The Jerusalem Post recently charged that a human rights activist who participated in the siege-busting Gaza Flotilla was falsely claiming to be Jewish. Given the high stakes over criticism of Israeli policy and the Flotilla in particular, such unsubstantiated charges to discredit a young Jewish activist are not unexpected. And they aren’t surprising coming from the very paper that published the patently false allegation that participants in the flotilla boats to Gaza were bringing sulfur and were planning to kill Israeli soldiers.
Still, the accusation against the young activist, Gabe Schivone, has raised a good number of questions worth exploring. But first, let’s get the fact straight. It is true that there is simply no universally agreed upon definition of who is a Jew — the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry has been tested and strained over competing interpretations — but it must be clearly said that by any reasonable definition Gabe Schivone is Jewish.
To start with, he has a Jewish grandparent and lives a life inspired by Jewish traditions and values. This makes him Jewish enough for the Nazis (according to the Nuremberg Laws). It also earns him a ticket to fly in free Birthright junket trip to Israel— a program that has been called “the most successful Zionist project in the Jewish world.” He would even be welcomed to Israel as a New Immigrant (according to Israel’s Law of Return).
Further, unlike nearly half of American Jews, Gabe is also an active participant in not one but two Jewish organizations— a radical Jewish community in Tucson, Arizona, and Jewish Voice for Peace. In other words, Gabe is in excellent company in his choices to honor his Jewish heritage and community and is fairly typical of new generations of Jews for whom intermarried parents are the norm. But instead of hearing the inevitable applause that greets graduates of Birthright or new immigrants to Israel, he must face charges of not being Jewish.
Why?
First, for the “Israel right-or-wrong” crowd, Jews like Gabe or me ( in my capacity as a staff member at Jewish Voice for Peace) who oppose Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians simply cannot be bona fide Jews. We hear this all the time. Yet, opposing the Israeli occupation and historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinians is a very Jewish act. The story of slavery and freedom that we recount each generation at the Passover table the Passover table is a central motif in Jewish tradition.
In fact, and I say this as someone educated entirely in Jewish schools from kindergarten through graduate school, the act of standing up against these injustices which are hateful to us is not merely a Jewish act; it is rather an essential Jewish act. standing up against these injustices which are hateful to us is not merely a Jewish act; it is rather an essential Jewish act.
But listen to the language of the Jerusalem Post piece and how it understands anti-occupation Jews: “misguided Jews, manipulative Jews, malevolent Jews, and other Jews of assorted bad faith.” It is worth noting that these very juicy adjectives parallel those traditionally used by anti-Semites.
Secondly, Gabe defines himself as a Chicano Jew, and many Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European descent, who make up the vast majority of Jews in the US, have no idea such a thing can exist. I know—I’m a Latino Jew myself. I was born in Latin America, my parents in Egypt, my grandparents in Turkey and Greece.
The fact is that Jews come in all forms and colors. If this has always been true, it is becoming more so with the new generation of American Jews, where over 40 percent of Jews marry non-Jews. How will these families and the children born into them identify? Most likely with hyphenated identities, including, yes, Chicano Jews. If we want to even have a Jewish future, and I do, then it is up to us to welcome them. Sadly, in all too many cases, older generations are shutting the door, and that is, as my Ashkenazi Jewish friends say in Yiddish, a shandeh (shame). No wonder demographers are fretting about the diminishing number of young people who identify as Jews.
We Jews may become a disappearing tribe and Gabe’s story perfectly embodies two of the main causes for that disappearance. If we want to have a Jewish future, then the Jewish world must learn to embrace the younger generations who love Jewish community but who have a very different and even critical relationship to Israel, and they must learn to embrace and not run from hyphenated Jewish identities which may, like American identity, one day even be the norm.
At the end of the day, the definitions of who is a Jew are as varied as Jews are. Regardless of how one defines Jews — by religious halachic law or nationality or something else—one thing remains clear: some 25 percent of the participants in the Gaza Flotilla were Jewish. Their numbers, and the numbers of those of us who supported the flotilla are simply too big to pick off one at a time, try as they might.
We are Jewish, and we believe in freedom, equality, and justice for Palestinians and Israelis.
