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Eyal Press, contributing writer to The New Yorker, shares his reporting on how disagreements over Israel, Gaza and Zionism itself are dividing synagogues, Jewish families and communities across America.
→ At Synagogues, Tensions Are Boiling Over | The New Yorker
Photo: Jewish activists and allies take part in a Passover Seder outside ICE headquarters in New York City to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil and an end to the war on Gaza, April 14, 2025. (Photo by Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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It's the Brian Lerishow on WNYC.
Good morning, everyone.
We'll be doing segments about Passover and Easter
and the world situation this week.
Passover first today because it comes first.
It starts at sundown tomorrow night.
Good Friday is this Friday and Easter is this Sunday.
We'll address those later in the week.
With respect to Passover,
the New Yorker has a very thoughtful article this week
about the divides within Jewish congregations,
within Jewish families as Passover approaches
over the way Israel is fighting its wars in Gaza
and now Lebanon.
What will the conversations be like
around many family satire tables on a holiday
that celebrates freedom from oppression,
freedom of movement and the founding of Israel,
the promised land as a refuge for the Jewish people?
The article sites, for example,
a Washington Post poll just a few months ago
that found 46% of American Jews supporting the war in Gaza
and 48% opposing it,
basically a 50, 50 split in the American Jewish community.
And the article quotes from a sermon
back on the Jewish New Year,
last fall, by Angela Bookdall,
senior Rabbi of the Central Synagogue in Manhattan.
Now, I've found a video of it and I'm going to play the quote
to help set this up, play the clip.
Then we'll talk to the writer,
Al Press from the New Yorker,
and take your calls about your families
and your congregations.
This runs a minute and a half.
Again, it's Rabbi Angela Bookdall
and her Rosh Hashanah sermon at the Central Synagogue.
Listen to both halves of this.
As she acknowledges different worshipers
within her own congregation
who might fire her as they rabbi
if she says what she really thinks.
I want to tell you about my unconditional love
for these really people
and our beleaguered homeland,
still desperately struggling to bring its hostages home,
still trying to eliminate Hamas terrorists
that not only refuse to lay down their arms
but intentionally trap their own people
in a combat zone.
But if I tell you these things,
all of which I believe,
some of you will stop listening
and decide that I'm no longer your rabbi.
I also want to tell you how my heart breaks
over the civilian deaths
and tragic suffering in Gaza,
the shattering destruction of Palestinian homes and cities,
I want to denounce settler violence in the West Bank
and the rhetoric from far-right government ministers
who talk about annexation of the West Bank
and expulsion of Gazans
instead of ending this war
and bringing our hostages home.
But if I tell you these things,
all of which I also believe,
some of you will stop listening
and decide that I'm no longer your rabbi.
This Israel conversation is ripping our community apart,
not just here at Central
but across the Jewish world,
among friends,
within families,
it's been the most painful experience of my rabbinic life.
Angela Bookdall,
seen the rabbi of the Central synagogue in Manhattan
in Hirussia,
Son of Sermon last fall.
And with that,
we welcome New Yorker magazine writer,
AL Press, who cited that sermon in his article
called at synagogues,
tensions are boiling over.
Disagreements about Gaza and Zionism
have divided congregations.
AL, thanks for coming on.
Welcome to WNYC.
Thanks so much, Brian.
It's great to be here.
And Jewish listeners,
you're invited to call in and reflect
on the tensions you may be experiencing
in your congregations.
Rabbis, congregation members,
are you experiencing this kind of tension?
If so, are you able to have productive conversations about it?
Are you able to resolve it in any way?
Is anyone changing anyone else's mind?
Are any of you literally deciding
that your rabbi is no longer your rabbi
because of their positions on Israel or Gaza
or Zionism today, one way or another?
And if so, what then for you and for them?
212-433 WNYC 212-433-9692?
Or maybe this is happening for you outside of a synagogue,
elsewhere in your Jewish life,
maybe in your family.
We know there's a lot of this divide by generation,
right?
There's been a lot of talk about that,
but not just by generation.
One woman from congregation Bethel
in Maplewood in the article describes herself
and her husband in this context.
She says, we're in a mixed marriage on Israeli politics.
Does that sound like you and your spouse, too?
Does that sound like you and your spouse, too?
