Uncategorized
How Judy Blume’s ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ broke taboos around interfaith marriage
(JTA) — When Judy Blume’s young adult novel “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” appeared in 1970, intermarried families were a small segment of the American Jewish population. Perhaps 17% of Jews were married to someone who wasn’t Jewish; today, 42% of married Jews have a spouse who is not Jewish, and in the past decade, 61% of Jews married non-Jewish partners.
Through the 1960s, middle-grade and young adult fiction rarely acknowledged the existence of these families, reflecting and reinforcing their outsider status. Today it is routine for authors to address the reality of inter-religious and culturally mixed families, portraying them with insight and compassion. (See “Not Your All-American Girl” by Wendy Wan-Long Shang and Madelyn Rosenberg, “Becoming Brianna” by Terri Libenson and “The Whole Story of Half a Girl” by Veera Hiranandani.)
This change was made possible partly by Blume’s story of sixth-grader Margaret Simon and her one-sided conversations with God.
Blume’s status as a pioneer in young adult literature is usually associated with her honest approach to the emotional, physical and sexual milestones of growing up, with her works still attracting readers and still finding an honored place on lists of banned books. That legacy is being celebrated in April with a new documentary, Amazon Prime Video’s “Judy Blume Forever,” and a theatrical release by Lionsgate of a feature film version of “Are You There God?”
Yet her treatment of contested identity in intermarried families is as revolutionary as her openness about bras, menstruation and sexual feelings. Actors Lena Dunham and Molly Ringwald, comedian Samantha Bee and many authors, including Raina Telgemeier, Tayari Jones and Gary Shteyngart, have cited Blume’s influence on both their lives and their work. Book lists for intermarried families frequently list the novel as a resource.
Margaret Simon is 11 years old at the start of “Are You There God?” Her Jewish dad and Christian mom have pointedly ignored the possibility that their daughter might have questions about her identity. Along with other issues of teen angst, she feels compelled to decide if she is Jewish, Christian or neither. Without any guidance, the last alternative leaves her in a frightening void. As she pointedly asks God, in her ongoing series of questions for Him, “I can’t go on being nothing forever, can I?”
Margaret’s parents, Barbara Hutchins and Herb Simon, fell in love and defied their respective parents by marrying out of their faiths. They assure Margaret that she has no religion, but can choose one when she is older, oblivious to the fact that this solution seems more of a burden than a promise of future freedom. Their avoidance of any serious engagement with either religion or culture renders any possible choice unlikely.
Blume situates Margaret’s search within the specific landscape of post-World War II America. When the Simons decide to leave their Upper West Side home in New York City and move to suburban New Jersey, their decision suggests a coded reference to their religious status. Long Island is “too social,” an implied euphemism for “too Jewish.” Living there might have made it harder for their relatively unusual situation to be discreetly ignored. On the other hand, the more affluent Westchester and Connecticut are “too expensive” and “too inconvenient.” Farbrook, New Jersey has enough Jews for it to feel right for Herb, but not so many as to make their mixed family stand out.
Margaret also suspects that her parents’ are determined to put distance between the Simons and Sylvia, her paternal grandmother, who lives in New York City. This gregarious woman shows up at their new home unannounced and toting deli foods, making it clear that Margaret’s one unambiguous connection to Judaism is not going to disappear. While Barbara’s parents utterly rejected her when she married a Jew, Sylvia has pragmatically decided to accept what she cannot change. In the postwar era, more Jews began to abandon or minimize religious practice, while still maintaining ethnically distinct customs. Like holiday observance or synagogue attendance, ethnic Jewish culture is also absent from the Simon home. Sylvia’s Jewish food, her frequent trips to Florida, even her combination of sarcasm and smothering warmth, provide Margaret with markers of the tradition her parents have eschewed.
Still, when Sylvia repeatedly asks Margaret if her (nonexistent) boyfriends are Jewish, the young girl is baffled. Given her own lack of consciousness of herself as Jewish, why would Margaret care?
Rachel McAdams and Abby Ryder Fortson in the forthcoming film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” (Dana Hawley/Lionsgate © 2022)
In the larger world of Farbrook, Margaret’s new friends seem to have more secure identities, conveniently defined by membership either in the “Y” (Young Men’s Christian Association) or the Jewish Community Center. Perfunctory attendance at Hebrew school until after one’s bar mitzvah is the furthest extent of her peers’ Jewishness. Margaret explains that her parents are “nothing” and that, prior to their marriage, they were Jewish and Christian, as if those identities could be cast off like an article of clothing. When Mr. Benedict, her enthusiastic young teacher, distributes a questionnaire, Margaret completes the prompt “I hate” with “religious holidays.” He attempts to draw her out about this troubling answer, and she scornfully observes that her teacher acted as if “he had uncovered some deep, dark mystery.”
