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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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Fire at Postville, Iowa, kosher meat processing plant shuts down production ahead of the High Holidays
(JTA) — A major fire at one of the largest kosher meat processing plants in the United States is poised to increase the price of kosher meat ahead of the High Holidays, in addition to devastating the plant’s local community.
Investigators in Postville, Iowa, said on Wednesday that the fire that devastated AgriStar Processing started accidentally in the facility’s laundry room. The fire, which began on Tuesday, destroyed at least 75% of the plant and has put more than 600 people out of work, Fire Chief Jeff Bohr told the local TV network KCRG.
The fire has also interrupted a linchpin of kosher meat production, according to OU Kosher, the oversight agency run by the Orthodox Union.
“The damaged facility means a significant portion of kosher beef and chicken slaughtered and sold in the US will not enter the kosher supply chain,” Rabbi Moshe Elefant, the organization’s CEO, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Kosher consumers will feel the impact of the tightening supply with reduction of availability.”
Elefant said OU Kosher was working to “find solutions for ramping up production at other plants” while warning that the crisis could fuel bad actors.
“Unfortunately, when supply is limited, it creates opportunity for unscrupulous individuals who seek to make money by preying on the well-meaning Kosher observant public,” he wrote.
Jarad Bernstein, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, said the fire represented “a terrible situation” in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“The impact on the local community and the business will be large,” he said.
The fire is not the first time that a crisis at AgriStar has sent the community into a tailspin. In 2008, a federal immigration raid at the plant, then known as Agriprocessors, netted the arrest of hundreds of workers and led to the arrest and conviction of the company’s longtime CEO Sholom Rubashkin on 86 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. It also led most of Postville’s Jewish residents to leave the town, which had developed as an unusual stronghold of Orthodox life in eastern Iowa.
Saying that “many people” believed Rubashkin’s 27-year prison sentence had been excessive, President Donald Trump commuted Rubashkin’s sentence in 2017. Rubashkin’s conviction stands.
Canadian Jewish billionaire Hershy Friedman purchased Agriprocessors and reopened it as Agri-Star. He told JTA in 2016 that he had done so after being urged by Jewish leaders to ensure competition in the kosher meat processing industry.
“It wasn’t done for financial purposes; it was done to really cater to the Jewish community,” he said about the purchase. “During the time Rubashkin was closed, the price of beef roughly doubled. After we acquired it, it came right back down.”
Friedman also said he had shored up the company’s employment practices, which had run afoul of the law, and made improvements to the slaughter process that had made Agriprocessors a target of animal rights activists.
Agri-Star said in a statement on Wednesday that it appreciated the first responders who “worked tirelessly and selflessly to protect lives and contain the fire” and the employees who had shown “inspiring” care for each other. It also indicated that it did not yet know the future of the plant.
“We understand there are many questions about what comes next,” Agri-Star wrote on social media. “While we are still gathering information and evaluating our short-term plans, we are committed to sharing verified updates as soon as they become available. We appreciate your patience as we work through this process thoughtfully and responsibly.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Fire at Postville, Iowa, kosher meat processing plant shuts down production ahead of the High Holidays appeared first on The Forward.
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California law on antisemitism in schools will be enforced after free speech challenge is defeated
(JTA) — A California law to prevent antisemitism in schools will be enforced after a federal judge dismissed a challenge from teachers and students who said it violated free speech.
U.S. District Judge Noël Wise on Tuesday ruled against a lawsuit opposing Assembly Bill 715, which went into effect in January. The new law introduces measures to curb the “widespread surge in antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and bullying” faced by “Jewish and Israeli American pupils across California.”
As part of the law, California is establishing an Office of Civil Rights with a new statewide antisemitism prevention coordinator for public schools, who has not yet been appointed. The law mandates teachers to provide “factually accurate” instruction rather than “advocacy, personal opinion, bias, or partisanship.” It requires local educational agencies to take action if they find that instruction or school-sponsored materials are discriminatory.
A group of teachers, students and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee filed a challenge in November. They said the law was unconstitutionally vague, chilled speech in the classroom about Palestinians and discriminated against Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students and perspectives.