So again, if you're experiencing this kind of tension,
are you able to have productive conversations about it
within the family, with your husband or wife
or parents or kids?
Are you able to resolve it in any way?
Is anyone changing anyone else's mind?
What's the heart of the moral question
or moral questions you're grappling with?
212-433 WNYC, any Jewish Americans?
Rabbi is anyone else?
212-433-9692, call a text.
So let's start with that clip of Rabbi Angela Bukdal.
Did you report it out on Central synagogue
enough to know how divided that particular Manhattan
congregation is on how Israel is conducting these wars?
No, I didn't.
I have to say, I did reach out to Rabbi Bukdal
and she declined a request for an interview.
I think probably because she felt
her sermon speaks for itself.
But I did focus intensively, as you mentioned,
on a synagogue in New Jersey called
Congregation Beth L, located in South Orange.
And I should say and emphasize that the division
I found there is not unique to congregation Beth L
by any means.
It's playing out across the Jewish community,
you know, as Rabbi Bukdal's sermon suggested.
And I wrote the article really with two sort of ideas in mind.
One is that, you know, so much attention had focused
in the media on the protests after the Gaza war,
the pro-Palestinian protests.
And one of the striking facts about those protests,
which sort of came out, you know, here and there
in the news coverage, is that there were Jews
on college campuses who were deeply upset
and offended by these protests.
And there were also Jews on college campuses
who were participating in those protests.
That's not a secret, but it tells you something
about sort of how divided and fractured
the Jewish community was getting and has gotten.
And the other reason I really wanted to delve into this
is, you know, the mistaken perception.
And I think the dangerous perception
that Jews are a monolith, that they think in one,
that they speak in one voice, that they all hold the same views
when it comes to subjects like Israel and Zionism.
That has never been true historically.
It is less true today in the American Jewish community
than perhaps ever before.
And so we should be talking about it and understanding why.
I did read through your article so much of which
is about congregation Bethel in the Maplewood South Orange area.
And I will say, it took some time.
If one were to print this article,
I see it would print at 41 pages.
And well, for one thing, Rabbi Bukdal didn't want to comment to you.
Rabbi Bukdal, maybe you're listening.
And want to call in and describe what the next steps would be
after that sermon, right?
Can you bring together factions of your congregation?
Or maybe you've taken more of a stand on one side or another
yourself.
Rabbi Bukdal, if you're listening.
Or any other Rabbi, any other Jewish American.
But on congregation Bethel, the Rabbi there, Jesse Olitsky,
I think it's fair to say, based on my reading of your article,
clearly took a side.
And a congregation member, Nathaniel Felder, who you profile,
who was protesting Israel the way it was conducting the war in Gaza,
was very frustrated, even though the leadership was progressive
on other things at that congregation, like ICE and immigration.
So where would you start to tell the story of congregation Bethel?
Yeah, I mean, I think that captures the background well.
You know, Rabbi Olitsky, with whom I spoke,
is a very progressive guy on a lot of issues.
On ICE, on, you know, civil rights.
He's participated in an interfaith group in New Jersey
that, where folks work together on those issues,
on the issue of Israel and Zionism.
I think it's fair to say that after October 7,
his sense of attachment and feeling of the inclination
to defend Israel and to worry about Israel
and to highlight the plight of Israel intensified.
And he's not alone in that.
You know, one of the sort of feces of the article is that
there had been a kind of soft sort of liberal Zionism,
a place where people who were slightly more conservative
and slightly more liberal could meet and not necessarily argue.
But that October 7th and the Gaza War has really shattered that.
And you have one group that has felt a heightened attachment
to Israel and a heightened sort of fear of anti-Semitism,
of belief that it's worse now than it's ever been.
And therefore, you know, we need to stand with, you know,
quote, unquote, our people.
At the same time, you have a lot of Jews
and they're not just Jews in their 20s.
They're parents, they're Jews in their 40s and 50s.
They're people like Natfelder who were at first concerned,
initially, both by the, of course,
they felt horror at the October 7th attack and sympathy
for people in Israel they knew,
but immediately felt concern for Israel's response
that it would be brutal, that it would be indiscriminate,
that many innocent Palestinians would die and suffer.
And those concerns escalated as the course of the war
intensified.
And Natfelder, I open the piece by describing the point
he came to, and this was last spring
when reports were surfacing that Israel was blocking
humanitarian aid into Gaza.
