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Transcript of "Navigating Jewish and Zionist Identities in Liberal Communities"
Evan Sheinhait: Good evening everyone. It's really great to see all of us in these little boxes and for all of us to join together for this, what I'm expecting to be a really interesting conversation about navigating Jewish and Zionists identities in liberal communities. My name is Rabbi Evan Sheinhait. I am the reform senior Jewish educator, and Reform rabbi at Brandeis Hillel. I'm really excited to introduce Dr. Rachel Fish. Dr. Fish is the founding executive director of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. She was most recently senior advisor in resident scholar of Jewish and Israel philanthropy at the Pol E. Singer Foundation in New York City. Fish was also the executive director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies here at Brandeis University, where she helped train the next generation of academics in the field of Israel studies. She completed her doctoral degree in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies department at Brandeis University. She has taught at Brandeis University, Harvard University, UMass Amherst, and in adult Jewish education programs. In 2015, Fish held the Rohr visiting professorship at Harvard University, where she lectured on modern Israel and received the Derek Bok certificate of Teaching Excellence. Also Dr. Fish is on the Brandeis Hillel Board of Directors. We're very excited to have her here with us this evening. Before we start, a little introduction to the format. Dr. Fish is going to present for 20-25 minutes. You'll see her presentation that she's going to take us through. If you have any questions, please put them in the chat. We'll be monitoring it to make sure we get to see all your questions. Then afterwards, we'll open it up to Q & A, which will take the questions from the chat and ask Dr. Fish there. We're going to ask you yourselves to stay on mute, but put your questions in the chat and we'll try to get to as many questions as we can and so without further ado, Dr. Fish.
Rachel Fish: Thank you so much, Rabbi Evan. I also just want to thank Celine for organizing who works at Brandeis Hillel. I want to thank Rabbi Winberg for inviting me. It's really a pleasure to be here and I have family members here, both on my lap and on the screen. Thank you for making the time this evening to come. I'm going to share my screen now actually so that you can see a presentation that I have created for us to be able to help navigate the conversation this evening. After I go through the presentation, as Rabbi Evan said, we'll open it up to a conversation, and I welcome specifically that part of the program because I find the discussion to be the most exciting pieces. This evening I'm talking to you about navigating Jewish, and Zionist identities in liberal communities and I just want to say from the outset that this can be a difficult conversation for some people to have. This can be a conversation that at times can feel like a lightning rod for a whole lot of other issues and around people's political perspectives, their political opinions. But what I would like to try to do this evening is actually provide a framework for us to understand some of the intellectual factors that contribute to the liberal and progressive spaces. And how these intellectual ideas have impacted those spaces and unpack a little bit of what those intellectual factors are and the way in which they frame a conversation specifically around Israel and Zionism, and of course, Jewishness plays into that conversation. I use Jewishness in the broader sense of the term, not just around religion. Then I'm going to provide an example using the Academy as an example of how these issues emerge, and the Academy is a space that I am very familiar with so that is why I'm using that as the example. But everything that I'm going to speak about this evening in terms of the intellectual factors, are factors that go beyond the field of humanities. It goes beyond the academy, seeps into the public discourse, mainstream media, politics, and larger framing around human rights issues. I imagine we're going to have a fruitful conversation. So we're going to begin. Some of the intellectual influences on liberal and progressive spaces, I would like to begin with unpacking, because these are terms that even if you don't know the terms, have absolutely influenced a perspective and an outlook, if you do know the terms, it is worth putting them in the framing to understand how these ideas have been able to garner so much force and cultivate a particular fertility, or a fertile ground around the field of humanities, which includes history, sociology, anthropology, comparative literature, and to other disciplines as well. So first I want to begin with Orientalism. Many of you may have read Edward Said's infamous work of Orientalism written in the 1970s. Edward Said was a professor at Columbia University. He's