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Diaspora alarm over Israel: Your guide to what the critics are saying
(JTA) — I started reporting on North American Jews and Israel in the last century, and for years covered the debate over whether Jews in the Diaspora had a right to criticize the Israeli government in public. The debate sort of petered out in the early-1990s, when Israel itself began talking about a Palestinian state, and when right-wing groups then decided criticizing Israel was a mitzvah.
Nevertheless, while left-wing groups like J Street and T’ruah have long been comfortable criticizing the Israeli government or defending Palestinian rights, many in the centrist “mainstream” — pulpit clergy, leaders of federations and Hillels, average Jews nervous about spoiling a family get-together — have preferred to keep their concerns to themselves. Partly this is tactical: Few rabbis want to alienate any of their members over so divisive a topic, and in the face of an aggressive left, organizational leaders did not want to give fuel to Israel’s ideological enemies. (The glaring exception has been about Israeli policy toward non-Orthodox Judaism, which is seen as very much the Disapora’s business.)
In recent weeks, there has been an emerging literature of what I have come to think of as “reluctant dissent.” What these essays and sermons have in common, despite the different political persuasions of the authors, is a deep concern over Israel’s “democratic character.” They cite judicial reforms that would weaken checks and balances at the top, expansion of Jewish settlements that would make it impossible to separate from the Palestinians, and the Orthodox parties that want to strengthen their hold on religious affairs. As Abe Foxman, who as former director of the Anti-Defamation League rarely criticized Israel, told an interviewer, “If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it.”
I read through the various ways Jewish leaders and writers here and in Israel are not just justifying Diaspora Jews who are protesting what is happening in Israel, but providing public permission for others to do the same. Here is what a few of them are saying (with a word from a defender of the government):
‘I didn’t sleep much last night’
Yehuda Kurtzer: Facebook, Feb. 8
Kurtzer is the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, the New York-based branch of the Israeli think tank that promotes a diverse, engaged relationship with Israel. In a recent blog post, he neatly describes the dilemma of Diaspora Zionists who aren’t sure what to do with their deep concerns about the direction of the Israel government, especially the concentration of power in a far-right legislative branch.
Centrist American Jews who care about Israel are caught between “those to our right who would see any expression of even uncertainty about Israel’s democratic character as disloyalty, [and] those on the other side who think that a conversation about Israeli democracy is already past its prime,” he writes. He is also concerned about the “widespread disengagement that we can expect among American Jews, what I fear will become the absent majority — those who decide that however the current crisis is resolved, all of this is just ‘not for them.’”
Kurtzer likens Israel to a palace, and Diaspora Jews as “passersby” who live beyond its walls. Nonetheless, he feels responsible for what happens there. “The palace is burning and the best we can do is to tell you,” he writes. “It is also how we will show you we love you, and how much we cherish the palace.”
An open letter to Israel’s friends in North America
Matti Friedman, Yossi Klein Halevi and Daniel Gordis: Times of Israel, Feb. 7
Three high-profile writers who moved to Israel from North America and who often defend Israel against its critics in the United States — Gordis, for one, has written a book arguing that American Jewish liberalism is incompatible with Israel’s “ethnic democracy” — now urge Diaspora Jews to speak out against the current Israeli government. They don’t mention the territories or religious pluralism. Instead, their trigger is the proposed effort to reform the Supreme Court, which they say will “eviscerate the independence of our judiciary and remake the country’s democratic identity.” Such a move will “threaten Israeli-American relations, and it will do grave damage to our relations with you, our sisters and brothers in the Diaspora,” concluding, “We need your voice to help us preserve Israel as a state both Jewish and democratic.”
All Israel Is Responsible for Each Other
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl: Sermon, Jan. 27
Buchdahl, the senior rabbi of New York City’s Reform Central Synagogue, isn’t looking to Israeli writers for permission to weigh in on Israel’s political scene. In a sermon that takes its name from a rabbinic statement of Jewish interdependence, she asserts without question that Jews everywhere have a stake in the future of Israel and have a right to speak up for “civil society and democracy and religious pluralism and human rights” there. She focuses on the religious parties who are convinced that “Reform Jews are ruining Israel,” as you might expect, but ends the sermon with a call to recognize the rights of all Israeli citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish, “and also those living under Israel’s military control.” Of those Palestinians, she says, “We can’t feel comfortable sitting in the light of sovereignty next to a community living in darkness and expect to have peace.”
