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How the Lower East Side has changed since the 1988 rom-com ‘Crossing Delancey’
(New York Jewish Week) — The classic and very Jewish 1988 film “Crossing Delancey” is one of those movies that feels both extremely of its time and also completely timeless.
Director Joan Micklin Silver’s film has all the classic rom-com trappings: A woman who’s torn between two men (and to that end, two worlds); complaints about how hard it is to meet a man in New York City (as true in 1988 as it is in 2022), and a “mother” figure who knows better (here, a Jewish grandmother known as Bubbe, and in this case, she actually does know better). You could pluck all these specifics and drop them into a present-day film — and, if told with the heart and care of “Crossing Delancey,” still have a pretty good movie.
Yet there’s one thing about the “Crossing Delancey” that fully anchors it in the past, and that is its late-1980s Lower East Side setting. While our heroine, Izzy (Amy Irving), lives and works on the Upper West Side, she pays frequent visits to her Bubbe (Yiddish theater actress Reizl Bozyk), her grandmother, downtown. From the moment that Izzy steps off the train at Delancey Street, she’s transported to another world: a bustling Jewish enclave with market-goers shopping for produce, friends and neighbors in the streets kibbitzing and a Hasidic child sitting outside the subway, enjoying a treat from a local bakery.
This dichotomy between the “Old World” of the Lower East Side and the “New World” uptown is the central conflict of the film: Izzy’s inability to reconcile her Jewish roots with her desire to live a secular, intelligentsia lifestyle, as represented by her two love interests (Sam the Pickle Man and Anton, the self-important author).
However, rewatching the film in the present day, I can’t help but wonder: Would Izzy run from the shtetl if she knew that in a few years, it wouldn’t exist anymore? That due to rising rents and a shift in population, many Jewish businesses would meet their end — or, somewhat ironically, be part of the flight to Brooklyn that began in the early-to-mid 2000s? In some ways, 1988 itself was the beginning and the end: It marked the opening of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, an effort to preserve the neighborhood’s immigrant past, and it was the very same year that Mayor Koch created a new redevelopment proposal for the Seward Park Extension, a canary in the coal mine for the sea change of development the city would see over the next 30 years.
Re-watching the film in 2022, it struck me how the Lower East Side’s bustling Jewish enclave — the same place where my grandparents were born and raised — has since been lost to time, gentrification and re-zoning plans. These days, the neighborhood paints a different picture entirely: giant buildings hog entire city blocks, with construction promising even more sky-high buildings. There’s no specific character to the neighborhood, no story to tell, few places more integral to the city’s fabric than the Delancey-Essex McDonald’s.
Of course, if you’ve lived in the city long enough, you know there’s no getting comfortable. New Yorkers have to, in essence, harden their hearts. We must accept that the local business you love that’s here today very well could be gone tomorrow — even if that business is a Duane Reade. The Lower East Side of today is not the neighborhood of 1988, or 1968 or 1928.
But amongst all of the present-day residential developments, upscale clothing stores and fast food chains, old-school Jewish businesses like The Pickle Guys, Kossar’s Bagels and Bialys and Yonah Schimmel’s Knish Bakery are still thriving. (And, I’d like to think that if you look hard enough, you’ll find some meddling but well-meaning bubbes and yentas, too.)
While we might not be able to fully experience the Lower East Side as the cast and crew of “Crossing Delancey,” here are four places from “Crossing Delancey” that you can still visit, and four that are sadly gone forever.
What Remains Today
Bubbe’s Apartment
154 Broome Street
The interior shots of Bubbe’s apartment, where Izzy fulfills all of her granddaughterly duties, like singing with her grandmother in Yiddish and plucking her chin hairs, were filmed at 154 Broome Street. The 181-unit building sits at the mouth of the Williamsburg Bridge — which is why Bubbe has that spectacular view — and is part of the New York City Housing Authority’s Seward Park Housing Extension. So while you still can visit the exterior of Bubbe’s apartment building today, don’t linger too long — it might weird out the current tenants.
