Thoughts on the War

Almost 25 years ago the failure of Clinton’s Camp David summit, followed by the 2nd intifada, killed the Israeli peace camp and pretty much rang the death knell for any kind of negotiated. two-state solution. Bibi Netanyahu has ever since governed as if the "conflict" was a war that Israel had won, and his governments have done (and allowed the settlers to do) basically anything it wants in the West Bank and Gaza with virtually no restrictions. The attack in the south on October 7 has to be seen in the context of a longstanding situation where there is neither the prospect for political advancement (or even basic citizenship rights) for the Palestinians nor international intervention to moderate Israel's behavior. Zionist claims that this attack is completely out of blue with no possible context are false. Analytically rather than morally, from the Palestinian perspective this kind of anti-colonial bloodletting is exactly the kind of thing Franz Fanon was talking about.

It has to be said that everything Hamas does helps Netanyahu politically. In the 90s It was a series of bus bombings that undermined the peace process and did a lot to get him elected in the first place. In the 2000s it was the second intifada, which allowed Israel to claim suppress the Palestinian independence movement, claim victory, and get on with the task of annexation, de facto if not de jure. And now it's this flamboyant attack in the south of the country, which allows him to complete his task of suppressing democracy within Israel and demolishing any possibility of Palestinian independence in Gaza. It’s often wondered how Hamas' actions could possibly be supposed to benefit the Palestinian people, but one can certainly see how they benefit Netanyahu: his domestic problems go away; he gets locked into his position; he gets Israel in a war footing and gets to cosplay Churchill; he gets hugged by Biden; he is able to complete the suppression of democracy at home. Hamas' actions and Netanyahu's interests dovetail quite well, as they always have.

There is absolutely no reason to give Netanyahu any kind of benefit of the doubt here. His is a racist and fascist government, despite the window dressing of "opposition" politicians who want to get in on the war action. He was the one who allowed the border to be unprotected, and he is the one who is framing this as a war against Amalek. A couple of hundred Israeli hostages are certainly not a hindrance to him. 

Some progressives in the US are painstakingly drawing a distinction between American Jews and Israel, and I appreciate that, but the vast majority of organized Jews (with the exception of a couple thousand people in Grand Central Station) is virtually unanimous in articulating a no-holds-barred approach such as has been explicated by Netanyahu. Another project that will be boosted by this, directly related to the suppression of the domestic peace camp in Israel, is the effort to outlaw anti-Zionist political speech in the US. There was a wave of legislation on this several years ago, mostly stymied by the courts, but the ADL is currently demanding that colleges ban SJP as supporting terrorism. Stifling anti-Zionist speech is a direct violation of the first amendment and is is a terrible idea, and cannot help but make the entire situation worse, as well as making "the Jews" directly responsible the undermining of this vital constitutional principle. 

Solidarity with the Palestinian people is absolutely legitimate, especially when they are under total assault by a reckless and maniacal Israeli government. If every expression of support for the Palestinians is going to be considered support for terrorism, and therefore suppressible/arrestable/fireable, then we’re going into a very dark place.

One more thought: I know a lot of people feel hopeless right now, and I agree that the situation is bad, as bad as it's ever been. We also have a Christian Nationalist Speaker of the House, which is its own terrible problem but will have to be dealt with another day. My feeling is that when circumstances make us feel that are losing our footing, when we are being blown back-and-forth by events with seemingly no place to hold onto, the best thing we can do is try to stay true to the values that we have espoused throughout our lives. Rather than letting the worst case make me think my values, which I consider sacred, have been superseded or made irrelevant somehow, I choose to see them as a port in the storm, something to guide my ship toward (to possibly overextend the metaphor). My operative philosophy has always been more or less “give peace a chance." It might seem naive, but I think I'll stick with that.

Ceasefire now.

Maxine Persons' Eulogy

 The eulogy for my mother that I delivered at her funeral on Sept. 1, 2023. 

I’ve always felt that my mother was ahead of her time. She came of age when before the feminist age, when women were not yet fully in the work force. She didn’t graduate college and she didn’t work a paid job until Jon and I were teenagers. But if she had been born 20 years later she would have been an exec or an office manager or something. She had amazing organizational skills, a great memory, and attention to detail. 

Maxine was born in the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, in the last period of the huge Jewish community in that part of New York. Her mother had 5 siblings and her father had 2, and if I remember it correctly (and of course I can no longer ask) 2 of her aunts lived in the same building with her parents and her. There’s a picture with my mother as a child with something like 50 cousins at a simcha, I’ll show it tomorrow night. Within the next generation the children in that picture moved all over the country and my mother was undoubtedly the last person who could even name them all. That’s only one of the ways she passing is a loss. 

Her father, Harry, owned a service station, and to my mother he walked on water. Her mother, Sherry, smelled of Tabu and cigarettes. They lived in a one bedroom apartment, with the daughter in the bedroom and the parents in the living room. She worked at Decca records before marrying David, which when I was young and hip that was by far the most interesting part of her story to me. 

After Jonathan was born we moved to New Jersey, first to Maywood and then to Sayreville, where we both grew up. Both of my parents grew up in secular families but my mother was a builder. They – by which I mostly mean Maxine, with David in tow – helped to found a Conservative congregation in Sayreville, the Sayreville Jewish Center, which became the focus of her life for about the next 15 years. She was president twice and also ran the weekly bingo game for many years. The Temple was the center of our family life for many years. 

Mention of the bingo game allows me to go into a digression about my mother’s culinary abilities, or lack thereof. Regular Wednesday night bingo games meant that Jon and I had to fend for ourselves for dinner. Our regular self-prepared meal was a box of lipton noodle soup and a can of spaghetti’os. My mother was not, as they say, from the cooks. Her two specialties were a beef cheese and noodle casserole which we called “noodle gook,” and which I still make using veggie ground, and shrimp scampi. We always speculated that my parents adopted kashrut in large part so my mom didn’t have to cook at all anymore. 