And like Kurtzer, she worries that concerned American Jews will simply turn away from Israel in despair or embarrassment, and urges congregants to support the Israeli and American organizations that share their pluralistic vision for Israel.
On That Distant Day
Hillel Halkin: Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2023
In his 1977 book “Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist Polemic,” the translator and author Hillel Halkin made a distinction similar to Kurtzer’s image of Israel as a palace and the Diaspora as passersby: Jews who don’t emigrate to Israel are dooming themselves to irrelevance, while immigrants like him are living on the stage where the Jewish future would play out. His mournful essay doesn’t address the Diaspora, per se, although it creates a permission structure for Zionists abroad to criticize the government. Halkin sees the new government as a coalition of two types of religious zealots: the haredi Orthodox who want to consolidate their control of religious life (and funding) in Israel, and a “knit-skullcap electorate [that] is hypernationalist and Jewish supremacist in its attitude toward Arabs.” (A knit skullcap is a symbol for what an American might call the “Modern Orthodox.”) Together, these growing and powerful constituents represent “the end of an Israeli consensus about what is and is not permissible in a democracy — and once the rules are no longer agreed on, political chaos is not far away. Israel has never been in such a place before.”
Halkin does talk about Israeli expansion in the West Bank, saying he long favored Jewish settlement in the territories, while believing that the “only feasible solution” would be a two-state solution with Arabs living in the Jewish state and Jews living in the Arab one. Instead, Israel has reached a point where there is “too much recrimination, too much distrust, too much hatred, too much blind conviction, too much disdain for the notion of a shared humanity, for such a solution to be possible… We’re over the cliff and falling, and no one knows how far down the ground is.”
Method to Our Madness: A Response to Hillel Halkin
Ze’ev Maghen: Jewish Review of Books, Jan. 10, 2023
Ze’ev Maghen, chair of the department of Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University, is hardly a dissenter; instead, his response to Halkin helpfully represents the views of those who voted for the current government. Maghen says the new coalition represents a more honest expression of Zionism than those who support a “liberal, democratic, egalitarian, inclusive, individualist, environmentally conscious, economically prosperous, globally connected, etc., etc., society.” The new government he writes, will defend Israel’s “Jewish nationalist raison d’être, and keep at bay those universalist, Western-based notions that are geared by definition to undermine nationalism in all its forms.” As for the Palestinian issue, he writes, “I’d rather have a fierce, hawkish Zionist in the cockpit than a progressive, Westernized wimp for whom this land, and the people who have returned to it after two millennia of incomparable suffering, don’t mean all that much.”
The Tears of Zion
Rabbi Sharon Brous: Sermon, Feb. 4, 2023
Brous, rabbi of the liberal Ikar community in Los Angeles, doesn’t just defend the right of Diaspora Jews to speak out in defense of Israeli democracy and Palestinian rights, but castigates Jewish leaders and communities who have been reluctant to criticize Israel in the past. “No, this government is not an electoral accident, and it is not an anomaly,” she says. “This moment of extremism has been a long time in the making and our silence has made us complicit.”
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California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race
(JTA) — California progressive Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed moderate Melissa Hernandez in a congressional runoff this week, capping off a contest that had become unexpectedly tight after the pro-Israel lobby entered the fray.
The Associated Press called the race between the Democrats — who were vying to replace a disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell — a full two days after polls closed, when Wahab secured 53.1% of votes to Hernandez’s 46.9%, with 95% of ballots tallied. The gap between them grew by four percentage points from Tuesday evening, when Wahab had held a narrow 51% lead to Hernandez’s 49%.
“We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a Thursday statement, noting her journey “from foster care to Congress” in her East Bay community.
Although Wahab ended up victorious, the narrow initial margin on Tuesday shocked California’s 14th District, given that she had secured a double-digit lead in preliminary races two months ago.
But in the past few weeks, an unforeseen variable appeared to influence the trajectories of the two campaigns: a massive spending push from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee aimed at turning the tides for Hernandez.
Since the beginning of August alone, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, and other affiliated groups spent more than $2.5 million on both boosting Hernandez and denigrating Wahab with negative ads and mailers, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“This was not a landslide for Wahab by any means,” local Democratic strategist Noah Finneburgh, who is not affiliated with either candidate, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“They narrowed the gap for sure,” Finneburgh added, referring to AIPAC. “They spent millions of dollars attacking Wahab very aggressively.”
