to engage because many of us are already there, many of us are in these spaces, in these rooms, many of us are just quiet when we’re in these spaces in these rooms because we don’t want to deal with the challenge.
To the extent that we can be empowered, and more confident, and more skilled, the better off we will be because from my experience, the vast majority of people in these spaces are curious about these issues, not problematic. Meaning they’re not out to get the state of Israel, they are out to advocate for justice and many of 'em I’ve encountered a lot of people who would say that they’re supportive of the BDS movement and a two-state solution, which many of us would say is an oxymoron, right? That you can’t be supportive of both because the global BDS movement is not seeking a two-state solution. But they believe that those two things are still compatible, and so I think it’s really about a few things. Number one, it’s about empowering our own people to feel equipped to engage as part of what Project Shema is doing. I think it’s important for us to have moral clarity about what’s happening in Israel proper, in Gaza, in the occupied West Bank as well, and to push in the ways that we can to change the status quo and help get to a two-state solution that ensures security, dignity, piece, and the national aspirations of both peoples. But beyond that, I think we have to actually advocate and tell our story, and help people who don’t know what it means to be a Jew, what antisemitism is, how antisemitism works, or really anything about Jewish history, they need to understand those things. If you treat the Holocaust as a one-off aberration, it’s really easy to dismiss the concerns of Jews. But if you understand the Holocaust as a pattern, as just the logical and conclusion or the worst example of a pattern of history that’s thousands of years old, it is a lot harder to dismiss the concerns of Jews. And frankly, there is nothing progressive whatsoever about advocating for the end of a Jewish state in a world full of nation-states when a nation-state is the only way to ensure your protection in a world that has never protected Jews regardless of where Jews have been. Save maybe the example of the last century in America, the previous 2,000 years of Jewish history in 2,000 years of Jewish history everywhere on Earth has seen endless amounts of systemic violence, be it in Europe, the Middle East or Southeast Asia, however you define the territory, or North Africa. And so I don’t think that it is progressive to advocate for a situation in which Jews are once again a stateless minority subject to the whims and bigotries of a world that has been intoxicated with anti-Jewish hatred for the vast majority of the last 2,000 years.
So one of the things that I’ve always found fascinating, and I think it it does particularly happen in the progressive world is the kind of inability for Jews to define antisemitism themselves, and for other people to define it for them. In the UK in about 20 years ago, there was something developed called the Macpherson Principle, which basically said that all complaints of of racism should be recorded and investigated as such basically until proven otherwise. And that was again referenced in the report on the antisemitism and the complaint in the Labour Party last year as, you know, also being relevant for Jews. How does it work in America? It’s obviously not foolproof in the UK, but there is at least that principle that people are aware of. How does it work in America and how does it work in the progressive movement itself?
Yeah, we don’t have that as a starting point, Carly. You know, I hesitate to say that Jews are the only one who experience this 'cause I might be, you know, I might not be noticing it when other communities do, but there absolutely is a troubling pattern in which other communities get to define antisemitism and not Jews, or the voices of a small and unrepresentative sample of our community are used as a shield to excuse antisemitism. And so I wrote about this a little bit in the op-ed, which was to say while the voices of, you know, the 10% of Jews in America who oppose the state of Israel’s existence, or who would define themselves as anti-Zionist are relevant. Meaning, we shouldn’t stifle or ignore those voices. If 90% of any other community said that something was racist and anybody else in the progressive movement was trying to use the 10% to say that it’s not racist, we would call them out for tokenization. And so that’s a lot of what’s happening, and because Jews are explicitly defined as a white religious community or understood as a largely white religious community in America in particular, and then you add onto that sort of the perception or reality of Jewish privilege or power in America, and then you add onto that the old anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jewish power, what ends up happening very quickly is if someone who looks like me says that something is anti-Semitic, it is perceived not through the lens of a Jew calling out anti-Jewish bigotry, it is perceived through the lens of a white person, or in this case a white man, calling out the actions of somebody else. And if the actions, if I’m calling out the actions or pointing out the actions of a person of colour in particular, the deference in our community doesn’t go to somebody like me. And so that’s a really distinct challenge that is hard to tackle other than to continue to point out the fact that what is progressive is ensuring that only a members of a given community are allowed to just to say what is and isn’t their identity and what is and isn’t bigotry against their people, and that we have to centre not just the voices of those most impacted, but we have to centre the representative voices of those most impacted. We can’t pick and choose which voices we want to listen to. Certainly nobody would allow me to point to somebody like Candace Owens in America, for the American audience that will make sense pretty quickly, and say that’s the voice of Black America. No one would allow me to do that inside of the progressive movement, as we have to push back on that in a diplomatic but firm way.
