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From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’: Michael Strassfeld writes a new guide to being Jewish
(JTA) — “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” That’s known as Hansen’s Law, named for the historian Marcus Lee Hansen, who observed that while the children of immigrants tend to run away from their ethnicity in order to join the mainstream, the third generation often wants to learn the “old ways” of their grandparents.
In 1973, “The Jewish Catalog” turned Hansen’s Law into a “do-it-yourself kit” for young Jews who wanted to practice the traditions of their grandparents but weren’t exactly sure how. Imagine “The Joy of Cooking,” but instead of recipes the guide to Jewish living had friendly instructions for hosting Shabbat, building a sukkah and taking part in Jewish rituals from birth to death. Co-edited by Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld and the late Richard Siegel, it went on to sell 300,000 copies and remains in print today.
Fifty years later, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld has written a new book that he calls a “bookend” to “The Jewish Catalog.” If the first book is a Jewish “how to,” the latest asks, he says, “why bother?” “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century” asserts that an open society and egalitarian ethics leave most Jews skeptical of the rituals and beliefs of Jewish tradition. In the face of this resistance, he argues that the purpose of Judaism is not obedience to Torah and its rituals for their own sake or mere “continuity,” but to “encourage and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”
Strassfeld, 73, grew up in an Orthodox home in Boston and got his master’s degree in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. Coming to doubt the “faith claims” of Orthodoxy, he became a regular at nearby Havurat Shalom, an “intentional community” that pioneered the havurah movement’s liberal, hands-on approach to traditional practice. He earned rabbinical ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College when he was 41 and went on to serve as the rabbi of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side and later the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Manhattan flagship of Reconstructionist Judaism.
“To be disrupted is to experience a break with the past and simultaneously reconnect in a new way to that past,” writes Strassfeld, who retired from the pulpit in 2015. This week, we spoke about why people might find Jewish ritual empty, how he thinks Jewish practices can enrich their lives and how Passover — which begins Wednesday night — could be the key to unlocking the central idea of Judaism.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: I wanted to start with the 50th anniversary of the “Jewish Catalog.” What connects the new book with the work you did back then on the “Catalog,” which was a do-it-yourself guide for Jews who were trying to reclaim the stuff they either did or didn’t learn in Hebrew school?
Michael Strassfeld: I see them as bookends. Basically, I keep on writing the same book over and over again. [Laughs] Except no, I’m different and the world is different. I’m always trying to make Judaism accessible to people. In the “Catalog” I was providing the resources on how to live a Jewish life when the resources weren’t easily accessible.
The new book is less about “how to” than “why bother?” That’s the challenge. I think a lot of people take pride in being Jewish, but it’s a small part of their identity because it doesn’t feel relevant. I want to say to people like that that Judaism is about living a life with meaning and purpose. It’s not about doing what I call the “Jewishly Jewish” things, like keeping kosher and going to synagogue. Judaism is wisdom and practices to live life with meaning and purpose. The purpose of Judaism isn’t to be a good Jew, despite all the surveys that give you 10 points for, you know, lighting Shabbat candles. It’s about being a good person.
So that brings up your relationship to the commandments and mitzvot, the traditional acts and behaviors that an Orthodox Jew or a committed Conservative Jew feels commanded to do, from prayer to keeping kosher to observing the Sabbath and the holidays. They might argue that doing these things is what makes you Jewish, but you’re arguing something different. If someone doesn’t feel bound by these obligations, why do them at all?
I don’t have the faith or beliefs that underlie such an attitude [of obligation]. Halacha, or Jewish law, is not in reality law. It’s really unlike American law where you know that if you’re violating it, you could be prosecuted. What I’m trying to do in the book is reframe rituals as an awareness practice, that is, bringing awareness to various aspects of our lives. So it could be paying attention to food, or cultivating attitudes of gratitude, or generosity, or satisfaction. My broad understanding of the festival cycle, for example, is that you can focus on those attitudes all year long, but the festivals provide a period of time once in the year to really focus on, in the case of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for example, saying sorry and repairing relationships.