These attacks, he explained, did not involve Israel and instead focused on divisive issues for the Bay Area, such as public safety and protecting kids.
“Negative advertising with a persuasive message can be very effective,” Finneburgh said.
In her Thursday night statement, Wahab declared that her “district cannot be bought,” describing the race as “one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen.”
Prior to this influx of cash and related ads, neither AIPAC nor Israel had played a significant role in this short-lived race — which began in April following Swalwell’s resignation over allegations of sexual assault.
When the district held a special primary to seek Swalwell’s replacement on June 16, Wahab and Hernandez finished as the top-two candidates and moved on to this week’s special general runoff election.
California primaries are “nonpartisan” or “top-two” races, in which the two highest ranking candidates move on to the general election, irrespective of their parties. The top-two in this case were both Democrats, like Swalwell, in a district that the Cook Political Report deems solidly blue.
Even though Wahab will now finish the remainder of Swalwell’s term, she will have to compete with Hernandez again in the November general election for a full term that begins on January 3, 2027.
In a June 16 special primary that preceded this week’s runoff, there was still a massive gap between the two candidates, with Wahab accruing 42.8% of the votes, compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%. A separate primary for the November race, which occurred two weeks earlier, placed Wahab at 38.3% and Hernandez at 17.2%.
Wahab, who will be the first Afghan American in Congress, has focused on affordability, civil rights, education and climate change. Her campaign calls for an end to wars and “prolonged occupations” but only specifically calls out U.S. military activity in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.”
Though Wahab has been critical of Israel and its operations in Gaza, she has not been as vocal about the issue as many other progressive colleagues nationwide. She responded “yes” when asked if Israel was committing genocide in a primary debate, but she didn’t include Israel or Gaza in her campaign priorities.
During a recent appearance on far-right influencer Hasan Piker’s livestream, Wahab acknowledged that “it’s not a zero-sum game in the Middle East,” adding that “we can care for all people.” She also referenced a resolution she introduced last year in the California legislature, pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza but also condemning Hamas and demanding the release of the hostages.
“We talk about both Palestinians and the Israeli victims there,” Wahab told Piker. “We talk about holding the perpetrators accountable from both sides.”
Asked if she was in favor of “ending all U.S. aid to Israel,” she responded “yes,” while stressing that “humanitarian aid is important to me, too.”
Wahab has earned the backing of multiple labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. The liberal pro-Israel group J Street also recently invested $108,000 in her campaign, according to the FEC. American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC, also spent at least $200,000 on supporting her.
Hernandez has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.
Come November, Hernandez will gain one additional asset. Due to statewide redistricting, the 14th District will gain about 26,000 new voters from Dublin, where Hernandez previously served as mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But Finneburgh said he believes that Hernandez has only a minimal chance of winning that race, especially because Wahab will be heading into that election as an incumbent.
He also suggested that if “she plays her card right,” Wahab could even take some endorsements away from Hernandez.
“There’s going to be people who are going to probably move over from the Hernandez camp and back her,” Finneburgh added. “It’s going to be hard to unseat her.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race appeared first on The Forward.
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Why an anti-Israel DSA member bested Alex Vindman in a Florida Senate primary
(JTA) — When Democratic socialist Angie Nixon, an ardent critic of Israel, secured a surprise win in Florida’s U.S. Senate Democratic primary Tuesday over Jewish former Soviet refugee Alex Vindman, pro-Israel advocates expressed alarm that even in the South, Democratic momentum seems to be shifting toward the party’s farthest-left flank.
Nixon is expected to face an uphill battle against her GOP competitor Ashley Moody. Given Florida’s status as a red state, Moody is likely to retain the seat, which she won last year after Marco Rubio, also a Republican, stepped down to become U.S. secretary of state. She and Nixon will vie to complete the last two years of that term, in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2019. The Cook Political Report currently rates the race as “solid” Republican.
Nixon’s triumph in the primary, however, marks the first democratic socialist victory in a Senate contest this year, with all other democratic socialist wins in federal elections occurring in House races. She won over establishment favorite and Israel supporter Vindman, who dominated the spending game and was widely predicted to win the nomination.
Her victory also comes as other candidates on the left flank of the party have claimed the Senate nomination in Maine, Michigan and Minnesota. Florida is the first red state to have gone with a Senate candidate this far to the left, and it raises the question of why Nixon prevailed and what it says about the larger dynamics among Democratic voters. But analysts caution that Nixon’s win may be more connected to local political dynamics, including the miscalculations by Vindman and his staff, than to the country as a whole.
