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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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The minotaur-slaying, dragon-battling hero of this video game is an old Jewish guy with back problems and an attitude
For a long time, Jews looking for representation in video games had to make do with the possible Jewishness of William Joseph Blazkowicz, the Nazi-hunting protagonist of the popular ‘90s video game series Wolfenstein.
A white, muscular, machine-gun-toting GI, with a lantern jaw and blue eyes, Blazkowicz didn’t exactly look the part. But his Polish ancestry, together with his enthusiasm for vanquishing Wehrmacht soldiers, left many Jews convinced. (Eventually, in 2017, Wolfenstein creator Tom Hall confirmed that the character’s mother was indeed a Polish Jew.)
Depictions of Jews in video games have, mercifully, improved in recent years, not least as the gaming industry has sought to reflect a wider range of identities and perspectives. The Shivah, published in 2006, told the story of a Manhattan rabbi caught up in a murder mystery. In 2020, The Last of Us, Part II introduced Dina, a Sephardi Jew with a fondness for apples and honey, while 2022’s Perfect Tides was an excellent coming-of-age story about a bashful 15-year-old New Yorker named Mara Whitefish. (Author and critic Josh Lambert described Perfect Tides as “the most compelling Jewish video game ever created.”)
To this growing roster of Jewish video games we can now add The Eternal Life of Goldman, the latest effort from independent game studio Weappy. Set to be released in full later this year, a demo version published last week received considerable praise online — and not just for its dazzling artwork and intuitive gameplay.
Rather, much of the intrigue and acclaim was because of the game’s improbable hero: a Jewish octogenarian with a yarmulke and a cane, the titular Mr. Goldman.
Although the demo is just the first 90 minutes of gameplay, it took me the better part of a day to get through. The game takes place on a vast archipelago populated by an array of menacing creatures — brilliantly brought to life by hand-drawn, 2D animations — and so death is ever present. For example, no sooner had I, as Goldman, arrived on the first of the game’s islands, than was I set upon by some kind of dragon-dinosaur hybrid. Goldman was promptly killed; he died with an arresting squeal. (The game’s sound effects are immense.)
It’s not clear why Goldman has opted to spend his presumably hard-earned retirement among volcanic ruins and thick underbrush. Palm Beach, this ain’t. Perhaps understandably, he isn’t so keen on the task at hand, which appears to be a rescue mission of sorts to retrieve a group of children known as “The Lost Ones,” though the demo ends before this is properly explained.
Still, Goldman is remarkably agile, with impressive powers of resurrection. The cane isn’t for walking, it turns out, so much as bouncing, thwacking and stabbing. It’s Goldman’s only companion as he faces down the beasts and monsters, most of which are lifted from a fable or myth. Besting the Minotaur, for instance, was the undoubted highpoint of a day’s gaming otherwise defined by my near-constant death.
Indeed, the game has a somewhat macabre feel. Even its framing device, a bedside conversation between a mother and daughter at a hospital, hints at a sinister plotline to come. (Ilya Yanovich, Weappy’s creative director, admitted as much in a recent interview.) In fact, the fairytales that the mother tells her ailing child seem to govern where Goldman ends up in the game. I was not the only reviewer for whom this called to mind the movie The Princess Bride — which, it’s worth noting, was written by one William Goldman.
This is just one among a host of Jewish, or Jewish-adjacent, references that cropped up in barely an hour-and-a-half of gameplay. There’s a faintly kabbalistic figure called Nissim Klein. Another character is named Hanoch. All three men — Goldman, Klein, Hanoch — periodically yell time-honored Yiddishisms like “Oy Vey!” and “Ach.” And at one point, we’re told about a group of giant clay statues “built by Nissim’s ancestors,” which feels more than a little Passover-coded.
Despite my difficulties progressing through the demo, then, the artwork, the Jewishness, the propulsive narrative energy, the main character’s cynicism, the simple left-to-right gameplay — it was all more than enough to sustain me.
Yet, at the risk of reading too much into a small slice of a much larger pie, it’s worth considering how Goldman communicates its Jewishness. For one thing, the game is, in at least one respect, the anti-Wolfenstein: While Blazkowicz’s Jewishness was merely gestured at, Goldman’s is unambiguous. And for another, Goldman places its Jewish protagonist in something other than a Jewish ceremony or ritual. (My apologies to the aforementioned The Shivah.) These are both salutary developments, the more so at a time of rising antisemitism, online and elsewhere.
