Jews who support Palestinians need new Institutions
JVL Introduction
According to the Editor of Jewish Currents, Jews who support Palestinians need to create new institutions to participate in Jewish religious and cultural activities because the Establishment Jewish organisations cannot provide what we need. Angel argues that this is not a distraction from the vital work of standing in solidarity with Palestinians and opposing the genocide, occupation and siege but is necessary and related. For those of us who do not have faith and who have distanced ourselves from most Jewish organisations, it may be less of an issue, but some of us are observant Jews and/or Jews for whom our heritage and its culture are important parts of who we are and what we value.
While Angel is writing from the perspective of the USA, there are resonances for us in the UK, where there have also been attempts to create new institutions and even new congregations. Do we need more? Are antizionist Jews also putting Israel front and centre of our Judaism, albeit from a perspective of opposition? If we reject the Establishment, how will we find support at important times such as births, barmitzvahs, marriage and death?
We missed this when it was first published in the summer but it is not time specific and provides considerable food for thought. Your thoughts and comments are, as always, welcome.
LL
This article was originally published by Jewish Currents on Tue 17 Jun 2025. Read the original here.
We Need New Jewish Institutions
Sustaining the struggle will require spaces for reimagining our tradition.
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A really interesting article that gives hope to the anti-Zionist Jew that they could bring about something positive with new organisations instead of always being negative. It needs doing.
Yawn
The world’s largest religion began as group of Jews who left Judaism. Two thousand years later there are millions of Jews.
If a few reform Jews want to leave now, big deal
PJJP – Progressive Jews for Justice in Palestine
( [email protected]) is one new grouping ; it’s newish, but based on earlier initiatives, especially from LGBQ rabbis founding congregations like Beit Klal Israel. Younger groups like Na’amod and Vashti are more overtly religious than JVL and JJP… BUT
my impression is that friends or relations who are ‘culturally Jewish’ in the bris/ bar-bat-mitzvah/wedding/funeral sense, often don’t want to spend their time building new institutions but like to have somewhere to go at important life moments, and are more linked to Othodoxy of a user-friendly kind (a bit like Anglicanism used to be for nominal Christians). Those congregations get a frequent diet of Israel-defensiveness, obvs. Plus the calibre of ‘community leaders’ always goes down over time, as shown by plenty of research on all such organisations.
(Jakobovits declined to Sachs and now MIrvis, QED!). It’s good if religiously-minded people want to try transforming their local shuls, their route strikes me as a hard one leading through committees full of place-men and-women, but what this article has made me do is think about the vulnerability of our secular leftist Jewish culture. As the generations roll on and the culture wars are getting tougher and tougher, I just hope Conway Hall and Golders Green crematorium go on being there for us!
I’m very glad someone has raised this issue but these replies have not provided an answer that speaks for me. I have never been religious. In the past and today, I have identified/identify with the ´non-Jewish Jew’ views of Isaac Deutscher, full stop. Joining JVL was my first and so far only venture in my mid-70s into a group self-defining as Jewish. For me it was to allow me to support Palestinian rights as human rights as a non-Jewish Jew and as a Labour Party member. But I still don’t self-define as Jewish and I am now having to face the question of JVL members considering becoming more Jewish and leaving Labour, another issue I am also confronting and therefore doubly for me of having to consider leaving JVL.
This is in fact a familiar issue for Christians. For many centuries European Christianity was dominated by a rigid structure of beliefs and practices centered on a hierarchy dominated by the papacy. Many believers felt that this contradicted the fundamental point of the religion and there were numerous attempts to change or break away from it, of which the Reformation of the 16th century was only one. The response from within was always that rejection of Roman Catholicism could only be the first step towards rejection of Christianity.
By contrast there have always been many ways of being Jewish. Whatever the disagreements I think that there has always been an acceptance among Jews (including secular Jews) that what unites them is more fundamental than what divides them. Until very recently this has been rare among Christians.
It now seems that Zionists are pushing Judaism towards the Christian model. Allegiance to Israel is being made as fundamental to Judaism as allegiance to the papacy is to Roman Catholicism; more fundamental in fact than any religious belief. The claim is that anyone who rejects the state of Israel has ceased or is ceasing to be a real Jew in any sense.
It has not been sufficiently noted that in attempting to reconstruct Judaism Zionists are following an essentially Christian model. Israel itself is a copy of a European state of the ancien régime, following the rule ‘une foi, une loi, un roi’. References to settler colonialism and apartheid are true enough but the history can be traced further back. I would see the nation state law as strongly reminiscent of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis X1V in 1685.
Very interesting. It makes sense by illuminating how the gap between the politics of protest and effective political action has to be traversed. It casts an interesting light on current developments in the protest sphere, such as Your Party and indeed JVL.