‘Washington Post’ reports that funders have excommunicated Jews who don’t believe in Zionism

Marc Fisher has an excellent piece up at the Washington Post on the cracks beginning to show inside the official Washington Jewish community over Israel, with young Jews saying they do not believe in the need for a Jewish state, and in doing so, fostering an argument. The Post piece is exceptional for its openness about matters usually deemed too parochial or marginal for American readers to care about them — the Jewish argument over Zionism Are you self-hating? Do you believe in Israel’s right to exist? Have you now or ever signed a statement in favor of BDS? are among the questions Jewish establishment apparatchiks ask young Jews in circumscribing the debate.

And there are two great nuggets of reporting. Louisa Solomon of the Shondes gets to say that a Jewish state was the wrong answer to Jewish persecution in Europe, and Fisher publishes her song lyrics bewailing the blood on her hands. And Fisher reports that fears of losing $250,000 in funding drove the Jewish Community Center’s censorship campaign against the Shondes, David Harris-Gershon, and the play The Admission.

Fisher cites surveys showing that rabbis are afraid to speak openly about Israel lest they lose their jobs, and he frames his piece by showing how backward the official debate is:

“A wonderful aspect of Jewish tradition is healthy debate,” says Stuart Weinblatt, rabbi at Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, Md. “But ultimately, a big tent does have parameters. It’s not inappropriate for the JCC or any institution to ask, ‘Does this play or speaker convey a narrative that helps people understand Israel’s ongoing struggle?’ There are plenty of venues willing to host productions critical of Israel. The Jewish community doesn’t need to be that place.”

“You have to push the envelope, you have to challenge,” says Gil Steinlauf, senior rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation in the District. “This is the essence of what it means to be Jewish: We welcome dissent. And I do see a move away from that welcome in the Jewish community.”…

Fisher features Louisa Solomon first, and treats her with enormous respect. Notice the head of the JCC implying that the group is “self-hating.”

Her politics feature in some lyrics, as in “I Watched the Temple Fall,” which makes clear her antagonism toward Israel’s policies:

“I’m sick/from the blood all over our hands/how the land soaks it in so the desert can/finally bloom with this colonial hate/no heart, no heart could really beat love for this state.”

Solomon asked if the problem would go away if she agreed not to mention a boycott from the stage, but there was to be no negotiating. Solomon says [Washington JCC exec Carole] Zawatsky focused on the “Temple Fall” lyrics “with what I heard as a clearly accusatory tone, as if the title itself were evidence of the band’s self-hating tendencies.”

For Zawatsky, the deal-breaker was Solomon’s avowed rejection of Zionism — the political movement for a Jewish state in the land of Israel. The original invitation to The Shondes “was a mistake,” she says. “A group that self-identifies as anti-Zionist doesn’t have a place on the stage of the DCJCC.”

Next to the David Harris-Gershon censorship. He’s not self-hating. But he has erred in other ways!

“David is a mensch,” Zawatsky says. “But he’s threading a very fine needle. He certainly identifies as a Zionist and wrote a good, thoughtful, painful book. But BDS has been a line that the American Jewish community has set.”

Fisher is honest about the role of donations in creating this orthodoxy. The following exchange is great because when you get honest Jews into a sincere conversation, they will acknowledge the importance of funding and not try and put a pretty face on it.

“David is not a political radical,” says Rabbi Alana Suskin, director of strategic communications at Americans for Peace Now. “His book is not political. But there’s an overwhelming fear in the Jewish community of any discussion of BDS.”

What drives that fear? Suskin falls quiet for a moment, then rubs her thumb against her forefingers.

Money.

More honest reporting:

Another local funder of many Jewish nonprofits, the Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation, born of the fortune of one of Giant Food’s founding families, also won’t give to programs that support BDS, says executive director Alison McWilliams. The foundation — which last year funded programs bringing Arabs and Jews together in schools, social services and even a TV sitcom — gave the JCC $20,000 but stayed out of the debate over [the play that mentions the Nakba] “The Admission.”

“It’s not our place as funders to tell them what kind of programming decisions to make, or even to advise them on that,” she says. Do all funders follow that principle? “Probably not.”

Fisher reports this craziness, in an interview with Ari Roth of Theater J, which is affiliated with the JCC and which staged The Admission, but with limitations on its run:

“On behalf of the Jewish people, are you now or have you ever been a signatory to a boycott of Israel?” Roth asked [Tony Kushner on the telephone], hoping for a clear “No,” because only then could he stage one of Kushner’s plays next season.

“What has happened to our Jewish community?” Kushner replied, as Roth recalls. Then, after a pause, “No, I’m opposed to cultural boycotts of any kind. But what kind of question is that? You know, you go from redlines to blacklisting in a heartbeat.”

It’s a question the JCC now requires Roth to ask of all artists he considers bringing to Theater J.

Did you see that: “It’s a question the JCC now requires Roth to ask of all artists he considers bringing to Theater J.” As Kushner says, what has happened to our Jewish community? Zionism has destroyed Jewish intelligence and debate, is the answer.

Ari Roth is outspoken in this interview about what happened to The Admission because of the pressure of a small group of rightwing fear fosterers called Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art (COPMA).

after COPMA’s campaign, the JCC negotiated “an about-face, a retreat,” Roth says. The number of performances was slashed from 34 to 16, and limits were placed on costumes, set and props, all so the play could be billed as a workshop production rather than a full-scale show.

The money paragraph in the story:

Two people who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to discuss internal matters said the JCC board was concerned about losing $250,000 in donations if “The Admission” went ahead as a full production. Zawatsky denies funding was a factor in her decision.

So this story delivers us at last into the construction of Jewish identity as the generation who are the children of immigrants dies off: in which particularist solidarity and wealth are too highly prized, have too much weight. Thank heavens for the next generation.