But Goldman is a stereotype, too, albeit a largely inoffensive one. He’s a cantankerous older Jew with a hunch and a limp whose dialogue, in the demo at least, mostly consists of kvetching and confusion.
Now, is it amusing to see Goldman bouncing through the forest, battling mythical beasts and natural disasters, all while expectorating constantly? Certainly. Is the incongruity the point? Maybe. Still, it feels like a missed opportunity that Weappy selected a somewhat backward-facing protagonist as its vehicle for Jewishness — especially as Jewish identity becomes increasingly variegated with each passing generation.
The Eternal Life of Goldman is a valuable affirmation of a particular flavor of Jewishness, sure, and given the stir that the demo generated online, it doubtless will do very well. I can’t help but feel, however, that a less played-out protagonist might have compelled Yanovich — who is Jewish — to include some fresher, more interesting modes of Jewish cultural and ethnic expression.
After all, we’re more than yiddish and yarmulkes.
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Arson at Jackson synagogue jolts Institute of Southern Jewish Life, but its mission persists
(JTA) — The arson in December at Beth Israel Congregation didn’t just damage the only synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi. It also threw into disarray the operations of a Jewish nonprofit that aims to serve the entire American South.
The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life is housed at the opposite end of the Beth Israel building from the library where the fire started. Most of its activities take place off site, in the small Jewish communities scattered across the region, and much of its archives had been digitized before the fire.
Still, the arson attack struck an institution that, since its founding in 2000, has linked far-flung congregations across the South and imbued generations of Jewish leaders with an appreciation for Jewish life in a region where community is often small, deeply rooted and hard-won.
“This is sort of the hub of where things happen, so we’re still assessing what is truly lost, what can be repaired, what can’t be,” Michele Schipper, the organization’s CEO, said ahead of the synagogue’s first Shabbat since the attack.
Even as the institute embarks on the long road of repairing its brick-and-mortar headquarters, its core mission of connecting and sustaining Jewish communities across the South remains unchanged.
“It will be important for my communities this winter and spring to be with me, to hear from me about what’s going on,” said Rabbi Salem Pearce, who is officially ISJL’s director of spirituality but unofficially “the traveling rabbi of the South.” She roves from her home in Durham, North Carolina, across 70 congregations throughout a 13-state region that extends from Texas to Florida.
Following the arson attack, Pearce said she believed the communities she serves had taken the attack personally because “they identify strongly, both with the ISJL and with the idea of being vulnerable being a small Jewish community in the South.”
“I always want to ground what I do in Torah and in Jewish tradition, and I think that both of those things have a lot to say about the power of community and resilience and being together and survival,” said Pearce.
For years, the institute also placed early-career Jewish educators in Southern communities through its flagship fellowship program. The program ended in 2022, but the network of dozens of former fellows scattered across the country say their work supporting Jewish life in the South left lasting impressions on their own Jewish identities.
Rabbi Lex Rofeberg, an ISJL fellow from 2013 to 2015, was attending a gathering of clergy from the Jewish Renewal movement in Boulder, Colorado, when he first heard the news of the arson.
“I felt in my body like a deep pain, and I immediately flashed to the incredible experiences I had as part of that synagogue community,” said Rofeberg.
He wasn’t the only one at the conference to feel that way. “I was with people that had a shared connection to the space and who I had met through this incredible community, and I thought all that was helpful,” he said. “So it was heartbreaking, and it was meaningful to see in that space a couple hundred people looking to be supportive of this community.”
Molly Levy, ISJL’s director of education, said one of the reasons why the institute shifted away from the fellowship program was that the communities were so strong that they needed more than temporary fellows could provide.
“They’ve all used the curriculum, they’re very familiar with it, and they want to do things that are more experiential, and looking at making their schools fit the students that they have today, as well as having these big conversations around antisemitism, around safety, making sure that their students feel safe,” Levy said.
The communities in the network also bond with each other. For Beth Israel Congregation’s first Shabbat service following the arson attack, the congregation used a Torah borrowed from Temple B’nai Israel, located about 90 miles southeast along Route 49.