In “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century,” Michael Strassfeld argues that the challenge of each generation’s Jews is to create the Judaism that is needed in their time. (Ben Yehuda Press)
Passover is coming. Probably no holiday asks its practitioners to do so much stuff in preparation, from cleaning the house of every trace of unleavened food to hosting, in many homes, two different catered seminars on Jewish history. Describe how Passover cultivates awareness, especially of the idea of freedom, which plays an important part thematically in your boo
The Sefat Emet [a 19th-century Hasidic master] says Torah is all about one thing: freedom. But there’s a variety of obstacles in the way. There are temptations. There’s the inner issues that you struggle with, and the bad things that are out of your control. The Sefat Emet says the 613 commandments are 613 etzot, or advice, that teach us how to live a life of freedom. The focus of Passover is trying to free yourself from the chains of the things that hold you back from being the person that you could be, not getting caught up in materiality or envy, free from unnecessary anxieties — all these things that distract us or keep us from being who we could be.
The Passover seder is one of the great rituals of Judaism. We’re trying to do a very ambitious thing by saying, not, like, “let’s remember when our ancestors were freed from Egypt,” but rather that we were slaves in Egypt and we went free. And at the seder we actually ingest that. We experience the bitterness by eating maror, the bitter herb. We experience the freedom by drinking wine. We don’t want it just to be an intellectual exercise.
Unfortunately the seder has become rote. But Passover is about this huge theme of freedom that is central to Judaism.
I think some people bristle against ritual because they find it empty. But you’re saying there’s another way to approach rituals which is to think of them as tools or instruments that can help you focus on core principles — you actually list 11 — which include finding holiness everywhere, caring for the planet and engaging in social justice, to name a few. But that invites the criticism, which I think was also leveled at the “Catalog,” that Judaism shouldn’t be instrumental, because if you treat it as a means to an end that’s self-serving and individualistic.
Certainly rituals are tools, but tools in the best sense of the word. They help us pay attention to things in our lives and things in the world that need repair. And people use them not to get ahead in the world, but because they want to be a somewhat better person. I talk a lot these days about having a brief morning practice, and in the book I write about the mezuzah. For most Jews it’s become wallpaper, but what if you take the moment that you leave in the morning, and there’s a transition from home to the outside and to work perhaps, and take a moment at the doorpost to spiritually frame your day? What are the major principles that you want to keep in your mind when you know you’re gonna be stuck in traffic or a difficult meeting?
And a lot of traditional rituals are instrumental. Saying a blessing before you eat is a gratitude practice.
But why do I need a particular Jewish ritual or practice to help me feel gratitude or order my day? Aren’t there other traditions I can use to accomplish the same things?
Anybody who is a pluralist, which I am, knows that the Jewish way is not the only way. If I grew up in India or Indonesia and my parents were locals I probably wouldn’t be a rabbi and writing these books.
But a partial answer to your question is that Judaism is one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world, and that there has been a 3,000-year conversation by the Jewish people about what it means to live in this tradition and to live in the world. And so I think there’s a lot of wisdom there.
So much in Jewish tradition says boundaries are good, and that it’s important to draw distinctions between what’s Jewish behavior and what’s not Jewish behavior, between the holy and the mundane, and that making those distinctions is a value in itself. But you argue strongly in an early chapter that that kind of binary thinking is not Judaism as you see it.
Underlying the book is the notion that Rabbinic Judaism carried the Jewish people for 2,000 years or so. But we’re living in a very different context, and the binaries, the dualities — too often they lead to hierarchy, so that, for example, men matter more than women in Jewish life. And we’ve tried to change that. We are living in an open society where we want to be more inclusive, not less inclusive. We don’t want to live in ghettos. Now, the ultra-Orthodox say, “No, we realize the danger of trying to live like that. We don’t think there’s anything of value in that modern world. And it’s all to be rejected.” And it would be foolish not to admit that in this very open world the Jews, as a minority, could kind of disappear. But I think that Judaism has so much value and wisdom and practices to offer to people that Judaism will continue to be part of the fabric of this world — the way, for example, we have given Shabbat as a concept to the world.
You know, in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, there are no Jews. So clearly, Jews and Judaism are not essential for the world to exist. And that’s a good, humbling message.