a professor of comparative literature. The book of Orientalism was a very important book that was written at a time in which it was trying to understand and make sense of Eastern and Western perspectives. But part of the challenge that orientalism has presented is that in many ways it suggests that the Westerner has no right to critique those from the east because the Westerner is not indigenous, or native, or authentic to the space of the east. You can imagine, if you continue to extrapolate this kind of idea out, how we get to a point then in the 21st century where you can have feminists, like individuals who are professors, or feminists and the human rights space, who feel as if they have no authority, or ability, or influence to critique what is happening with issues around women, and female genital mutilation and issues around misogyny in African countries. Because they say, well, that's not our culture, we're not indigenous to that place, so therefore, we can't critique it. The second influence is postmodernism, postmodernism, like all of these ideas, has a value in terms of a methodological approach, particularly around teaching of literature. But the challenge becomes in the field of humanities when postmodernism suggests that there are no objective facts. Therefore, everything has moral equivalency. In postmodernism, the term narrative becomes the most important term. Because everyone has a narrative, all groups have narratives, all individuals have narratives. and narratives can create equality, or equilibrium where individuals are able to say, I feel, or that my narrative is. It in some ways creates this false equivalency between what actually happened on particular dates, times, events in history, and the interpretation around what happened. The third intellectual factor is Neo- Marxism and here I'm very clear that I'm not talking about Marxism in the economic sense, but I'm talking about Marxism in the sense of power and power dynamics. Neo- Marxism suggests that the weak need to be strengthened, and the strong need to be weakened. Why this matters is because if you follow a neo-Marxist line of thinking, it will lead you into the issues of post-colonialism and post nationalism that suggests that all acts of colonialism ought to be condemned. That in terms of post nationalism, everything that's wrong in his world is because of the nation state and that is why we have the world's problems that we have. Again, if you want to apply this to the Israel conversation, if you want to apply this to the Middle Eastern conversation, if you want to apply this to the Jewish conversation, it doesn't take much to be able to understand that in a neo-Marxist post colonialist positioning, Israel is viewed as being the the Goliath and not the David. The Palestinians or other Arabs are now viewed as the David. Israel is viewed as a white imperialist, colonialist outpost in the region of the Middle East. You have individuals like former, now no longer alive, Professor Tony Judt from NYU, who used to argue that Israel was anachronistic, meaning Israel as a nation state had no right to exist because of its Jewish identity. He did not critique any other nation state that had a particular identity, whether it be Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, or any other place.
Rachel Fish: The last three intellectual influences are universalism being prioritized over particularism. Just to say very clearly, and you'll hear me say this a few times. I truly believe that there ought to be a healthy tension between universalism and particularism. This is, I would say, a way in which Jews and Israel are a laboratory for the conversation of universalism and particularism. But in many ways, at least in the humanities, very often, universalism is prioritized at the expense of some particularisms. We'll go into a little bit more detail. But what I mean by that is Jews are often negated a form of particularism. Whereas other minority communities are given the opportunity to have that particularism, to law that particularism. Jews are expected to be only for the universal. This of course applies then to Israel as well because there's a direct correlation between how Jews are perceived in liberal and progressive spaces and the way in which Jew is often equated with sinus or Jew is equated with Israel. Humanities as well, and some of these liberal and progressive spaces. In addition, you have the celebration of the therapeutic. Meaning, feelings trump facts, how one feels, how one can be triggered. I don't want to minimize those things, but facts are given a less of a priority. Then very often, particularly in the conversations that we're seeing today, is the paradigm of race, gender, sexuality, and class become the lens through which all issues are refracted. If one does not use that lens in order to engage in an issue, then very often you are going to be perceived as presenting something that is not really taken into consideration, the micro voices or micro