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How this Brooklyn neighborhood became the ‘Klezmer Shtetl’
(New York Jewish Week) — Some of the greatest talents in Jewish music have strolled Midwood’s lettered avenues, including the klezmer musician Pete Sokolow and the Hasidic composer Ben Zion Shenker. Both have left us — Sokolow in 2022, Shenker in 2016 — but the Modzitzer synagogue on Avenue L, where Shenker once lead prayers, is a spiritual home for klezmer virtuoso and Midwood denizen Andy Statman, 73. He’s davened (prayed) there for more than 30 years.
Now, a younger group of klezmer musicians joins Statman in making the quiet, south-central Brooklyn neighborhood their home, due to the (relatively) affordable rents, low density and greenery, as well as its proximity to Jewish communal life spread across the borough.
“We needed more room than Park Slope could provide on our budget,” Pete Rushefsky, who has played a hammered dulcimer known as the tsimbl in the city’s klezmer scene for more than 30 years, told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s been a great neighborhood to raise a family.” That’s especially true for a culturally active family: Rushefsky’s wife, Madeline Solomon, sings, plays accordion and runs the Brooklyn Workers Circle School in Park Slope; their 12-year-old daughter, Mathilda, plays in a children’s fiddle band in the neighborhood.
Midwood looms so large over the present-day Jewish music scene that there’s even a klezmer rock band named for it: Midwood, the band, was founded in 2015 by the fiddler Jake Shulman-Ment. The 39-year-old veteran klezmer violinist lives in the same apartment building on Ocean Avenue as Jeremiah Lockwood, a blues performer and a scholar of cantorial music.
“I call it the ‘Klezmer Shtetl,’” said Midwood’s vocalist, Eleonore Weill, who is also a multi-instrumentalist. (Weill used to reside in Midwood but now lives in next-door Ditmas Park, which is also home to Sarah Gordon, lead singer of the rock band Yiddish Princess. Nearby Kensington counts among its klezmer-making residents D. Zisl Slepovitch and the klezmer couple Ilya Shneyveys and Sarah Myerson.)
Another Midwood musician is Michael Winograd, 40, who many consider to be the best klezmer clarinetist of his generation. As a teenager, he went to Statman’s home for lessons; last summer he moved to the neighborhood.
Midwood musicians Jeremiah Lockwood, left, and Pete Rushefsky. (Courtesy)
Elsewhere in Midwood resides guitarist Yoshie Fruchter, founder of Pitom, which the Tzadik record label called “a shredding Jewish instrumental band.” Fruchter has performed with Jon Madof’s Zion80, which plays Shlomo Carlebach tunes in an Afrobeat style, and Mazal Tov Cocktail Party, the latest klezmer/dance music project led by David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg.
“I didn’t choose Midwood, particularly,” Shulman-Ment told New York Jewish Week. “It sort of fell into my life.” The fiddler decided to rent his Midwood one-bedroom in the summer of 2021 while he was on tour in the Pacific Northwest. After seeing the place online and sending a couple of friends to check it out in person, Shulman-Ment signed a lease while he was still on the road.
As it happens, Lockwood — who lives with his two sons, ages 14 and 16, on the floor below Shulman-Ment — also rented his apartment sight unseen that same summer.
The two neighbors credit Ivona Hertz, co-owner of Ocean Empire Management, with helping them find a home. Her company manages a pair of buildings across from Prospect Park that are home to so many jazz musicians, they came to be known as “the jazz dorms.”
“When the tenants are happy they always recommend their friends,” Hertz said, describing how she came to rent Midwood apartments to so many musicians. “That’s how the ‘jazz dorms’ were created and that’s how the Midwood buildings are now getting more musicians. The apartments are larger, up to three bedrooms, including the square footage, and more affordable in Midwood.”
According to the available rentals on the real estate website StreetEasy, the median rent in Midwood is $2,566. (Hertz, the property manager known for helping musicians, says she typically charges between $1,500 and $1,750 a month for one-bedroom rentals.) The median sale price in the nabe for the first quarter of this year was $644,000, according to the real estate website PropertyShark — that’s substantially less than the Brooklyn borough-wide median of $755,000.
In addition to relatively low housing costs, Midwood is also known for being home to a very large — and mostly Orthodox — Jewish community. Traditionally Ashkenazi, the southern reaches of the neighborhood have also seen steady growth of its longtime Sephardic Jewish community. “Sephardic Jews dominate from [an area known as the] Avenue H cut to Avenue Z,” Sarina Roffe, CEO of the The Brooklyn Jewish Historical Initiative and president of the Sephardic Heritage Project, told the New York Jewish Week. “The Sephardic community in Brooklyn has been growing for more than 100 years.”