Essex Market
108 Essex Street
This one is a little complicated. The original Essex Market, where Bubbe shows off her Korean-language skills, still stands today. (If you get off at the subway at Delancey Street, you can’t really miss it.) But that iteration of the market closed its doors in 2019 — in order to relocate to a building across the street so big and so glassy it would make Michael Bloomberg blush. In addition to apartments, office space and a movie theater (it’s a truly mixed-use building for our modern times!), Essex Market does boast local, independent vendors, such as Essex Olive & Spice, Porto Rico Importing Co. and Puebla Mexicana food. Per the New York Times, only one of the market’s vendors decided to forgo the move, opting instead for retirement. But you might want to pay a visit to the original Essex Market while you still can — even if only to give it one last look. Following the move, Essex Market initially housed some avant-garde art installations, but it has since seemingly closed its doors for good. According to Gothamist, it’s to be razed to create — what else? — more condos.
Seward Park Handball Court
Essex Street between Grand and Hester Streets
From the moment Sam and Izzy meet, he makes no effort to hide his ardor. In fact, I’d say he uses every weapon in his arsenal to demonstrate his interest — even going so far as to try to impress her with his handball skills when she unexpectedly drops by the court. (You might also clock his CUNY sweatshirt, as I most certainly did.) The handball court is still there, should you decide you want to play a pickup game, but sadly the court’s colorful mural depicted in the film has since been painted over.
Bonus: Gray’s Papaya
2090 Broadway
While this article is focused on the film’s Lower East Side locations, and with good reason, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that one important New York institution Izzy visits triumphantly remains: The Upper West Side Gray’s Papaya. There, Izzy celebrates her birthday with a friend and a hot dog — the right way to do it, in my opinion — when a woman bursts in singing “Some Enchanted Evening,” for everyone and no one in particular. It’s one of many of the film’s classic New York moments.
What’s Been Replaced
Steinberg’s Dairy
21 Essex Street
When Izzy emerges from that train at Delancey Street, director Silver takes great care to immerse us in this world. The camera stays on Izzy as she walks from the subway to Bubbe’s apartment, passing a host of local businesses along the way. Among them is Steinberg’s Dairy, which once lived at 21 Essex Street. Steinberg’s Dairy, which also had an Upper West Side location, offered staples like herring, egg salad and vegetarian chopped liver for less than a dollar back in 1941. Today, if you’re in the area, you can grab a drink at the punk rock bar Clockwork, which opened in 2013.
Zelig Blumenthal
13 Essex Street
Izzy also takes us by Zelig’s Blumenthal (also known as Z & A Kol Torah), where three older women sit outside, enjoying the sights and sounds around them. Once a popular Judaica store, it unexpectedly closed its Lower East Side doors in 2010 after 60 years in business. At the time, then-owner Mordechai Blumenthal made the decision to relocate the store to Flatbush due to a dwindling Orthodox population and foot traffic in the area, and a landlord who made clear he “wanted him gone.” It’s unclear if the Flatbush location remains open today, but a vintage clothing store called Country Of has taken up its original spot.
Posner’s Pickles (AKA Guss’ Pickles)
35 Essex Street
Posner’s Pickles, as run by Sam the Pickle Man in the film, was never exactly a real place to begin with. Filming took place at the world-famous Guss’ Pickles, which first opened on Hester Street in 1920, before relocating to Essex Street, where there were once over 80 pickle vendors for locals to choose from. After a stint on Orchard Street, Guss’ Pickles followed in the footsteps of so many others by then, leaving Manhattan to open up shop in Brooklyn’s Dekalb Market in 2017. While Guss’ Pickles is today based out of the Bronx, their delicious pickles are available to order no matter where you are in the country, via Goldbelly. Today, 35 Essex Street is home to Delancey Wine — appropriately named, but doesn’t offer possibilities for a slogan like “a joke and a pickle for only a nickel,” as Posner’s Pickles did in the film.
Schapiro’s Kosher Wines
124 Rivington Street
For 100 years, Schapiro’s Kosher Wines proudly served the Jewish community as the only kosher winery in New York City. It’s where Bubbe chides Izzy for her lack of interest in Sam, and while today the pair couldn’t have this conversation outside Schapiro’s, they could grab brunch at the restaurant Essex. Home to New York City’s “longest-running Brunch Party,” Essex salutes its Lower East Side roots with dishes like potato pancakes and Israeli couscous.
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The post How the Lower East Side has changed since the 1988 rom-com ‘Crossing Delancey’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Columbia University pledged to revamp Mideast offerings. Students of the subject say fragmented courses fall short.