communities that are trying to be heard and presented. What propels these influences? I would say there are a few things. One, there's a lack of sensitivity towards Jews feeling a sense of tribal collective identity. Particularly in the American landscape, Jews are often viewed as a confessional identity, as a religion. As a Religion in American context, it often means that Jews lose some of the people substantive piece that takes on an identity that is not just about religious practice. The second piece is that we have a serious issue of identity politics, whether it's race, sex, gender, or sexuality. Looking through the lens of every single issue and that identity politics very often collapses individual experiences and creates a situation in which group identities are accelerated and group identities lose, in many cases, the human individual unique qualities. It often in those situations when we look at identity politics and when we have large groupings, whether it's around race, whether it's around gender or other forms of categorization. Anti-Semitism is often hidden or misunderstood and we see this most specifically in critical race theory. Now I want to just pause for a minute because I'm saying something that is not popular. I'm saying something that's contrarian. I recognize that it is not ideal to be saying this over a computer instead of in-person. But what I want to say very clearly is that knowing that race and racism are major issues in this country. These are issues American history hasn't properly grappled with. It's what we in the American citizenry needs to properly grapple with. At the same time, the current conversation around race theory poses a serious challenge. I cannot, I guess I'd say cannot overemphasize. I cannot state more clearly that in the critical race theory language, Jews and Israelis are deemed to be white. That whiteness presupposes then that they have privilege, and because they have privileged, they are ultimately part of the problem. They cannot be vulnerable. They are not a minority that can be under attack because of the color of the skin or their approximate color to whiteness. I find this to be highly problematic for moving a conversation forward in terms of actually addressing really difficult issues around anti-Semitism, racism, and other forms of hatred. The last piece I would say in terms of what propels these influences, is that very much in the conversation today playing out in the both political discourse, the media, you see it in pop culture, is a competitive cycle of oppression dominating those discussions. What do I mean by that? Everyone is desperate to prove how much more they are a victim than the next group. That perpetual oppression Olympics is a challenge for actually engaging in a substantive and meaningful conversation about the individual identities of the people who were actually dealing with these issues. Because everyone is so desperate to prove how much they have been wronged by a society. Now, as I have said, these intellectual factors influence a variety of realms. I know it, first and foremost from the humanities. I have seen it play out throughout educational institutions. Not just in higher education, but you also see it in high schools. You also see it in the way in which textbooks are written. You see it in the conversations that are taking place with young people as they are trying to learn not only subject matter, but also critical thinking skills. In the academy specifically, these influences within the humanities have created a very fertile ground for anti-Jewish politics, and I am carefully choosing my words here, and the dehumanization of the State of Israel. Why I say anti-Jewish politics is because if Jews want to live as a religious group, then that's fine. That's not an issue. But if Jews choose to organize themselves as a people with an agenda that goes beyond their religious identity, then that sense of Jewish politics will be under attack. There's also a professor named Jonathan Haidt H - A - I - D - T. Johnathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University and he has written a very important essay a few years ago that actually didn't get much attention. But in his essay, he's saying to the university that universities really need to figure out, are they pursuing emet veritas , truth? Or are they pursuing tikkun olam, social justice? He says that depending upon which of those you prioritize the pursuit of truth as detached and objectively as possible. Or the pursuit of social justice will influence not only the agenda of the university, the way in which content will be taught, the way in which students will be engaging in critical thinking. But it will influence the orientation of the university because if you are pursuing truth, it will influence your understanding of social justice issues. Just as if you pursue social justice, you may need to subvert the truth in order to feel comfortable pursuing the social justice issues you desire to pursue.