She spent many evenings, for years and years, sitting in our family room or den, with a huge pile of papers in front of her, moving the papers from one pile to another – Temple papers, home papers, later Little Elegance papers, I’m sure still later Valencia Isles and Hadassah papers. One of my lasting sense memories is of my mother, in her robe and slippers, with a detective show on television, moving papers slowly from one pile to the other. 

Maxine could be a loyal and steadfast friend. I emphasize “could.” She remained connected to the Debs, her clique in high school, her entire life. Carol Feitelman has been friends with my mother for 70 years. They went on trips when they were older, to Ireland and Iceland all kinds of different places. 

And on the other hand Maxine was stubborn, demanding, and definitely got into beefs with people, as several people on my father’s side of the family could attest. She had two sayings that I recall: “don’t get mad, get even,” was one, and the other one was, “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” I definitely tested that one when I was younger. One time I “borrowed” one of their cars to drive to Vermont to see a girlfriend. When she confronted me after I said, “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” She didn’t like that too much. I also discovered as I got older that “don’t get mad, get even” is not really very good advice. It’s taken me a long time to work through that. But when Maxine was done with you, she was done, and that’s definitely something I’ve inherited from her. 

And that was what she was like her whole life. My mother had a big personality, and leadership qualities that made themselves apparent in any situation she was in. When Jon and I were teenagers she started working at a collectibles store in the Woodbridge Mall, Little Elegance. It was a family owned business but her natural leadership qualities and organizational skills were again apparent and she ended up as the assistant manager, making the schedules and placing the inventory orders and the like. She also used her employee discount to amass a truly impressive collection of collectibles. When she moved to Valencia Isles she went on committees and the board, which when Rabbi Klein heard that yesterday said, Now that’s a thankless job, and it was. 

But there was part of my mother that wanted to be thanked for her thankless jobs, and didn’t like it when she wasn’t. And I can relate to that too. When there was inevitably board politics and interpersonal tension – as there always was and always is- she ended up leaving Valencia Isles. In later years I tried to tease her by asking her who she was in a blood feud with this month, but she didn’t find it funny and I had to stop. But as the attendance here today attests, she had many friends and admirers. Like many strong people, she elicited strong reactions, on all sides. 

Just the year before last, before her health started failing, she ran a Hanukkah party for the local Hadassah chapter. She was an organizer to the last. I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this, but perhaps it’s not surprising that both Jon and I married women with definite Maxine tendencies. 

One must acknowledge the love of my mother’s life, my dad David. My parents were together for over 60 years, which is just amazing. They took turns caretaking each other – my mother caring for my father when he faltered after his retirement, my father caring for my mother when she was in Cleveland Clinic for nearly a year in 2012 and then over the last year or so as my mother’s health failed. They bickered with each other terribly but when they walked from the car to the restaurant, they held hands. When I was going through pictures the other day, nearly every picture I have of my mom has my dad in it too. They were as solidly married a couple as it’s possible to be. 

As her world got smaller Maxine’s relationship with my wife Suzy deepened, which we appreciated. She loved her grandchildren, and went to every graduation they could. The last time I saw my mother was when Jon and I visited together in May. They had been given bad news about her prognosis, but while Jon and I were here she rallied significantly, whether to put on a brave front for us, or because we were here, or both. We were able to go out to dinner, and to sit by the pool, and to play rummy, as she and I always loved to do and as we both had done with her father olev ha shalom.     

She collected owls and was an avid mahjong player and like rainbow cookies - these are the things one remembers. As I wrote the obituary I noted that she was an activist, a community organizer, it was a role that was natural to her, as it is to me. The people she loved, love her, and the people that don’t, lick their wounds. That’s the way she wanted it.

Maxine Persons nee Miller, Malkah bat Tzvi Hersh Ha’Levi ve’Sarah, May you be bound up in the bonds of life, and may your memory be a blessing to us all.  

  

On the "IHRA Definition"

hose of you who are not completely subsumed in Israel and Jewish communal politics may not be familiar with the hoohah surrounding the so-called “IHRA Definition” of antisemitism. IHRA stands for “International Holocaust Remembrance Association,” and the “IHRA definition” is a (supposedly) “nonbinding working definition of antisemitism” that includes a number of examples of antisemitic beliefs or behavior, including denying the Holocaust, making stereotypical claims about Jewish power, or blaming all Jews for the actions of individual Jews, or of non-Jews.

So far, so good, but included in the list of examples are these two:

• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

The issue here being the inclusion of criticism of Israel, or of its policies, as evidence of “antisemitism.” It certainly can be, but it isn’t necessarily, and Israel deserves criticism. But it can be argued that the IHRA Definition weaponizes accusations of antisemitism in defense of Israel’s indefensible policies against its subject Palestinian population, and that is deeply troubling, as I’ve written about previously.

The concern is that the IHRA definition is yet another step in Israel’s most vocal supporters’ efforts to toxify or even criminalize criticism of Israel, of a piece with the anti-BDS legislation that was a previous arrow in this quiver. There are alternative definitions of antisemitism, such as the Jerusalem Definition of Antisemitism, that don’t have this baggage but the OJC has put its eggs into the IHRA definition basket – because the baggage is the point.

The quote-unquote organized Jewish community (henceforth “OJC”) in Kansas City (and I suppose elsewhere) has focused much of its advocacy efforts over the past couple of years on getting state and local governments to adopt the IHRA definition. The Kansas state legislature passed a resolution in 2022, and several municipal governments in Johnson County have been passing resolutions over the past year or so as well. Of course the idea that there is anything to criticize in the IHRA definition is taken as proof of the problem that it purports to address.