New president Jennifer Mnookin took the helm of Columbia University July 1, vowing to chart a steady course following a tumultuous Gaza War protest movement and Trump administration threats to pull funding that led the Ivy to make a controversial pledge for reforms.
The government also threatened a takeover of the department called Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department (MESAAS), which has long been associated with the Palestinian cause and known as a hub for scholarship critical of Israel.
Columbia’s July 2025 agreement, issued in response to allegations that the protests amounted to discrimination against Jews on campus, pledged to “conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of programs in regional areas across the University, starting with the Middle East” to ensure offerings are “comprehensive and balanced.”
Nearly a year later, the department has been left untouched, according to its chair, Gil Hochberg.
“No requests, suggestions, recommendations, changes were made or enforced by the university on MESAAS as a department. Our academic autonomy has been respectfully preserved,” she said in an interview with the Forward. “The department itself has not been directly or indirectly affected.”
Columbia has made other moves to offer more courses that cover Israel. But undergraduates who study the region say that fragmentation makes pursuing a major challenging.
Orpaz Zamir, a Middle East Studies major at Columbia who hopes to pursue a career in Mideast policy, said courses focused on the conflict are limited. “If you want to study about Israel and Palestine, there are only two classes you can take,” referring to a sociology course taught by Professor Yinon Cohen and the course taught by Massad. He took both.
Massad, the only professor currently teaching about the conflict in MESAAS, has been the department’s chief lightning rod. His article a day after the Oct. 7 attacks, describing the Israeli victims as “colonists” and videos of the attacks as “awesome,” sparked a petition with 70,000 signatures to remove him from Columbia. Massad, who is tenured, has been teaching the course Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies for years. Among his students was Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former Columbia Gaza encampment leader who last week defeated a longtime New York congressman on an anti-Israel platform and drew criticism for her refusal to condemn the Oct. 7 attacks. As an undergrad, she called Massad her favorite professor.
In Spring 2024, a visiting professor, Mohamad Abdou, was fired amid the Congressional hearings on campus antisemitism because of a social media post he made shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks that read: “I’m with the muqawamah [the resistance] be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.”
Activist faculty made headlines but also spoke to a broader reality, as identified by an internal Columbia University antisemitism task force that found in its December 2025 report that “Columbia lacks full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy, and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist.”
The same report concluded: “Many Jewish and Israeli students reported that if they want to study the Middle East at Columbia, there currently are not enough options that don’t treat Zionism and Israel as fundamentally illegitimate.”
Exam questions
Students interviewed by the Forward describe experiences consistent with those findings. Zamir said he found Cohen’s course on Israel more balanced than Massad’s, though concluded the assigned readings disproportionately favored the Palestinian perspectives.
“To the Palestinian side, he would give entire chapters and long readings, and then for the pro-Israel side it would be mostly a few pages of an article,” said Zamir. “There’s one book that they did give to us that was a bit more pro-Israeli, but it was pro-Israeli in the bad sense, like it justified ethnic cleansing. It’s not the kind of thing that I would support.”
In Massad’s course, Zamir saw discussions of the conflict reflect a particular ideological viewpoint.
He recalled Massad questioning evidence of Hamas sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attacks and disputing claims that Hamas intentionally targets civilians. Zamir also found the questions on exams to be problematic. On one exam, Zamir said, two out of three questions had to do with how Zionism collaborated with the Nazis. On the final exam, one of three questions asked students whether Israel had the right to exist.
“Because he didn’t give any reason in class for why Israel should exist, it’s very hard to answer that question with anything other than ‘no,’” Zamir said. He said he drew on arguments he had learned outside the course to argue that Israel did have that right — and received full credit for the answer.
Zamir noted that despite their ideological differences, Massad made an effort to make him feel welcomed as the only Israeli in the class, even when fellow students didn’t.
Other students interested in the subject described similar difficulties finding courses they viewed as balanced.
“I was looking up every professor and looking pretty scrutinizingly through the description of every class,” said Zev Huneycutt, a rising senior majoring in Middle East studies, economics and political science.
“In the Middle East studies department, when I would look them up, and they’d have leveled this kind of crazy criticism of Israel, and it’s not stuff like, ‘I have some issues with current Israeli government policies,’ it’s stuff that goes a little farther than that. It’s delegitimizing, and I’m like, ‘Okay, well, I’m not taking that professor then.’”