Rachel Fish: The last thing I will say on this front is that students experience the impact of these intellectual factors really in three ways. They experience it in the classroom when professors used their classroom as a bully pulpit for a political purpose and political cause.And you see this. I have seen this all the time, and it's not just in the humanities. When you have a class that's on public health issues and all of a sudden, the next thing you know, your teacher is lecturing about how terrible Israel is because they are not giving equal access to Palestinians in the West Bank around health issues. Students, most of whom know nothing about this subject, hook, line and sink or take that information. If a student tries to challenge that there very often in a power dynamic in which they are not going to have a successful time with that individual teacher. There's of course, the campus quad. By the campus quad, I mean the theatrical of the campus quad. You can imagine many of you may have known that as many of you may have seen it.Maybe your students or children have told you about it. But in the campus quad, there are theatrics that take place. Those theatrics can be during apartheid week. Those theatrics can be during dayan. Or those theatrics can simply be when other progressive movements organize themselves and all of a sudden under the radar, Palestinianism is slipped into the conversation because that is the litmus test or one of the pieces of the litmus test denoting how progressive one is on campus. So let me give you an example.The Cuny school City University a few years ago, had a protest on the campus quad specifically about tuition. The cost of how much students were paying to go to school to get an education. Within moments of of the protests happening, all of a sudden a Palestinian flag is unfurled and you begin to hear the chants from the river to the sea Palestine will be free. If you watch the students, because it was on video, and I also saw it in person.If you watch the students, the majority of them have no idea how all of a sudden their protests got hijacked by something that had nothing to do with the issue at hand. But because they were trying to create a coalition and build allies, everyone starts chanting the exact same thing. So this is how the theatrics of the campus quad can be manipulated for purposes that are highly problematic around Zionist identities, Jewish identities, and of course, the State of Israel. Now, Administrative responses vary and as a historian, I don't want to say, you know, this is how all administrators respond. But what I will say is that too often administrators are uncomfortable to actually stand up to these issues because they hide behind the language of this is academic freedom, political language. They say that this is excepted, but we know that there's a double standard very often because if there was so much animosity towards another minority community on campus, the University would respond appropriately.We have seen that time and time again. I'm going to quickly run through these very, very quickly.But just to say that there really are some structural factors within the university that perpetuate these issues. The first is faculty. I already told you about how faculty can use the classroom as a bully pulpit and also those who are involved at the level of the student government for boycott, divestment and sanctions can often find faculty who will be supportive of their cause. Whereas the faculty who are supportive of Jewish nationalism are very difficult to find.Now, obviously there are exceptions. Brandeis is one of those exceptions. Brandeis is blessed to have the shoe sermon Center for Israel Studies. You're blessed to have Jonathan Sana, Alex K. Faculty from the narration in Judaic Studies department. So Brandeis is an exception in this case, I would say. But there are many faculty on campus who are silent on these issues. They are conflict averse. They are fearful of personal and professional repercussions and demonstrate unfortunately great cowardice. I say that not trying to be disrespectful to faculty, many of whom are my colleagues and individuals that I look up to.But when students are looking for grownups support on campus and some of the most important scholars you can imagine tell these students, keep your head down and don't do anything. That sends a signal to those students that they internalize. Those personal and professional consequences are very real. When faculty are fearful of speaking up or publishing because they won't actually get published in the press, the academic press they want to, they may not be invited to speak at academic conferences or it is going to be very difficult at the departmental meeting to even pass a course that they're interested in teaching. Funding issues. I will just tell you that the universities, many of them, have received incredible sums of funds from Arab countries and leaders from those countries, specifically for Middle Eastern Studies and Arab Studies programs. They fund chairs, they fund public outreach initiatives. By public outreach initiatives, we're talking about educational programs for K through 12 public school educators. These educators come to these universities like Georgetown, like Columbia. They used to do it at Harvard. They don't anymore. They do it at UCLA, they do it at Berkeley and they say, look, I don't know the Middle East and I know how challenging of a subject area it is to teach.They come to those universities where they are given content, they are given material, they are given resources, they are given lists of books and films and all of them, I have yet to see. All of them have very problematic material around Israel and Jews.They are lacking greatly in diversity. They're lacking in creating a sense of multiple perspectives. This happens