Hey, beloved tribe.
A slightly late shavua tov. I hope you’ll indulge one more info-gathering series of questions here. I now have two advocacy channels I want to keep building with intention and passion and it’s unclear to me at this moment whether they can or should be married. My intuition says no. I think the Venn diagram between them might well be a healthy half-to-three-quarters moon, but there are reasons people might want to be in one group but not the other and they will be slightly different in character.
This group, the Never Alone community and newsletter group, is explicitly left-leaning. This is where I’m trying to build a home on the left side of the aisle for Zionist Jews. I’m a very political person. I fought like a wildcat to get Trump out of office and I’m hellbent on keeping him out. We need a home for left-leaning Zionists and even the Trumpiest Jews I’ve spoken with like this newsletter even if they hate my politics.
There are 3 reasons for this:
They want Israel to remain a bipartisan priority in Congress in order to keep Israel armed and funded and reassured of its continued alliance with the U.S.
They recognize that the vast majority of the Jewish diaspora is left-leaning and that if most left-leaning Jews abandon Israel, it’s a disaster for Israel AND American Jews.
They have children and grandchildren under tremendous pressure from their peers to disown the Jewish nation. They know said children and grandchildren won’t listen to Republicans, so they want a true member of the left to speak to their progeny in the language of the left, in which I am most fluent.
So I do have right-wing Jews in this readership who like me in spite of, not because of, my political sensibilities.
I’m glad they’re here, but in this space, I’m going to keep on fiercely and vocally supporting Biden and other Jew-friendly left-wing candidates, keep supporting other vulnerable minority communities, keep fighting Trump and his ilk, etc.
The book club is an adjacent project.
The book club has one over-arching purpose, though I am more than willing and very happy to have it serve a range of other purposes as well.
But the driving purpose is to confront, and to very effectively and decisively defeat, the discrimination Jews are experiencing in the publishing world.
In that one space, I am willing to check all other political considerations at the door. I’m flinging the door open to ALL Jews who want to fight this cancer.
In that one space, I really don’t even want to ever see the words Biden, Trump, Democrat, Republican, Left, Right, Progressive, Conservative, etc.
Not because they don’t matter but because they are irrelevant to THIS mission: defeating the forces of anti-Semitic discrimination in the book world.
In the book club, JEWISH UNITY IS THE CARDINAL PRIORITY.
In that space, we need to be like Israelis.
Israelis were all too recently at each other’s throats right up until the moment Hamas broke through that border fence and went on a killing rampage. Then right and left, Likud and Labor, religious and secular, hawk and dove, etc. all climbed into their tanks and trenches like the blood brothers and sisters they are underneath all that and snapped back into protecting each other with their lives.
That’s what we need to do on some level here while fighting our own war in the diaspora against Hamas supporters and their enablers.
So let me say just a little more about the Never Alone Book Club.
First, it is absolutely a real book club. I’m an author, writer, editor, devoted citizen of the literary community and a very passionate and serious reader. Books are my first love and my lifelong home. I’m hearing from other Jewish book people all over the country and they’re distressed and scared, and I want to prove to them all that their family is standing with them and will never leave their side. My book club will always be a place where books are celebrated and Jewish writers are supported and surrounded by friends and allies.
But it will also be a mightily organized, oiled and coordinated fighting machine. I have a guerilla warfare strategy and I’m going to share it in the coming days and weeks. Nothing I’ll ask you to do will require real time or money. Just awareness and emotional commitment.
So to this end, I would be very grateful if you’d take a literal minute to respond to a few questions.
(If the answer is yes, and you haven’t yet joined the Never Alone Book Club, please do so now!)
The next question is for those who answered yes:
And finally, please keep in mind when answering the following that all your answers are anonymous. I have no way to see who said what, so please be honest:
Thank you so much in advance to anyone who helps me get more information by answering these questions. I really have no way to see ANY identifying info about respondents, so total honesty is a risk-free proposition in all three polls.
I’m sorry not to be able to say more just yet. But I promise that all will be revealed very soon.
For now, I need you all to know this:
Right now, so many of you feel vulnerable because you’re buying into a very understandable and powerful illusion — the illusion that these Jew-hating gatekeepers have power over us and our lives.
I’m here to promise you they don’t.
There are literal millions of us in the U.S. and a more intelligent, strategic, innovative, resourceful, resilient tribe of human beings has never been born.
If we ever really came together, nothing in the world could ever stop us. We just need to believe this is true — because it is.
We will not only outlive them, but we will outsell them, outsmart them, out-organize them, out-work them, out-everything them.
I’ll be back with you on Wednesday. Until then, stay strong and stay standing.
I love you all so much. Chazak v’ematz. Am Yisrael Chai.
Thank you for your final rallying paragraphs. I think I believe it but it helps to hear you and others say it. I think the majority out there-a silent one- is not voicing because they don’t know enough and won’t take a stand in their confusion.
Please take one person who said "yes" out of your count. I do not have a FB account anymore.