And the work we’ve been doing together around corporate engagement, particularly, I have found fascinating because, you know, what has become very clear to me is that corporations have lost their way in terms of engaging around antisemitism. Now the workplace in America is no different to the rest of society, and antisemitism is increasing there in the way it is everywhere else. But what’s happened particularly over the last few years building on what we’ve been talking about is this Jews are on the wrong side of history feeling, you know, they’re white privilege. In the very important DEI work that corporations are doing and engaging around and developing meaningful curriculum around, antisemitism has dropped off. Now the problem is, is that education around antisemitism, dealing with discrimination against the Jewish community in the workplace hasn’t appeared anywhere else. So, you know, what’s going on with a lot of corporations is they will tell you that they’ve developed very comprehensive work dealing with discrimination in the workplace, but what they mean is dealing with discrimination for some groups and not for all. So when you push them and you ask them, okay, but when was the last time you engaged around the topic of antisemitism? You know, they all look at you a little bit blank. Now there are some exceptions, and with the Shine A Light campaign, you know, we’ve already got 25 major corporations signed up and who have agreed to take part, and the list is growing daily, and many of them are actually taking public positions this week. But I was faced with a fair number of kind of shocked and surprised looking faces when you ask the kind of slightly leading questions that help them draw the conclusion that actually they had abandoned the issue of antisemitism. I know you’ve been doing a lot of work in this space. How are you finding those conversations, and why do you think this space matters?
Well, first of all, kudos to you for leading on that and pushing in that space, and you know that I share your concerns and urgency around it. So first of all, for context, you mentioned DEI, which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and inside of American corporations or particular or corporations headquartered in America that might be global, right? These DEI initiatives have become increasingly widespread, especially in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and calls for social and racial justice in America, and so we should understand DEI work broadly as the social justice movement of a corporation or institution. By and large, DEI is heavily focused on marginalised populations and in particular in the American context, on communities of colour. And the vast majority of this work is actually centred on questions of equity now, right? So the idea of recognising that there are sort of differences in starting point and access to resources and opportunities that frequently break down along racial lines in particular in America, but also class and gender, but race ends up being the definer. So I’ve mentioned a few times that most people don’t know what it means to be a Jew, and most people end up defining Jews as a religious community, and also in the American context in particular, Jews get defined as a white religious community. And unfortunately, DEI work is not at all centred around or considering in the natural course of action the concerns of a, quote-unquote, white religious group.
So at best you might have a religious consideration happening, but that’s really as you found out, not happening too frequently. We often hear lots of stories of even Jewish religious holidays like Yom Kippur, right? The most important day on our calendar, having corporate events and board meetings on those days, and the pressure that puts on. So that’s the bad news. The good news is this, when we have had a chance to actually present to executives or to DEI leaders inside of a corporation, we are able to fundamentally shift the way that they understand what it means to be a Jew, what antisemitism is, how it works, and why incorporating antisemitism into their broader DEI work matters. And so far, from our experience, and this could change tomorrow, Carly, once we’ve been able to present, we have never heard no because what ends up happening is we do a 30 minute education, a presentation with them, and it fundamentally changes their understanding of who we are, what we are, how antisemitism works, et cetera, and they all walk away acknowledging that they need to do more. The challenge is the pace at which they are doing more and what that means. But I’m happy to say that when we’ve gotten in the door you know, in partnership with you or on our own, we have seen movement whenever we have been able to actually present to leaders.