On one level, he has. Her mother’s blandly universal definition of God as a “nice idea,” who “belongs to everybody,” is clearly a denial of the fractures in her family members’ lives.
Blume also captures the essence of mid-century non-Orthodox Judaism as comfortably accessible, yet also somewhat empty. On a visit to Grandma Sylvia’s elegant temple, the atmosphere is quietly decorous, the sanctuary filled with well-appointed congregants and beautifully arranged flowers. Sylvia’s rabbi greets Margaret with an enthusiastic “Good Yom Tov,” which he translates as “Happy New Year,” although it is actually a generic holiday greeting.
When Margaret later visits Presbyterian and Methodist churches, she notes the remarkable similarity among all three experiences.
The novel’s one incident of specific religious practice involves Margaret’s brief, unfinished confession in a classmate’s Catholic church. Having participated in bullying, Margaret tries to assuage her guilt through a ritual alien to both her father’s Judaism and her mother’s Protestant Christianity. She even momentarily confuses the priest with the silent God of her conversations. Nothing could be further from her parents’ rejection of religion, or from Grandma Sylvia’s loving assurance to Margaret that “I knew you were a Jewish girl at heart.”
When Margaret’s Christian grandparents decide to resume contact, the suppressed anger in the Simon home finally erupts. Herb is furious, and accuses his in-laws of only wanting to meet Margaret “to make sure she doesn’t have horns!” — a caustic reference to a persistent antisemitic myth. Blume had subtly foreshadowed this disruption of the status quo in a parallel event at school. When a Jewish student, backed by his parents, refuses to sing Christmas carols, the implicit agreement of the town’s Jews to quietly conform is broken. A Christian girl, in what seems an act of retaliation, then refuses to sing Hanukkah songs. These acts of resistance reinforce Margaret’s marginal status. Her intermarried family represents neither conformity with postwar norms nor an assertion of Jewish pride.
Blume appears to tip the scales in her portrayal of Mary and Paul Hutchins, Margaret’s maternal grandparents. Entirely unlikeable, simultaneously pushy and cold, they insist that the granddaughter they had never acknowledged is Christian. After their failed visit, Grandma Sylvia returns, along with her sweet and obviously Jewish new boyfriend, Mr. Binamin (“rhymes with cinnamon”). Readers rooting for the triumph of Margaret’s Jewish roots may breathe a sigh of relief here, but hope for a satisfying ending is illusory. Margaret’s search for a stable sense of self is still unfinished, and will not be satisfied by choosing membership in either the Y or the JCC.
For young readers, the novel’s discussion of religious identity proved as life-changing as its honest portrayal of puberty and menstruation. “I related to that kind of conflict of religion,” the comedian Chelsea Handler, who grew up in a mixed Jewish-Mormon home, told Blume in 2020. “At that time, I just found out my mom was Mormon, on top of thinking she was Jewish, and your books were such a reprieve for me and such a joy.”
More than 50 years ago, Judy Blume tackled a difficult subject, about both changing demographics and the search for authenticity in American Jewish life. Margaret’s conclusion that “twelve is very late to learn” about the essence of who you are still poses a challenge, while her persistent search for a meaningful identity offers a degree of optimism.
—
The post How Judy Blume’s ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ broke taboos around interfaith marriage appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Texas’ new Bible curriculum isn’t as ‘Judeo’ as advertised, local rabbis say
Among the many faiths practiced by millions of Texas students, a new statewide required reading list that includes biblical passages draws from just two traditions: Protestant Christianity and Judaism.
Yet Texas rabbis say Jews had no role in shaping how Judaism appears in the curriculum, and they disagree with how the lone Jewish text is presented. Rather than teaching about Judaism on its own terms, they argue, the lessons filter Jewish texts through a Christian perspective.
The reading list, which is expected to go into effect in 2030, will have public school students across the state reading passages from the New Testament and mostly Christian translations of the Hebrew Bible alongside literary classics. Of the curriculum’s six Hebrew Bible readings, just one uses a Jewish translation.