OK, but one could argue that while Jews aren’t necessary for the world to exist, Judaism is necessary for Jews to exist. And you write in your book, “If the Jewish people is to be a people, we need to have a commonly held tradition.” I think the pushback to the kind of openness and permeability you describe is that Jews can be so open and so permeable that they just fall through the holes.
It certainly is a possibility. And it’s also a possibility that the only Jews who will be around will be ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But if Judaism can only survive by being separatist, then I question whether it’s really worthwhile. That becomes a distorted vision of Judaism, and withdrawing is not what it’s meant to be. I think we’re meant to be in the world.
Your book is called “Judaism Disrupted.” What is disruptive about the Judaism that you’re proposing?
I meant it in two ways. First, Judaism is being disrupted by this very different world we’re living in. The contents of the ocean we swim in is very different than in the Middle Ages. But I’m also using it to say that Judaism is meant to disrupt our lives in a positive way, which is to say, “Wake up, pay attention.” You are here to live a life of meaning and purpose, and to continue as co-creators with God of the universe. You’re here to make the world better, to be kind and compassionate to people, to work on yourself. In my mind it is a shofar, “Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep!” “Judaism Disrupted” says you have to pay attention to issues like food, and justice, and teshuva [repentance].
You were ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. Do you think your book falls neatly into any of our current denominational categories?
[Reconstructionist founder] Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s notion of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is the one that I feel closest to. But I feel that the denominational structure isn’t particularly useful anymore. There’s basically two categories, Orthodox and the various kinds of liberal Judaism, within a spectrum. The modern world is so fundamentally different in its relationship to Jews and Judaism that what we’re seeing is a variety of attempts to figure out how to respond. And that will then become the Judaism for the next millennium. It’s time for a lot of experimentation. I think that’s required and out of that will come a new “Minhag America,” to use Isaac Mayer Wise’s phrase for the emerging custom of American Jews [Wise was a Reform rabbi in the late 19th century]. And we don’t need to have everybody doing it one way. As long as people feel committed to Judaism, the Jewish tradition, even if they’re doing it very differently than the Jews of the past, they will be writing themselves into the conversation.
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El-Sayed’s Senate election has divided Michigan Jews. What will bring them together?
(JTA) — DETROIT – The “Jews For Abdul” in the room at the Michigan Democratic Party’s election night watch party were beaming as vote tallies rolled in, pushing Abdul El-Sayed closer to his eventual victory in Michigan’s U.S. Senate race.
“It’s actually hard to put into words what this night, and this moment, means to our movement,” Eli Newell, the Midwest field organizer for left-wing Jewish group IfNotNow, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency shortly before El-Sayed’s victory speech.
Newell added, “We see our agenda of shared safety, equality, justice and a brighter future for all represented in Abdul’s candidacy.”
IfNotNow had mobilized heavily for El-Sayed, bringing a sizable Jewish cohort in from out of state to canvass in Jewish neighborhoods. Newell himself lives in Chicago.
But he and many of the other Jews at the watch party — who almost exclusively tacked left, particularly on Israel — offered a markedly different outlook from the state’s more traditionally pro-Israel Jewish institutions.
Many of the leaders from the latter camp had publicly mobilized against El-Sayed to various degrees during the campaign, objecting not just to his hard-line criticism of Israel, but also to his initial reaction to the state’s Temple Israel attack and his associations with Hasan Piker, the far-left streamer. For those Jews, the candidate’s victory was a more challenging story.
“Personally, I’m not sure I’m on his most favored list,” Rabbi Asher Lopatin, community relations director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, told JTA the day after El-Sayed’s win.
Shortly after El-Sayed won the Democratic primary, Lopatin took a brief leave of absence from his job to campaign with the Republican nominee, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers. He was one of the first Jewish figures in the state to do so publicly.
The week before the election, he also appeared at a Republican Jewish Coalition event boosting Rogers, where he and another rabbi in attendance received shout-outs from the stage.
Now Lopatin and other Michigan Jewish leaders who similarly backed Rogers face a new question: How can they build relationships with a senator they have gone on record as opposing on deeply personal grounds?
“I’m not taking anything back. But I think we have to work with what we have,” Lopatin said. “We have to build relationships with him. We have to build relationships with his supporters.”