Most of these newer, klezmer residents identify as secular Jews, and not Orthodox. But many of them said they enjoy living among their Orthodox brethren. Clarinetist Winograd lives in part of Midwood that’s “very Jewish,” as he described it. “I kind of like being a secular Jew who gets to experience the benefit of a quiet Shabbes. I enjoy being a culturally-engaged Jew living in a Jewish neighborhood even if I’m not partaking in the more religious activities.”
Shulman-Ment — who identifies as a secular Jew who is committed to Jewish culture — spent a year living in Crown Heights, so he was familiar with the feeling of living in an Orthodox neighborhood and feeling like a bit of an outsider. He said he’s noticed, though, that if he’s in his “gig costume” — a suit and fedora — some of his Orthodox co-religionists offer a friendly greeting.
Lockwood described his (and Shulman-Ment’s) section of Midwood, along Ocean Avenue, as “rough-hewn and unlovely. It is a hard-working and threadbare place.” And yet, “I like it here fine,” he told the New York Jewish Week, adding: “I just don’t want to encourage out-of-towners to move in.”
Fruchter — who moved to Midwood last December with his wife, Jewish cookbook author Leah Koenig, and their two kids, aged 4 and 9 — said his area of Midwood has a lot of Pakistani residents, but on Saturday his family can often hear zemiros, hymns sung at the Sabbath table, coming from the homes of Orthodox neighbors down the block. “I really like how you see people from so many different places, cultures, religions and backgrounds all sharing the same sidewalks,” Fruchter told the New York Jewish Week via email. “I love walking by businesses with signs in different languages and restaurants where I have no idea what to order… I love that it’s a ‘quiet’ neighborhood but with a lot of bustle in it.”
Klezmer virtuoso Andy Statman, left, has lived in the neighborhood more than 30 years, while guitarist Yoshie Fruchter, right, is a more recent resident. (Courtesy)
The family is involved in the Flatbush Jewish Center, a Conservative egalitarian synagogue in the neighboring Kensington section of Brooklyn where Fruchter has served as cantor on the High Holy Days and organized a concert series.
Fruchter is also a member of Shulman-Ment’s band Midwood — whose recording of their live performance at the “Klezmer On Ice” festival in Minneapolis last winter will be released in the coming months. Midwood the band’s next gig is at the National Yiddish Book Center’s annual Yidstock festival in Amherst, Massachusetts on July 16.
Shulman-Ment will also be performing with the actor and musician Daniel Kahn on June 15 at the East Village world music venue Drom. The performance is timed to the release of the duo’s first album, “The Building & Other Songs,” which features Yiddish versions of songs by Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and Woody Guthrie.
The other Midwood klezmer musicians with gigs to look forward to are Rushefsky — who is also the executive director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance — and Statman, who will both be playing with the violinist Itzhak Perlman in the coming months.
In addition, Statman plays in two trios: The Andy Statman Trio, which has performed at the Greenwich Village Synagogue in Manhattan regularly for 20 years, and another with the Eddy Brothers, two young West Virginia bluegrass musicians. More recently, Statman started playing with a traditional bluegrass quartet that’s comprised of players he’s known since he was a teenager. That band is now known as Andy’s Ramble, not to be confused with the 1994 Statman album of the same name.
Statman grew up in Queens and was in his mid-20s when he first moved to Brooklyn in 1976. After a series of apartments, he and his wife Basha moved to Avenue L in Midwood in 1987, where they raised their four children. “Our kids needed to be here. We needed to be here,” Statman said. “There is sky and trees and grass here. There are birds chirping all over. The neighborhood was incredibly vibrant.”
When he first arrived, Statman took a break from his music career for a year to study Jewish holy texts full time. In the 35 years since, he’s seen real estate values soar to a level he calls “ridiculous.” Statman said that since the early 2000s, he’s watched kids who grew up on his block move to Lakewood, New Jersey or Monsey in Rockland County — both home to sizable Orthodox Jewish communities — because they couldn’t afford to buy homes in Midwood. Now their parents are leaving, he added, because they want to be near their grandchildren.
It’s a fate the clarinetist is personally familiar with: None of his four children, now grown, live in the area. With two daughters and their grandchildren living near Lakewood, the Statmans are considering relocating there themselves.
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The post How this Brooklyn neighborhood became the ‘Klezmer Shtetl’ 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.