“They did not take her candidacy seriously,” Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Emphasizing that Vindman and his team members “are certainly kicking themselves,” Jewett stressed that while Nixon had wanted a debate, her opponent had refused.
“I don’t know that he knew what he was getting into,” added Jacob Perry, a Democratic strategist who had at one point been in discussions to join Vindman’s campaign.
Vindman, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant-colonel, served on the White House’s National Security Council and was influential in Trump’s first impeachment. Born in Kyiv, he left the former Soviet Union for the U.S. as a refugee with his father and siblings in 1979.
One obstacle that Vindman faced in this race, according to Perry, was his newcomer status in Florida. Having moved to the Sunshine State just three years ago, after retiring from the Army, Vindman was unfamiliar with its political and cultural dynamics, he added.
“He knows about as much about Florida politics as I know about Ukrainian politics,” Perry said.
Reflecting on the loss on Tuesday night, Vindman credited Nixon for her “strong campaign” against him, noting in a post on X that he “will be standing by her side in the fight against Ashley Moody.”
“Who would’ve ever thought that a Jewish refugee would make it to the U.S. Army, to the White House, and to becoming a candidate for the U.S. Senate,” he added.
President Donald Trump celebrated Vindman’s defeat on Wednesday, describing the outcome on Truth Social as “the most gratifying loss last night” and calling Vindman “a real treasonous creep.”
The president lashed out about Vindman’s decision to testify in Congress over concerns about a Trump request from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate former President Joe Biden. Trump described the conversation as a “routinely recorded” and “perfect call,” stressing that he was “completely innocent.”
“Vindman should be prosecuted for what he did,” added Trump, who also described Vindman’s opponent, Nixon, as “a radical left lunatic” who will face a “certain defeat at the hands of Ashley Moody.”
Nixon on Tuesday thanked Vindman for his service and for his “efforts to make sure that Florida voters know what is going on right now is not normal in Washington, D.C.”
“I look forward to working with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and others to bring the people of Florida together,” she said.
Nixon, a state lawmaker from Jacksonville, has been an outspoken voice against Florida Republican efforts to redistrict congressional voting boundaries, which will likely result in fewer Democratic seats in the U.S. House.
Although Nixon joined the Democratic Socialists of America this year, she didn’t earn the group’s endorsement. She did, however, gain the support of young Florida progressives, as well as Michigan U.S. House Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who are top DSA voices and Israel detractors. Nixon spoke at a controversial rally on Friday in Fort Lauderdale, where Tlaib was a featured guest, the Miami Herald reported.
Regarding Nixon’s lack of DSA endorsement, Politico said it had obtained an internal Discord chat that had raised concerns about Nixon being “opportunistic” because she joined DSA only recently. At the time, a DSA spokesperson explained that the message came from a specific DSA chapter and that Nixon hadn’t filed an endorsement request. The group did not immediately respond to a request from JTA for further comment.
Nixon has repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide and criticized Vindman for staying silent on Israel. In Florida’s legislature, she introduced a bill calling for a “de-escalation and ceasefire in the state of Israel and occupied Palestine.” She also voiced support for cutting U.S. aid for the Jewish state and declared that she doesn’t take AIPAC money.
“Together we went up against a political establishment against millions of dollars of out of state spending,” Nixon said on Tuesday. “We were outspent 16 to one, and we won.”
Over the course of the primary race, Nixon brought in less than $1 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Vindman, on the other hand, amassed more than $16 million, a sizable sum in a conservative-leaning state. Records available thus far do not link these funds to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, while the Track AIPAC website describes Vindman as “pro-Israel” but lists his “Israel lobby total” as “TBD.”
Regardless of the funding sources, Jewett pointed out that Vindman still has millions of dollars left in his campaign chest.
“He had millions left that he could have spent buying more ads or developing a better ground game, recruiting more volunteers to go knock on doors,” Jewett said.
The ads he did run focused less on Nixon and more on introducing himself and attacking Moody, with “the presumption that he was going to win,” Jewett added.
Meanwhile, Perry observed that Vindman’s social media photos throughout the campaign usually featured meetings with people who “look like him.” These groups, he explained, often included veterans who weren’t registered Democrats and who weren’t “going to vote for him in a primary.”
Nixon, on the other hand, was capitalizing on her skills as a community organizer and was out hustling, Perry added.
