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A Jewish museum exhibit features the Palestinian flag. Some visitors wonder if it belongs.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Tucked in the far corner of a large, brightly-lit exhibition hall on the ground floor of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, there is a delicate-looking piece of art with a strong political message.
At first glance, it appears to be three circular vases with flowers in them. The ceramic vases sit on shelves attached to the wall, and colorful collages hang above them. On closer inspection, visitors will notice that the flowers are made out of paper and that affixed to each vase is an image of the Palestinian flag printed on foam board.
A nearby label written by the curators of the exhibit, titled “Tikkun: For the Cosmos, the Community, and Ourselves,” explains that the piece was inspired by a conversation the artist, Tosha Stimage of Berkeley, had with a Palestinian man. He told Stimage about the plants that are native to Palestine — “a place which he can no longer access due to the ongoing conflict in the region,” the curators write.
The label also includes a note about the flag: “Some may find its presence at The CJM troubling or confusing, while others may find it appropriate and forthright. Stimage recognizes the potential for these divergent responses and hopes to use them as a means of generating dialogue.”
On a Sunday afternoon in October, Maury Ostroff read the label and walked away without inspecting the artwork.
Visitors to the “Tikkun” exhibit are encouraged to share their responses to the artwork via comment cards. (Andrew Esensten)
Asked how the presence of the flag made him feel, Ostroff, who is Jewish and lives in Muir Beach, in Marin County, replied, “Unhappy.”
Why?
“It’s not offensive to me in the same way that a swastika is. My skin is a little bit thicker than that. But I wish it weren’t here.”
He added, “What’s so Jewish about this? What’s so ‘tikkun olam’ about all of this?”
For the “Tikkun” exhibit, which opened Feb. 17 and runs through Jan. 8, the CJM invited both Jewish and non-Jewish Bay Area artists to contribute new works on the theme of repair, however they chose to interpret it. “No one is listening to us,” the piece by Stimage, who is not Jewish, is the first work of art featuring the Palestinian flag to be shown at CJM in recent memory; the museum could not say when or if the flag has been displayed on its walls before.
The piece prompted several internal conversations among CJM staff when it was first submitted and, since it has been on display, has generated a variety of responses from museumgoers who have left comments in a box at the entrance to the exhibit. Intentionally or not, Stimage has raised numerous questions with the artwork, including: Does a work of art that is sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle for statehood belong in a Jewish museum? And what is the role of a contemporary Jewish museum, anyway?
“To truly be a contemporary art museum, meaning embedded in the contemporary issues of our day, our job is to provide a platform for dialogue and to share a diversity of perspectives on our walls,” said Chad Coerver, CJM’s executive director since September 2021. “If any institution [like ours] took the path of withholding artwork that troubled our staff, our board or our community, it would be very difficult to mount exhibitions.”
CJM is a member of the Council of American Jewish Museums, a network of 76 museums across the country. CAJM does not have guidelines about the kind of art its member museums can and cannot display, according to Executive Director Melissa Yaverbaum.
J. reached out to several CAJM member museums in New York, Los Angeles and other places by email to ask if they had ever shown artwork with Palestinian iconography or works by Palestinian artists. The museums declined to answer or did not respond.
In recent years, two Jewish museums have been embroiled in controversy over issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago staged an exhibit in 2008 on Israeli and Palestinian concepts of homeland that included maps and portraits of Palestinians. Following outcry from members of the local Jewish community who felt the exhibit presented Israel in a negative light, the museum decided to close the exhibit after only a few weeks. And in 2019, the director of the Jewish Museum Berlin resigned after the museum tweeted a link to a pro-BDS article in a German newspaper. (The museum previously came under fire for welcoming anti-Zionist scholar Judith Butler and representatives of Iran.)
In a joint interview with J., two CJM staffers who worked on “Tikkun” — co-curator Qianjin Montoya, who is not Jewish, and a Jewish senior curator who served in an advisory role, Heidi Rabben — shared the story of how Stimage’s piece came to be in the exhibit. (Montoya’s co-curator for the exhibit, Arianne Gelardin, no longer works at the museum.)
Since 2009, CJM has invited local artists from different backgrounds to create new work as part of the museum’s annual Dorothy Saxe Invitational. The idea for “Tikkun” was hatched before the pandemic put the planning process on hold. Once the CJM and Saxe — a local philanthropist and art collector — agreed on the theme, the co-curators invited artists “already engaged in healing through their relationship to community or in their practice of daily life,” Gelardin told J. last February.