Approved Friday in a 9-5 vote by the Texas State Board of Education, the curriculum introduces Bible readings as early as first grade, when students will read the Parable of the Prodigal Son as told by Jesus.
“You can see from the list of texts that it is not meant to be inclusive of Jews,” Joshua Fixler, associate rabbi at Congregation Emanu-El in Houston, told the Forward. “If it were more inclusive of Judaism, that wouldn’t make it better, because it would still be the state lifting up one or two religious traditions over all others.”
The move is the latest in a series of efforts to expand the role of Christianity in public education, and more broadly, to challenge the separation of church and state as a bedrock principle of American law. Texas also requires classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, allows schools to hire religious chaplains as mental health counselors, and lets schools set aside a daily time period for Bible readings and “voluntary prayer.”
Supporters of the reading list, such as the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, argue teachers will present the Bible as a historical and literary text — not as dogma.
“Teaching students essential excerpts from the Bible so that they may be well-read is not ‘sermonizing’ any more than reading Greek mythology encourages paganism,” Matthew McCormick, an education analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, wrote in a blog post supporting the list.
Questionable Choices
According to David Segal, a rabbi based in Houston and policy counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, that distinction between historical and literary text and dogma contradicts the list’s design. The curriculum compels teachers to use overwhelmingly Protestant translations, he said, inherently favoring certain interpretations over others.
There are hundreds of English Bible translations, each carrying different theological implications. The Texas Board of Education drew from three Protestant Christian versions, plus one passage from the Jewish Publication Society’s 1917 translation of the Tanakh — a version many rabbis consider outdated.
“The choice of a singular translation, and particularly those translations, is one of the things that verges on an unconstitutional preference of one religion over another,” Segal said.
Even the reading list’s lone Jewish text is unsettling, rabbis say. Chapter three of the Book of Lamentations, reflects on the destruction of the First Temple and interprets it as divine punishment for the Israelites’ sins.
Segal said he was puzzled by its inclusion. More concerning, he said, the text appears alongside Holocaust literature. Pairing the chapter with Night by Elie Wiesel and The Survivor by Primo Levi raises troubling questions about whether eighth grade students might be led to interpret the Holocaust as divine punishment from God, he said.
“If you asked me to compile a list of, like, Bible greatest hits that I’d want to teach K-12 for cultural literacy, nowhere on that list would appear Lamentations,” he said. “And that’s coming from someone who actually loves teaching that book to adults.”
Alongside Anne Frank’s diary and the poem Blessed is the Match by Hannah Senesh, seventh graders will read a Christian translation of the 23rd Psalm, which describes God as a loving protector who guides his people through life’s hardship. Because it comes from the King James Version, the reading list refers to it by its Christian title: the Shepherd’s Psalm.
Others have raised concerns about the age-appropriateness of the material — and whether teachers will be equipped to deal with the thorny questions it raises.
Caryn Tamber-Rosenau, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Houston, teaches a college class on the Hebrew Bible. She said she believes in the value of teaching religious texts, but she cautioned that the method matters.
“Some of these texts present incredibly difficult historical, literary, and especially theological questions,” she said. “How are teachers going to mediate those things for sixth graders?”
That points to a broader concern, Segal said: Despite supporters describing the curriculum as reflecting “Judeo-Christian values,” he is unaware of any Jewish organizations or leaders that have endorsed the reading list.
Members of the Texas Board of Education who voted in favor of the curriculum did not respond to the Forward’s requests for comment.
“It’s not really very Judeo, because all but one of the Hebrew Bible selections are presented in the form of a Christian translation,” Segal said. “Christians have every right to understand it that way within their own theology and belief and doctrine, but it’s a problem when the state is assigning that version.”
The post Texas’ new Bible curriculum isn’t as ‘Judeo’ as advertised, local rabbis say appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Colorado voters weigh candidate for Congress who declined to call Boulder firebombing antisemitic
A democratic socialist once fired from a law job for pro-Palestinian comments is hoping to unseat a longtime member of Congress in Colorado’s primary election Tuesday, following primary victories for allies in New York.
Attorney Melat Kiros is a viable contender, according to polls, which show her about even with Rep. Diana DeGette in the race for Colorado’s 1st congressional district, which DeGette has held since 1997. One other candidate, University of Colorado Regent Wandy James, is polling a distant third for the seat, which includes almost all of the city and county of Denver.