on a regular basis and not only influences, of course, the actual content, but it influences who will be teaching in many cases.As I said also university administrations tend to be conflict averse around this. There are complicit in accepting these problematic funding sources. Administrators tend to be insensitive towards Jewish concerns because they do not view Jews as a vulnerable minority, but rather as part of the majority. The last thing I will say is that there are certain rhetorical tools or linguistic tools that have helped perpetuate this hostile sort of environment or fertile ground for a hostile environment.We see this all the time in the media as well.Marty Friedman wrote about this in some of his writings and tablet Magazine which shared how problematic it is to talk about Israel as a journalist. This is the hijacking of terms around apartheid, where Israel is now viewed as an apartheid state. Israelis become the new Nazis in Israel commits genocide at every turn. That's kind of the language that's used.We also know, of course, this human rights rhetoric that is used that can also be highly problematic. Israel as held to a double standard, Zionism is held to a double standard, whereas no other national group is held.There's an over-emphasis on a regular basis on the need for Jews to be for the other at the expense of their own.The last thing I will say is that the internet for all of its wonderful aspects in terms of the conversation around Israel and Jews and Judaism, particularly for younger people, has been a place in which you can see true spread of antisemitism on a variety of online platforms in such ways that it is very insidious and that many young people do not fully understand and therefore are not sure how to challenge it, grapple with it, address it. It's one thing to see a swastika, it's another when it's some of this underlying language that's coming from progressive spaces that they are not accustomed to navigating. The last thing I will say and then we can open it up is that there hasn't really been a thoughtful developed approach to how to unpack so much of the intellectual factors that can create this kind of hostility. Too often our young people are told to keep their head down, as I said, and ignore and to remain silent.Very often, particularly on campus students are on the defensive.So instead of actually going on the offensive, laying down the foundational conversation about thoughtful, complicated Israel learning about the multiplicities of Zionism and the cacophony that Zionism has always been. Instead you get simplistic, superficial as sort of talking points and students are constantly trying to respond rather than actually set the agenda. There tends to be a huge, incredible amount of Double Think and that Double Think is when a student will think one thing privately, but say something else publicly because they don't want the personal sort of isolation or marginalization that they could feel from their own peers, let alone from academics. There is a very strong herd mentality that exists where it's very difficult to go against the grain.We're living in an environment at this point in time in which we see a lot of cancel culture. Young people do not want to be cancelled.They want to be liked, they want to be with their friends.So there is a great challenge for young people about how to navigate these conversations and really think through the multiple layers that are needed in order for them to begin to feel comfortable to sit down with their friends, began to build relationships, help model empathy, active listening skills, and actually help people understand what the complicated identity is of Jews in the 21st century.
Evan Sheinhait: Thank you so much for sharing those thoughts. I have a lot going through my head, but I do want to turn to the questions because they're coming in. I want to save as much time as we can. As a reminder, if you have any questions, please put them in the chat and we're going to try to get through as many as we can. One question is appearing a few times is the idea that adds Israel is increasing in deepening connections with a variety of Arab countries. Now, how do you think this is going to play out in conversations around Israel and Zionism on campus.
Rachel Fish: In terms of the conversation on campus, I think it won't actually matter to those who are detractors of Israel, meaning rationality and facts don't matter. We've seen that over time. Those who are detractors are not going to at all care that the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, potentially Saudi Arabia, normalized relations with Israel. They also don't want to understand the reason those countries are normalizing relations with Israel because Israel is an incredible startup nation. Because Israel has a high GDP, because Israel has incredible security abilities that these countries need, and because these countries are terrified of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, anyone else you can imagine. No one who cares about what I'm saying is going to listen to that conversation and be rational. They are only going to hyper focus by putting Israel under a microscope in terms of their orientation, assuming that Israel is always trying to marginalize Palestinians, is not looking to have meaningful relations with Palestinians, and is not taking into context the larger region.
Evan Sheinhait: Thank you. Another question that was asked has to do with how students are supposed to respond when they see anti-Israeli sentiment on campus. You mentioned, a lot of professors and faculty say, "Put your head down, don't make his scene." But are interested in what message does that tell students both who are pro Israel, but also those who might have never engaged with Israel before, and this is the only message that they're seeing.