In February, as part of the agreement with the federal government, Columbia published an internal review committee’s recommendations and commitments from several academic departments to enhance Middle East-focused offerings — almost all of which are set to occur outside the MESAAS department.
Indeed, the first recommendation from the review committee reads: “Expand coursework on the Middle East … by developing offerings that complement — and are clearly differentiated from — courses offered by MESAAS.”
Hochberg concludes that this is because MESAAS is already fulfilling its mandate. She noted that the department was “rigorously reviewed” both internally and externally in 2024 during the standard review process that takes place for every department at Columbia every eight years.
“It would be very strange to have another, and the university would never do that,” she said, adding that the review done in 2024 generated a file of 20 pages of recommendations detailing the strengths and weaknesses of the department. According to Hochberg, none of the recommendations made in internal and external reviews had to do with how Israel is taught at MESAAS.
Hochberg, who was born in Israel and identifies as an anti-Zionist, has previously taught courses on Israeli culture. Serving as chair of MESAAS for the past six years, she said, administrative responsibilities have required her to step back from teaching those courses, contributing to what she acknowledges as a gap in the department’s offerings on Israel.
She contends much of the criticism of an anti-Israel bias within MESAAS has been overblown. “It’s a very vigorous department,” she said. “The picture of it as being like a propaganda machine, it’s just not fair.”
Arab Studies search
Though Columbia has left MESAAS largely untouched, it has made additions to other departments and institutes, including bringing on a visiting professor in the economics department to teach about the Middle East, and arranging a visiting appointment in the History Department to teach the history of modern Israel. Its School of International and Public Affairs has appointed a visiting professor, jointly with Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, to teach on the Jewish world and Middle East policy with courses beginning this fall.
The university also plans to hire a new Edward Said Professor in Modern Arab Studies and Literature, a tenured position that was vacated last August by Rashid Khalidi, a leading scholar of Palestinian history. Khalidi cited the university’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism as part of its agreement with the federal government — which equates denying Jews their right to self-determination in Israel with antisemitism — as his reason for resigning.
One potential candidate, Max Weiss, was active in Princeton’s pro-Palestinian movement, serving as a spokesperson when faculty occupied Princeton’s Clio Hall in April 2024 and 13 people were arrested. Another, Rosie Bsheer, was removed from her leadership post at Harvard after she organized a panel that former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers described as “very likely” antisemitic under the IHRA definition.
The university also plans to launch a new undergraduate major in Global Affairs and Public Policy, which it says will expand Middle East course offerings. But the proposal has drawn criticism. In a June 15 statement, the Student Affairs Committee of the University Senate, a body that sets campus policy, questioned “the role of the Global Affairs and Public Policy major in regard to the federal resolution agreement’s commitment to offer politically prescribed curricula on the Middle East.”
To help expose students to a range of analyses of the Middle East, the internal review committee encouraged cross-listing among the Jewish studies institute, MESAAS and the proposed new program.
But this upcoming school year, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is offering several courses that pertain to the Middle East, including a course on the history of modern Israel and a course on Jews living in North Africa, that are not cross-listed with MESAAS. (The Institute’s director declined to speak with the Forward, saying that she does not discuss Columbia in the media.)
The only Israel-focused course that MESAAS will cross-list for the upcoming year is the sociology course taught by Cohen.
According to Hochberg, “There are absolutely no political barriers to including courses offered by Jewish and Israel studies in the department, and there never have been.”
She said, “I don’t think it’s a hostile relationship between MESAAS and IIJS. There’s just no substantial relationship. But we do cross-list some courses.”
For Zamir, Columbia’s new reforms are unlikely to address what he views as the underlying problem.
“Adding some classes in the Israel Institute won’t change things, because no one will take a class in the Israel Institute unless they are pro-Israeli to begin with,” he said. “If it’s in the Middle East department, it’s like ‘okay, well, it sounds neutral,’ even though it’s definitely not.”
Lishi Baker, who graduated this spring with a major in history and a specialization in the Middle East, said he largely built his Middle East studies education outside the MESAAS department. He sees the university’s efforts to expand Middle East offerings in other departments as a welcome development.
“A lot of people do what I did, which is study the Middle East through other departments,” Baker said.