And Nat, who is someone who, you know,
has a lot of family in Israel,
and his grandfather made Aliya,
left his home in Long Island, went to Berceba,
lived there for a year himself.
All of this is in the piece,
but he could not remain quiet when he would pass
the sign in front of the synagogue
that said we stand with Israel.
And meanwhile, what he saw as a policy of starvation
was unfolding, because that same grandfather taught him
that the most important thing about being Judaism
was adhering to certain basic moral concepts.
And the most important of all was protecting human life.
So he wrote to the rabbis,
and he wrote to them several times, actually,
asking that the sign come down,
or that some sort of congregation-wide email be sent.
And when this didn't happen,
he took matters into his own hand.
He made a sign of his own.
And the sign said starvation is against Jewish values.
Our support of Israel cannot be unconditional.
And he made the sign, he stood in front of the synagogue,
and that's sort of the point of departure for the piece.
And what unfolded and how things got to that point.
Not only at Bethel, but again,
at a lot of other congregations.
And we'll come back to congregation Bethel
and some of what you describe.
They undertook there to try to hear various points of view
from within the congregation,
but if I'm reading your article correctly,
it wasn't very satisfying to a lot of the people there.
Here's an example.
This is sort of maybe a meta-example of
how deep this divide runs, even the fact
by all that we're doing this segment.
And I guess by extension that you published this article
that the New Yorker published this article right now.
Listen a road shortly before we went on the air.
The Brian Lershow, how Gaza and Zionism
are dividing synagogues.
Great story idea, but right at the start of Passover,
nasty mistake.
And so even raising the topic,
and it's relevance to this week,
starts to get some people ticked off.
Absolutely.
It's not surprising at all.
But if we've done this in the fall,
people would have said on the eve of the high holidays,
how can you talk about this?
And if it were neither holiday,
they might say, how can you talk about this in a moment
when anti-Semitism is rising?
And I'd refer them to some of the voices in the piece.
I quote Rabbi Elliott Cosgrove at one point,
and he's a sort of controversial figure in the piece
because he gave a very divisive sermon criticizing Zoran Momdani.
But in his quote, I mentioned in the piece,
he says his biggest concern right now
are the internal divisions within the American Jewish community.
And so you can pretend they're not there.
You can pretend it's never a good time to talk about them.
Or you can talk about why they have formed.
And I have to say I was inspired and moved
by the stories shared with me
by the members of this congregation
who as you rightly know, many of them are very frustrated
and have been very frustrated
because they're at a synagogue
where they feel that their sense of belonging
is harder to feel
because their perspective on the Warren Gaza
and on many of these issues is not represented
in the same way that the other side is.
And we played that clip of Rabbi Bukdol
from central synagogue in Manhattan
saying if she expresses one half of what she believes,
some of her congregants will say,
you're no longer my Rabbi
and if she expresses another part of what she believes,
other congregants will say,
you're no longer my Rabbi.
Well, I think we have a call from somebody
who literally did fire their Rabbi
and change congregations over some of this.
Udi and Highland Park, you're on WNMC.
Thank you so much for calling in, hi.
Hi, thank you.
My wife and I were members of a conservative synagogue
for 20 years and do we resigned
after our Rabbi gave a sermon about the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah
and talking about how the shrieks
of the people coming from the destroyed cities
were the shrieks of the perpetrators,
not the shrieks of victims.
And this was early on into the Gaza War
when there were just 15,000 people who had been killed.
And I went up to him afterwards and asked,
you know, is that what you're,
am I in taking away from this what you,
what I think I am?
And he said, yeah, and he just didn't,
he brushed away any concern about
the humanity of the other side
and we resigned after 20 years of being members.
Do I understand correctly from my screener
that you and your wife
served in the Israeli defense forces?
Yes, we both grew up,
we grew up in Los Angeles,
moved to New Jersey
and we both served in the IDF.
That's intense.
Are you in contact with people back there
and having conversations with them?
So much of the Israeli public
from the polls I've seen of there supports pretty much
everything that the Netanyahu government is doing
in Gaza and now Lebanon.
Do you still have relationships there
with people you're in dialogue?
Yes, we have family there.
But I don't bring up the political situation
because even those who oppose Netanyahu,
my cousins in Israel have marched against Netanyahu.