Broadening the Jewish tent to include El-Sayed supporters was also on the mind of Decky Alexander, who chairs the Michigan Jewish Democratic Caucus. The caucus had refrained from endorsing the senator-elect during the campaign, and several members of its leadership had openly pledged to vote for Rogers.
Into that void, progressive Jews in the state organized Michigan Jews for Democracy, a grassroots movement to offer an alternative Jewish voice backing El-Sayed.
Now, Alexander said things were shifting. “We need to make sure that we are inclusive in our caucus,” she told JTA, naming Michigan Jews For Democracy as well as Bend the Arc, a progressive Jewish group that had endorsed El-Sayed, as potential new partners she’d like to work with. “I think we need to have those voices at the table.”
The senator-elect’s campaign, on Thursday, pointed to a progressive PAC analysis of voting by ZIP code to argue that El-Sayed had “virtually matched” the 2024 Jewish vote for Michigan’s Jewish senior senator, Democrat Elissa Slotkin. The PAC, Millions of Michiganians, claimed that El-Sayed lost only 1.3% of votes across 72 heavily Jewish precincts that had gone to Slotkin.
Yet uniting such disparate Jewish voices could be easier said than done. In one reliably Democratic, heavily Jewish Detroit suburb in the days leading up to the election, homes could be seen repurposing their old “Haley Stevens for U.S. Senate” yard signs after the pro-Israel congresswoman endorsed Rogers in the race’s final days. El-Sayed beat Stevens in the Democratic primary in August.
Those yard signs went back up after Stevens’ endorsement and were still up after El-Sayed’s victory on Tuesday. Some had new handwritten additions addressed to Stevens: “Proud of you! Stand tall!!”
Prior to Election Day, more than 560 Jews in the state had signed a petition, titled “Michigan Jews Against Extremism,” that pledged to vote for Rogers explicitly because of concerns over El-Sayed’s rhetoric.
While ultimately numbering slightly more than half of the total Jews to sign the open letter supporting El-Sayed, the signatories were influential. They included the president of Detroit’s Jewish federation; the head of the local flagship Holocaust center; and Mark Davidoff, who heads the Michigan-Israel Business Accelerator.
Post-election, Davidoff told JTA that his pro-Israel business group “is prepared to work with all newly elected and returning leaders across Michigan.”
A representative for the “Against Extremism” letter, Kalamazoo-based Troy Zukowski-Serlin, told JTA after the fact that the letter may have been too strongly worded.
“You could just as easily point a finger at the Mike Rogers campaign, with extremism,” Zukowski-Serlin, who had been listed as a Michigan Jewish Democratic Caucus board member until he declared his intent to vote for Rogers, reflected. “That probably got the group off to a bad start.”
Even as the Rogers campaign had courted Jews, it also employed messaging many outside observers pegged as Islamophobic. Some of El-Sayed’s campaign surrogates who liaised with the Jewish community, including Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, also pointed to Rogers’ associations with Christian nationalist donors.
Today, Zukowski-Serlin said, “I can understand why somebody would vote for El-Sayed.” His own daughter did, for one — and they were far from the only Jewish household in the state to have split their votes.
Echoing a line El-Sayed himself often employed when addressing Jews on the campaign trail, he suggested that, apart from Israel, they were likely aligned on most policy positions.
“There’s plenty of other issues that I think we can find common ground on,” he said. “I think we can get along.”
Other Jewish groups in the state didn’t mince words, even after the race was called and some early-voting exit polls suggested that a majority of Jews in the state may have voted for El-Sayed despite any reservations.
Michigan’s chapter of the Anti-Defamation League was among those to signal what it called “serious concerns” with El-Sayed’s “history of minimizing the fears of the Jewish community and demonizing Israel.”
The ADL’s statement included an olive branch of sorts.
“As we move forward, Senator-elect El-Sayed has an opportunity and a responsibility to demonstrate that he will hear Jewish Michiganders, reject efforts to blame or marginalize them because of their connection to Israel and confront antisemitism with the moral clarity this moment requires,” the organization noted.