“We’re just down the road in Hattiesburg. So people immediately wanted to know, OK, how can we help?” said Rabbi Debra Kassoff of Temple B’nai Israel, who became the ISJL’s first director of rabbinic services in 2003.
During her stint as the ISJL’s resident rabbi, Kassoff traveled across the region to offer rabbinic services to congregations.
“It was an honor, it was fascinating and overwhelming,” said Kassoff. “When I first came here I felt really embraced, people seemed excited to have me, and were glad that I was wanting to be there and be a part of this kind of corner of the American Jewish landscape that is so often overlooked.
In the wake of the attack, rabbis from several Southern congregations quickly voiced their dismay and solidarity with the institute.
Rabbi Jeremy Simons, a former director of the rabbinic department at the ISJL and incoming rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, recalled his time in Jackson in a post on Facebook and appealed to his followers to donate to the synagogue’s recovery fund.
“While I have plenty of fond memories in that building and in that library, there are so many who call Beth Israel their spiritual home and are feeling a pain neither you or I will ever know (God willing),” wrote Simmons. “I know you don’t have to have spent time in that building, or even know of its existence, to be shaken by this news. I try to remind myself they can destroy our buildings, but they can never destroy our faith. If anything it will only strengthen it.”
Rabbi Raina Siroty of Temple Beth-El in Knoxville, Tennessee, wrote in a post on Facebook that the ISJL had “connected and strengthened Jewish communities from Texas to the Florida Panhandle,” adding that “Southern Jewish communities are woven deeply into the fabric of their cities. They deserve to worship without fear.”
Rabbi Jason Holtz of Temple Kehillat Chaim in Roswell, Georgia, wrote in another post that he had attended the ISJL’s conference within a few weeks of moving to Georgia.
“I remember leaving with a sense of enthusiasm but also amazement at the wonderful people that provide such resources and leadership for Jewish communities all over the South,” he wrote. “When people think of Jewish life, places like Jackson probably don’t immediately come to mind. But Jews all over the South, my congregation included, have benefited so much from the tireless and dedicated people who call Jackson home.”
Schipper said many past fellows and staff of the ISJL had also shared messages of support.
“There’s such powerful messages that they are sharing and remembrances of their time here in Jackson and at Beth Israel, because for many, this was their first non-parent home synagogue,” she said. “I’m overwhelmed in the best possible way of the outpouring of support from the local community to the Jewish community worldwide. It really makes me proud to be Jewish.”
Rofeberg said his two years at the ISJL, which included hosting a “Purim-gras,” or a Mardi Gras-Purim combo at a Louisiana synagogue, were “pivotal” in setting him on a path to seek rabbinic ordination.
“I think I went down thinking I was doing this grand service as somebody who had learned in college about Judaism,” said Rofeberg. “And I really quickly learned how wrong that was, and how so many of these communities I was visiting and the community I was living in had way more to teach me than I had to teach them.”
Megan Roberts Koller, an ISJL fellow from 2007 to 2009 who grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, said her time with the institute deepened her own understanding of her identity as a Jew in the South.
“I think being in an environment with lots of different types of people helped me realize how special the Southern Jewish experience was,” she said. “It was interesting to be part of something so new and something so different.”
Roberts Koller recalled the fellows going on trips to the Neshoba County Fair and local blues concerts to experience a “slice of life” of Mississippi.
“Especially over the summers, when we were traveling less and we were onboarding new people, there was quite a push to have us experience that authentic Mississippi summer and help people feel both out of their comfort zone and comfortable in Mississippi,” she said.
While Roberts Koller, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, no longer works in Jewish communal life, she said her experiences at the ISJL had inspired her to continue pursuing Jewish involvement in her own community.
“The experience of working for the Institute of Southern Jewish life and seeing congregational life all across the South and cities large and small, I think, really made an impact and made it a priority to be part of a congregation here in Nashville,” she said.
In recent years, Levy said the ISJL had created a “catalogue” of lessons about Jewish pride and information on teaching students about antisemitism.
Currently, the ISJL’s antisemitism curriculum begins in the eighth grade, but Levy said she was working on starting antisemitism education in the earlier grades.
“When I go into a community, I usually meet with the teens, and will usually have conversations on being the only Jewish kid in your school or being a small population of Jewish kids in your school,” said Levy. “When I ask, ‘Have you heard something antisemitic, or have you had an incident in your school?’ It’s very rare when someone doesn’t raise their hand.”