The issue has been re-introduced in the Roeland Park council, which will be considering the matter at its meeting on Monday night. One of the councilors, Michael Rebne, is opposing the resolution and is working with CAIR-KS, the Muslim communal relations organization, to oppose it as well. The KC rabbis (of which I am one) received an email from the Jewish Communal Relations Bureau (JCRB, a primary OJC institution) asking us to engage in support of the resolution, reach out to supportive clergy, attend the meeting, etc.

I’m sympathetic to Rebne’s position. I find the IHRA definition problematic and have signed statements opposing it. As I hope I’ve made clear here, I think it’s more about toxifying criticism of Israel than about addressing actual antisemitism. (The fact that actual antisemitism is more likely to come from people who are demonstrative in their “support for Israel” has apparently escaped the attention of the OJC.) On the other hand, in my humble opinion, and as I tell people who ask me, aside from the morality of it (Mrs. Lincoln) there’s zero reason for a local elected official or even state legislator to put themselves out on a limb on this – on what is, after all, a purely symbolic statement that makes you enemies in the OJC but and has no other practical effect. I mean, if Bibi Netanyahu ignores Joe Biden he’s sure not going to listen to a council member from Roeland Park, KS.

I think what will happen is that the resolution will pass with 1 or maybe 2 no votes, Michael Rebne will bolster his progressive bona fides, and life will go on as before – with the institutions of the OJC having played their chosen role in protecting Israel from criticism and making it harder to address actual antisemitism.

Speech at KIFA Dinner 6/1/23

A mother goes to wake her son for Hebrew school one Sunday morning. When she knocked on his door, he said, “I’m not going!” “Why not?” asked his mother. “I’ll give you two good reasons,” he said. “They don’t like me, I don’t like them and I never get anything out of it. His mother replied, YOU ARE GOING. First, they’re expecting you. Second, you’re 47 years old. and third, you’re the rabbi!”

I grew up in suburban New Jersey in the 1970s. I had a very strong Jewish education for those days. I always felt kind of maladjusted in the environment I grew up in. I had a very strong sense of not wanting to be part of the corporate, workaday world, but I was only vaguely aware that there were alternatives. As a teenager I was very attracted to the politics and culture of the 60s. I was vaguely aware of the prophetic tradition in Judaism and as a teenager I learned about the socialist tradition of the Jewish immigration period.

I was politically active fairly young. I worked for the Bill Bradley for Senate campaign as a sophomore in high school. The first demonstration I ever went to was the day draft registration started, in 1978. I was involved in anti-war and anti-nuclear power campaigns. I attended some very famous rallies, like the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington and the big nuclear freeze rally in New York in 1982, which Bruce Springsteen played at.

After scraping through college I moved to New York and basically worked day jobs and hung out with rock bands. At the end of my 20s I had a religious experience and started on the path I’m on now. I lived in Israel for four years in the 90s where I taught English, I met my wife there and then we moved back and I started seminary.

As I finished seminary I went for a job interview for a congregation outside of Chicago and they noticed that my resume started in my 30s. If I was a second career rabbi, they demanded to know, what was my first career? I tried to be coy about it but they weren’t having it. On the day they were voting on me, I got a call telling me that I had to come up with a better explanation of what I had done in my 20s, which I gave them, but I should have known at that point what was gonna happen. The city was similar to where I had grown up and I thought, great, I’ll be the rabbi that I didn’t have growing up, but of course that’s not what the leadership wanted. When they didn’t renew me, it was during the recession and I couldn’t get another pulpit job and we couldn’t sell the house. After going on a pulpit visit weekend where the synagogue president’s son and one of his cronies, I kid you not, poured salad dressing on my guitar, I was hired by Jill Docking to become the director of the Jewish Federation in Wichita which is how I came to Kansas in 2007.

If you had asked me when I was a child in New Jersey what would be the last place I would ever live, Wichita KS would have been right at the top of the list. But I had decided I wanted to move into organizational work and that was an opportunity for me to learn what a budget is and how to relate to board members and all the rest. I thought three years of that and the big R in front of my name would put me in a good position to move back east for a national job and while I applied for several jobs, but I did not get them and when I came to the end of my three-year contracts I wasn’t renewed. I thought about moving back east to try to be a freelance rabbi but Suzy didn’t want to move without a job so we moved to Kansas City, which is where she’s from.

Meanwhile, in 2008, the Kansas Interfaith Power & Light chapter had been formed, by Eileen Horn, Jerry Rees, and David Owens of blessed memory. That’s where the 15 years comes from. Eileen was the coordinator of IPL which at that point was a program of Climate and Energy Project. She had been to the national IPL conference and my colleague Fred Dobb told her, oh, if you’re doing interfaith climate work in Kansas you should talk to Moti, so she called me and I went on the steering committee.

After I moved to KC, in 2011 the coordinator role for IPL came open. They knew me of course so they hired me to be the coordinator half-time. The first thing I did that got any attention was testifying at the hearing about the Keystone Pipeline at the Expo Center in Topeka in the fall of 2011. Gov Brownback and then-Senator Knox and a couple other people who were pro-Keystone testified and then I was the first opponent. John Hannah covered it and because it was the first in a series of these hearings around the country, it got national play and all my friends were very impressed. Here’s a pro tip: if John Hannah writes about you, there’s a good chance that it'll go viral, because AP is carried everywhere.