He pieced together courses from the History Department, political science, policy school and Jewish studies, ultimately earning a minor in Jewish studies because many of the courses he took related to Israel did not count toward his major.
“I think now, the best place to study the Middle East at Columbia is everywhere but the Middle East Studies Department,” said Baker.
The post Columbia University pledged to revamp Mideast offerings. Students of the subject say fragmented courses fall short. appeared first on The Forward.
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VIDEO: Literature scholar Nathan Cohen speaks about ‘shund’ literature
נתן כּהן, דער אָנגעזעענער פֿאָרשער פֿון דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור בײַם בר־אילן אוניווערסיטעט, האָט לעצטנס געהאַלטן אַ רעפֿעראַט אויף ייִדיש אין מינכן, דײַטשלאַנד, וועגן דער ייִדישער מאַסן־ליטעראַטור (דער עיקר, שונד־ליטעראַטור) צווישן 1860 און 1914.
דער נאָמען פֿונעם רעפֿעראַט, „ביכער פֿאַר אַלע“, איז געווען אַ רמז אויפֿן פֿאַרלאַג פֿונעם זעלבן נאָמען, וואָס זײַן שליחות איז געווען צו מאַכן די וועלטלעכע ייִדישע ליטעראַטור מער צוטריטלעך און וואָלוועלער פֿאַר די אָרעמע ייִדישע מאַסן.
די לעקציע, וואָס כּהן האָט געהאַלטן דעם 17טן יוני אינעם לודוויג־מאַקסימיליאַנס־אוניווערסיטעט, איז געווען טייל פֿון אַ יערלעכער טראַדיציע אין מינכן, אײַנגעפֿירט אין 2011 — דעם שלום־עליכם־רעפֿעראַט אין אָנדענק פֿון עוויטאַ וויעצקי, ז״ל. אַרום זיבעציק מענטשן זענען געקומען הערן דעם רעפֿעראַט, און נאָך אַ פֿופֿציק האָבן זיך צוגעהערט דורך דער אינטערנעץ. די אונטערנעמונג איז געשטיצט געוואָרן דורכן קולטור־צענטער פֿון דער מינכנער קהילה און דורך דער קושנער־פֿונדאַציע.
מיט אַ טאָג פֿריִער האָט כּהן געגעבן אַן אַרײַנפֿיר צו דער טעמע פֿאַר אַ גרופּע אָרטיקע ייִדיש־סטודענטן. ווי מע האָט געהערט פֿון די אָפּרופֿן נאָכן קלאַס, האָט נישט נאָר דער תּוכן, נאָר אויך כּהנס אופֿן רעדן גופֿא פֿאַרכאַפּט די תּלמידים. בײַ עטלעכע סטודענטן איז דאָס געווען צום ערשטן מאָל וואָס זיי הערן אַ גאַנצענע לעקציע אויף ייִדיש, און דערצו נאָך – פֿון אַן אומבאַקאַנטן לערער.
אינעם רעפֿעראַט גופֿא דעם צווייטן טאָג האָט כּהן אָנגעהויבן מיט אַ היסטאָרישן אַרײַנפֿיר, דערקלערנדיק ווי אַזוי און ווען עס האָט זיך אָנגעהויבן פֿאַרשפּרייטן די ייִדיש־וועלטלעכע ליטעראַטור און וואָסער ראָלע האָט אין דעם געשפּילט די ייִדישע פּרעסע, אָנהייבנדיק מיטן אַמאָליקן ייִדישן וואָכנבלאַט „קול מבֿשׂר“.
אין צוואַנציקסטן יאָרהונדערט האָבן זיך די ייִדישע צײַטונגען גענומען פֿאַרשפּרייטן אַלץ מער און מער. אין וואַרשע אין 1906 האָט מען אַרויסגעגעבן אַ סך מער ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע צײַטשריפֿטן ווי העברעיִשע אָדער פּויליש־ייִדישע. האָבן די ייִדישע צײַטונגען געמוזט אויסהאַלטן אַ שטאַרקע קאָנקורענץ, און איין מיטל אין קאַמף איז געווען צו דרוקן די ראָמאַנען אין המשכים (אָדער, ווי מע פֿלעגט עס רופֿן אויפֿן דײַטשמערישן שטייגער – „אין פֿאָרזעצונגען“). אַ בולטער בײַשפּיל פֿון אַזאַ „ראָמאַנען“־קאָנקורענץ געפֿינט מען אין די צוויי וואַרשעווער טאָגצײַטונגען, „הײַנט“ און „מאָמענט“.