Looking ahead, Schipper said the institute’s focus will be on building on a firm foundation, not just in its physical space but in the messages it delivers across the South.
“If you look at our curriculum, it already had information on how to be a proud Jew,” said Schipper. “So I think, can we strengthen that message? Can we let people know a little bit more about what we are doing, so that they’re well aware that this organization is providing support to these communities in so many ways.”
For Levy, the aftermath of the attack has underscored the strength of the organization’s broad spanning community.
“It’s only shown us how incredibly powerful our network and how incredibly important these connections are, just because of all of the outpouring of love and support that’s come from our other ISJL communities and how much they want to support Beth Israel,” she said. “It’s been really hard and really sad and really challenging, and we were incredibly ready to activate our network and activate the support that we needed to give.”
Schipper said she could see an upside to the bleak circumstances that brought national attention to her work this year.
“This is not how I would love more publicity,” she said, referring to the arson. “But if somebody else learns about who we are and what we do and goes, ‘Oh my gosh, my cousin’s in Kentucky, and they could really use your resources,’ then great.”
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Why I already miss Rev. Jesse Jackson
I first met Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. in 1979, not long after I joined the staff of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA). Rev. Jackson was an early friend of the organization, which was founded in 1964 by Rabbi Robert Marx out of the Civil Rights Movement to combat poverty, racism and antisemitism. Jackson and Marx met when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. moved to Chicago with the goal of bringing the Civil Rights Movement north.
Rev. Jackson was an aide to Dr. King. He subsequently founded Operation Breadbasket, later renamed Rainbow PUSH (People United to Save Humanity). JCUA’s early work in Chicago was focused on building partnerships throughout Chicago with groups predominantly in the Black and Latinx communities and among the most oppressed in Chicago. Since those early years, Rainbow PUSH and JCUA have worked together, organizing communities and building coalitions, tackling rampant racism in housing, schools, businesses and the police, all while working to try to end political corruption, ensure voting rights, and explicitly envision a just city and world.
My introduction to Rev. Jackson came at a shaky time for the Black and Jewish coalition. As minorities in America, the Black and Jewish communities, having experienced systemic discrimination, had forged common ground during hard-fought campaigns for civil rights, winning new rights and protections for all minorities with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Our communities’ bond is often remembered and personified by the courageous work of three young civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, Black and Jewish, who tragically were murdered by the KKK while traveling together to work on behalf of voting rights.
By 1979, however, breaches in the communities’ relationship were visible and tensions had emerged. Some in the Jewish community were angry that Rev. Jackson had met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Meanwhile, in Chicago, leaders and residents from the Black community were angered by conditions facing Black families newly arrived to the south and west sides of Chicago following the exodus of Jewish families from these same communities. Some of the new Black residents were particularly incensed by former Jewish residents who retained control as landlords, shop owners and political bosses.
With all this as a backdrop, Milt Cohen, then JCUA’s Executive Director, and Rev. Jackson convened a meeting in our then-tiny offices, inviting leaders from both communities to air their grievances, find common ground, and renew the alliance. Jackson and Cohen sought to identify joint actions for local social justice issues where there remained strong agreement.
A press conference followed the meeting, where we announced our plan to strengthen Chicago’s Black and Jewish coalition and jointly tackle inequities involving schools and housing. I was in awe, overwhelmed by Rev. Jackson’s powerful presence. Even though I was the youngest person at the press conference, both Milt and Rev. Jackson pushed me forward to speak. This was just the first of many occasions when Rev. Jackson would encourage my participation, leadership, visibility, and partnership.
After that first up-close experience almost 50 years ago, I enjoyed many opportunities to answer Rev. Jackson’s invitations as he exhorted me to speak, participate in programs, and join him and PUSH in actions. In engaging me, he was also consciously choosing to include JCUA and bring a Chicago Jewish presence to the work.
I spoke at PUSH’s weekly Saturday forums and served as a panelist on Rev. Jackson’s Upfront cable show. With JCUA members and diverse coalitions from across Chicago’s communities, we marched through the streets of Chicago and Washington D.C. We joined Rev. Jackson when he took on the corrupt Chicago political machine, then led by Mayor Jane Byrne, and as he launched a raucous and successful boycott of Chicagofest, the Mayor’s favorite lakefront festival, and lucrative gift to her political cronies.