The 30 artists who accepted the museum’s invitation were given only four months to conceive of and submit new works. That was likely the shortest timeline in the history of the invitational, which has been held 11 previous times, according to the museum. Each artist received a packet of materials compiled by CJM staff, with input from the Shalom Hartman Institute, a non-degree granting Jewish education center, to guide their thinking on “tikkun.”
Stimage was invited to participate because she is “very active” in the Bay Area and because “her work reflects ideas of community and connection,” Montoya said.
The curators said Stimage’s inclusion of the Palestinian flag in her submitted piece came as a surprise and prompted challenging conversations. However, they noted that they found the content of some of the other artists’ work surprising, too, and that it’s not unusual for contemporary artists to push the envelope in their work.
“I wouldn’t say we expected to receive a piece about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we weren’t steering anyone away from that, either,” Rabben told J., adding that the submission guidelines did not place any topic off limits. “That’s a commitment from the museum to authentically represent the creative spirit of the artists that we’re working with,” she said.
Still, the curators said they engaged in a dialogue with Stimage in order to better understand each aspect of her piece and her overall intentions. Through those conversations, the curators learned that Stimage wanted to explore a moment of “rupture,” and that through her piece she hoped to communicate “that before healing or repair might happen, you have to first acknowledge that rupture,” Rabben said.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is showing “Tikkun,” an exhibit of works by Jewish and non-Jewish artists on the theme of repair. (Andrew Esensten)
Coerver, who was involved in some of the conversations, stressed that “careful consideration” was given to including the piece in the exhibit. “We felt an artwork addressing the plight of the Palestinians was appropriate in an exhibition on healing and repair,” he said. (No work submitted as part of the Dorothy Saxe Invitational has ever been outright rejected, the museum said.)
Stimage did not respond to interview requests from J. According to a CV on her website, she was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and earned an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2016. She is a past fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and was an artist-in-residence at Facebook in 2018. She also owns a floral gift shop in Oakland called Saint Flora.
Her work often touches on Black identity; she created a piece honoring Sandra Bland, an African-American woman whose 2015 arrest and death in a Texas jail cell sparked protests, and contributed to a 2019 San Francisco Art Institute exhibit on the Black Panther Party.
“I have a responsibility to create things that will, to the best of my present knowledge, do more good than harm, heal, inspire and uplift other humans,” she told the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper in 2015.
Stimage’s precise views on Israel are unknown. CJM referred J. to her artist statement for “No one is listening to us,” which reads: “Olive, sage, and sumac are flowering plants native to the Mediterranean (including regions of Gaza and the West Bank) that have a direct relationship to contested ancestral land and affect the livelihood of so many Palestinian farmers and families caught in the conflict. They are positioned in the space of The Contemporary Jewish Museum as a metaphor for the ongoing conflict over land rights and the desperate need for restoration and healing of an age-old wound.”
The curators told J. that during their conversations with Stimage about her piece, they asked her why including images of the Palestinian flag was important to her but did not request that she remove them.
“We determined that none of [the piece’s] components in and of themselves signified something problematic or concerning,” Rabben said. “Of course, we had the awareness that the symbol [of the flag] will be read in a variety of ways by a variety of people.”
(Rabben pointed out that the exhibit includes other works with national symbols rendered in provocative ways, such as a black-and-white photograph of an American flag that was torn apart and partially reassembled by Mexican-American artist Jose Arias.)
The Palestinian flag — which contains the Pan-Arab colors of black, white, green and red — was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. Since then, it has been the primary symbol of Palestinian nationalism.
For decades, the PLO was considered an enemy organization by Israel, and anything associated with it “had no place in Israeli public life,” said Eran Kaplan, an Israeli-born professor of Israel studies at San Francisco State University. Israel never went so far as to ban the flag. However, during the First Intifada, which lasted from 1987 to 1993, Israeli soldiers sometimes followed orders to confiscate the flag from protesters in the West Bank and Gaza.
With the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, Israel and the PLO recognized each other as negotiating partners. Yet the Palestinian flag remains a contentious symbol in Israel today. Kaplan noted that it recently served as a flashpoint during the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American broadcaster who was killed in the West Bank in May. (The IDF conducted a review and admitted that the Israeli soldier who shot her had most likely misidentified her as an armed militant.) After warning Abu Akleh’s family not to display the flag, Israeli police attacked mourners in East Jerusalem, ripping flags out of their hands and off of the vehicle carrying her casket.