Eileen’s focus had been on doing energy efficiency updates in churches mostly but I'm more political, you may have noticed. In 2012 I took a few members of the board to the statehouse to meet some people and look around. We had a very back-of-the-envelope legislative priorities document which amounted to “do something about climate change.” After we were done we went to the Senate chamber. We just happened to be sitting there when Forrest Knox got up to the well and proposed an amendment to repeal the renewable portfolio standard that Governor Parkinson had put in as part of the sunflower coal plant compromise in 2009. We were like What the hell?! They ended up sending it back to committee but we knew after the election that year, they were gonna go after it hammer and tongs so that’s when we developed Kansans for Clean Energy and started a working relationship with Dorothy at CEP and Zack at Sierra Club which continues to this day.

In the meantime I was traveling around the state doing the same thing I do now, talking to churches and trying to get people to care about climate change. That's when I met Annie Ricker, which is a story for another time.

In 2015 the RPS issue was over and it was clear that there wasn’t going to be any legislation having to do with energy policy or climate, as in fact there hasn’t really been to this day. It was clear that without an organization to develop a faith-based voice on policy that space was going to continue to be dominated by the Hard Right. We also noted the tendency in progressive advocacy groups to silo into single issue groups, which limits the ability to draw attention to the interconnections between justice issues – such as the racial and economic implications of climate disruption. So in September we had a board retreat at the UU church in Lawrence, and what came out of that was KIFA.

We announced it at the beginning of 2016. One of the first things I testified on was a bill to ban this resettlement of Syrian refugees, which Micah was also involved with – that was an Islamaphobia fest - and another one was the second hope act bill. The Hope Act one was significant because I went to testify with my nice “care for the poor” Bible quotes and one of the legislators, who was a rightist Christian, quoted Thessalonians to the effect of if you don't work you don't eat. I didn’t really know what to do with that - later I found out it was a serious misinterpretation – but in the aftermath I decided rather that Biblical quotes, I would bring statements from the national denominational advocacy and say these are the people who are paid to put frame scripture in terms of policy. That's basically the approach I've taken since then.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Two significant steps were getting a $25,000 capacity building grant from Health Foundation in 2018, which allowed me to go full time and remains the only grant we’ve ever gotten from them, and then also in 2019 we established the relationship with both the ELCA’s Central States Synod and with national ELCA Advocacy, and for that I want to shout out to Bishop Candea, who managed that relationship for the Synod, and John Johnson, who facilitated it at the churchwide level. From that we developed relationships with the local UCC Conference, the Episcopal Diocese, and with the Mercy & Justice Team of the local United Methodist conference. I find I’m asked much less about my bona fides now.

And basically our approach has been to try to do the next right thing. I think this is good spiritual advice, as well as good political advice. We’ve tried to be useful, to put our efforts where they seem likely to do the most good. The fact that we’re funded mostly by individuals and denominational partners and not by a bunch of grants looking for deliverables means we’re able to be nimble when something comes up that we feel requires our attention, such as the CRT issue last year.

We have also been blessed in our leadership. John Martin was board chair for the last few years of IPL, and since that meeting in Lawrence we’ve had Sarah Oglesby-Dunegan who led KIFA for the first 3 years, and Rachael Pryor, who’s been the board chair for the past 3 years and has been an amazing partner. Annie Ricker has big Birkenstocks to fill.


And now I want to spend a few minutes speaking about our current moment – no wait, Robert, I’m just going to take a couple more minutes and then I’m going to sit down.


The most Jewish thing about me is my steadfast belief that the world can be a better place and we can help make it so. Traditional Judaism has a strong belief in the coming of the messiah.


Ani ma'amin, Be'emuna shelemah Beviat hamashiach Ve'af al pi sheyitmahmehya Im kol zeh, achakeh loh - I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the messiah, and though he may tarry, still I will wait for him.

Which more liberal traditions, including mine, think of as a messianic age. This is the source of the social justice tradition in modern Judaism, even if people don’t realize that they’re living one of Maimonides’ articles of faith. If we link this with the related concept that we are the hands of God, what we come our with is – We believe that the world can be a better place, and that we can help make it so. This is only one of a number of seemingly quaint and outdated concepts that I try to hold onto.


I don't know how much of this is because I'm getting older–looking back to the good old days seems to be human nature–but it seems clear to me that things are getting significantly worse. People with social justice sensibilities know that the world is a heavy burden to bear, and it’s heavier now than I can remember it.


When I was a senior in high school, Ronald Reagan was elected and John Lennon – he of “all you need is love” – was killed, and you couldn’t have had a stronger message that the halcyon days were over, hippie. A year after Lennon’s death, I went to a handgun control rally in Washington, where I was at school. We formed a big peace sign which could be seen from the air. Those were the days of Jim Brady, when we thought something could be done about gun violence – handgun violence. To me the difference between then and now is most obvious when we look at where the gun issue has gone. That’s not the only issue, but that’s the one that shows it in the starkest relief. The fact that any of us, or our children, can basically be shot anywhere and nothing will be done about it, is morally reprehensible as well as psychologically and spiritually devastating.

We are in a period when a minority of Americans, supported by the lavish funding from the 1%, and myriad sources of misinformation and hatred, have captured the mechanisms of power, including the courts. They are perfectly willing to use their position to bolster their power, and if we take them at their word, to destroy those who oppose them, whether legally or with stochastic violence. The extra-legal mechanisms that have been used historically, such as direct action and civil disobedience, are being crushed legally. And a significant part of the political system vilifies the term “woke,” which means antiracist. I look with particular horror at both what’s happening in Florida, and what’s happening with Cop City in Atlanta, where yesterday they’ve been very cavalier about using the word “terrorism” and where just yesterday they arrested people working on bail funds. The combination of red scare politics and government suppression of the left is tried and true in American politics, and it has been generally been very successful, which is why we have to keep inventing the wheel every 20 or 30 years.

