Jews Without Trembling Knees

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

I am so proud of Jeffrey Goldberg.

I’m proud that he doubted the veracity of the Signal chat because it was so preposterous. I’m proud that he hung in there and collected abundant receipts. I’m proud that he knew better than to out CIA agents still under cover (sounds basic, but apparently it’s beyond the intellectual threshold of our government). I’m proud that he published a redacted version at first.

I’m proud of his cool under fire. I’m proud of his calm and level demeanor after our government unleashed contemptible attacks on his character to deflect from their own buffoonery. I’m proud that he released some more of the Signal chat today, with the implicit threat of releasing the rest still hanging in the air above the whole clusterfuck.

I’m proud of his integrity. I’m proud of his fearlessness. I’m proud of what he said to a reporter who very reasonably asked him if he was afraid of violent retaliation by our dictator’s regime:

It’s not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today — we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries — there’s too much preemptive obeying for my taste.

Atlantic Editor-In-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg

I’m proud of his patriotism. Trump’s clown car is endangering the lives of all Americans and people all over the world. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: when you purge every competent adult in the room and install your own flunkies and morons instead, you leave the United States weak weak weak.

This fuck-up is so epic and so head-spinningly stupid that it defies credulity. My 16-year-old son would know way better than to have a conversation like that on Signal. All 18 of these clowns failed to note the patently obvious here.

Already, a long list of countries that were long-time allies as of two months ago have realized it’s no longer safe or in their interests to share intelligence with us.

I’ll be real: I’m also afraid for Jeffrey Goldberg. Pete Hegseth is a white Christian nationalist. I can only imagine the froth he’s working himself into over this Jew who’s exposing him. You could hear the viciousness dripping from his voice as he deflected to attacking Goldberg in response to reporters’ first questions about this debacle.

But he’s inspiring me, just as all Jews who dare to speak truth to power and about power inspire me. That includes the Vindman twins, Senator Jon Ossoff, Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, HIAS, Bend The Arc and countless others.

And I need that inspiration as I set out for AWP very early tomorrow morning.

As I’m getting ready to go to Los Angeles for the conference, this missive arrives in my inbox, as a similar directive landed in the inboxes of most conference panelists last year. I say most because the senders went through the list of panelists, crossed out every Jewish-sounding name, and sent the same kind of request to all the other speakers.

Dear AWP Panel Moderator,

As we prepare to gather in Los Angeles for the 2025 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, we—a coalition of literary organizations independent of AWP—invite you to begin your panels this week with a global solidarity statement. As an offering, like last year, we are providing a template for recognizing the intersectional nature of oppression and suffering at this critical international moment. Whether or not you choose to use this template, we hope you will join us in naming these sources of oppression—at a moment when many of the most vulnerable among us feel unable to do so— as part of how you open your events.

The statement is as follows:

The event organizers would like to acknowledge that we are gathering during a time of struggle and violence against many peoples. The Palestinian people continue to be brutalized by the decades long, American funded genocide and colonial violence of Israeli apartheid. We also stand in solidarity with victims of genocide in Sudan and Congo, and with the Indigenous peoples on whose ancestral homelands this conference is being held, including the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash tribes. We stand firmly against anti-Blackness and recognize that police violence and all white supremacist violence must be named and opposed. We stand with immigrants, against whom the current federal administration is carrying out horrifying acts of violence, imprisonment, and erasure. These forms of violence, along with transphobic violence being legislated across the United States endanger the lives of trans, queer, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people. Therefore, as we begin our event, we wish to underscore that none of us are free until all of us are free, and that all anti-racist, liberationist, and decolonial struggles are intertwined.

In solidarity,

RAWI

Haymarket Books

Kundiman

Mizna

Noemi Press

Sewanee Writers Conference

The SWANA Caucus at AWP

Tin House Workshop

A comprehensive account of all the anti-Jewish goings-on at least year’s conference can be found in Sarah Einstein’s excellent essay, AWP As A Narrow Place.

At any rate, the ask they sent out ahead of time worked. Many speakers dutifully voiced these sentiments as requested, including keynote Jericho Brown — a poet I otherwise love — who spoke at length about Gaza in his remarks with no mention of the hostages or the massacre.

This year the keynote speaker is Roxane Gay and based on the tenor of her newsletters, I’m sure she will have absolutely no qualms about doing the same.

I expect protests, disruptions, hostilities at every turn.

But I’m going to unapologetically present at my panel anyway, and then I’m going to attend every other Jewish panel and event at the conference.

Because I have back-to-back panels to attend from early Thursday morning until midday Saturday, as well as evening events and plans throughout my time in LA, I’ll need to be back with you on Monday.

In the meantime, please send me strength, space laser light, and Jew juju to take with me as I walk this gauntlet. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Much love to you all in the meantime.

Am Yisrael Chai.