Today, the flag holds different meanings for Israelis and American Jews from different generations and political persuasions.
“There are large segments in Israeli society who view any form of Palestinian national identity as a threat to the existence of Israel,” Kaplan said. “There are others who view the PLO as legitimate partners in any form of negotiations [over the creation of a Palestinian state], but there’s an absolute split over those questions.”
Given the sensitive nature of Stimage’s work and others in the exhibit, the curators decided to solicit feedback from visitors via comment cards available at the entrance to the hall. Rabben said the museum has received a number of comments specifically about “No one is listening to us,” most of which were positive. “The majority of those comments were ‘Thank you for offering space for this topic at the museum,’” she said.
Last month, a security guard sitting in the “Tikkun” exhibition hall told a reporter that he had not witnessed any expressions of outrage or protest through the first nine months of the exhibit. “When we opened we were afraid of negative reactions, but they’re not stressed about it,” he said of visitors. “We have shown worse things here.” The guard, who has worked at the museum since it opened in 2008, mentioned a 2010 exhibit, “Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf,” which included a copy of Hitler’s autobiography. “Some people were cussing us out” for displaying the book, he recalled.
Meanwhile, on the same floor as “Tikkun,” there is another, smaller exhibit containing potentially offensive art. A sign outside of the room warns visitors that inside is a Hitler marionette created by the parents of puppeteer Frank Oz. “Our intention in displaying this object is to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive through the objects and firsthand stories of those who experienced its persecution, and to encourage conversation and education about the ongoing horrors of antisemitism and authoritarianism today,” the sign says.
Coerver, CJM’s executive director, said he was proud that the museum’s three current exhibits — “Tikkun,” “Oz is for Oznowicz: A Puppet Family’s History” and “Gillian Laub: Family Matters,” which includes photographs that Laub took of her Trump-supporting relatives — are raising “challenging questions” and providing opportunities for both visitors and museum staff to “expand our horizons.”
“We’ve been wading into some issues that I think are a little thicker than maybe we’ve been confronting in the past,” he said, “and I hope that continues.”
A version of this piece originally ran in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
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Man charged in a Jewish journalist’s death vandalized a Jewish business days before
The unsolved murder of a Jewish man in a public park, a synagogue desecrated with motor oil and feces, a bagel shop splattered with dirt, and the sudden and tragic death of a Jewish journalist.
Those incidents within a few miles of each other in a heavily Jewish neighborhood of Queens have put the Jewish community in that borough on alert since May. Ronnie Perry, who works at Benny’s Brick Oven Kosher Pizza in the neighborhood, said he can’t help but see a pattern.
“You know what the common denominator is, right?” Perry said.
Though investigators have not determined the motives in each case, prosecutors on Monday charged the same man who allegedly caused the death of the journalist with a hate crime for allegedly vandalizing the bagel shop.
“I was beyond horrified,” said Rachel Sales, daughter of the killed journalist, Cara Trager. “The fact that this guy did a hate crime … days before means that he could have been apprehended before my mom was killed.”
Perry, whose pizzeria is just a block from the vandalized bagel shop, told the Forward that the string of troubling incidents have rattled the community, and there’s not a lot visibly Jewish businesses like his can do to bolster security.
Nily Rozic, the Jewish state Assembly member who represents the Queens district where many of those attacks took place, said the incidents are more than just property damage or isolated violence.
“It really makes people feel like they’re being targeted as a community,” she said.
Last week, prosecutors charged Dawood Faisal, 22, with a hate crime for destroying property at Bagels & Co, a bagel shop on the corner of a major thoroughfare in Fresh Meadows that advertises itself as kosher in neon lights and displays Israeli flags. On two separate occasions in May, Faisal allegedly knocked over multiple plant stands outside the shop and, in one instance, hurled dirt at the outside wall of the store.
In May, Faisal was arraigned on charges of manslaughter for the death of Trager, a Queens-based journalist who was also active in her Jewish community. Faisal allegedly sped over 75 mph through two red lights and collided with two cars, propelling one into a crosswalk where it struck Trager and her husband, Michael, who survived.
Prosecutors have not presented any evidence that Trager was specifically targeted by Faisal, and authorities are not investigating the crash as a hate crime, according to a spokesperson for District Attorney Melinda Katz.
But even before the vandalism charge, Michael Trager told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he believed that Faisal had been “looking to do damage in a heavily Jewish area.”