Detroit’s chapter of the American Jewish Committee raised similar flags. While recognizing what it called the “historic significance” of El-Sayed becoming the first Muslim elected to the Senate, the AJC statement continued, “Unfortunately this historic moment has been tarnished by the Senator-elect’s continued anti-Israel rhetoric that alienates countless Jewish Michiganders and other supporters of the State of Israel, and endangers American Jews.”
Detroit’s Jewish federation, meanwhile, congratulated “all those elected to federal, state, and local office in Michigan” and offered a veiled plea for restraint without naming the senator-elect.
“Together, we look to those elected to act with wisdom, lead with compassion, and uphold the civic and social values that ensure the safety and inclusion of our community and of all Americans,” the nonpartisan organization’s communal relations arm said in a statement.
Gary Torgow, the Michigan-based chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, told Rogers during the campaign, “We need you to get elected.” On Thursday, Torgow released a post-election statement calling on the local Jewish community to “move forward with optimism, dignity, and pride in who we are.”
Now the work of mending fences begins — not just between El-Sayed and Jewish leaders, but between Michigan’s Jews themselves. Across the state, rabbis offered reassuring messages to their communities, and some were eager to put the divisiveness of the campaign season behind them.
“I think the election divided the Jewish community,” Lopatin said. “I’m excited to get back to uniting them.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Three lessons for American Jews from the failed GOP attacks on the trans community
There are many reasons for the majority of American Jews — proudly American, politically liberal or centrist, supportive of Israel but opposed to nationalist extremism — to celebrate this week’s election, or at least heave a sigh of relief.
But I want to focus on what might seem to be an unusual aspect of this historic moment: the failure of Republican attacks on transgender people. If you live in a deep blue state, you might not have noticed these attacks at all, but if you live in a battleground state, you were likely inundated by them: relentless television ads, millions of phony “Trans & LGBTQ+ Student Resource Guides” mailed to Texas voters from a fake organization, and puerile, false claims about Senator-elect James Talarico.
And what did the Republicans get from this multi-hundred-million-dollar campaign of misinformation?
Bupkis.
Now, this was an unusual election. It’s possible that nothing would have made a difference, given the terrible economy, the pointless Iran war, and the unprecedented corruption of Donald Trump. These were, polls tell us, the core issues motivating mainstream American voters, and they voted, as the saying goes, to throw the bastards out. As The New York Times reported, Republicans vastly outspent Democrats in every competitive Senate race, but still lost nearly all of them. So maybe, in a closer election, the anti-trans attacks might have worked.
But they didn’t, and as I see it, the failure of this massive campaign offers three encouraging lessons for the Jewish community.
First, anyone who knows Jewish history should be grateful for the failure of a vicious attempt to vilify and scapegoat a small, vulnerable minority. Obviously, Jewish people are often that minority — and we were again this year, targeted by both the Far Right and Far Left. Anti-trans activists lied relentlessly about science, Democratic policies, trans people’s lives, sports (and the alleged advantages trans women possess, which have been disproven countless times), and most devastatingly, about the nature of transgender care, which never involves surgery on minors.
All of this was harrowing for me to watch, especially as someone with several trans friends whose lives were being so brutally misrepresented — and directly impacted by rollbacks in healthcare access (including by hospital chains who caved to blackmail by the Trump administration). And as a scholar of Jewish history and theology, and as a queer person myself, it also felt eerily, darkly familiar. Perhaps it’s a cliché to say that when one group is attacked, we are all attacked, but in this case, I felt it viscerally. I am relieved it didn’t work.
Second, despite all the rhetoric and rage-baiting, fundamentally there is a core congruence between what LGBTQ advocates say and what ordinary Americans, including Jewish ones, believe: not the finer points of gender identity, but “live and let live.” Most Americans still do not understand transgender as a phenomenon (yet), and they still have significant concerns, particularly about kids (and sports). But Democrats have finally learned how to talk about this issue, and it’s by appealing to common sense, American values, and even ‘Judeo-Christian’ teachings like loving your neighbor.
For example, Senator-elect Dr. Abdul El-Sayed did a great job framing the issue as about private medical decisions that should be left between families and their doctors. Comedian and influencer Suzanne Lambert framed the issue around love and respect, even when we don’t understand ‘the other.’ James Talarico made light of his opponent’s pathetic attempts to impugn his masculinity, while also refusing to throw trans people under the bus.