Another value that gets short shrift these days is the concept of the public good. One of the reasons KIFA has been talking about public education is because it’s one of the few things that society contributes to as a whole for the broad benefit of all. Which is precisely why it’s under attack. But we dare not give up these important concepts, these important values. Such as the public good. Or our commitment to democracy. Or human liberation. Or caring for those less fortunate. Or peace.

The reason KIFA works in and through communities of faith or people of faith is because if there's any institution that even purports to care about the idea of the common good, it’s faith communities. Even if organized religion is in a period of decline – in large part because of the cruelty emanating from white supremacist-tainted religious beliefs and the inability of more moderate religious institutions to effectively stand up to it – I also believe strongly that spirituality, spiritual needs, are an intrinsic part of the human condition, and that if they’re not met with loving, life-affirming forms of religion then they will be met with fear-based ones. We meet many people who grew up in a church, and they didn't leave because they stopped believing in those values, they left because those institutions didn’t live up to those values. I could name a dozen people in this room that this applies to. They are a vital part of KIFA’s base.

I spend a great deal of my time trying to convince clergy and faith communities to be slightly more prophetic. Given the rise of white Christian nationalism I think it is vital for Christians in particular to stand up and push back. I believe that presenting a faith option that is anti-racist, open and affirming, and fully creation conscious is not only good religion, it’s good marketing. There are plenty of congregations that are fully living their mission to be on the other side of those issues – why are we so circumspect about fully living into our values, and our mission?

But when things seem to be dark or getting darker, we have God. We have each other. We are not alone. Our efforts mean something in the world, in creation - to God. We bring our burdens to God, and we take our strength from God. That’s what God is for!

And when we have that, how can we despair. I think about the 19th century, when robber barons ran the economy, Jim Crow was ascendant in north and south, and state violence was used to crush incipient labor and other social justice movements. Yet only 30 or 40 years later we had the New Deal and the heyday of industrial unionism. The long arc can move quickly, when it moves.

Our goal in any situation is to do the next right thing.

The two elections last year – the amendment election in August and the governor’s race in November - showed us that there is still a preference for moderation in Kansas. We have two things going for us right now, and they’re not insignificant: the first is Laura Kelly being in a position to protect us - to a limited but real degree – from the excesses of hard right leadership of the legislature, and the second is that relative to where we were even 5 years ago, the public policy infrastructure in Kansas is well led and relatively well resourced – I mean ACLU, Loud Light, Appleseed, KAC, Voter network, KIFA. This gives us four years – three now: the senate elections next year and the House and governor elections in 2026. If we are not able to use these relative advantages to change the political trajectory of the state then in 2027 we’ll have Gov. Kobach or Gov. Masterson and Kansas will be Confedistan just like all the rest of the red states. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll do the next right thing.

There are 3 aspects of the work we do that we must keep in mind. First is the actual political change piece: how do we make the work we do count in terms of material benefit for people in need? The second is our own self-care, that is, building for the long haul – how do we maintain our equilibrium enough to be able to continue to do this very difficult work? And third is building those social bonds, those bonds of mutual care and concern. How do we build resilience in the face of climate disruption? How do we build solidarity in the face of the genocidal suppression of trans identity? How do we defend ourselves and each other from armed MAGAs full of white resentment and self-righteousness? Grappling with these questions must be at the heart of our work moving forward.

But we have to be clear about what we believe. We believe that everyone is created in the image of God, and that everyone has the right to equal treatment under the law. We believe and work toward a multiracial, multicultural democracy where everyone has what they need to survive and thrive. We do this work not because we think it will be easy - we know it won’t be - or even that we’ll live to see the results. We do this work because we still believe that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, and that, God help us, All we need is love. This is not optimism and it's not hope - it's faith. The belief in things not seen. We do this work because we believe that the world can be a better place and we can make it so. We ask God to help us in this work, and we find God in the work, and in each other.

As for me I have to say that as challenging as my journey has sometimes been, I'm in a good place right now. People often ask me, and I’m sure they ask my colleagues as well – how I am able to do this work. Well, I have something that I'm good at, that people seem to want to support, I work with wonderful people both within KIFA and in our allied organizations, and I have a good marriage. I consider myself blessed.

The one thing we can’t do, is give up. This is always an option for white people with some means. But we can see who it leaves behind. Noam Chomsky says something really powerful in this regard: “We have two choices. We can be pessimistic, give up, and help ensure that the worst will happen. Or we can be optimistic, grasp the opportunities that surely exist, and maybe help make the world a better place. Not much of a choice.”

Or to revise our text: “I believe in perfect faith in the coming of a better world, and though it may tarry, we will do what I can to bring it into being.” And as the man said, and I still believe it - “Love is all you need.”

The Dangers of Both-sidesing Antisemitism

 Let me start by saying something that really should go without saying: No one should be harassed or attacked because they are Jewish. Attacking random Jews or Jewish institutions for any reason, whether because of the actions of Israel or because Jews are perceived as supporting immigration or racial justice, or any other reason, is Jew-hatred, bigotry – antisemitism. It must be strongly opposed, as must any such identity-based bigotry.

Antisemitism is an odd hatred, in that it’s sometimes hard to tell that it’s happening at all. Most American Jews (75%) code as white. Jews have no institutional or governmental impediments to their success; in fact, Jews are at the very heights in every segment of American society. No cop ever pulls someone over, no bank ever denies someone a loan, for being Jewish. When we talk about systemic racism, we are talking about oppression written into the law or the economic order; antisemitism is not “systemic” in that way. There are exceptions, but most antisemitism most Jews are likely to face are the bigoted expressions of individual people. On the one hand this can make people – especially people who face more onerous oppression on a daily basis – think that antisemitism doesn’t exist or that it isn’t that big a deal, which can make solidarity challenging and Jews feel isolated. On the other hand, Jews should be a little circumspect about categorizing themselves as “marginalized” or comparable to other ethnicities which face more systemic oppression.