Sales told the Forward her mom was passionate about fighting antisemitism, and the two often discussed the uptick in anti-Jewish hate crimes — including the bagel shop’s vandalism days before Cara Trager’s death on May 29.
“This is a tragedy for the entire Jewish community to understand, and beyond the Jewish community, this is a tragedy for New Yorkers, for Americans, to see that hate crimes don’t end at vandalism. People could die,” Sales said. “My mom died.”
Just a week before the car crash, Albert Itzkowitz, a local rabbi and former kosher bakery owner, was shot and killed while visiting Kissena Park in Queens. Police are investigating the incident as a murder but have not identified any suspects.
His family is calling for the killing to be investigated as a hate crime.
“Daddy was visibly Jewish. He was targeted in broad daylight. He was killed in a public park where he should have been safe,” his daughter, Leah Livshitz, said at a press conference in June. “His family deserves answers. The Jewish community deserves answers.”
Then in July, two Orthodox congregations in Queens were desecrated with feces and motor oil. Police are also investigating that vandalism as a hate crime.
Rozic, the first and only Israeli-born New York state Assembly member, said even as investigations are ongoing, she understands the incidents as “interconnected” and has heard from Jewish constituents who feel afraid.
“Context is important,” Rozic said. “When incidents like this are followed by additional violence, it compounds the fear and the trauma of the community.”
Anti-Jewish hate crimes have increased by 8.5% in New York City this year — with 205 reported versus 189 for the same period last year, according to data from the NYPD.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who previously represented a Queens district in the statehouse, has noted his administration’s 800% increased investment in the office of hate crime prevention. But in recent weeks, he has faced backlash from some Jewish New Yorkers after he released a video referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war criminal” and calling on New Yorkers to protest the Israeli leader’s planned visit to the United Nations in September. Mamdani has defended his comments on Netanyahu as “critiques of a political leader, not of people of a specific faith.”
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He stumbled upon Leonard Bernstein’s stubble on his way to finding a ‘Lost Mozart’
David Israel needed an electric razor, so he borrowed Leonard Bernstein’s.
It was the early ‘90s and Israel was about to make his first trip overseas as a representative of the Bernstein estate at the London Symphony Orchestra. He knew that European outlets had a different voltage and so he phoned up the maestro’s daughter Jamie to ask if he could use the one at the Dakota, where Israel worked as an editor, preparing the definitive scores for Mass, West Side Story and On the Town after Bernstein’s death in 1990.
“I took a red eye, so I’m there in the morning, and I was going to shave,” Israel told me in a video call from his home in Malibu. “All of Lenny’s gray stubble comes falling out into the sink. And I thought, ‘Well, if I get a piece of Scotch tape, I could save this, and we could clone him at some point.’ And so I did.”
Israel, who has composed music for Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp, knew he had a story to tell about his picaresque early days in the world of classical music. His second novel, The Lost Mozart is a kunstleroman that borrows quite a bit from life and, like the stubbly attempt to revive Leonard Bernstein, is about an effort to bring genius back to life.
The story follows Noah Wideman, like Israel a graduate of the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, who stumbles on a fragment of an unfinished Mozart string quartet. An unprecedented 627th composition from a life that lasted only 35 years.
Together with a crew of older men — a legendary classical music radio announcer, his partner and their collector friend in possession of the titular sketch — Noah works to finish what Amadeus started.
Noah, a gifted pasticheur, is primed for the task and, due to an early job at ASCAP, where he surreptitiously recorded the music playing at strip clubs that failed to pay their annual licensing fee, his skills as a detective.
Completing the work of one of the greatest musical geniuses is an act of chutzpah, something Israel knows something about. His own lost Mozart moment came shortly after college, when he made a play for the legacy of another great.
He knew Bernstein socially through the dean of the Hartt School, and chose the college in part because he knew the maestro often came to visit. Israel was scheduled to have dinner with him in 1990, but Bernstein died a month earlier. Israel produced a memorial concert and, on March 13, 1991, was at a party where he ran into Bernstein’s former assistant, who ran the publishing arm of his estate.
“We were just chit-chatting in the kitchen after this concert at this party, and he said, ‘What are you going to do when you graduate?’” Israel recalled. “And I said, ‘ I’m going to work for you,’ and that’s how the job came to be.”