But I think they're firmly in favor
of what Israel is doing to, you know, against Gaza.
And I listen to Israeli radio
and I just, you just hear that there's a very biased view.
It's all about the hostages and the victims.
And there's nothing on Israeli radio
on Israeli media about the other side
and what they're suffering.
Ooty, thank you for your call and your perspective.
Let's go right to another caller.
Matt in Brooklyn says he's a rabbi
and this kind of divide essential to his existence now.
Matt, you're on WNYC. Hello.
Hi.
I told you, I told your screener
that the phrase I usually use
and people have seemed to come around to it
as the definition of politics
is that if you disagree with me,
it's called politics
and if you agree with me,
it's called Jewish values.
And, you know, I don't only say it actually to be funny,
I think it's actually a really valuable
or hopefully meaningful way of looking at the issue
because, you know, if as a rabbi,
I were to say to my condor
that I just got back from the J Street conference
then they're going to say,
why are you so involved in politics?
But if a colleague says,
oh, I just got back from the APAC conference,
nobody's going to say why are you so involved in politics?
They're just...
Jay Pag is a progressive group.
APAC is APAC.
So depends what the reaction will be.
And in that case, even further,
even people who actually probably do disagree with APAC,
for example,
will still not even see it as politics
because we've come to see it as this kind of,
I guess you could say,
it's an overt and window type of thing
where we've come to see that as just sort of a normal part
of Jewish communal life,
whereas the other one is quote unquote political
because people just because so many people,
so vocally disagree with it.
Yeah, anyway.
Well, how do you navigate this divide
as a rabbi in your congregation?
Do you try to move toward some kind of consensus
or some kind of,
I don't know what the word is, maybe tolerance or respect
for those with the other point of view
than some of their co-congregants?
Well, I'd like to think I act with tolerance
in respect toward all of them.
And I think to the point of your piece,
I mean, I'm in a much more traditional kind of synagogue
than rabbi Bukdal.
So if I were to, for example,
speak about keeping kosher,
the importance of keeping kosher,
the importance of keeping Shabbat,
and then I found out that a congregant
doesn't keep kosher or doesn't keep Shabbat.
I don't think anyone would think,
oh, I bet he doesn't respect them.
I bet I'm not gonna feel welcome there.
I hate him for saying this thing that
disagrees with me, whatever it is.
But when it comes to this issue,
people say, well, how come you're saying things
that I disagree with?
And it really is, not just this issue,
I guess politics in general really are this thing
where how dare you say this,
how dare you have this position
that isn't the same as my position,
whereas on seemingly all other matters of Jewish life,
that's okay.
Matt, we really appreciate your call, rabbi.
Thank you very much.
And as this in Pesach to you,
Steven in Westchester I think is calling
about a congregation where there's another type
of approach to this that actually comes up
in Isles, New York, or Article.
So Steven, you're on WNYC.
Thank you for calling in.
Hi, Brian.
Thanks for taking the call.
I was gonna say that I think some of the,
at least my congregation feels a little bit stymied
because it's a, I feel like if the rabbi were to bring it up,
I think they would sort of lose memberships
because I think some of the congregants are so entrenched
in this bit of like a blind faith approach to Israel
and what they're doing.
And it's very interesting
because it's the same people that would criticize
what's going on in this country
in terms of the government,
but they don't really seem to criticize
what's going on there.
One thing you told our screener,
and I wanna see if I got it right,
is that your congregation doesn't really talk
about Israel because they don't wanna divide themselves
among themselves.
And the rabbi doesn't wanna lose one group or another.
How much are you experiencing that?
Is that an accurate characterization?
I would say Israel in terms of what's going on there
with Gaza and the West Bank and Palestinians.
I mean, when I was, when I was going to Hebrew school,
it was very much like we can, you know, two-state solution.
But I mean, I feel like the two-state solution
hasn't been a real concept in like 25 years.
So maybe, maybe it should say 20 years, but.
Stephen, thank you very much.
Take on it.
Stephen, thank you.
Well, that kind of touches on something
in the article I all that you wrote about,
which is that a lot of rabbis, according to your reporting,
will just avoid the topic.
You know, they'll talk about other Jewish issues,
but they'll avoid Gaza now, Lebanon,
because they don't wanna divide the congregation.