Wise said it was too soon to consider these claims, given the uncertainties still surrounding the new Office of Civil Rights, its leadership and how it will define and respond to antisemitism. She also said that teachers and students did not provide sufficient evidence of infringements on free speech, and teachers could not claim speech rights on the job.
“Teacher Plaintiffs are not acting as private citizens and therefore do not have First Amendment rights while teaching,” Wise said in her ruling.
She also dismissed the claim that the law would discriminate against non-Jewish students. “The existence of an Antisemitism Coordinator does not change the Office’s overarching purpose to stop discrimination generally; it merely reflects the State’s decision to accord specific funds to a specific problem,” she said.
Malak Afaneh, a staff attorney at ADC, said the group was reviewing the court’s decision and considering its options.
“AB 715 has already caused educators to alter the way they teach out of fear that classroom discussions or activities could trigger complaints or investigations,” Afaneh said in a statement. “When teachers feel compelled to abandon cultural identity projects or avoid discussions about Palestine, it is students who are denied the opportunity to engage with diverse ideas and perspectives.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco celebrated Wise’s decision as “great news.”
“This ruling, and the fact that the case has been dismissed with prejudice, affirms that AB 715 is a strong, legitimate approach to protecting Jewish students — and all students — against harassment and discrimination,” the group said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post California law on antisemitism in schools will be enforced after free speech challenge is defeated appeared first on The Forward.
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The El-Sayed effect: How Jews and Israel are factoring into Michigan’s other primary races
(JTA) — DETROIT — The intra-party debate over Israel that has dominated Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary is reverberating further down the ballot throughout the state.
Progressive former county health official Abdul El-Sayed’s bid to lead a swing state as an avowedly pro-Palestinian senator is being mirrored on a micro scale in Michigan’s 7th District — one of the nation’s most hotly contested congressional seats. In addition to endorsing a candidate there, El-Sayed and his movement have also taken aim at a Detroit-area incumbent who has belatedly embraced a pro-Israel platform, while a key architect of the 2024 “Uncommitted” movement is also running for local office.
In contrast, a young Jewish candidate hopes to pick up the mantle of El-Sayed’s rival in the Senate race, centrist U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens — and buck a growing national trend of Democrats turning away from supporting Israel. Jewish Democrats in the state, many of whom are drifting away from the party as a result of the discourse around the primary, are watching closely.
Here’s what you need to know about how Israel and Jewish issues are affecting other races in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday.
A swing district Dems hope to flip is dragged into the Israel debate
In Michigan’s 7th District, William Lawrence, a former climate activist who has called for an end to all military aid to Israel, is challenging two centrist Democrats for the party’s nomination.
The district, which stretches from the state capitol in Lansing into the Detroit exurbs and encompasses Michigan State University, is currently represented by a Republican. But Democrats are eyeing it as a promising pickup; the seat was previously held by Jewish Democrat Elissa Slotkin, who won her Senate election in 2024 even as Donald Trump won the state.
Lawrence’s campaign, though, is far from Slotkin’s staunchly moderate playbook. Lawrence recently rallied with El-Sayed, independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Lansing, where he called to “stop arming Israel and bring our money home to invest in housing and social security.”
Both of his major primary opponents, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink and former Navy SEAL and Obama military aide Matt Maasdam, declined to refer to Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a genocide at a candidate forum, while Lawrence did. Recent polling from two Brink-sponsored firms shows Brink in the lead, while an April poll from the Lawrence-aligned Data For Progress puts him ahead by 6 points. Lawrence’s hopes for the nomination likely rest on Brink and Maasdam splitting the establishment vote.
As with many progressives running this cycle, opposition to Israel makes up a key part of Lawrence’s pitch — which his campaign feels confident about, despite the purple political makeup of the district.
“There is broad support for ending military support to human rights abusers and bringing that money home to fund good jobs, housing, and healthcare here at home,” his campaign told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an emailed statement responding to a list of questions about his positions on Israel.
Lawrence was a co-founder of the influential climate activist group Sunrise Movement, which has experienced infighting over pro-Palestinian advocacy. His rhetoric on Israel also played a role in the biggest scandal of his campaign to date. Comments he made on a 2024 podcast disparaging Black Democratic leaders as “a pillar, frankly, for establishment, capitalist, imperialist American power” that “defangs the white left” resurfaced shortly before his big-ticket rally earlier this month.