“Angie understood the Democratic primary voter better than Alex or his team,” he said.
Stephen Sussman, a professor of public administration at Barry University, said he was unsurprised that Nixon ended up beating Vindman because her platforms “resonated with the progressive left and the Democrats.”
Her messages, Sussman added, struck a chord “with the Democrats on the ground,” while Vindman had the reputation of being “more of a national figure.”
Jewett echoed these sentiments, noting that the reason political scientists had “called him the frontrunner was because of his national notoriety and name recognition, and his role in bringing Trump to the first impeachment.”
In a general election, that national notoriety could have given him a slight advantage. Swing voters, Jewett explained, might have appreciated his overall moderate agenda, his military vet status, his pro-Israel stances and the fact that he still owns a weapon.
While recognizing that Vindman could have had “a little better chance than Nixon” in the general election, Jewett stressed that Moody is the “clearly the favorite” in this red state.
“She’s always a top vote-getter,” Perry added. “There’s nothing really particularly interesting or that stands out about her. But she somehow brings in the votes.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Why an anti-Israel DSA member bested Alex Vindman in a Florida Senate primary appeared first on The Forward.
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A Jewish federation had big plans for a community campus. Then the money ran out.
(JTA) — When the Jewish federation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, laid off its entire support staff earlier this month, the move didn’t come as a surprise. Instead, it felt like an inevitable next step in an inexorable trajectory of decline that has unfolded in public over the course of months, upending the infrastructure that had long organized Jewish communal life in the state capital.
The slow-rolling collapse in Harrisburg, which has roughly 9,000 Jews in the city area, has included the closure of programs, the displacement of Jewish institutions and the planned sale of the Alexander Grass Campus for Jewish Life, which was purchased by the federation for $4.5 million in 2022 and envisioned as a hub for Jewish life in central Pennsylvania.
The downfall has also featured an unusual intervention by Jewish Federations of North America, the umbrella organization for 141 local federations that usually work highly independently. JFNA dispatched a former federation leader to help the Harrisburg Federation make hard financial decisions as it became clear its situation was not sustainable.
“While well-intentioned, there were clearly mistakes made that have set back Jewish life in Harrisburg and caused distress and division,” JFNA’s president and CEO, Eric Fingerhut, wrote in a letter to the community in April, in which he called the local federation’s business model “not viable.”
At the time, Fingerhut expressed optimism that the situation could turn around, writing, “Despite all that has transpired in recent years, I am confident the members of the Greater Harrisburg community can come together to repair what has been broken and build a bright future.”
Four months later, that optimism is being tested as Harrisburg’s Jewish residents have watched core functions of the local federation evaporate.
Gila Ogle, the head of the Silver Academy, a Jewish day school in Harrisburg, said there was a “deep desire to ensure a vibrant future for Jewish life in Harrisburg,” but lamented that there is no longer a local Jewish federation to support it.
“What people are saying is, ‘Well, now what’s our opportunity? How can we come together?’” she said.
The Silver Academy officially learned in June that it could no longer be housed in the Grass Campus, Ogle said. The school will open this fall in the educational wing of Beth El Temple, a Conservative synagogue in Harrisburg. The synagogue is also hosting senior programs previously operated by the JCC.
Ogle said the school had seen a small decline in enrollment over the past year, a trend she attributed to the “unsettlingness of the whole situation” for families.
“Families have a lot of concerns, and I think that’s fair,” Ogle said. “We’ve really done our best to communicate transparently and keep families looped in and part of the process, but it is hard.”
The Silver Academy was not the only institution housed on the Grass Campus that was hurt by the Harrisburg federation’s downfall.
When Rebecca Anzel first heard about the looming closure of her 3-year-old daughter’s preschool in April, she was “shocked and confused.” Her daughter attended the Brenner Family Early Learning Center, which shut down on May 1, just over a week after Anzel and other families were informed of its closing. The preschool has no plans for reopening.
“I was devastated for my daughter, because I was worried about what that would do for her development and progression,” Anzel said at the time.
Now, as the federation’s collapse enters its final stages, the institutions it once supported are beginning to chart a future without it.
“It wasn’t that the Harrisburg Jewish community failed; it was that the business construct, the model, was failing and was faulty,” said Marc Terrill, the former head of the Jewish Federation of Baltimore, whom the national organization dispatched to Harrisburg to help the local federation deal with its finances. “They recognized that this isn’t the end to Jewish life in Harrisburg. They want very much a reset in putting together a financial, an organizational, construct that is more similar to what the most thriving Jewish communities in North America have.”