And what can our audience do, you know, to kind of lean into this and to engage in their own workplaces?
Yeah so, you know, supporting this particular initiative is really important, right? The Shine A Light initiative. And if you work inside of a corporation, Carly, I’m sure you’re going to share the website at some point in time. I know you did earlier, you’ll probably do it again, and send it out to folks. Share this with your corporate leaders, your DEI team, ask them to engage. The easiest thing that I think you can do, or the most impactful thing I think you can do is try to connect with whoever leads DEI or corporate executives that you have a relationship with, and raise this to them and ask them to create space for a conversation for a meeting with the right internal leaders around antisemitism. Not so that the concerns of Jews can take precedent over the concerns of other communities, but so that the concerns of Jews can be part of the broader conversation.
And DEI space and the work going on there is big in the corporate world, but it’s also manifesting itself on campus, in education school boards, really across many, many pillars of American society. Are you finding as much engagement and collaboration opportunities there? You know, we’ve been particularly focusing on the corporate element, and on in some level, the administration of campuses. But I’m interested whether you’re finding people are open to that discussion across the board.
Yeah, by and large, we’ve found that when we’ve engaged with, you know, these types of the DEI leaders on campuses or administrators, you know, they’re always open to meetings and by and large they’ve been fairly positive. You know, the challenge to this is really a challenge around Israel and Palestine, meaning they’re sort of caught up in the pressures of the social justice movements on campus vis-a-vis the conflict itself. And so they’re not issue experts, right? Even DEI executives on a campus or in a corporation aren’t issue experts on all communities, let alone antisemitism. So we work really hard to try and help them understand how you can protect, especially at an academic institution, right? Free speech, civil discourse, the challenging of ideas, while also ensuring that you’re not tolerating the harassment or attacking or ostracization of a Jew for being a Jew who believes in Jewish national self-determination. But by and large, when you’re able to get in these spaces and have these conversations, especially when you can do it in a way that I would say is completely off the record and says going in, let’s have a wide ranging conversation, ask the questions you want to ask, but don’t always feel comfortable asking, that we can get to some places where there is positive proactive movement. Just a really very short story. I was on a college campus a couple weeks ago. We met at two o'clock with the vice president of DEI in this campus. They had an issue in May of 2021 that was pretty anti-Semitic. And not only did she engage meaningfully in that hour, she came back at six o'clock that evening to an open conversation around antisemitism, which by the way, was the same presentation I had given her because she wanted to see it again, and listen to it again, and absorb it some more. And so we’re finding some success there, and it’s not that our approach, Carly, like in terms of talking about the history, the Jewish history, is particularly unique. You can find anybody who, you know, can give a good presentation on Jewish history. It’s the way that we structure the content to deal with what we know are the preconceived frameworks that are emanating out of social justice spaces in the way that they’re misdefining Jews, antisemitism, and how it works.
So as we’ve both mentioned, there’s a lot of material on the website, which is shinealighton.com, and you can look at the workplace tab and see a lot of material if you want to start engaging with your corporations. I would encourage you to then look at reaching out to the contact info, the workplace at shinealighton.com so that experts like Oren, and ADL, and other partners that we’re working with can then start to engage with you and be a part of that discussion. Now my next question we could have a whole hour on so I’m not going to go too far down the rabbit hole, but how do you find the role of social media and the kind of polarising echo chamber that it’s become? How does this affect your work, but also the kind of reinforcement of these ideas in the progressive world?
