Talk To Me

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

This has been, without a doubt, the worst week for me since the immediate wake of October 7th.

It wasn’t just the death of the Bibas children, though of course that was excruciating, crushing. It was the sick-beyond-description manner in which Hamas handled the return of their bodies. The way Palestinian children were brought to watch the spectacle, like white children at a public lynching. The way their coffins bore the date they were taken into captivity, except this was worded: “Arrested on…” as if a months-old baby and his toddler brother were criminals just for being Jewish. The fact that their autopsy revealed they were killed not by an airstrike, but by human hands.

Also the fact that the fourth body returned was that of dovish Oded Lifshitz, who spent his life doing Palestinian advocacy and peace activism.

Then, of course, there was the silence on social media from all but Jews (with a precious few shining exceptions). There was news of more anti-Israel unrest on various campuses, even as the U.S. government under Trump pivots to supporting Russia in its unprovoked ongoing violence against Ukraine. There was footage of more people ripping down posters of the Bibas family.

And finally, there was the dizzying news that the body in the fourth returned coffin was not Shiri’s. That her fate remains unknown. And the impossibility of knowing how to feel about that. Devastation over the fact that the three can’t even be buried together? Hope that she’s still alive? Horror at the idea that she might still be alive, suffering the unthinkable, traumatized beyond any possibility of future joy in life?

As if all this weren’t enough, there was also a foiled terror attack in Israel, where three buses exploded at once. By a miracle, they were empty. Per The Times Of Israel, it’s speculated that the explosives were meant to be detonated on Friday morning, in five buses rather than three, when they were active and full of people, but oh-so-thankfully, the blessed incompetence of the attempt resulted in no human harm.

Imagine that you have a nationwide army of collegiate and academic progressives doing your bidding, screaming for a ceasefire for 16 straight months, and the moment it’s achieved, you do your best to blow up five civilian buses.

But then again, why not? It’s a given that if war resumed in response, the same progressives would blame only Israel.

This maddening habit extends even to some Jews in my social media circles. One of them posted this:

I try not to be goaded by such sentiments by other Jews but this time I couldn’t stop myself from responding.

Also, if anyone thinks beautiful land in an incredible location -- ceded in its entirety by former Jewish residents -- along with continual billions in international aid for development purposes is "nothing to lose," I have no idea what to say to them.

In any event.

In my last newsletter, I promised to share the decisions I’ve been grappling with in the last couple of weeks.

Tomorrow it will be exactly a year since I started writing this column.

When I started, my over-arching desire was — and remains — to build a home on the left side of the aisle for Zionist Jews.

For many years, I’ve imposed upon myself the oh-so-uplifting-and-rewarding job of calling out anti-Semitism on both the right and the left. But for a full year after October 7, 2023, the right receded as a frightening specter for me.

I did not believe Trump would win again. The hatred from within my own progressive ranks spurred me to do everything I’ve done on this front. Those so-called progressives were the most immediate threat, the most menacing enemy.

Then Trump took office and turned everything upside down. Since last month, he’s been a frenzied bull in a china shop, smashing everything to smithereens with dizzying speed. Dissolving the crown jewels of national and global public health. Shutting down green initiatives and doing his best to hasten climate collapse. Accusing Ukraine of starting the war and backing Putin in every possible way. Scapegoating our trans brothers and sisters. Gutting aviation safety and blaming the serial catastrophes ever since on DEI initiatives, which is another way of saying people of color. Purging career civil servants by the tens of thousands, endangering us in every conceivable manner. And I could easily go on all day.

Worst of all for me, on an emotional level, are the Jews who celebrate him. In nearly every Jewish space where I’ve found refuge in the past year, this recurring tendency has reared its hideous head.

On my favorite podcast of all time — Call Me Back, hosted by Dan Senor — I’ve had to endure listening to beloved analysts express the opinion that Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

I was a wildly appreciative paying supporter of the Free Press for their clear-eyed coverage of Israeli issues, until the hundredth time they went after Biden with real dripping vitriol while treating Trump like a loveable rascally scamp who occasionally goes too far.

I find much to admire about Future of Jewish but they are far to the right of me.

And this litany goes on and on.

It’s made me feel like we need our own outlet, much bigger than just me, one that doesn’t let partisan loyalty cloud the truth about the anti-Semites on both sides of the aisle and the horror that is Trump.

There are a lot of liberal Jews who love Israel and hate Trump, but right now we are disjointed and scattered. We need to come together as a political bloc if we want to keep Israel a bipartisan priority in Congress, if we want the vast majority of U.S. Jews — who are liberal and secular — not to be estranged from the Jewish nation, and if we want to keep our children and grandchildren proud and unapologetic Zionists.

To this end, I’m thinking of starting a second magazine, tentatively called MAZL, which feels like a lucky name. This would stand for Magazine of the American Zionist Left. Like everything else I do, it would be entirely free, and subscribers would receive essays and articles weekly from a range of left-leaning Zionist voices.

If you would, please help me gauge interest in this by taking a moment to answer this poll. Anyone reading this will be able to vote:

The second initiative I want to share has to do with our book club.

Here is something I’ve never overtly said before:

The reason I started this book club was to mount a fierce fight against the way Jews are being pushed out of publishing. As wonderful as it is to read Jewish books and discuss them with other Jewish readers, that was a secondary benefit of my main goal, which was to create an organized machine that would keep Jewish authors on the bestseller list continually.

I’m sharing this here because I want to make this happen much faster than I can on my own.

The Never Alone book club has over 2,500 members. I don’t know how many members are in Hadassah’s book club, or the Jewish Book Council’s book club, but I imagine that if we pooled our members for the purposes of this campaign, we would have more than enough members to execute this plan.

The truth is that you need to sell far fewer books than anyone would believe to be a New York Times bestseller. Generally speaking, if you sell between 5,000 and 10,000 books in a single week, you make that list.

Fam, there is absolutely no reason in the world that we can’t have a book club of U.S. Jews more than 5,000 strong. If we all buy the same book on the same day each month, we can create a Jewish bestseller every month. That will send a message to U.S. publishers that they can’t ignore — that Jewish books are not poison, but rocket fuel.

I don’t care if someone else steals this idea if they can make it happen faster than I can. None of this is about my own ego; all of it is about serving the Jewish community. If you have a contact at Hadassah or the Jewish Book Council and you can facilitate a meeting or urge them to act strategically, wonderful. I just want this to happen by any means necessary.

Again, to gauge how responsive people might be to such a campaign, I’d very much appreciate if you’d weigh in on a second poll:

The last bit of info I want to share is that I’m planning to be in Israel for the first half of May, volunteering on behalf of the IDF for several days and also doing my best to meet as many virtual friends (who already feel like real-life friends) as I can. If that’s you, please message me either here or through Facebook. The prospect of being there is giving me so much right now — it’s pulling me forward every day when so much feels as if it’s conspiring to drag me down.

Okay, fam. Thank you so much in advance for responding to my polls in order to help me gain clarity about how to pivot during my second year of advocacy. I am wishing all of you the kind of Sabbath that’s an oasis within the darkest of times. I’ll be with you again on Monday, and in the meantime, I’m sending heartfelt love to you all.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.