Jerry Haber is perturbed that a flotilla activist, Gabe Schivone, characterized himself as Jewish in an op-ed and said he was representative of a movement among young Jews of casting off Zionism, and then his Jewishness was questioned (by a friend’s letter), and Schivone admitted that he made the claim because of vague Jewish ancestry in Mexico. I am not sure how much to care about the question. I am a little irritated by anyone putting on airs, and certainly we have seen lots of people deploy their Jewishness, to gain standing in this issue… I’ve seen people claim Arab ancestry with the same goal… In the end, as Haber says, the religious identity of the speaker doesn’t affect the issue. And our goal here is to get more and more people in this conversation, regardless of their origins. Everyone counts. And yet, if you care about identity politics, this is an interesting question. Here is the meat of Haber’s argument:
I don’t know Gabe Schivone, though I have associates who have been impressed with the young man. But his case raises several issues that should be considered separately.
First, playing the Jewish card. Jewish critics of Israel have been accused of cynically exploiting their identity in order to establish “credibility.” This is not a serious criticism because the phenomenon, if it exists, is rare.
On the contrary, most Jewish critics of Israel who emphasize their Jewishness do so because it is part of their identity, and often closely tied to their demand for social justice, their desire to dissociate themselves as Jews from a Jewish ideology that they abhor, etc. Many Jewish critics of Israel — and here I would put many people I know from Jewish Voice for Peace, of which Schivone is an active member — are motivated not only by their concern for human rights, but by their feeling a special responsibility as Jews for the plight of the Palestinians, and because this treatment does not reflect values they consider to be Jewish. Their critics may consider this misguided, but it is not a cynical exploitation of their Jewishness.
In fact, many non-affiliated Jews have become more Jewish because of their association with the struggle for Palestinian rights. I recently heard a talk from Hebrew University demographer Sergio dellaPergola, who acknowledged this phenomenon. Opposition to Israeli policies often increase a sense of Jewish identity.
But with Schivone we are not talking about a nominal Jew who becomes more Jewish through his pro-Palestinian activism. We may be talking about a person whose Jewish ancestry (if he has it) became more significant to him as he began to associate with Jews on campus. I have seen that happen time and time again; students who are not Jewish according to conventional demarcators may feel more and more Jewish if they hang with Jewish crowds, go to Hillel or Chabad (neither of whom excludes non-Jews). I knew one gentile who faithfully attended orthodox services, who had no intention to convert to Judaism, but who felt close to traditional Judaism as a bat Noah (a gentile who has accepted what rabbinic Judaism says is incumbent upon them). Sure, she didn’t claim to be Jewish, but she let Jewish tradition define who she is and what she should do. In America, today, the parameters of Jewish identity are shifting, and demographers count Jews according to multiple criteria (one criterion counts you as a Jew if you live in a household in which there is a Jew).
Had Schivone said, “I am an American of Jewish ancestry who has become more and more attached to Jews and Judaism through my work with JVP” I would see no problem with that. The problem is that he misrepresented himself by calling himself Jewish; he simply is not Jewish according to the most liberal criteria, no more than Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who claims Irish ancestry, is Irish-American. And by not being forthcoming — and then by playing the Jewish card — he has damaged his credibility.