The Congressional Black Caucus condemned his remarks and called on his supporters to “withdraw their support.” In a subsequent statement, Lawrence said he had been referencing “my horror at the genocide in Gaza” and talking about working “to organize Black Americans against the genocide.” (Though she appeared at the Lansing rally with him, Ocasio-Cortez has declined to endorse Lawrence.)
Fewer than 10,000 Jews live in the greater Lansing area, out of a total population of 479,000, according to a 2021 population report from Brandeis University. Local Jewish institutions have expressed alarm about El-Sayed’s movement: When the candidate brought left-wing streamer Hasan Piker to MSU’s campus for a rally earlier this year, the university’s Hillel issued a statement saying it was “deeply troubled” by the appearance of what it called a “known antisemite.”
Asked by JTA about the safety of his Jewish would-be constituents, Lawrence’s campaign responded, “Will takes Jewish safety extremely seriously and stands firmly against anti-semetisim [sic] which is unfortunately on the rise across the political spectrum.” The Brink and Maasdam campaigns did not respond to JTA requests for comment.
After moving from DSA to pro-Israel, this Detroit congressman is fighting to keep his seat
Why is a Detroit-area race between two non-Jews, in a district with few Jews, also pivoting on Israel? The answer reveals the state of intra-left politics today.
In Michigan’s 13th District, encompassing much of Detroit and its western suburbs, state Rep. Donavan McKinney is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar for the Democratic nomination. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America who has been endorsed by, and campaigned with, El-Sayed and national pro-Palestinian figures, McKinney’s campaign literature champions a focus on “kitchen-table issues,” including public health in Detroit.
Yet his website’s major policies also include a large section labeled “Palestine,” in which he pledges to end military aid to Israel and calls on Israel to “release all Palestinians who have been detained.”
A Black politician running against an Indian-American incumbent in a majority-Black district, McKinney has also made racial representation a central factor to his campaign, twinning Black identity with the pro-Palestinian cause as a growing number of other local activists have also done.
McKinney’s embrace of the issue could play particularly well in his race against Thanedar, who has — unusually — ventured from the left to the center on Israel. A businessman and failed gubernatorial candidate (he and El-Sayed both lost the Democratic primary to Gretchen Whitmer in 2018), Thanedar was initially a DSA member himself. As a state legislator in 2021, he co-sponsored legislation calling for an end to U.S. military support of Israel.
He abruptly changed course during his 2022 congressional run, in a redrawn district formerly held by Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib. Thanedar then expressed more pro-Israel views on the campaign trail even as pro-Israel lobbyists AIPAC endorsed an opponent. (He largely self-financed his successful congressional run.)
Once in Congress, Thanedar took an AIPAC-sponsored trip to Israel and shifted his views to become a staunch pro-Israel advocate. After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, he renounced his DSA membership, citing a New York rally hosted by the group praising the attacks that he called “hate-filled and antisemitic.”
“I see this as the biggest murdering of Jews since the Holocaust,” Thanedar told the Michigan Advance, of the attacks, also publicly criticizing Tlaib for her own response. AIPAC, once his enemy, spent more than $2 million on his 2024 reelection campaign, according to federal disclosures. The lobbyists are fundraising for Thanedar again this cycle, though the latest reported federal elections data indicate that AIPAC-aligned spending for him has been a tiny fraction of the millions it has spent in other races.
The battle looks to be bruising. Polling is scant, but a progressive-aligned poll earlier this month had Thanedar a narrow 4 points up. On Monday a handful of Congressional Black Caucus members, breaking with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, endorsed McKinney — a rare measure to take against an incumbent. The caucus’s McKinney backers include Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, both hardline Israel critics.
Neither McKinney’s nor Thanedar’s campaigns responded to JTA requests for comment for this article.
A young Jewish LGBTQ legislator may pick up Stevens’ pro-Israel torch
As Jewish Democrats in Oakland County, the affluent, heavily Jewish Detroit suburbs, have bemoaned the state-level Democratic tilt toward anti-Israel rhetoric, many are clinging to a silver lining: state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is bidding for Stevens’ congressional seat in the 11th District.