Is that what you found?
I think that's definitely one impulse.
I think it's a reason that as the Gaza war got,
you know, longer and longer and bloodier and bloodier
and more and more divisive within the Jewish community,
there were a lot of rabbis who just strained to avoid it.
But there's another factor at play in that.
And that is that saying anything critical
or perceived to be critical, you know,
by a board member or a donor to the synagogue
or a member of the synagogue is dangerous.
You can be branded a traitor if you do that,
particularly if you're a younger rabbi.
And I heard in my reporting that younger rabbis
who are more inclined to have more progressive views
on this issue are the ones who are most afraid to speak out.
I did speak with Rabbi Sharon Browse,
the senior rabbi at a synagogue in Los Angeles,
and she talked about the discourse,
she called this discourse, defend, deflect, and denounce.
So if you dare to say anything about Israel and your rabbi,
the folks who attack you will first they'll defend Israel
regardless of what it's doing.
Then they'll say, why are you talking about Israel?
Why aren't you talking about Sudan?
And then they'll denounce you as someone who's disloyal
to your people and she has been denounced
in that way several times.
So I think there's a great disincentive
to say anything critical.
At the same time, and you heard it in these calls,
and I think it's a more general thing.
You know, American Jews by and large are liberal.
They pray to, you know, what one scholar called,
you know, the God of social justice,
a God who believes in equality and tolerance.
And love for Israel in the United States,
which I think eaked in the 1970s and in the decades afterwards,
was sort of predicated on this notion that Israel was a country
that sought peace with its neighbors,
that integrated women into its army,
that could sort of be wedded to that progressive ideology.
Well, Israel yesterday passed a law,
its class passed a law,
mandating hanging for West Bank Palestinians
who will be tried in military courts.
That's not consistent with progressivism.
What's happening in the West Bank is not consistent with progressivism.
And so the tension that I described in this article
is not going to go away,
and in fact will very likely intensify in the years to come,
particularly among younger people.
Here are two texts that just came in,
that kind of reflect pieces of the divide.
One says, Passover is when Jews are supposed to reflect
on how bitter it is to be oppressed,
and how important it is to struggle for freedom.
It's the perfect time to talk about the plight of Palestinians and Gaza.
People have captive starved many of whom are refugees
from their land that they were driven from within living memory.
But a very different text says,
I am a Jew in my 40s.
I used to define myself as a moderate Zionist
after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
And during the subsequent war, I have become a more radical Zionist.
I am also an advocate of freedom of speech and diversity of opinion.
In that sense, I'm willing to tolerate the views and expressions of Jews
which are different from mine.
What I do not have patience for is when people who have opinions
that are strong but uninformed,
the mainstream media is not a good source of information regarding Israel.
This person writes, citing New York Times, CNN, etc.
People who rely on these sources to inform them about what is going on over there
and then think and speak as if they are well informed do so in error.
So a couple of texts that came in back to back
that exemplifies what's in aisle presses New York or magazine article.
After the break, we'll play a clip from a journalist guest
who was on the show last week from Lebanon
who raised a specific moral issue facing Israel and its supporters
and will continue to invite your calls from your point of view
maybe specifically on that clip stay with us.
Music
Brian Lehr on WNYC as we continue with New York or magazine writer
Al Press and his article with Passover beginning tomorrow night
and we're going to have a Easter and Good Friday
in the world situation segment later in the week.
Al's article is called at synagogues, tensions are boiling over
and here's one source of those tensions.
Last week we had journalist William Christu of the Guardian on from Lebanon
where Israel is hitting what are widely considered civilian targets
because Hezbollah uses that same infrastructure
as civilian non-combatant Lebanese people do
as Hezbollah plans and stages attacks on Israel from across the border.
The reporter gave this example.
We're seeing in those areas there's a widespread targeting of medics
including through the double taps, double tap strikes,
which is when they strike somewhere, wait for paramedics to come
and then they strike the area again hitting the paramedics in the process.
And what we saw in the last war, what we saw in Gaza,
is that the point of this is to make it increasingly difficult
for people to stay in those areas, to clear those areas out
so that Israel can fight their war easier.
And human rights groups have warned against this,
saying that it amounts to forced displacement.