Rachel Fish: There are a lot of organizations that now are working on campus. There are two faculty oriented organizations, scholars for peace in the Middle East and the Academic Engagement Network. Both of them are very important to organizations. They work closely with faculty for the purpose of being able to provide a community for academics, to have space to think about these issues, and to find like-minded individuals who can share their experiences. Also in some ways support group for those who have to deal with these kinds of hostilities on a regular basis. Those groups do support student efforts, but they're primarily focused at the faculty level. But those groups can help identify faculty members who may be on a campus that can also provide support to students. There's also a new initiative by Hillel International that Mark Rosenberg is running, which is called The Center for Campus Climate, which is working specifically with a variety of stakeholders from administrators, diversity, equity and inclusion officers in order to give them more sensitivity around understanding Judaism and Jews and Israel. There's also a discussion happening at the level of the students and of course, for the purpose of being able to ensure that the university is understanding how Jews are a minority on campus and how their identity is impacted by some of this hostility. There are a variety of other organizations as well that work with Hillel, that work with Chabad and other opportunities for students to be able to find that support on campus.
Evan Sheinhait: Thank you. Another theme that's coming up in the chat a lot is, what to do when people find themselves in liberal spaces? Whether that, the gamblers keep coming up as Black Lives Matter rallies or other protests are liberal causes. How are both students, but also parents and educators supposed to tell when an event is going to be helpful and effective in that goal and when might it slip and like you said, become hijacked by another topic or idea?
Rachel Fish: I think that first we have to recognize that the majority of young Jews, myself included, even if I'm not so young, cared deeply about so many of the societal issues that are impacting America. They want to be part of positive change. They want to be allies to other minority communities. Remember, we're commanded 36 times in the Torah to remember what it means to be the guerre, to be the stranger. We as Jews know what it means to be the other. We as Jews deeply feel, I think within our DNA to be present and to be supportive in order for the other to be elevated and uplifted and empowered. This is a mandate I think we all feel. The question becomes, however, what happens when being for the other is at the expense of your own identity? That's a very real question, and one that very few young people are having a conversation around in their homes, in their educational institutions, in their synagogues with religious leadership. It's one that I would say needs to happen way before students ever stepped foot on college campus. We need to be creating brave spaces for students to be able to have those conversations. Let me just give you an example. Right now at many elite high schools in New York and in Boston, there is a trend that's happening, mostly from diversity equity and inclusion officers to create affinity groups for students on campus. Affinity groups are based upon the individual's identity. These affinity groups are organized and broad categories, usually around race. Here we use the language and see by BIPOC, if that's how you pronounce it, Black Indigenous people of color. Which just so you know, there was an interesting piece on NPR just today are the other day saying, a lot of people who are black indigenous or people of color don't even like that term. Many liberal and progressive white people like it, but it doesn't mean those other communities like it. But they want to create groups around race or ethnicity, around gender and around sexuality.
Rachel Fish: Jews are put into a different affinity group. Jews are often put and the white affinity group, which is highly problematic for Jewish students who often do not feel part of the majority for a variety of reasons that you all know. When this happens, students do not feel as if they can engage plus we have seen also through research and Harvard Business Review actually did a piece on this recently, that this does not promote diversity and actually continues to promote segregation. It actually doesn't expose young people to different identities, to multiplicity of perspectives. I would argue we need to recalibrate the way in which we are thinking about engaging with the other. Part of that means that one, to start young by doing it through literature, because through literature you're able to see something in yourself. There's both a mirror and a window and see beyond into another community and which you can reflect and begin to understand and not in a voyeuristic way. The second piece is to actually build relationships, one-on-one relationships, in order to break down stereotypes and to humanize those who are coming from a different identity. I can't underscore how necessary it is to engage in that one-on-one dialogical relationship that Martin Buber talked about in terms of the I-thou relationship, because if it is only an I-it relationship with these broad categorizations, it will not lead to productively engaging and building the muscle of compassion. I think all of these components are necessary in order to be able to actually expose young people to different identities. Then I think we also need to be very clear what needs to be present and show up appropriately for different social issues because you can't see that space otherwise, that's problematic, but at the same time, remember, we're not always going to be present in order to convince those who don't want us there, but the 80 percent of people in the middle who don't know anything about these issues are the people that you need to be able to talk to so that they gain greater sensitivity, awareness, and hopefully long-term education that can influence how they understand these issues. But before students ever get in those spaces, they can look at what happened in Chicago a few years ago when Jew showed up at the Dyke March, they can look at what happened when Jew showed up at the Women's March in DC. They can look at what happened in certain places in which Jews showed up at the Black Lives Movement, not just protest, but the larger organizing bodies, the Movement for Black Lives. Those have to be understood and unpacked. Not to say you shouldn't be part of those movements, but to understand how those movements can hijack and actually marginalize another community that's a minority ie the Jews.