So, I mean, I think all of us clearly understand how toxic those spaces can be. They’re probably the most toxic spaces on Earth because you get to be behind a keyboard. There’s no interpersonal action, you know, you don’t have to look me in the eye, Carly, and say the thing you want to say. It’s a lot easier to be a jerk, so to speak, in those spaces. And I’m sort of of two minds about it, right? On the one hand, I don’t think that we concede the space. Meaning like, I feel like we have to engage someone. But on the other hand, even if all 16 million Jews on earth were, you know, saying the perfect thing or whatever the heck that might mean, we’re 16 million against 7.8 billion people, right? So it’s not as if our voices are ever going to be the dominant voices on those platforms, and I think that’s just the double-edged sword of the space. What’s happening, I’ll talk a little bit about how I think we should engage in a second, but the way that it’s impacting this fight directly, Carly, is that it’s silencing people. It’s silencing Jews because they don’t want to get attacked, and it’s silencing progressive allies because they know that if they say anything that runs counter to the narrative that is being pushed or is even remotely, quote-unquote, supportive of Israel, by that I just mean like acknowledging the right of Jewish national self-determination, or even saying something which should be as non-controversial as Israel has the right to defend itself from rockets, they know that they’re going to get attacked too. And so the incentive structure that plays out is really problematic in that those who would speak are silenced, those who are speaking are often vitriolic and demonising, and so that allows anti-Semitic ideas to spread pretty rapidly.
On top of the fact that, as I mentioned before, many people can’t even tell when a thing is anti-Semitic in the first place, versus when it’s just a criticism of a policy of a government. And that’s sad but true, especially because as I mentioned, they don’t know what Jews are, they don’t know what antisemitism is, they don’t know how antisemitism works, they don’t know what Zionism is or anti-Zionism. Most of them don’t, and so when you see that language, you don’t immediately see it as something problematic adding onto the fact that if you decide to stand up and talk, you are going to get attacked. So what does that mean for our engagement in social media? I think of this heavily as on an individualised level and not in an institutionalised level. Each of us as individual actors has a sphere of influence. There are people following us on social media. Some of them may never engage with us directly on social media, many of whom are reading what we write, and I think when I engage on these issues on social media, which I pick and choose my spots. I don’t chase every story. I spoke about the Sunrise Movement DC thing 'cause I thought it was so problematic.
I focus in particular on addressing ideas, not attacking people, and I assume that the audience doesn’t actually know why the issue is problematic, and therefore I focus on educating. And my goal is simply this, anybody out there who hasn’t arrived at the conclusion that Israel is an illegitimate state that ought to be demonised and wiped off the face of this Earth, or somebody like me, you know, is a white supremacist for believing the Jews have a right to self-determination in some portion of this land, anybody who hasn’t arrived at that conclusion, I want them, if they read what I write, to walk away with a deeper level of understanding about our community, about what antisemitism is, about how it works, and why we’re concerned, and I do that in a way intentionally that is designed not to dismiss or erase the lived reality of Palestinian people, but just to humanise Jews and to help tell our story. And so that’s my goal when I engage in social media, which doesn’t always get the most likes or retweets 'cause that’s not the way that space works. But every once in a while, I’ll write something that gets a lot of traction, and the goal is those people who are open to hearing, I want them to walk away with a better understanding. And the moment we attack, the moment they often turn off, and they see our attacks as symptomatic of systemic power, and therefore they are less likely to hear what it is that we’re trying to say.
So on the website, if you go to the workplace section, we’ve had a lot of questions about, you know, what this looks like in reality and how you should engage. The ADL who’s one of the other partners on the workplace pillar is doing a webinar why we should talk about antisemitism in the workplace, and that’s at 2:00 PM at 1:00 PM Eastern time. You can find the way to register for that on the website at the bottom of the workplace tab, and we’ll send round Oren’s op-ed that we’re having a lot of questions about afterwards. And we’ll also send round a link to the week’s activities. But if you go to the event section, you can find a lot of these. And if you’re in DC, I look forward to seeing you at the National Menorah Lighting tonight, and if you’re in New York tomorrow night, I look forward to seeing you in Times Square, and there are activities all across America and Canada for the next week, both physically, virtually, and in a number of ways for you to engage. And particularly in the space that Oren’s just touched on in terms of social media, there’s a lot of opportunities to engage there. And all of that info is on the website. So Oren for our last question, this can be a very disheartening space to be, you know? You don’t get a lot of pats on the back, you don’t get a lot of, you know, congratulations. It’s kind of like pushing water up a hill. What is it that keeps you going in this space and what do you think is one thing you would encourage people to do if they are active in social justice movements already? You know, they’re authentic allies but they are struggling to find a way to speak up for the Jewish community, and speak out against antisemitism.