So Jewish listeners on that human rights groups argument
as one side of it and Israel's argument on the other side of it
that without destroying that much civilian infrastructure,
even killing people in the healthcare workforce as we just heard there,
without doing that, Hezbollah will be able to keep attacking
so it's the right of self-defense.
So Jewish listeners as we discuss these divides among American Jews
as we head toward Passover tomorrow night,
in the context of Jewish community divides like the Washington Post poll
that we mentioned at the top that found basically a 50-50 split among American Jews
on whether they support the war in Gaza.
What's your own answer to these moral questions?
How much killing of civilians is justifiable in the context
of trying to protect your community from a military foe that is real
and that is attacking you from within that community?
And on the Zionism question,
which we'll get to in a little more depth with our guest,
how much is national self-determination justifiable,
even when your group has indigenous roots there
and they were persecuted for 2,000 years everywhere else they've been.
If you're setting up a country without equal rights
or any related question you want to address
and that maybe you'll bring up your Passover Seder this week,
2, 1, 2, 4, 3, 3, WNYC call a text, 2, 1, 2, 4, 3, 3,
9, 6, 9, 2, 2, the theme of IELS article.
And I all you write that even Zionism is now being perceived differently
in the Jewish community with more of a divide.
And so for example, you give us some history citing a broad unity
among American Jews about Israel.
After the 1973, I'm Kippur War, a surprise attack by Arab countries.
Most American Jews weren't Zionists in the sense that they wanted
to move to Israel, you say, but they were glad that it existed overwhelmingly.
Why do you cite that particular Arab Israeli wars having been so galvanizing
and what do you compare it to today?
Well, I think it's just such a striking contrast with October 7th.
So the Yom Kippur War, the surprise assault launched by Arab forces
on the Jewish holiday, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar,
stirs this pretty unified response in the American Jewish community
that I quote the commentary editor Norman Buthoritz was,
didn't need any convincing, but he celebrates the fact that this attack,
as he says, all American Jews have been converted to Zionism,
even the skeptical Orthodox Jews who thought that Zionism was a heresy
were coming around.
He quotes Irving Howe, the editor of dissent,
the socialist who expressed his taste for nationalism,
but admitted that he felt this astonishingly intense feeling for Israel
when the Yom Kippur War broke out.
Then you fast forward 50 years to October 7th,
and it's another surprise attack that sort of punctures this era of vulnerability,
of invulnerability, I should say, in Israel.
Would it galvanize the same unity to the contrary?
What it has galvanized is what it has done is sharpen the divisions,
create deeper polarization, make Israel and Zionism
more contentious subjects within the Jewish community.
And that's in part because the American Jewish community has changed.
It's also because Israel has changed.
And so I think that contrast is really striking.
And again, some texts coming in that are on various sides of this.
If they don't want to be attacked, they should stop attacking Israel.
Very simply stated, we're getting a few like that.
I think in contrast to those, Helene and Brooklyn, you're on WNYC.
Hello, Helene.
Hi.
This is just so pressing for me.
I am a baby boomer, the essential baby boomer born in 1946,
to two parents who escaped from the Holocaust in 1939,
from my father from Poland, my mother from Vienna,
and leading behind very, very many relatives,
tens of which died.
At the same time, I grew up in Brooklyn in a very progressive family,
and what Passover Seder means to me right now is taught
about how to be a Jew in light of both prevalent anti-Semitism,
and what Jews are doing, Israelis are doing in the gods of destroying people.
That's not the Jew that I was brought up to be.
Humanism was, in fact, the core of our ideals.
What I was most proud of is that my parents did not bring us up
as Holocaust Jews.
They brought us up with optimism in our place in the world,
and we worked for all kinds of progressive things.
But it's an unmixed feeling.
I feel vulnerable as a Jew.
I understand that these Israelis feel vulnerable,
but at the same time, I don't support what these Israelis have done
during this war in Gaza,
and also have been much more informed in my later years
about what the Jews did to take over the land of Israel,
and how much destruction and death and extrusion occurred.
None of this is easy resolution,
but certainly I don't take offense that the New Yorker article
was written at this time.
I can't think of a more important time for Jews and everybody to fit
and talk about what is that we want?
What can we accomplish?
Who are we?
Those are the most important questions.
Helene, what would you say then if you were in dialogue with the listener
who just wrote this text?