Israel immersed himself in Bernstein’s scores and correspondence, in much the same way Noah dives into the Mozart archive. Bernstein was an idol, but Israel reveres Mozart, and picked him as a subject over Bach or Beethoven in part because of how prolific he was.
“The reason why I felt like this was good material for a novel is because by 2023, which is when I was writing the book, it seemed like the only way you could experience new Mozart was through fiction,” Israel said.
Not anymore. In June, just a couple of months before Israel’s pub date, a curator at France’s National Library found a notebook with sketches from the 22-year-old Mozart, who was in Paris to audition as a court musician at Versailles.
There’s more to the story, Israel said, including Wolfgang’s oft-overlooked older sister Maria Anna, a composer and musician in her own right who got top billing in the siblings’ early tours through the courts of Europe.
The sequel, Israel tells me, will feature her as another “lost Mozart,” and draw from Israel’s own time working on Bernstein’s archive, including his impromptu jam session with Yo-Yo Ma.
“It’s one of the funniest scenes in the first few chapters,” Israel promises. He can’t yet say more about what happens at the Dakota. Readers will have to discover those lost movements for themselves.
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Michigan’s Senate race has become a referendum on Israel — and the future of the Democratic Party
Tuesday’s primary contest for an open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan has become a proxy fight over the Gaza war and a referendum on Israel supporters’ influence in Democratic politics. Democratic voters will decide whether to nominate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who is leading in the polls after assailing his opponent as beholden to the campaign fundraising group AIPAC, or Rep. Haley Stevens, a reliable supporter of Israel who has condemned what she called “inflammatory rhetoric” from El-Sayed.
Following a string of primary victories by insurgent Democrats who made condemning Israel central to their campaigns — from New York to New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Colorado — the outcome will become the clearest test yet of whether the vocally anti-Israel progressive movement may come to define the Democratic Party.
Recent polls show El-Sayed with growing momentum, leading Stevens by as much as 16 points.
Michigan, home to one of the country’s largest Arab-American communities, was already a national hot spot for voter pushback on pro-Israel politics as the birthplace of the 2024 “uncommitted” movement that protested President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza by submitting blank ballots in the presidential primary.
It also has an influential Jewish community that has become deeply invested in the race — and with some El-Sayed supporters among them.
Tuesday’s winner will have to prevail in the November general election, and success is not guaranteed: While Democrats are a majority of registered voters in Michigan, Republican President Donald Trump won the state in 2016 and 2024.
With Democrats counting on winning Michigan as they aim to retake the Senate, the questions looming over Tuesday’s primary aren’t just about the party’s direction on Israel — they’re also about whether running against Israel is a winning message in a swing state.
Democrats are facing a difficult path to winning Senate control even as polls show growing dissatisfaction with the Republican agenda.
A look at three possible scenarios shows the high stakes of the race for the Democratic Party and the place of Israel in U.S. politics:
An El-Sayed victory
An Emerson College survey of 700 voters shows El-Sayed leading Stevens by 16 points, despite more than $60 million of outside spending attacking him. AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has spent $30.6 million backing Stevens, according to recent FEC filings. AIPAC also raised several million dollars for Stevens by directing its donors to online portals that funnel money directly to the candidate’s campaign. All in all, the Michigan contest is AIPAC’s largest investment this election cycle.
If El-Sayed wins, he would become the first Muslim nominated by a major party for the U.S. Senate and would immediately become one of the most prominent figures on the Democratic left. It would echo the victory of Zohran Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race as the city’s first Muslim mayor and the most prominent democratic socialist in office, with Jews divided between fierce opposition and fiery support.
But the immediate political meaning would be about AIPAC.
The progressive frontrunner has transformed AIPAC’s investment in the race into a centerpiece of his campaign message. Backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, El-Sayed used AIPAC as a political foil and a symbol of everything he says is wrong with Democratic politics: super PAC money, billionaire influence and demands for unconditional support for Israel. A poll of Michigan voters conducted by Data for Progress in April found that 64% of likely Democratic primary voters would be less inclined to support a candidate backed by AIPAC.
At a recent virtual town hall hosted by Progressive Democrats of America, El-Sayed compared his possible victory to David defeating Goliath. “AIPAC, if you’re listening, burn your money, come back and burn it again in the general,” he said. “I’m happy to burn your money for you, and then we can get onto the business of governing and asking whether or not our foreign policy ought to be dictated to us by the interests of a foreign government.”