Evan Sheinhait: I love everything you're saying that a lot of that's the model we use at hello when engage with students always, those one-on-one moments. It takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of effort to actually build relationships, even though we know they're more meaningful. I'm wondering if you can clarify how we're supposed to know when something is legitimate criticism?
Rachel Fish: Of Israel?
Evan Sheinhait: Of Israel or Zionism. When is it legitimate?
Rachel Fish: Yeah. This is actually super easy for me. For any of you who have ever spent a Shabbat in Israel or for any of you who have actually had people over for Shabbat in your own home you know how many opinions are around the table and it's many more than the people who are sitting at the table. Within Israel, it is easy for me to say that it is appropriate, it is expected to criticize Israeli policy and Israeli government just as we Americans criticize American policy in American government. It happens all the time. Michael Walzer, professor emeritus at Princeton had this beautiful essay in which he talks about what it means to be a connected critic. We want connected criticism because connected criticism leads ultimately to a place in which a society and individuals within that society try to improve the society and order to make it better for everyone. When you have criticism in Israel, it spans the political spectrum left, right, center, religious, secular, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, Russians, you name it. That is what you hear in Israel. Just as in the American Jewish discourse, you see a variety of perspectives. Listen, one of the values of Judaism is disputation, its argumentation. It's a value that we hold dear. The challenge that we are talking about, just so I'm very clear, is not about does Israel have borders here? Does Israel have borders there? Should there be settlements? What do you do particularly with checkpoints? Should there be a security fence? That's not the conversation on campus. The conversation on campus like at UMass Amherst just last year was, does Israel have a right to exist? I want you to go and tell me any other conversation that happens like that on any campus. Does France have a right to exist? Does England have a right to exist? Does New Zealand have a right to exist? Does North Korea? Does China? Does Iran? It doesn't happen. That's when you know there's a clear double standard. When you see that double standard, I firmly believe you need to call it out, because if you don't call it out, you perpetuate the situation, and how what happens on many campuses is that this is seen as academic freedom. This is seen as a legitimate form of scholarship. I want to be very clear. It's not. Nothing about it is about showing the complexity of Israeli society. About showing the complexity of Israeli Jews, about showing the complexity of Israeli citizens, Jews and non-Jews. It is simply does this place have a right to exist? Criticism, kosher, but hatred, not so much. I often hear and probably Evan, you probably hear this, well, I'm just anti-Zionist. I want to say one thing to this, which is, as a historian, I will say to you, anti-Zionist positions were completely accepted responses prior to the existence of the state in 1948, there were a variety of responses to the Jewish question, to the problems of persecution, to the problems of anti-Semitism, and to the issues of acculturation and assimilation. There were a variety of ways in which Jewish diaspora communities engaged in thinking about what were the ways in which the Jewish polity could respond and an anti-Zionist position was one of those positions. After the creation of the State of Israel, anti-Zionism takes on a very different context. It takes on a very different meaning. It is no longer simply about a response, but rather you're saying defacto this place that already exists, Zionism, which is Jewish nationalism, the movement for self-determination ought not to be a liberation movement for the Jewish people. That I have a problem with and smells and sounds a lot like antisemitism.
Evan Sheinhait: We thank you for that. Shifting a little bit, but almost similar lines of this idea of intersectionality and how we hold to many identity. As you mentioned, that Jews in Israel those are clumped as white and with all the stigmas that come with that identity. But we know that the Jewish community is much more diverse with Jews from the Middle East, in North African, Jews of color. Do you have a sense of how that all fits in either within the Jewish community or within this conversation at large.
