Notes On The Jexit From The Democratic Party

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

I hope you all had a better week than I did.

I went through the motions of doing the things I needed to do but I felt deeply spent and defeated.

I’d met the week before, as I mentioned then, with the leader of some local Democratic groups. I’ll call her T.

That was a good meeting and I was impressed by T’s understanding, sensibilities and goodwill.

Which brings us to this week.

It’s Jewish American Heritage Month, which you wouldn’t know since it feels as if no one is acknowledging it. But T. posted a very simple acknowledgement of this fact in one of her groups.

It said HAPPY JEWISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH — I mean, it was literally that simple.

The way the comment section filled in response to this was honestly worse than anything I experience from politicians.

“As long as they are willing to hold the Israeli government accountable for genocide and war crimes, they’re A-OK in my book,” wrote a man I’ll call N.

T. tried hard to handle this in the best way. She responded:

“I think that comment is inappropriate here. Are you holding all Russian Americans accountable for Putin? Are you holding all Americans accountable for Trump? Both have caused enormous loss of life.”

N. was a wily one, wilier than most. He said: “Weird how you read that. I LITERALLY said “willing to hold the Israeli government accountable” just as I hold the US government accountable for atrocities against Iran and all over the world. Are you saying you’re NOT willing to hold that government accountable?”

T: “No! I’m saying that my support for our Jewish community members is not tied to anything.”

N: “So you LITERALLY support anyone just for being Jewish and not for the true contents of their character, got it.”

I highlight this response because it represents the most innocent-seeming position. Not antisemitic! Just anti-genocide.

Another woman posted this:

A few Jews took this question at face value and tried to assure her that Judaism and Zionism are separate things, which of course these people themselves insist whenever accused of being antisemitic. This is how that went:

Another Jew tried to provide a scrap of education regarding the fact that Jews don’t represent a religion but a people (even though there is of course a robust religious component to our peoplehood).

That woman did leave the group. The mere mention of a month celebrating the contributions of Jewish AMERICANS to the United States sent her flouncing off in a self-righteous huff.

The message is clear: The younger generation won’t tolerate a tolerance of Jews. Every grudging concession to the Jews as people — even when explicitly restricted to those of us in the diaspora — needs to come with an asterisk, a qualifier:

HAPPY JEWISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH — that is, except to the overwhelming majority of Jews who are fucking scumbags.

Again, I post these because they present the most reasonable-seeming veneer: I just want to make it clear that I don’t hate Jews, just the overwhelming majority of them who support genocide. I feel exactly the same way about all minorities — they’re all capable of doing bad things.

So this sounds reasonable on the face of it. But we all know that during Arab American Heritage Month, these folks don’t fill comment sections with faux-innocent qualifiers like:

“Are they against jihadist terrorists? Child marriage? Genital mutilation? Murdering gay and trans people? Stoning a woman to death for accidentally exposing an ankle? Massacres all over the world? If so, then I’m happy to celebrate them.”

They don’t mar every honor of Arab-American contributions to the US with character aspersions.

In any event, this more than anything a politician has said or done made me feel deeply alienated from my own side.

A huge part of activism is the social nourishment it provides. It used to feel so good to attend anti-Trump rallies and marches and know I was surrounded by people who felt the way I did. It was an inexpressible comfort to know at least we were in it together.

These events are landmines for Jewish Americans now. Attending makes us feel worse, not better. It’s safer not to go. To just do the work in other ways, if we still feel committed to advancing the left’s agenda.

So in my despair, I posted this yesterday:

If the Democratic party needs evidence of this, they need look no further than my comment section which filled up with literally hundreds of responses affirming this trend.

There were a couple of people who didn’t respond with recognition, and I feel two are worth highlighting because of the clarity they required me to provide:

Let me be crystal clear here: I am still overwhelmingly left-leaning. Nothing in this world and I mean NOTHING could make me vote for a MAGA candidate.

I want Trump out of power as badly as I’ve ever wanted anything.

I’m not dropping out of the fight against him.

But I no longer feel I can defend the direction the left is going in. In my bone marrow, I feel it is going somewhere very bad, and eventually it will be as bad as the right.

But today I woke up with a certain clarity.

I realized I can’t stop or falter in regard to my mission.

Even if I can’t stop the Jexit, I can document what brought us here.

I can create a record of how the left is on the path to becoming as propaganda-blinkered, as uninterested in the truth, as prone to prioritizing rager-tainment over honest activist labor, as ravenous for scapegoats as a substitute for meaningful action, and as murderous as the right.

And that’s what I plan to do.

Please stay tuned.

✡️

A few quick things as we head into Shabbat:

Please save this coming Thursday evening (5:30 Pacific time, 8:30 Eastern) for an hour with Debbie Plawner and a first look at Illuminated Paths, a new set of contemplative tools rooted in Torah wisdom and brought to life through color.

She will do free card readings for two or three of you, so if you’d like an oracle deck session with her live during this event, please let me know in the comment section, which I will open to everyone for this purpose.

✡️

Second, please have a look at yesterday’s gorgeous poetry showcase in JUDITH, featuring the work of Yermiyahu Ahron Taub.

This is my blurb on the back of his book:

Taub’s poems are luminous and beautifully Jewish, glinting with tenderness, vulnerability, longing beyond endurance. They choked off my breath, made the roots of my hair tingle, left me frozen with my knuckles pressed hard against my mouth. With each startlingly vivid turn of phrase, Night Breaks In The Garret [in which four of the five poems below were included] reveals the staggering price too often exacted for being precisely who we are, while also reminding us of the spiritual imperative to pay it again and again. Searing and indelible.

Here is one of the poems featured:

figure prostrate on tishebov* stone

while the second temple burned,
while the jews huddled in lament,
mother stared into a smaller flame.
even in the narrow of the last august rain,
the flame soared persistent into beads of corn and careful salmon:
the feast after the fast.
its concentration refused to be touched by the
return of men who collapsed into sticky beds
and napped under the maps of their blank hunger.
and as the flames against the holy edifice grew more furious,
and the desecration more lurid—pigs and swastikas—
mother found she had to put the food aside,
to forego the solitary light.
she had to hurry to shelter by the side of the road,
under the kitchen table.
she needed to lie prostrate,
biting into the wooden columns,
in order to avoid the oncoming hooves of the terrified horses.

*tishebov: the Jewish calendar date of the destruction of both temples marked by mourning and fasting.
 

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And finally, here’s one piece of truly excellent news, which I trust we all need like oxygen right now.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s soul-searing memoir about her son Hersh — who held as a hostage in the dungeons of Gaza for nearly an entire excruciating year before being killed along with the five other members of “The Beautiful Six” — is currently #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

I am overjoyed that Rachel is receiving the recognition that she so deeply deserves — but just as powerful as that joy is the proof of what we can do when we come together.

I started the Never Alone Book Club because I knew that we as American Jews have the power to send a Jewish author to the top of the NYT bestseller list every single month if we are organized and resolute about this.

Imagine how that would change our current position in publishing. And it would not be hard. It would just take the simplest commitment to click a button once a month and pay around $20 for the same book. If just 5,000 of the millions of us did that, we could put a Jewish name at the top of the list on an ongoing basis.

So please, if you haven’t yet, go to the Never Alone Book Club on Facebook and join.

✡️

Okay, fam — I’ll be back with you next week.

So much love and sustenance in the meantime.

We will outlive them — I promise we will.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.