No Democrat ran on trans rights as a signature issue. But the best Democrats didn’t run away from it either.
Which brings me to my third point: Moderate Americans can agree to disagree, and still unite on core concerns. The middle 40% of America is not made up of culture warriors or Christian Nationalists. And it seems (I would love to see exit polling data on this) that they saw the endless ads and attacks for what they were: an attempt to distract from the core issues. Despite Elon Musk’s massive investments in hysteria — perhaps motivated by his inability to accept his own trans daughter — most centrist Americans are more focused on stuff that actually impacts them. It’s not that they agree with, or even understand, transgender issues. It’s that they don’t need to agree on everything in order to vote for a political candidate.
The same is true, of course, for issues bitterly dividing the American Jewish community today. Both right and left seem to have adopted the worst aspects of so-called “cancel culture,” in which any deviation from ideological purity on a single issue is grounds for exclusion. Thus we have seen progressives like Scott Wiener be bullied by the Far Left and critical-of-Israel politicians like El-Sayed demonized by the Center and Right.
In the High-Intensity-Jewish bubble, it can seem as though Israel, Palestine, and the relationship between Anti-Zionism and antisemitism is all-consuming. I’ve felt that way myself. But outside the bubble, in fact most American Jews understand that there are more important issues. 62% of Jewish Michiganders voted for El-Sayed, for example. And in exit polls conducted over the last several elections, American Jews have not ranked Israel among their top concerns (we don’t yet know if that was true this year), despite what they hear from lobbyists and mainstream organizations.
Indeed, many leaders, particularly in the New York metro area, have alienated their own communities by insisting that some views are “beyond the pale,” or that Jews are physically unsafe, or that contact with this or that media figure renders one untouchable, as if a podcast interview is a contagious disease like the Biblical tzaraat.
Successful politics doesn’t work that way. As the cliches go, politics is the art of the possible, and it makes for strange bedfellows. We don’t agree on every issue with everyone we vote for, or are interviewed by. That is how we win — and, in this case, rescue the democracy that has made the American dream possible for generations of Jews.
I’m not suggesting that everything is now rosy for trans people in America. That is far from the case. Even as the nationwide anti-trans attacks failed, state level initiatives passed that seriously harm trans populations. Trans activists are regarded by our own government as domestic terrorists. And misinformation continues to run rampant. The work remains ahead to re-introduce actual trans people, lives, medicine, and science to middle America. And that will take a long time.
But that’s the long-term work. In the short term, elections are about making compromises, and I’m encouraged that this attempt to scapegoat a tiny and vulnerable minority, which happens to include several friends of mine, ended in failure. There is much that we in the Jewish community can learn from it.
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Liberal Jews hail wave of Democratic victories a day after the election
(JTA) — While liberal Jewish Americans reveled in a blue wave of victories after Tuesday’s pivotal midterm elections, centrist and conservative voices issued words of caution about the increasing fragility of the country’s relationship with Israel.
The pro-Israel liberal group J Street hailed the results as a “resounding victory for new politics on Israel and Palestine,” celebrating that 98% of J Street-backed candidates were projected to win their races.
“We are proud to have supported a record number of candidates who share our commitment to Israel’s future, democracy and a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, said in a statement that lists all the successful politicians that had the lobby’s support.
Voters, he argued, rejected the president’s policies and “made clear they want a different direction for America and a different approach in the Middle East.” He pointed to the losses of Republican stalwarts Susan Collins in Maine and Mike Lawler in New York, calling them “prominent champions of the old approach to Israel politics.”
The day before, J Street had said it “ran the largest super PAC investment in organizational history,” raising $10 million for more than 200 candidates. The lobby warned, however, that “AIPAC and its supporters will continue to influence American foreign policy, finding creative ways to override the will of voters with dark money.” AIPAC didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Halie Soifer, CEO of the liberal Jewish Democratic Council of America, likewise lauded the Democratic victories as a referendum on Trump, quipping that the president asked voters to “pretend he was on the ballot in the midterms, and Jewish Americans did just that.”
“Jewish voters are not a monolith, but they widely disapprove of Donald Trump,” she said in a statement, describing the administration’s agenda as “antithetical to core Jewish values.”
