On Speaking "As a Jew"

The seduction of speaking as a Jew – and why I will not do it

Of the many indignities Jews have been forced to endure over the last five months, one of the most painful is the very public dragging of Jewish identity, history, and suffering into the cause of a free Palestine. There are the ceasefire protestors adorned in “not in our name” shirts; and the cavalcade of TikTokers who parade themselves “as a Jew” for the consumption of the non-Jewish world’s social media timelines. One popular social media post proclaimed: “I do not consent to the use of my Jewish traumas to perpetuate this ethnic cleansing & settler colonialism against Palestine.” Most humiliating of all are the images of Jews disseminated across social media by Jewish Voices for Peace, holding signs that read “my grandparents didn’t survive the Holocaust for Israel to commit genocide in Gaza.” The social justice group If Not Now speaks in the name of “Jewish values” in organizing for Palestine. At this year’s Academy Awards, director Joanthan Glazer invoked his own Jewishness and the memory of the Holocaust to condemn it’s cynical weaponization by Israel’s right-wing government. The playwright Tony Kushner put a finer point on it: “the history of the Holocaust, the history of Jewish suffering must not be used as an excuse” for Israel’s war in Gaza, Kushner said. “It is a misappropriation of, of what it means to be a Jew, what the Holocaust meant, and he [Glazer] rejects that. Who doesn’t agree with that?”

But what exactly is being called upon when these people invoke their Jewishness? Or by If Not Now when they invoke their “Jewish values?” It’s hard to believe they are referring to religious values, which offer a confusing muddle of admirable precepts and ancient, reactionary theology. Or are they the sum total of the lessons gleaned from our collective suffering and trauma, as groups like Jewish Voices for Peace and Tony Kushner seem to suggest when invoking the meaning of the Holocaust? And what do people like Tony Kushner think the Holocaust means anyhow?

If it those lessons we refer to when speaking as a Jew, then there too, we are not left with much to hold onto; indeed, that history is marshaled on a daily basis by Jews – not least among them Holocaust survivors themselves – as evidence that no one will stand up for us in our darkest hour, that we will be abandoned to the death squads and gas chambers, that our desperate ships of refugees will be turned away; that tolerance is for fools and solidarity is a wager made only by dead Jews; and that expecting Jews to take the same bet that has resulted in their near complete annihilation is an insult to their intelligence, their history, and their humanity; that to insist on recommitting to that wager is the definition of insanity; and that nothing matters but power. These are the lessons of the Holocaust for many of its victims throughout the world, and especially so in Israel, the nation that rose out of the ashes of the Shoah and is the true steward of its memory. To be clear, these are not poor, pitifully misguided people; these are the reasonable conclusions drawn from the experience of living people. That is an upsetting thought for a leftist like me, but it is one I know I must reckon with rather than tell myself some children’s story about all the Good Lessons of the destruction of my people.

And so the problem with making your Jewish identity tantamount to your political activism, and in turn, your political activism tantamount to the lessons of your trauma, is that you don’t have much of a leg to stand on when other Jews draw different lessons from their trauma. And who can argue with trauma, after all? If the basis of our politics are “lessons from the Holocaust” how can we argue with Benjamin Netanyahu when he begins a war by saying “never again is now”? That is the sincere feeling of many Israelis right now, and not just those on the extreme right. And so instead of finding a way forward, we find ourselves trapped in a never ending cul-de-sac of trauma with our right-wing Jewish brothers and sisters.

The truth is, there are no good lessons to draw from the Holocaust. In fact, when you stare into the abyss that is the Shoah, it is a world-historically bad event from which to draw progressive lessons – a litany of betrayals and failures of solidarity. There is no teleology to our suffering, no ultimate purpose. Jews were not murdered to teach a lesson about tolerance; they were murdered for being Jews. Attaching some kind of lesson to their suffering – whether done by diaspora Jewish leftists or Israel’s right-wing government – degrades their memory. We are not here to be the moral of anyone’s story.  And if we are keen on drawing any lessons from the Holocaust, the lesson is just as much, if not more so, “no one will save us, so no one else matters” than it is “no one is safe until we are all safe.” To be more crass, the lessons are just as much "no lives matter, except ours" as they are “all lives matter.” The fact that the Jewish American left has tied itself to the latter position, if not the literal words, is one of this war’s cruel ironies; it has, perversely, become the sentiment segments of the left now demand of diaspora Jews, and one which some Jews seem only too eager to oblige.

For diaspora leftists like Kushner and Jewish Voices for Peace, Holocaust memory must remain an abstraction. If it were allowed to be understood as anything else, then the same people who so deeply relish the irony of the Holocaust’s victims committing war crimes – of all people, they should understand – would have to contend with the disturbing thought that if not by the accident of their birth, they too – ever eager as they are to make meaning of the Shoah – would be invoking its lessons to wage war against Gazans. In so doing, groups like Jewish Voices for Peace and Tony Kushner rob the Holocaust’s victims of their humanity anew: first as victims, then as parable.

If I am being completely honest with myself, the fact that I — like many other young, progressive American Jews — am so seduced by enlisting my identity and my trauma in service of progressive “lessons” is more indicative of a series of contingent and material conditions of which I am the product than anything fundamentally true or real about the Holocaust and its attendant lessons. It feels so good – so intuitive, so courageous – to speak “as a Jew” here in my diverse, progressive, professional-managerial milieu in America, where claims to an identity of victimhood are the currency of the day (and what exactly is being called upon by speaking “as a Jew” if not one’s status as history’s ur-victim?). American Jews, left out of the identitarian rat-race for so long, can finally cash in their chips on the social justice left – in condemnation of the very Jews excluded from American power and privilege. How convenient for us diaspora Jews that the ethical point-of-view neatly aligns with the self-interested point-of-view, which neatly aligns with the outwardly virtuous looking point-of-view. But deep down, I know that by the luck of the draw, the choices of my ancestors, the roll of the dice, I ended up in America, rather than Israel, and that if the chips had fallen slightly differently, I too might be a traumatized Israeli invoking the Shoah to justify the mass starvation of Gazans. This thought doesn’t compel me to change my politics, as it might for some of the most guilt-ridden, stridently pro-Israel Jews on the right, but it does fill me with a profound sense of humility about different Jewish experiences, and the vastly different kind of politics they might entail. I am not against collective punishment as a weapon of war because of my Jewishness; I am against it because it is wrong. To insist otherwise, as diaspora leftists seem so keen on doing, is to make a mockery of my Jewishness, in every sense of that word. And so insofar as I advocate for a free Palestine, it is in spite of, not because of my Jewishness. As a Jew, I extend my solidarity to the Palestinian cause in spite of the evidence, not because of it. 

The fact that some Jews themselves can be as unreflective about our history, that they too are looking for the easiest and cheapest answers to make sense out of the senselessness of our suffering should not come as a surprise, since they are people too after all, and can be as thoughtless and unreflective about themselves as any non-Jew can be about us. Nor does their Jewishness give them any more or less legitimacy to opine on this question; on the contrary, their lack of reflection, and the very public performance of it, only exacerbates the bottomless pain and humiliation we are already experiencing.

So no, I will continue to support Palestinian liberation, but not “as a Jew,” and not by degrading my history. That is a false choice. Organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace are unable to see us as anything more than victims or oppressors, but I can; they confuse their good fortune with virtue, but I will not. I refuse the cheap, siren call of enlisting my Jewish suffering to this cause. It is a trap. So tie me to the mast of this Jewish ship. “Not in my name,” as they are so keen to say these days.