The Space Between

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

A belated Shavua Tov.

I’ll be real: some days, many days, I just don’t know what to write when I sit down at the screen. There is no shortage of news to report on, none of it good. Daily I ask myself how I can simultaneously not ignore all that is happening while not falling into what I’ve come to think of as the Tiedrich trap.

If you don’t know Jeff Tiedrich, he writes a bleakly hilarious newsletter called This Week In Stupid. I genuinely love it. Let me say that again for the people in the back: I genuinely love Jeff Tiedrich. He skewers the Trump regime with merciless accuracy and is wildly entertaining while doing so.

And yet, after you’ve read the 20th or 40th or 100th such account — if you’re anything like me, you find yourself thinking, “Okay… and?”

I mean, as entertaining as it is, I already know the Trump regime is a toxic dumpster fire. I don’t need to be told that again and again and again. The guy has nearly 174,000 followers, and if he had any ideas about how to resist that regime, he could lead a campaign that accumulated critical mass very easily.

If I were inclined to let myself merely chronicle all that’s demoralizing, depressing and maddening right now, I would never sit at the keyboard at a loss. For instance, I can hardly abide the clusterfuck that is the case of Mahmoud Khalil. Of all the worthy, innocent people Trump is deporting, naturally — of course — none of them attract even a fraction of the moral indignation that’s exploded in defense of this terrorist tool.

In exactly the same vein, I can’t believe that when measures are finally, finally taken against Columbia for allowing so much violent anti-Semitism to run rampant all over their campus, it’s in the form of the Trump regime using us as pawns to go after higher education, withholding federal funds desperately needed by researchers and scientists — a great many of them Jews. The cherry on top? This hole will be easily filled by Qatar, screwing us from both sides as usual.

In yet another wildly frustrating instance, a left-leaning Jewish Facebook friend is in the process of trying to rally a Jewish mob to go crash Chuck Schumer’s literary tour while he tries to promote a book about anti-Semitism, because she’s angry about his capitulation to Trump’s spending bill.

I don’t like his vote in favor of that bill either, but I recognize that he did it because he believed giving Trump a pretext to seize unilateral power would be worse. As with countless other issues, I don’t pretend to have iron-clad conviction about which of those two scenarios represented the lesser evil. I do know that with all the catastrophic developments that are unfolding now, a bunch of Jews crashing an event meant to combat anti-Semitism is a pathetically misguided use of our energy.

In all of the above cases, and countless others, we will continue to be cast as the villains of the story while the actions taken will do nothing to help us — indeed, they will do quite the opposite.

But I desperately want to offer an antidote to this continual train wreck, even if I can’t single-handedly stem the carnage.

The obstacle right now is that, in contrast to someone like Tiedrich, who has a massive following but doesn’t — as far as I can tell — come up with action items, I have what I believe are very decent and realistic ideas but only a few thousand followers. That’s far from nothing, and I love and cherish every single community member here, but I’m also aware that we need to join forces with other like-minded collectives to order to achieve meaningful goals.

So given the joys of Jewish Geography, which I went into within my last newsletter, I want to reiterate what I most want to do with all the initiatives I’ve undertaken since October 7, 2023, with the hope that others who see their value will assist by spreading the word, inviting others to join, offering introductions, etc. Some of these initiatives are partisan, some are not, and action items are in boldface type:

1. I wanted — and still want — to build a home for Zionists on the left side of the political aisle, so many of whom feel politically homeless. I’ve come to see that we are not remotely as alone as we feel. There are a lot of us. The problem is we’re scattered and disjointed. We need to come together and form a serious political bloc. I love writing this newsletter but I’m feeling the need to gather all us like-minded Jews together in one publication or hub. To this end, I’ll be launching MAZL — the Magazine of the American Zionist Left — on Israel’s Independence Day, May 1st. If you’d like to contribute an essay or opinion piece, or know someone who would, please ping me here to pitch your own work or theirs!
   
   Please be aware that I will entertain a spectrum of opinions. If you fall somewhere to the right of wanting to dismantle Israel as a Jewish state, and somewhere to the left of supporting Trump, believing there are no good Palestinians and/or thinking Israel can do no wrong, we can talk. Those are my hard boundaries and within those two brackets, I don’t need to be in lockstep with every contributor. In fact, I will be very glad to present a range of reasonable opinions.
   
   As an exciting aside, here is the papercut image I commissioned for the magazine cover. It represents our enemies on both the right and the left, breathing fire, and a Jewish phoenix rising from the flames:
   

   

   Isn’t it stunning? The artist is Anna Kronick and her Etsy site is here. I will be profiling her in my Jews Of The Universe column very soon.
   

2. In the same spirit, I encourage everyone here to vote in the current election for representation in the World Zionist Congress. The US will send 152 delegates to this global coalition and every one of us has a chance to influence policy creation by voting for our values.

   
   In my opinion, the three most appealing parties are Hatikvah (which identifies as “proudly Zionist and proudly progressive”), The Jewish Future (which describes itself as representing liberal and centrist Zionism) and Vote Reform (representing the US Reform Movement).

   
   I desperately want Israel to survive and prevail forever as a morally upright and shining Jewish state. That won’t happen unless we fight for every aspect of that dream.

   
   If you’re Jewish (as is almost everyone here), please vote — registration is very quick and easy and the cost is only $5.

3. I also wanted — and still want — to mount a fierce fight against the way Jews are being pushed out of the literary world. I want to support Jewish writers in every way I can think of.
   
   To this end, please consider attending my conversation with Elisa Albert this coming Thursday at 5 pm Pacific time, 8 pm Eastern. I will post the link on Wednesday!

   

4. In service of the same goal, what I most want is to achieve a membership of 5,000 readers (minimum) in the Never Alone Book Club (which is about half that now, and can be found on Facebook) and I would like to lead a targeted campaign each month where we all buy the same book on the same day and send Jewish authors to the top of the NYT bestseller list every single month. There is absolutely no earthly reason this can’t happen — we just need to spread the word.

5. In service of Jewish morale, I intend to keep profiling the most inspiring Jews on my radar in my Jews Of The Universe column. If you know someone I should profile, please introduce us.
   
   Okay, fam. I will be back with you on Wednesday. As much as it feels right now as if we’re being forced to choose between Jewish suicide on the left and moral suicide on the right, I promise it’s a false dichotomy.

   
   The space between is a narrow bridge, but we can build a world there. The essential thing is not to be afraid.
   
   Much love to you all.
   
   Chazak v’ematz.
   
   Am Yisrael Chai.