I found the fact that the majority of Israelis,
even those who are previously very sympathetic and supportive
of Palestinians' rights, support the government actions,
I find that persuasive in my support of Israel's actions.
I don't believe that Israelis are uniquely irrational or immoral,
it's easy for us to cut-tut when we sit in our safe bubble,
quite different to feel the need to protect those
who are brutally mutilated or innocent loved ones.
What would you say to that listener?
I understand what came to mind as you were saying it,
it's like asking the victims or the survivor of an attack.
Okay, my child is killed, you're asking me,
should I put the perpetrator of that horrendous crime to death?
These are not the people.
I understand this is a country in fear.
They've been attacked many times.
They've had thousands of their soldiers die.
This is not really where you can draw back and say,
okay, who do I want to be in light of this?
What am I willing to do to the end?
I understand the fear.
That's why I premised my comments
that I don't have that absolute solution.
There is anti-Semitism.
The Arabs have attacked Israel multiple times.
But the Jews have done incredible things to take over the land of someone else
and to push them out.
And they have now conducted a war in a way that's killing many more
than the people who are hurting them.
So I wish I had a magic answer.
I don't think there's a magic answer.
But I don't know that the fear of the Israelis
is necessarily the answer to what we want to do
because it goes beyond the war.
What do we do with Israel going forward?
A democratic nation.
It could never be.
Thank you very much for your call.
We really appreciate it.
As well as to the listener who texted the words
that we contrasted her with and invited her to respond to.
A. L. as we head toward the end of the segment,
I'm going to read one more text
which it appears came from a member of Congregation Bethel
at Maplewood, which is where the heart of your article is.
Listener writes,
I am a white Jewish woman in my late 60s
and a member of the Congregation reported on
in ALs article,
I appreciate that a core aspect of our Jewish tradition
is to wrestle and grapple with hard things.
We are about the dialogue and the exchange and the learning.
And we remain in community with one another
even when we don't agree with one another,
after all we are all and remain co-congregants.
And that's something to be celebrated and amplified.
So I guess my closing question to you
based on your deeply reported article
is where is this headed
or might head going forward
or are people like our various callers
and textures from various points of view
destined to divide into political echo chambers
like the country is doing to such a degree
within the Jewish community in the United States?
Well, you know, it's a great question.
I'm going to defer to
Liba Byer, one of the people I interviewed in the piece.
She grew up in a super Zionist household.
She is now openly identified as anti-Zionist.
She is also a member of Congregation Bethel.
And one thing she mentioned to me,
which I later saw was that Congregation Bethel
was a big tent synagogue meaning
this is a movement that sought to open the doors of synagogues
to LGBTQ Jews, to interfaith couples
really to broaden who feels accepted.
And what she said to me was, you know, for me
and for a lot of young people today,
big tent means diversity and tolerance.
Tolerance of diverse views on Israel and Zionism.
I think that actually pinpoints the challenge or rabbis.
Can you be tolerant
not just through paying empty lip service
or occasionally saying, sure, we'll welcome you in.
Just don't expect any of your views to ever be articulated
from the BMA or in congregation-wide emails.
But can you really be an equal part of this community
expressing your beliefs in dialogue with others
and not be tagged as disloyal or un-Jewish
or somehow hostile to the congregation?
I think that's a challenge and the challenge will grow
because as younger Jews grow up and become members
or look for congregations,
they have experienced these events,
these formatives deeply, you know,
they have watched the Gaza War unfold
and they don't remember the Young Kippur War.
They don't remember 1948,
as well as they remember 2000, you know,
the October 7th attack, 2023
and it's aftermath, the destruction of Gaza.
So if there is no big tent in these communities,
then it will be polarized and they will split up.
I think that's the really hard challenge
that faces these institutions.
New Yorker writer, AL Press.
He's also author of the book,
Dirty Work, Essential Jobs
and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America,
which came out a few years ago
and won some journalism awards.
Thanks so much for joining us on your latest article.
Thanks so much for having me, Brian,
and happy Passover to listeners.
And same for me to all our Jewish listeners.
And that's our pre-passover segment
about difficult discussions taking place
within the American Jewish community.
Later in the week, as we head toward Easter,
we'll talk about American Christians finding different answers
to the question, what would Jesus say
about immigration in particular
and other Trump policies?
The Brian Lehrer Show