Yet fear of antisemitism is only tangentially related to its actual experience. Jews are a traumatized people, due to the not-distant memory of genocide and other, more recent events, such as the massacre at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. It’s quite common for synagogues to have armed guards, which is not the case for most churches. So Jews feel that threatened status every time they go into a Jewish communal building. Jews live with antisemitism in their kishkes (guts).  

The inability to differentiate between incidents of violence or “systemic” (to use that term) antisemitism and the ignorant actions of individuals is a problem. They feed into the same place of Jewish trauma, but they’re not the same.

I recently attended a workshop on antisemitism, at a friend’s invitation. It was arranged by a co-counseling community in the Washington DC area, so it was on the more psychological/personal-trauma side of things, as opposed to the solidarity/political-action side where I usually find myself. The facilitator maintained that antisemitism is a “systemic” prejudice which, for reasons I’ve explained, I think is a misuse of the word.

During the course of the evening there was a panel discussion in which four people were asked to relate a time when an antisemitic experience “broke their heart.” One mentioned the 2002 antiracism convening in Durban, South Africa, which became infamous for its vocal expressions of antisemitism; another, the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, where they were from. The experiences related by the other two were more random, one-off microaggressions: one person had a coworker in Texas ask to see her horns; the other told of a neighbor saying, while drunk, “the Jews own everything.” As I say, it’s difficult– but important - to differentiate between these two types of incidents; in this event, they were treated as the same.

And as far as I could tell, neither of the latter two people tried to process the incidents with the offenders, or to use them as a teaching opportunity. Yet they carry these incidents with them, in their kishkes, as I say, for the rest of their lives. The whole exercise came across as de-politicized, de-contextualized, and to be honest, as privileged white DC-area Jews feeling sorry for themselves because one person one time said something stupid to them. If that’s “systemic antisemitism,” then it’s not much of a problem, however troubling the incident may be for the person involved.

The wariness that Jews feel over either expressed or always-incipient antisemitism is easily manipulated by legacy communal organizations that either a) want to justify their continued existence by positioning themselves as stalwart defenders of the Jews or b) protect Israel and rationalize its actions. Keeping Jewish trauma on a low boil seems to be the main business of legacy organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, local community relations organizations, and the Federation system, which I will henceforth refer to collectively as the Institutional Jewish Community, or IJC.

All of which is to say, I’m hesitant to jump on the “antisemitism is rampant” bandwagon that has developed over the past several weeks. I have no idea if and how extensive any uptick in antisemitic incidents is since the most recent violence in Israel/Palestine, and I don’t trust claims on the subject from IJC groups. When I look at the list compiled by the “antisemitism is rampant, and rising!” ADL, I see anti-Zionist actions treated as evidence of antisemitism. An example I know about directly is that during a Palestinian solidarity rally in Kansas City, an Israeli flag was torn down. That’s vandalism, but it isn’t antisemitism. It was done as a protest against Israel, not as an attack on Jews. Yet it’s on the ADL’s list.

People like me will say, “Anti-Zionism does not equal antisemitism,” but the legacy institutions of the OJC not only don’t recognize a distinction, they purposefully confuse the two, for the same two reasons: and to keep Jews in a state of trepidation, and to delegitimate pro-Palestinian activity by tarring it as antisemitism.

The focus of the co-counseling event was antisemitism on the left; the right’s antisemitism was stipulated. This week there is a forum sponsored by IJC groups in Kansas City about “antisemitism on the left and right.” But this framing is not only wrong; it’s dangerous. It needs to be said, again and again: Most manifestations of antisemitism, and almost all antisemitic violence, come from the right. Jews are far more endangered by white supremacism than by Palestinian solidarity. We want to hold our comrades to a higher standard, and that’s appropriate, but we also need to know who our real enemies are.

One manifestation of antisemitism on the left that came up during the con-counseling evening was the story a campus environmental group that forced prospective Jewish participants to sign a statement attesting to their non-support to Israel in order to participate.  As an organizer, I don’t think there should be a political litmus test for Jews to join actions on issues unrelated to Israel/Palestine. I have people in my coalition who don’t agree on every issue, and it’s not good politics to exclude someone from, say, Medicaid Expansion work because they’re not as progressive as I am on LGBT issues.

Yet there are two problems with focusing on incidents like this, or another one that received a lot of attention - the food truck owned by an expat Israeli that was disinvited by a food truck festival -- as evidence of rampant antisemitism. The more important is that it centers Jewish suffering (or “suffering”) and puts Palestinian voices once again onto the backest of burners. OK, maybe making college students sign a statement is problematic. But a laser focus on these single incidents keeps us from talking about the far, far worse endemic violence of Israel’s actions toward its Palestinian population.

And the second problem is that Jews and Jewish institutions like to pretend an innocence on this that is entirely unsupported. Virtually Jewish institution in the country supports, either stridently or ”with regret”, every one of Israel’s actions – blowing up civilian infrastructure, arresting 7 year olds and all. Almost every synagogue in America has an Israeli flag on its pulpit. 

You can’t have it both ways. If Jewish organizations (speaking as “the Jewish community”) take it upon themselves to defend Israel’s every action, if every statement in support of Palestinian rights is taken as an expression of antisemitism, then it can’t be surprising when Jews. collectively, get blamed for Israel’s actions – which is then seen as antisemitism. But that might be part of the goal: for American organizations, to promote their own anti-antisemitic vigilance; for Israel, to “prove” that the diaspora continues, as ever, to be a cesspool of Jew-hatred.  