Soifer added, “Jewish Americans want leaders who will lower costs, defend our freedoms, stand against antisemitism, support Israel’s security, and hold the Trump administration accountable for its corruption, cruelty, and lawlessness.”
This cycle was JDCA’s largest-ever midterm Jewish voter engagement, involving a seven-figure investment in vast mobilization efforts, the group said in a statement.
JDCA noted that its political action committee ran many targeted ads, including in Ohio and Texas, where Democratic Senate candidates Sherrod Brown and James Talarico defeated their Republican rivals. The group also said its PAC funded ads for successful House candidates Cait Collins in New York, Piya Dandiya and Jared Moskowitz in Florida and Christina Hines in Michigan.
But not all Jewish Democrats were thrilled by the outcome.
Jeff Robbins, a Boston-based attorney and former Democratic Senate staffer, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said the “obvious” bad news coming out of the election was the normalization of “a vitriolic, occasionally untethered, and all too often fact-less attack on Israel and its bona fides.”
A registered Democrat, Robins said, “it’s painful to hear the enemies of Israel celebrating as they have today, and claiming that this is their referendum on Israel.”
Robbins said that such habituation was already clear in last year’s election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel. This cycle’s shift, he added, was apparent in the success of Abdul El-Sayed in his Michigan Senate race and the primary loss of Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman to former city comptroller Brad Lander.
Robbins also expressed concern about “the push among anybody wanting a career in the Democratic Party” to distance themselves from Israel, which in many cases amounts to antisemitism, he said.
He particularly called out the House wins of Christopher Rabb in Philadelphia, Claire Valdez and Darializa Chevalier in New York City, Melat Kiros in Denver and Troy Jackson in Maine. Jackson, Robbins added, ended up repeating anti-Israel diatribes that have become popular among many members of the progressive left.
“The fact that he defeats somebody who was a stalwart and very knowledgeable friend of Israel, Susan Collins, is more bad news,” he said.
Robbins stressed that the Jewish community must take the results as a “warning sign” and stop assuming that “raising money and honoring people and dinners” is sufficient, without “making the case in the public square.” Members of the pro-Israel Jewish community cannot “just assume that people will realize that, of course, the victims of a genocidal attack are not the perpetrators of a genocide,” he added.
At the same time, Robbins, who also served in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights under former president Bill Clinton, pointed to other results he was happy with. “The good news is that the Democrats elected a number of people who are moderate and therefore sensible when it comes to the realities of the Middle East, and those people’s voices in Congress may be a blessing.”
He acknowledged that the voices of these moderates who support Israel could be consequential in the Democratic caucuses in both the House and the Senate.
Jonathan Greenberg, director for combatting antisemitism at Defending Education and a former AIPAC staffer, called the election as “a disastrous night for the Republican Party.”
“I really don’t think there’s any way for a conservative to look at what happened last night and say that there’s a silver lining,” added Greenberg, who ran for state office in Illinois as a Republican in 2012 but now is unaffiliated.
He called upon Republicans to seize the opportunity to rebuild a stronger foundation, after “years of bad rhetoric and a cycle full of bad candidates.” He slammed Democrats for failing “to police their own side,” while also recognizing that some moderate Israel supporters were successful in this election.
“If the the more blue dog-type Democrats who got elected last night are willing to stand up to the crazies in their party and say, ‘This isn’t us, and you’re not welcome to say things like that in our party,’ then, yeah, that would be great,” he said.
Greenberg credited Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, for his outspokenness on this issue, while stressing that “he can’t be the only one.” In Moskowitz’s primary race, he was a staunch defender of Israel against progressive challenger Oliver Larkin.
“You have to have a critical mass of passionate people – the ascendant far left has that right now,” Greenberg added. “If the center doesn’t organize itself and forcefully push back, then they’ll lose.”
For Robbins, this tumultuous period for American Jews has been a long time in the making and is hardly a surprise. He said he has warned Israelis for the past 10 to 15 years about an anti-Zionist shift in the Democratic Party, but he has repeatedly received the response, “Hakol b’seder,” the Hebrew phrase for “everything is OK.”
“I would say, ‘No, kol is not b’seder,’” Robbins concluded.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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