So to the first part, what keeps me going, as I said before, I think it’s really critical for all of us to keep in mind the fullness of Jewish history, and not to allow sort of the temporary nature of our lived reality to determine whether or not we are going to engage. Meaning, I probably have the luxury to walk away without any risk to my own personal safety. However, as I think about the last 2,000 years in particular, as I think about my grandfather’s story, I feel like I have the obligation to stay in large part because I understand that antisemitism is not static in the way that it impacts our community, and that the relative privilege, or status, or safety of the Jewish community has never been constant, and that we have many times in our history have found ourselves in situations where we were comfortable, or felt secure, or safe, or we had a good relationship with the king, or the elites of a society. Only a decade or two later to find ourselves in catastrophic situations. And so from my perspective, the reason why I stay is because I understand how antisemitism works, I understand how the bad stuff happens. It’s not about me being attacked on the street, or God forbid, a synagogue being shot up. I’m worried about systemic attacks on Jews here or anywhere else, and those things happen because Jews get isolated and cleaved off from society.
Not just because white nationalists and white supremacists hate us, but because these anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish ideas travel into other communities as well, and we end up isolated and alone where those who are dominant in society blame us for their problems, we get scapegoated, those who are marginalised in a society believe that we are worthy of being scapegoated or think that we are the cause of their problems as well. In America, white nationalists think that we’re trying to replace white power and elevate Black and Brown people, while there are some who believe that we are the white supremacists holding down people of colour. And so as somebody who believes in social justice as a value because of Jewishness and Judaism, and is concerned in the long scope of history about antisemitism, I know that I have to fight it everywhere because Jews ultimately can end up isolated and cleaved off. That it’s not a one-directional challenge. So for me, being in these spaces serves two purposes. Number one, it allows me to live what I think is authentically my Jewish life, which is in America, to stand up for those who are attacked for the crime of being themselves, and to help people better understand our community so that I can protect our community. To those of you who are part of these movements, I know that it can be uncomfortable and I would just ask you to stay. Stay because these movements matter to our community as well. We are impacted by these issues as well. Stay because we are called to do so, both in the terms of Judaic principles, as well as Jewish principles, and stay because we can’t actually deal with both the disingenuous actors and the genuine actors who just don’t understand the dog whistles when they hear them. Unless we are in relationship with them and can reach and communicate with them. So that would be my charge to those of us who are doing this is, we can’t walk away.
Thank you very much, Oren. As we’re on the hour, I’m going to hand back over to Wendy. Thank you for your partnership this week, and for everything you are doing across this space. To all of the Lockdown audience, I hope we’ll see some of you in person at some of the the Shine A Light events. You can see them all on the website, and a lot of the materials that Oren has referred to on the website, shinealighton.com.
Well thank you very, very much, Oren and Carly for truly an excellent presentation. We’re here because we care. Oren, . Brilliant job, stay right where you are. We’re right behind you and it really is we’re living through very, very difficult times, toxic narrative all around. There are huge issues that we have to address, and unfortunately, antisemitism always walks side by side with all this, you know, toxic rhetoric. And Carly, thank you very, very much for, you know, strategically working together with other organisations together with your team, and we wish you good luck for this week. We are all there with you, and to all our participants, thank you for joining us. And on that note, I’m going to say goodnight. Thank you and goodbye.