Israel’s standing on the international stage is low, not because of antisemitism, but because of its own actions. “You’re singling Israel out, Israel is the Jews amongst the nations” doesn’t work so well the 50^th time Israel blows up civilian infrastructure, sprays skunk water into a mosque, shoots a nonviolent protestor, ethnically cleanses a neighborhood, or arrests a child in the middle of the night. Actions have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are that those who support the blowing-up are disinvited from parties. That’s not antisemitism, even if it happens mostly to Jews. 

We have reached the point where the mainstream focus on support of Israel is at cross purposes with the safety of Jews in the diaspora. IJC or Israeli leaders try to write non- or anti-Zionist Jews out of the people. Meanwhile, Evangelical Christians support Israel (for complicated reasons that we don’t need to go into here) and think that this not only excuses them from their residual (or not-so-residual) antisemitism, but that it puts them in a position to judge Jews that they feel are insufficiently supportive of Israel – to accuse us of antisemitism or even to claim that we’re not Jews at all. Rightist Christians can do anything up to and including white nationalism and it will be a-ok with Israel and significant elements of the IJC because they “support Israel.” It sets up a “good Jews” (who support Israel) versus “bad Jews” dynamic that undermines the real fight against antisemitism. It endangers Jews, especially those who buck the communal position on Israel.

Antisemitism is not an ahistorical, supernatural hatred; although it has its own particularities, it’s of a piece with anti-Asian bigotry, homo- and transphobia, anti-Black racism and all the other hatreds we see in the world, and in America. Like those, it’s utilized by those in power to divide people and protect power. Like those, antisemitism is an unacceptable form of ethnic hatred that needs to be addressed with education and organization and, failing that, with political opposition or even self-defense. It’s complicated because historical trauma makes Jews think it’s always around the corner when others have trouble seeing it at all. But overemphasizing it is psychologically unhealthy, keeping Jews manipulable to those offering “safety.” And equating it with anti-Zionism makes political activity by or on behalf of Palestinians – which is mostly what is meant by “antisemitism on the left” - into a form of bigotry, and undermines social solidarity and the safety of Jews. It makes support of Israel into a litmus test for worthiness to be part of civic discourse at all, and that’s extremely dangerous. Conversations about antisemitism, particularly amongst progressives, need to be aware of this dynamic and careful not to play into the ploys of our opponents -- Jewish or not.  

 

 

Jim Denning is in a Tight Spot

I’m posting this on my personal blog because it is my analysis and is not meant to speak for KIFA.

Jim Denning is in a tough spot.

By saying this, let the reader not get the impression that I feel in any way sorry for him. Denning, along with Susan Wagle and Dan Hawkins, squashed Medicaid Expansion this year solely through the use of  McConnell-esque power tactics. Sympathy is not owed him. But he is in a difficult situation. 

To recap: leadership in both the Kansas House (Majority Leader Hawkins and Speaker Ron Ryckman) and Senate (Senate President Wagle and Majority Leader Denning) refused to give Medicaid Expansion so much as a hearing, despite the fact that a clear majority of legislators wanted it, and the new governor would have signed it, and in fact made it one of her highest priorities for the legislative year. No hearings, no floor action, and in fact bills that might have been “germane” were also kept off the floor, to prevent them from being amended to include Expansion.

In the House, a confluence of circumstances (not least that much (most?) of the Republican caucus despises Dan Hawkins) led to a bill that was ruled not germane by the Rules Committee being stripped and amended as a Medicaid Expansion bill. It required a supermajority to do this and that, of course, required a significant number of Republicans. But, said Republicans were brave enough to pass a bill, but not brave enough to put it in a Senate shell, which would have prevented further interference by Denning and Wagle by allowing the Senate to pass Expansion by a simple majority vote.

Orman Pre-Mortem

The election is in 3 weeks, and I think it's safe to assume that Greg Orman will not be elected the next governor of Kansas. I'm in a bit of a bubble, but from my vantage point I haven't seen him catch any kind of fire, either in terms of endorsements or voter energy. He's polling 10-12%, and I suspect that when the dust settles he'll get between 7-8% of the vote. (I have friendly wager going that he won't break 10.)

Ever since there has been talk of him running, there have been Democrats (and poli sci professors) warning that his votes will come from the Democratic candidate, and that it would be impossible for a Dem to win if Orman was in the race. This is usually accompanied with either pleading or angry demanding that he drop out, which he has not done. I have never made this argument and am agnostic on it, and in fact am usually skeptical of the claim that third party candidates are what defeats major party candidates. Jill Stein didn't make Hillary Clinton lose, for instance. (Ross Perot might be the exception that proves the rule.) The argument assumes that every vote, or the vast majority of votes, that someone like Orman would get would come from (in this case) Laura Kelly, and I don't think that's a fair assumption.

Nevertheless, I think Orman is on a fool's errand, and I want to explain why.

Philosophically I agree with him that there are vast swaths of the voting public who are not served adequately by what the major parties have to offer, and that they have rigged the game in their favor.  I think this is self-evident. One only has to look at the strange creature of the moderate Republican, steadfastly determined to remain a member of a club that doesn't want him as a member. Or, to take my case, a progressive Democrat, watching in dismay as (to use only one recent example) the likes of Chuck Schumer rolls over and gives Trump another 15 federal judgeships with nary a whisper. Or votes for an increase in the defense budget, as almost every congressional Democrat did. (That's 2 examples, but grrr.) I absolutely agree that there are many more gradations of political identity that are not represented in the two-party paradigm, and I would be happy (thrilled, even) if there were viable Green Party or Socialist Party or Labor Party options available. I would also support measures, such as ranked-choice voting, that would make this more possible.