Rachel Fish: First I would say Rabbi oven, you said that we all know and we may be Jews do know, and we may be on this call now. But the rest of the world does not know. Much of America, does not know. Much of America is not Boston. I say this as someone who grew up in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, much of America is not California. Much of America has no idea what a Jew looks like. They want to check your heads and make sure you don't have horns. They need to save your soul and convert you. This is real. First of all, much of America needs to humanize Jews because we're the other and they don't know what Jews are. They don't know that Jews come in multiple ethnicities, come from different National groups, come from different countries, speak multiple languages, had different religious practices, different cultural traditions, and different histories. Some are shared, but many are unique to the particular place from which they come. I would say actually, we as American Jews need to do a much better job about showing the heterogeneity of the Jewish community. We are not monolithic. I believe if we can do that through a variety of mediums and a lot through humanization. It won't go very far to be able to show that Jews are a lot of different types of peoples and yet have a sense of shared collective identity. That's not typical and not at all understood by the larger American populous.
Evan Sheinhait: Thank you for that reminder. It's always a great reminder to remember that this Jewish bubble at Brandeis doesn't represent everyone in our country and there's lots of opinions out there and we need to be cognizant of it. We see the time is ticking down. We're going to do one more question. The question, how do we separate this idea of progressiveness and anti Israel? Do you have any tips or resources for how these two identities of Progressivism and Zionism can coexist?
Rachel Fish: So you asked two different questions. This may be how you all feel also, so we're going to wrap up. But you asked two different questions there. I would say that there are two things here. Jews are in a very particularly peculiar situation. If you talk about hatred coming towards the Jews on the right, it's because we're not white enough, It's because we're not herian and it's because of our identity, which is not just about our religious identity, but are considered to be racial identity by the Nazis, by Wilhelm Marr, who coins the term antisemitism in 1897.. Which Jews can't circumvent their identity just by converting, because it's a racial DNA issue. So the hard right can't except Jews because we aren't White. We are a threat to whatever whiteness is. But now we have a situation on the hard left and I actually prefer saying hard left and hard right because many of us are progressive and a variety of ways and I don't want that language to be hijacked by someone who's not progressive but thinks they are. But the hard left actually says, will you Jews, You're are white. Because of your whiteness, you actually have no say in any issues around oppression, because you're part of the problem. You're as part of the privileged class, your upward socioeconomic mobility prevents you from critiquing what's happening in society. Jews are literally caught in the crosshairs, and also don't forget about Radical Islamism. We may not be living in France, but let's not close our eyes to what reality actually exists when political theological Islam, and I'm not saying all Islam, but a particular form of Islam has an agenda. Jews truly are in the crosshairs. Do I have an answer for this?. Listen, If I had an answer for this, I'd be doing very well and so with the Jewish people. But here's what I will say. We have a responsibility to be able to educate our young people about these issues. We have a responsibility to teach them that they are part of something particular and that is their roots, and they must be grounded in it and not ashamed of it and proud of it. At the same time we have a collective responsibility for the Universal, for shared humanity. We have to teach that it's both a responsibility and a privilege to be part of the Jewish community. That's not a small thing to teach, and it has to happen way before the students come on campus. If they come to Brandeis, they will be in a community in which they will be able to navigate that very well. They will have resources from Hillel, they will have incredible faculty, but not every campus is Brandeis. We need to be able to just begin these conversations through that brave space I talked about. I'm really obsessed with that because safe spaces are not going to help us, of course, physical safety. But safe spaces mean you don't want to be challenged with ideas that feel uncomfortable. We actually have to be willing to end our sentences with question marks rather than exclamation points.
Evan Sheinhait: Thank you so much, Rachel, for this really thought-provoking and inspiring conversation. I'll share as someone who works with particularly many liberal and progressive Jews. This conversation comes up a lot and the shared that's really affirming that the note that there are people out in the larger Jewish worlds thinking about this and talking about it and supporting them as they navigate this in real time themselves. Thank you again and thank you everyone for joining us for this conversation. Stay tuned for more information about future virtual conversations like this. With that, I'm going to say, good night to everyone.
Rachel Fish: Thank you. Goodnight.