We spoke of the dangers of Reaganomics that threatened the elimination of schoolchildren’s lunches, we got out the vote and elected Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black and progressive Mayor. We spoke out against the Trump administration and MAGA’S attacks against hard fought and won civil and human rights.
Rev. Jackson magnetically built alliances across faith, race and ethnicity. Untiringly, brilliantly, he literally changed the face, policies and politics of Chicago, the nation and the world. He sought to overturn injustices, shatter obstacles to change and non-violently revolutionize the social order. He galvanized millions to act. He commanded every room. His astute in-depth analyses turned meetings into classrooms and calls to action.
By 1984, Rev. Jackson was a leading national and global figure. Barack Obama said that Jackson’s two presidential runs in 1984 and 1988 laid the groundwork for his own election. At the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, as part of the Harold Washington Favorite Son delegation, we listened carefully as Rev. Jackson delivered his convention speech, one that resonated so powerfully that it would become known as the “Peace Speech.” He regaled, quieted, then inspired thunderous roars from the room.
“Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow — red, yellow, brown, black and white, and we’re all precious in God’s sight,” Rev. Jackson said. “America is not like a blanket, one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt, many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.”
Rev. Jackson’s speech was among the most profound, insightful and powerful addresses I had ever heard. He offered an extraordinary vision, calling upon our better selves to rise to the occasion and illuminating the roads we could take together. Inspired by his outreach and challenge, I was deeply moved. I was grateful for the opportunity to express my choice and to stand with our delegation to vote for Rev. Jesse Jackson for president.
As Rev. Jackson became a global celebrity, a position he used strategically and effectively to wield exceptional influence and carry out extraordinary actions such as negotiating the freedom of political prisoners around the world; he exhibited warmth and kindness to strangers and the powerless. He famously made the children of local neighbors feel seen and appreciated; he listened to their stories and took them to baseball games.
When I brought Yingxi, one of my students who was visiting from Mainland China, to Rainbow PUSH, Rev. Jackson noticed her and warmly welcomed her. He invited her into his office, took time to get to know her and to listen, responded thoughtfully to her questions. Yingxi has told me that, to this day, she still treasures the time she spent with him. On so many occasions, I saw the light in his eyes, from afar and up close, as he greeted young people and old, engaging them, ensuring they were seen. I felt that same connection even as I was just one of many thousands of activists who crossed his path.
In March 2021, Rev. Jackson’s and my friend, Rabbi Robert Marx passed away. I asked Rev. Jackson to speak at a memorial, even though I was aware that this would not be easy, as he was already showing signs of the Parkinson’s-like illness that made his once booming, eloquent voice more difficult to hear. However, he enthusiastically accepted the invitation, and shared heartfelt memories at the service. “We have always been together. I love him so much. I miss him already,” he said of Marx.
In recent years, I grew increasingly fond of Rev. Jackson as he never stopped fighting for justice and acting with compassion. Even as he found it difficult to speak, he kept drawing all of us in.
A few years ago, Rev. Jackson asked me to bring a busload of people to the annual reenactment of the march in Selma across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He didn’t give me much time to get a bus together, but I was able to get a carload of religious and community leaders, including an imam and a Baptist minister. We sat in the Brown Chapel AME Church, where services were reenacted, and we protested, prayed and sang before we marched together across the bridge. Rev. Jackson led, pulling me upfront to join him. With the diverse crowd from across the country, we marched, all astutely aware that the job is not yet finished.
Rev. Jackson grew from a student with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to a global leader, gaining followers while infuriating leaders and the status quo. But he could not be ignored, would not be ignored. He was somebody, and made sure you knew you were somebody, too.
While movement leaders have courageously fought and sacrificed over the years, many in time moved to the background. Rev. Jackson, on the other hand, passionately, powerfully, brilliantly and strategically, stayed the course. Even in his last weeks, he persevered from his wheelchair, determined to remain a force, to continue the fight and , famously, to Keep Hope Alive.
I have much to be grateful for in reflecting on the life and work of Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. including the friendship he extended, his outsized impact on our lives, on our communities, our country, and, given his legacy, into the future.
I already miss him.
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