However, wishing doesn't make it so. American history is piled high with the carcasses of independent candidates and third party movements that seemed like a good idea at the time, or that had a brief constituency and then fell away. The system is just not set up to accommodate it. To me that makes the project rather a waste of time. You have to spend so much extra effort to be viable as an independent or third-party candidate that it's virtually impossible (not absolutely impossible, but really really rare) to be successful by that route. Today's crop of Democratic Socialists seem to have learned this lesson, as they have attempted to gain access to the Democratic Party ballot line, as opposed to reinventing a wheel that has failed so many times before.

A local example is a fellow in Manhattan named Aaron Estabrook, a political activist type who has been executive director of an organization (a Pac, mostly) called Save Kansas for the past several years. He has run for office himself several times, as an independent, and lost (badly) a state BOE race in 2016 this way. This year he wanted to run for Riley County commissioner, and had to gather 500 signatures to get on the ballot. He gathered more than that but had many of them thrown out for various reason and lo and behold, he's not on the ballot. If he had run as a Democrat he wouldn't have had that extra, onerous procedural step. The question is, what's your goal? If your goal is to prove the viability of independence, that's fine (not that Estabrook has done that, of course, since he's not on the ballot), but if your goal is to be an elected official, then why would you give yourself the extra hassle of just getting on the ballot, which takes a lot of energy but in and of itself doesn't give you any power? Running as an independent unquestionably detracts from your ability to win elected office. Whether it "should" or not doesn't enter into it. It does. 

And that brings us back to Orman, who does want to prove that independence is a viable political strategy. Orman's argument in the election is based on 2 factors: first, that he's an independent and thus is free of the vicissitudes of partisan politics, and second, that as a business owner he's uniquely qualified to run the multi-million dollar “business” that is the Kansas state government. Everybody who runs for office says they're the most qualified, so I'll leave that one to the side for the moment, and focus instead on argument 1.

I believe that Orman's strategy is based on a logical fallacy, to whit: that if there are 300,000 unaffiliated voters in Kansas, they are fed up with the two party system in a relatively consistent way, and would be motivated by a viable alternative to the party system. But unaffiliated voters are a heterogeneous group: many, perhaps most, are what we're calling these days “low-propensity” voters. (When I was younger we called them “marginal” voters, which sounds pejorative now.) Most of the rest are fellow-travelers to one of the two major parties, and break that way in the elections. Some are more “extreme” versions of the parties, such as people who consider themselves more libertarian or whatever than the Republican Party. Orman positions himself as the flagbearer for this group, which isn't a group, in the way that Laura Kelly is the leader of Kansas Democrats or Kris Kobach (God help us) is for the Republicans. But – and this is key – nobody elected Orman to that position. He has no claim to the position other than his own assertion.

The codicil of this argument is that this group, which isn't a group, is looking for a rich, white, moderate business owner to lead them to the promised land. I think we'll see the flaw in that reasoning when Michael Bloomberg or John Kasich try this strategy in 2020.

Over a year ago I asked people that I know in Orman's circle to show me an actual strategy toward winning this election – where the votes had to come from, both in geography and in voter profile. They couldn't do it then and I bet they wouldn't be able to do it now. Orman isn't running a campaign so much as a crusade, the arguments for which he sees as self-evident, and that it is only fear or force of habit that prevents people from acknowledging the obvious truth of his analysis and flocking to his side. And as his message continues not to resonate, and as this flocking continues not to occur, his argument for it gets more annoyed-sounding and shrill.

And this brings me to my main objection to Orman's project: his inveterate “bothsides-ism”. He claims that the problem with our politics is partisanship between the two parties (he compares it to the Hatfields vs. McCoys) and that the choice between Democrats and Republicans is the choice between “shingles and the flu.” It's hard for me to express how tone-deaf I find this framing. I bring this fairly famous quote from Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, from 2012:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

The difference between the two parties is evidenced in the behavior of the two major party candidates in the Kansas gubernatorial election this year: Kobach is doubling down on his Trumpian message in the hopes of winning narrowly by motivating his base, while Kelly is attempting to appeal across the political spectrum, as evidenced by her recruiting of endorsements from dozens of former Republican elected officials. Even in Orman's book his examples of partisan gamesmanship are one-sided – a dozen examples from the Republicans and one or two examples from the Democrats, and that's his example of “both-sides.”

(Even Orman's argument that he would be uniquely positioned to “get things done” in Topeka ring false. Kelly has relationships with people there and will be able to leverage whatever remnants of the Dem-Mod R coalition there are to get things through. Orman, having no base in the legislature, and no one there having supported him – Doll would be lieutenant governor - means that neither party will have any reason to help him succeed.)

It needs to be stated clearly: the reason the political system isn't working is because the Republican party has been taken over by extreme conservatives who play the hardest of hardball politics and will break any norm in pursuit of their goals. Democrats still believe in bipartisanship (as evidenced by Kelly's strategy) and norms and that's one of the reasons they've been at such a disadvantage. The fact that some Democrats are moving left or are objecting loudly to Republican tactics is not evidence of both-sides-ism, and anyone – including Greg Orman – who thinks that both sides are equally at fault ("shingles vs. flu") in the current state of our politics is either willfully blind or just not a very good analyst of politics.

I told Orman a year ago that if he ran as a Dem he had a very good chance of being the next governor. I think he would have been fine in that role. He chose not to do that, and the reasons for that decision, and the arguments he makes in support of it are, in my opinion, themselves disqualifying. His political career (as a candidate) in Kansas will end in three weeks, and his campaign will go into the pile of “it seemed like a good idea at the time” - even though in this case, it didn't.