An El-Sayed win would mark a reversal from AIPAC’s last confrontation with Stevens’ opponents in Michigan. In 2022, Stevens defeated Jewish Rep. Andy Levin by 20 points in a rare incumbent-versus-incumbent House primary after redistricting. Levin argued that the group was trying to punish him for criticizing Israeli policy and supporting Palestinian rights. AIPAC celebrated Levin’s defeat as proof that even a Jewish incumbent could not survive after crossing the organization. (Levin is supporting El-Sayed.)
It would also create immediate questions about how El-Sayed would operate in Washington.
Would he support Sen. Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American history and one of Stevens’ most powerful allies, as Democratic leader if Democrats win the majority? And would he give Senate progressives new leverage over key votes on Israel?
What if El-Sayed loses the general election?
For Democrats worried about electability, the primary is only the first test.
The winner will face former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost Michigan’s 2024 Senate election and is now running with a largely unified Republican Party behind him.
Michigan remains one of the country’s key battlegrounds. President Donald Trump carried it in 2016, lost it in 2020 and won it again in 2024. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a moderate Democrat who was an intelligence analyst in the CIA and served three tours in Iraq, won her race even as Trump carried the state.
Recent polls found Rogers leading El-Sayed by single digits.
Some Michigan Jewish Democrats are already considering whether they could support El-Sayed, vote for the Republican, or leave their ballot blank in November. Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in the state.
Stevens has sharpened those concerns in the final days of the campaign. She accused El-Sayed of blaming “all of your problems on Jewish Americans,” warning that his rhetoric would lead to defeat in the face-off with Rogers. El-Sayed, who has courted Jewish voters without moderating his views on Israel, rejected accusations of antisemitism.
“I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people,” he said.
A November loss would have consequences far beyond Michigan.
Democrats are already facing an uphill battle for Senate control after the collapse of Graham Platner in the competitive Maine Senate race.
Losing the seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters would further divide Democrats. Party leaders would almost certainly blame El-Sayed’s ideology, his vocal opposition to Israel and the progressive groups that elevated him for losing a swing state. AIPAC, meanwhile, would claim vindication despite losing the primary.
Speaking with reporters on Sunday, El-Sayed said he’s confident Democratic voters will rally behind his candidacy as they reckon with what is at stake.
What if Stevens survives?
A Stevens victory would offer a very different lesson.
It would show that experience, establishment support and a strong general-election argument can still overcome anger about AIPAC, even in the state where the uncommitted movement began. Even a narrow victory would preserve AIPAC’s reputation as one of the most effective forces in Democratic primaries.
But it would say more about Stevens and her personality. She first entered Congress in the 2018 Democratic wave, capturing a Republican-held suburban district. She then survived redistricting and defeated Levin in the bruising 2022 primary.
Stevens has the backing of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Schumer and much of Michigan’s Democratic establishment. And she leads Rogers in a November matchup.
By Wednesday morning, Democrats will know who won Michigan. It may take until November or even longer to know whether Tuesday’s vote marked the beginning of a new era in Democratic politics or another chapter in the party’s divide over Israel. Nonetheless, Democratic leaders still have to reunite a coalition fractured over Gaza and manage a growing progressive wing in the House.
The fight extends down the ballot
The Senate contest is not the only Michigan race testing the strength of the progressive left.
In Detroit’s 13th Congressional District, state Rep. Donavan McKinney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is challenging incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar with the support of Justice Democrats. The group, which helped launch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the Squad, made McKinney its first congressional endorsement in four years.
In Michigan’s 7th District, former climate activist William Lawrence is running against two centrist Democrats in the primary, making an end to all U.S. military aid to Israel a key part of his campaign. The seat was previously held by Slotkin.
On a state level, Abbas Alawieh, one of the leaders of the uncommitted movement in Michigan, is running for a seat in the state legislature in a Dearborn-area district with a large Arab and Muslim population. In a sign of his growing profile, Alawieh recently met with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
AIPAC and the debate over Israel is also spilling into a neighboring state Senate race. Pro-Israel donors are spending heavily to back Justin Onwenu against former State Rep. Abraham Aiyash, an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza.
It has also reached the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents. Michigan Democrats nominated Amir Makled, an attorney who represented pro-Palestinian protesters, after he defeated incumbent Regent Jordan Acker at the party convention. Makled faces scrutiny for past Hezbollah praise and antisemitic posts. Republican regent candidates Lena Epstein and Michael Schostak, both Jewish, have campaigned on antisemitism and campus safety. That race will be decided in November.
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