Kiros, who was born the year DeGette took office, has used Israel policy as a wedge throughout the campaign — calling for an arms embargo against Israel, including funding for defensive weapons like the Iron Dome.
Last week, Kiros drew criticism for declining to call a firebombing attack at a vigil for Israeli hostages in Boulder last year antisemitic.
But some Jews are supporting her, saying that Kiros’ harsh criticism of Israel is necessary and warranted. DeGette has outfundraised Kiros at a 3-to-1 ratio, while Kiros has picked up endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement.
Kiros’ candidacy in the deep-blue district, where DeGette won three-quarters of the vote in 2024, will test the momentum of recent congressional primary victories by Democratic Socialists of America–backed candidates Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York. Avila Chevalier personally campaigned for Kiros on Monday on X.
The race also comes during a tenuous month for Jews in the state. Students in Boulder issued a statement June 3 praising the Boulder attack as an act of “resistance.” Denver Jewish Day School, the largest Jewish school in the state, sent kids home early from summer camp June 11 after receiving threats. And last week the ADL filed a civil rights complaint alleging severe antisemitic harassment in Boulder schools.
Colorado voters will also go to the polls Tuesday to choose their nominees to succeed Gov. Jared Polis. Leading the Democratic candidates in polls is Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors. (His top opponent, Sen. Michael Bennet, has a Jewish mother but does not identify as Jewish.)
Here’s 4 things to know about the congressional race ahead of the election.
1. Kiros entered politics after a pro-Palestinian blog post got her fired.
Kiros, whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Ethiopia when she was a baby, was working as an associate for law firm Sidley Austin in November 2023 when it signed onto a letter to law schools instructing them to take an “unequivocal stance” against antisemitism and Islamophobia, including protests that call for the elimination of Israel, which the letter called antisemitic.
In a Medium post responding to the letter, Kiros wrote that she agreed with the stance against antisemitism and that “there is no justification for the attacks on Israel on Oct. 7.” But she added that she did not believe that calling for the elimination of Israel qualified as antisemitism, partly because that perspective foreclosed on the possibility of a one-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians enjoyed equal rights.
“By chilling future lawyers’ employment prospects for criticism of the Israeli government’s actions and its legitimacy,” Kiros wrote, “you are complicit in Israel’s weaponization of anti-Semitism.”
The post received some traction online, and Sidley asked Kiros to take it down. She refused, reportedly leading to her firing. She then worked as communications director for 2024 congressional candidate John Padora, who placed third in that year’s Democratic primary in Colorado’s fourth congressional district.
2. She repeatedly declined to call the Boulder attack antisemitic
Kiros was grilled on her stances about Israel in a June 22 interview with a Denver news channel.
She said weapons that defend Israeli citizens against attacks from Iran and Hezbollah “give Israel the cover to continue the genocide that’s taking place in Palestine and now the ethnic cleansing that’s taking place in Lebanon.” (Genocide scholars have debated whether the war in Gaza rises to the level of genocide.)
Some of Kiros’ comments on Israel appeared to take a more centrist position than some of her far-left allies. Though she has campaigned with controversial streamer Hasan Piker, she said she disagreed with his statement that Hamas is a lesser evil than Israel.
And asked whether Israel “had it coming” on Oct. 7, Kiros said “no, not at all — it’s about understanding the conditions in which violence and war happens.” She said Israel had resisted change despite decades of international frustration with its policies; her job as a politician, she said, was to change those conditions.
But the remark that drew the most attention was her response to a question about the Boulder attack, which took place at an event calling for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. The attacker, Mohammed Soliman, was heard saying “Free Palestine” as he threw molotov cocktails and used an improvised flamethrower to burn his victims.
Soliman left behind writings in which he declared that “Zionism is our enemies until Jerusalem is liberated and they are expelled from our land,” and further described Israel as a “cancer entity,” according to law enforcement.
He injured 13 people in the ambush, including an 82-year-old woman who later died of her wounds.
“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros said. “All I know is that he attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed. And I don’t even know what the people that were at that protest believed, too. In fact most of them were probably just there to ask that the people who were kidnapped on Oct. 7 be returned to their families.”
Asked to confirm that she thought the attack was not antisemitic, Kiros said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what his intentions were.”
In a statement to the Forward, DeGette said, “It’s never okay to rationalize antisemitism or excuse an act of terrorism. Those aren’t Denver values and we deserve better.”