די לעקציע האָט כּהן אילוסטרירט מיט אָן אַ שיעור בילדער, ניט נאָר פֿון די צײַטונגען, נאָר דער עיקר אויך פֿון די שיינע שער־בלעטלעך פֿון די אַרומגערעדטע ראָמאַנען; צווישן זיי — ניט ווייניק ווערק פֿון די ייִדישע „שונד“־מחברים אײַזיק־מאיר דיק און שמר. אָט נעמט למשל אַזאַ טיטל: „די בלינדע יתומה, אָדער צווישן טיגערן“ פֿון שמרן, געדרוקט אין 1892.
גרויס הנאה האָט דער עולם געהאַט קוקנדיק אויף ייִדישע באַאַרבעטונגען פֿון אַזעלכע באַקאַנטע ווערק ווי „שערלאָק האָלמס“, „ראָבינזאָן קרוזאָ“ און „מאַקס און מאָריץ“ — אַן אילוסטרירטע דײַטש־שפּראַכיקע דערציילונג פֿון 1865. כּהן האָט זיך באַזונדער אָפּגעשטעלט אויף די דעמאָלטיקע נאָרמעס פֿון איבערזעצן, אויף דער נטיה צו פֿאַרייִדישן פֿרעמדשפּראַכיקע ווערק: אָט הייסט למשל ראָבינזאַן קרוזאָס געפֿונענער חבֿר ניט „פֿרײַטיק“ ווי אין אַנדערע לשונות, נאָר דווקא „שבת“.
מיט פֿילצאָליקע קאָמישע בײַשפּילן האָט כּהן געפֿירט דעם עולם דורך דער געשיכטע פֿון ייִדישער ליטעראַטור, און בולט אָנגעוויזן ווי אַזוי זי האָט אַלע מאָל געזוכט אַ מיטל־ליניע צווישן די אַמביציעס און פֿאָדערונגען פֿון דער הויכער ליטעראַטור מיטן געוואַלדיקן נאָכפֿרעג בײַ די מאַסן נאָך אַ מער „צוטריטלעכער“ ליטעראַטור.
כּהן האָט אַזוי שיין און דראַמאַטיש באַשריבן די שונדראָמאַנען מיט זייערע סענסאַציאָנעלע קעפּלעך, אַז דער עולם איז שוין, דאַכט זיך, גרייט געווען צו קויפֿן און צו לייענען די ביכער. אַ שאָד וואָס קיין מוכר־ספֿרים איז דאָרטן ניט געווען!
דערצו האָבן אַ סך צוהערערס זיך געפֿרייט אַז זיי קענען הערן אַ לאַנגע לעקציע אויף ייִדיש. עטלעכע האָבן זיך אַפֿילו נאָכגעפֿרעגט וועגן ייִדיש־קורסן – וואָס דאָס איז אפֿשר די שענסטע פּעולה פֿון כּהנס רעפֿעראַט.
כאָטש מע האָט אין אָנהייב 20סטן יאָרהונדערט אָפֿט געהאַלטן ייִדיש פֿאַר אַ „זשאַרגאָן“ קען מען זאָגן אַז טיילווײַז „זשאַרגאָניזירט“ מען ייִדיש ביז הײַנט צו טאָג, ווײַל ס’רובֿ פֿונעם עולם אַסאָציִיִרט ייִדיש ראשית־כּל מיט מוזיק (און געוויינטלעך בלויז מיט איין געוויסן טיפּ מוזיק – קלעזמער) אָדער וויצן. מיט זײַן רעפֿעראַט האָט כּהן דערוויזן דעם היפּוך — אַז ייִדיש טויג יאָ פֿאַר אַן אַקאַדעמישער בינע, און אַז אַפֿילו וועגן אַזאַ „נידעריקער“ טעמע ווי שונד, קען אַ פּראָפֿעסאָר האַלטן אַן ערשטקלאַסיקע לעקציע.
כּדי צו הערן דעם גאַנצן רעפֿעראַט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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For the first time in decades, Israelis have something to vote for — not just against
As an Israeli-American, I’ve had a front-row seat to the successes, failures, blind spots and breakthroughs of political movements in both places.