Moss, a Jewish and pro-Israel candidate, has a campaign platform of standard liberal issues including gun safety, cost of living and LGBTQ rights (Moss is gay). He has been endorsed by many of the state’s leading Democrats. And while his campaign website platform doesn’t mention Israel or antisemitism, he has angrily denounced antisemitism in both parties.
“The overwhelming majority of Jews believe in a place of refuge in a Jewish homeland. But if you even mention how woven the Jewish religion is with Jewish sovereignty in Israel, today you get called a ‘colonizer,’ a ‘racist,’” Moss said in a 2024 speech from the state Senate floor. “‘Zionist’ is now being weaponized as a slur, and it is infuriating that the same people who will say that also post ‘Happy Passover’ to all who are observing without acknowledging what we’re actually observing.”
Moss called out antisemitism on the left again after the attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield earlier this year. Following the state Democratic convention in Detroit, at which a lawyer for pro-Palestinian encampments who had a social media history of praising Hezbollah received the party’s nomination for the University of Michigan board of regents, Moss called the nomination “unacceptable” and said he would refuse to vote for the nominee. Moss’s campaign did not return a JTA request for comment for this story.
Many Jews in the district who back Stevens also have high praise for Moss — though AIPAC, which has broken campaign records in spending for Stevens’ Senate race, has spent minimally for Moss, according to the latest federal elections data. Democratic Majority for Israel made a small donation to his campaign, as have former AIPAC leaders.
Moss probably doesn’t need their support: He has a strong likelihood of prevailing in the primary. Though polling in the district is scant, he dwarfs his competitors in fundraising and name recognition. Some pro-Palestinian progressives, including California U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, have backed Aisha Farooqi, an attorney who has called to halt military aid to Israel. Her campaign, though, hasn’t caught on with El-Sayed’s supporters on the level of Lawrence’s or McKinney’s. Another fringe candidate, Don Ufford, launched a website called “AIPAC Jeremy Moss” in a bid to target the presumptive frontrunner.
Should Moss prevail in the primary and in the general election, he would return the heavily Jewish district to Jewish representation for the first time since former U.S. Rep. Andy Levin lost his 2022 reelection bid to Stevens — in a redistricted primary that saw AIPAC backing Stevens. Levin, a progressive, is backing El-Sayed in the Senate race.
An ‘Uncommitted’ founder returns … with big-ticket Democratic support
Further down the ballot, a key architect of Michigan’s 2024 “Uncommitted” movement designed to pressure Democrats on Israel is running for state Senate — as a Democrat.
Abbas Alawieh, a Lebanese-American former legislative staffer for both Levin and Tlaib, is making a bid for local office after becoming a national name for his role in pushing Democrats to vote “Uncommitted” over former President Joe Biden in the 2024 state primary ballot. The movement, which began as Listen to Michigan, was based largely on dissatisfaction with Biden’s support of Israel’s war in Gaza.
It attracted a groundswell of support — including from some Jews — and spread to other states, crystallizing a lack of enthusiasm for Biden that built to him stepping off the presidential ticket. Alawieh emerged again as a thorn in the party’s side during that year’s Democratic National Convention, when he and other “Uncommitted” delegates unsuccessfully lobbied to place a Palestinian speaker on the agenda.
As he now emerges as a party hopeful, Alawieh is mending some surprising fences in the establishment. This month he secured the endorsement of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and recently sat down for a meeting with former Vice President Kamala Harris — who lost Michigan in her 2024 presidential run, which many analysts chalked up at least in part to “Uncommitted.” (Alawieh himself has said he voted for Harris, though not all of his movement’s co-founders did.)
The former VP “initiated” the meeting after months of phone calls, Alawieh said in a statement, adding that he had urged her to oppose “the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza” and “ethnic cleansing” in Lebanon.
Alawieh says he doesn’t expect Israel to be a major part of his focus in the state Senate. Still, he recently told the Michigan Advance, “The party was undoubtedly wrong about Gaza in 2024.” His campaign did not respond to a JTA request for comment.
He is running in a district that includes Dearborn, which has a large Arab and Muslim population. Alawieh isn’t the only “Uncommitted”-adjacent figure running for office this primary cycle: In Wisconsin, Francesca Hong, who helped lead the parallel “Uninstructed” movement, has a plausible path to victory in her gubernatorial primary.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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