The Kiros campaign did not respond to an inquiry.
3. DeGette, the incumbent, has a mixed record on Israel
DeGette, 68, has also pitched herself as a progressive. She was an early supporter of Medicare for All and includes abolishing ICE in her campaign positions. Her supporters highlight her efforts to secure abortion rights and her role in managing Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.
But unlike Kiros, DeGette has supported a two-state solution. DeGette voted for an April 2024 foreign aid package that included $5.2 billion to replenish Israeli air defenses.
“I believe Israel should have a nation, and I believe Palestine should have a nation, and I believe we need to move towards that solution,” DeGette told Colorado Public Radio. “I believe Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Her support for the war in Gaza flagged as it dragged on. In December 2025, DeGette voted against the National Defense Authorization Act that included provisions for funding additional weapons to Israel — and calling for a permanent ceasefire along with a surge in humanitarian aid.
But some constituents remained unsatisfied. DeGette’s heated exchange with one at a campaign event earlier this year went viral on social media. Someone asked “why she kept sending money for bombs,” and DeGette replied she was only funding defensive arms. When the constituent stormed off, saying DeGette didn’t care about Palestinians, the congresswoman followed her to correct her.
Finally, DeGette said, “If the only issue that you care about is this issue, then you should not vote for me.”
4. Some Jews in her district support Kiros. Others are worried.
Rabbi Rachel Kobrin, the spiritual leader of Congregation Rodef Shalom, wrote in the Denver Post last week that Kiros’ candidacy scared her as a liberal Jewish woman because it reflected a coarsened public discourse around Israel and ruled out a two-state solution.
“I do not believe Milat Kiros has shown the curiosity, humility, and empathy necessary to represent my community as a political leader,” Kobrin wrote.
One Jewish reader responded to Kobrin’s column by coming to her defense.
“We fought the state of South Africa as an apartheid state that was violently and legally separating and killing its black native citizens,” wrote Vivian Weinstein, a Denver resident critical of the war. “In the same way, Israel cannot continue to exist as an apartheid state according to its own law.”
The post Colorado voters weigh candidate for Congress who declined to call Boulder firebombing antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
How seriously should we take San Francisco’s anti-Zionist hecklers?
The videos of local activists in San Francisco accosting Scott Wiener, the state senator running to replace Nancy Pelosi in the U.S. House, are hard to watch.
“Say ‘Free Palestine’ for the camera, dog,” Jesus Coba, who runs a popular Instagram account, tells Wiener as he’s trying to watch the World Cup at a bar. “Say ‘Free Palestine’!”
Coba is holding the camera close to Wiener’s face as the politician stares at him in silence.
A few days later Wiener was surrounded and screamed at as he made his way through Dolores Park, where he had come to participate in a Shabbat service as part of the Trans March.
“F— you and your Zionist handlers,” one person shouted at Wiener, who is both Jewish and gay, and has championed legislation protecting trans rights. “F— you and your Israeli masters.”
What happened to Wiener can be seen as part of a national trend. Jack Schlossberg, a Jewish heir to the Kennedy dynasty, face-planted in his attempt to replace Rep. Jerry Nadler in the U.S. House. He ran a poor campaign, but it wasn’t helped by the fact that he tried to trade on his status as a Millennial social media influencer while refusing to embrace the TikTok generation’s skepticism of Israel.
“Can you say ‘F— Israel,’ Jack?” an erratic fellow influencer who goes by the name Crackhead Barney asked visibly stressed Schlossberg during a street interview.
“No way, dude, I’m Jewish,” Schlossberg responds.
And other Democrats have spoken about the extent to which a candidate’s willingness to accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza has become a litmus test in primary contests.
But, at the same time, the people hounding Wiener in public are part of a radical but fringe minority — one with deep roots in San Francisco — that has struggled to gain political power even as its members excel at generating viral clips.
***
San Francisco is home to loud and often obnoxious activism fueled by the very real sense of alienation that comes when a region known for its radical politics is subjected to repeated rounds of displacement by the tech industry. I grew up in the city during the first dot-com boom, when the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project plastered the neighborhood with calls to vandalize luxury cars and sushi restaurants. The man behind the group was eventually arrested and police found instructions in his apartment for how to build acid bombs.
Gay Shame, an anonymous protest collective, carried on this style of activism with a promise to “instigate, irritate, and agitate” and graffiti insisting that “Queers Hate Techies,” while locals blockaded the private buses that ferried tech workers to their jobs south of the city.