One difference has always stood out to me. Americans occasionally get to experience something many Israelis have not felt in a very long time: the opportunity to vote not only against something, but for something.
And that may be the greatest political challenge facing Israel today.
Because before politics is about power, it is about imagination. Before a movement becomes viable, people have to believe that something different is possible.
Last week, leaders of the Israel-Palestinian peace activism group Standing Together launched a new political party in Israel: Makom Lekulanu, which translates to “a place for us all”.
Predictably, the conversation immediately turned to electoral math. Will the party cross the threshold required to enter parliament? Will it weaken other opposition parties? Will it matter in a political system dominated by larger forces?
These questions are understandable. But they overlook what may be the most important thing the new party does: challenging the conviction, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have worked to instill in Israelis, that no genuine political alternative to our grim status quo exists.
The damage predates the crises that have defined Netanyahu’s current term as prime minister: the corruption scandals, the attacks on democratic institutions, the devastation of Oct. 7, and the ensuing catastrophes in Gaza and now the wider region. Since the Second Intifada, Israelis have been taught to think of politics primarily as crisis management. Fear has become synonymous with realism, and hope has become synonymous with naïveté.
Election after election, the horizon has narrowed, and so has the Israeli political imagination. The possibility of fundamental change has seemed to disappear from view.
Students of political change have long observed that transformative moments rarely begin with majorities. More often, they begin with a shift in what people believe is possible.
Standing Together spent years working toward such a shift, long before launching a political party.
Jewish and Palestinian activists joined together to model a different vision of citizenship. They delivered temporary bomb shelters to Bedouin communities neglected by the state. They organized protection for Arab bus drivers threatened by Jewish extremists. They led humanitarian aid convoys toward Gaza despite enormous political pressure and public hostility.
None of these actions changed the balance of power in Israel. But they allowed people to begin experiencing a different version of what Israel could be — a place where Jewish-Palestinian partnership can be practical rather than theoretical, where solidarity can thrive even amid war and trauma, and where citizenship can mean taking responsibility for one another, rather than merely defending one’s own group.
Creating a clear sense that a better kind of civic life is possible, and showing what it could look like, is a tactic that powered Barack Obama to the presidency in the United States. It helped Sen. Bernie Sanders reshape American politics despite never winning a major party nomination for the presidency. It’s won a wave of recent progressive victories in New York City, where I live, which have been fueled by a politics of solidarity and shared purpose rather than grievance alone.
It’s no accident that former Comptroller Brad Lander, one of those New York progressives, has deep relationships with the leaders of Standing Together. A shared ethic — the conviction that the futures of all people in a land are intertwined, whether we acknowledge it or not — lies at the core of both American and Israeli progressivism.
There’s reason to hope that Makom Lekulanu could create momentum in Israel similar to that which politicians like Lander have created in the U.S. The party’s name echoes a 2008 political campaign in Tel Aviv led by Dov Khenin called Ir Lekulanu, or “a city for all.” Khenin, who advocated for affordability, environmental sustainability and democratic participation, began that race polling very low and finished with more than a third of the vote. He lost the election, but he changed the political conversation and inspired a generation of activists who understood that campaigns can succeed even when they do not win.
The party’s name also evokes Eretz Lekulam, “a land for all,” a joint Israeli-Palestinian movement advancing innovative political frameworks — including confederation — for resolving the conflict. Last year, Standing Together adopted Eretz Lekulam’s political platform, becoming one of the few major political actors willing to articulate a comprehensive proposal for equality, freedom and shared belonging for Israelis and Palestinians.
Whether one agrees with every element of that plan is ultimately less important than the fact that it exists. In today’s Israel, fully articulated visions of the future have become surprisingly rare.
Will Makom Lekulanu succeed electorally? I have no idea. But the most important question facing Makom Lekulanu is not whether it can immediately cross an electoral threshold. It is whether it can help Israelis feel hopeful again. Can they picture a politics not organized entirely around fear? A Jewish-Palestinian partnership that’s a source of strength rather than a threat? A future that is more than just a better-managed version of the present?
Because before people build a different future, they must first be able to imagine one.
The post For the first time in decades, Israelis have something to vote for — not just against appeared first on The Forward.