The abrupt closure of the campus comes as Jewish institutions increasingly rethink the necessity of large physical hubs amid rising operational costs and shifting demographics. While closures on the scale of Harrisburg’s are rare, in 2022, the Jewish Federation of New Mexico collapsed following a spate of bitter legal and boardroom battles and a widening financial crisis.
For some in Harrisburg, the federation’s short-lived experiment with the 6.4-acre campus underscored the need to pursue a more flexible model of community building.
Terrill pointed to the purchase of the Grass Campus as the pivotal decision in the federation’s unraveling.
“What’s been called into question is the business model,” said Terrill. “That wrapped around a number of things, but really, the thing that was the large decision that became existential was the purchase of the Grass campus.”
Rabbi Ariana Capptauber, the former leader of Beth El Temple and ex officio member of the Harrisburg federation’s board, said that she hoped the sale of the campus could serve as a turning point for the local Jewish community to reexamine how it organizes and sustains Jewish communal life.
If these developments serve as “a wake-up call” that lead to a more creative use of the community’s resources, Capptauber said, “then it could be really good.”
The financial strain surrounding the campus had been mounting for years.
While the federation had a net income of $2.9 million in 2023, according to public tax filings, in 2024, the organization operated at a $3.3 million deficit.
Sam Levine, a member of the federation’s transition committee, told The Burg in May that expenses to run the campus were “considerably higher than anticipated,” adding that the organization was also “depending on some donations, which unfortunately did not materialize.”
Since the property was purchased, the mortgage for the Alexander Grass Campus had risen to $9 million, Jeanette Krebs, a member of the federation’s transition committee, told Penn Live.
“We are continuing to work through a debt elimination strategy which includes monetizing real estate. Much remains to be seen regarding how things will turn out,” Krebs told JTA in an emailed statement. “I think there are several things that we can all agree on in Harrisburg. Most importantly, that there is a future, people care deeply and we are committed to learning from our mistakes.”
Parents and other stakeholders said they learned little about the looming crisis before programs began shutting down. For Anzel, the lack of communication compounded the distress of losing her daughter’s preschool.
“We have not been given any sort of explanation at all other than major donors fell through, and so now we’re sort of left to try to fill in the blanks ourselves,” Anzel said.
Dana Ray, another parent at the Early Learning Center who organized a letter signed by parents calling on the federation to preserve the center, said that the prevailing sentiment among parents at the school had been “anger and sadness.”
Terrill said that there had also been a divide within the community over the initial move to the Grass Campus.
“There were some people that were very anti-campus,” Terrill said. “They thought that there was a different way to go, and ultimately a decision was made to go, and that had certain implications for it.”
Levine, the transition committee member, told local outlets that the federation is not planning to file for bankruptcy in hopes that local donations and the sale of the campus will help buoy the organization as it faces roughly $500,000 worth of debt on top of a large outstanding mortgage.
For Terrill, the “cautionary tale” of the collapse of the Harrisburg Federation was that there’s “no substitute for building community consensus, effective governance, and effective planning.”
The federation’s transition committee, which was announced by Fingerhut in April, has held roughly 200 conversations and listening sessions with community members as it charts what comes next.
“In a nutshell, the business plan, if you could call it that, was very reactionary,” Terrill said. “What they’re looking to put in place in response to lessons learned is an approach that’s quite different. That is linked to transparency, to financial discipline, to right-sizing, to community input.”
But as the Harrisburg federation begins selling off the campus that was intended to secure its future, local rabbis and parents say the federation’s unraveling has meant the loss of a central part of the local Jewish community’s infrastructure.
“It kind of makes me sad that now we’re sort of forced to leave this really, really lovely, vibrant Jewish community where she’s learning and actually retaining information about Judaism,” Anzel said of her daughter, who is now enrolled in a different preschool. “I don’t know where else she’s going to get that, and I’m really sad.”
Rabbi Tzvia Jasper, the senior rabbi of Temple Ohev Sholom, said that while many were “understandably upset” by the situation, it had also given way to a new sense of community.
“It’s certainly a really devastating time for our community, but in the same vein, I think there’s a lot of anticipation for what this new moment is going to bring,” Jasper said. “With any big change like this, comes the opportunity for creativity and innovation to sort of rethink and restructure the community and find out what the needs truly are.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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