When Google Glass — an early precursor to Meta Ray-Bans that embed a livestreaming camera in your glasses — became a symbol of gentrification, a woman was punched in the face for wearing the device into a local dive bar.
It’s not shocking that Jews have not always fared well among this set, for whom strident opposition to symbols of power reigns supreme. A disturbing precursor to the protests against Wiener came in 2018 when activists began weekly protests outside Manny’s, a cafe and “civic event space” in the Mission.
The business replaced a sushi restaurant, but it still somehow became the target of neighborhood activists who demanded a host of concessions from Manny Yekutiel, the cafe’s Jewish owner. Yekutiel agreed to many of the asks: bilingual signage and staff, affordable drip coffee and free event bookings for community groups.
But Yekutiel still found himself facing weekly protests, including by Gay Shame, accusing him of promoting a “pro-elite, pro-Zionist and pro-gentrification agenda.” Someone spray-painted a Star of David and “F— Zionism” on the exterior, and a window was smashed.
His sole crime was apparently a Facebook post from a few years before he opened the business asking for recommendations on “some good Zionist organizations in the Bay.”
The people who thought protesting Yekutiel was a good use of their Wednesday nights for several years are the same folks — sometimes literally — who are now harassing Wiener.
Coba, who was kicked out of the bar for yelling at Wiener, and whom Wiener said had previously accosted him at the airport and accused him of having a “tainted bloodline,” recently posted footage of someone chasing Yekutiel through a street fair.
Yekutiel is now running for the Board of Supervisors, which is San Francisco’s city council, and the man quizzing him was mad that Manny’s had once hosted pro-Israel activist Hen Mazzig. Coba claimed Mazzig was an Israeli commando, which I could find no evidence for, and Yekutiel said all he knew was that Mazzig had served in the Israeli military as most Israeli Jews are required to do.
“Well maybe having Israelis at the cafe isn’t a good idea,” the man, who does not identify himself, tells Yekutiel.
***
It could be difficult to summon much sympathy for tech workers whose commute was delayed by nudists trying to board their buses as a form of protest. But it’s much easier to see how corrosive the “Zionist” litmus tests being applied to Jews in San Francisco and elsewhere are.
As a longtime politician, Wiener’s record of support for Israel is deeper than Yekutiel’s. But not by much. He joined a solidarity trip to Israel in 2024, but had also called for a ceasefire in Gaza in November 2023, opposes U.S. military aid to Israel at least until a new government is in place, and — after an awkward delay — he joined the other candidates in the race for Pelosi’s seat in accusing Israel of genocide.
Wiener is a relative moderate in a city where progressives sometimes treat that as akin to being MAGA, and both Coba and the people yelling at Wiener during Pride make allusions to disagreement with his preferred housing policy. Mayor Daniel Lurie, another moderate, was chased out of the Trans March last year, though without as much vitriol.
But it seems clear that the obsession with Wiener supposedly supporting genocide is tied to the fact that he’s Jewish.
His opponent, Connie Chan, is backed by labor unions and has staked out a position to Wiener’s left on Israel, though she has faced no backlash for being endorsed by Pelosi, who embodies moderate San Francisco politics and has been a stalwart supporter of Israel.
At the same time, it’s important to keep in mind that the people leading the charge against Wiener have failed time and again to move the political needle.
They didn’t stop gentrification or slow the mass arrival of tech workers to the city and luxury buses still ferry them to work. Google Glass flopped, but now every other influencer on TikTok is wearing Meta Ray-Bans to film content. Manny’s continues to thrive with support from prominent progressives in the city, and Yekutiel appears to be leading in his race to join the city council.
Wiener rose from the Board of Supervisors to the State Senate, and despite his extremely vocal detractors he remains the favorite to win in November. Local media has not framed Israel as a key issue.
(Schlossberg, for his part, ultimately lost to another pro-Israel Jewish candidate who was to his right on Gaza.)
When Joe Eskenazi, one of the most astute journalists covering local politics in the city, wrote about the Manny’s protests years ago he aptly described the demonstrators as “a diminutive group of attention-seekers.”
That certainly seemed to be the case at the time. Whether the rising tide of animosity toward Israel will afford these hecklers a veto over Jewish politicians ascending the political ladder is now an open question.
The post How seriously should we take San Francisco’s anti-Zionist hecklers? appeared first on The Forward.
