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The freaks of J Street [J Street]

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

Looking for the "freaks" of the J Street Conference. | Photo by Flickr user jstreetdotorg CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

I came to the J Street Conference looking for allies. As a queer Jew who is sternly critical of Israel, but still a staunch Zionist, I was looking forward to meeting some like-minded folks. Folks who can’t help but discuss privilege, minorities, and oppression. Folks who are obsessed with identity politics. Folks who face the annoying problem that inevitably comes when they can’t seem to leave their education at school, branded by their families as the one who always talks “politics.” I was looking for the black sheep, the outsiders, the radicals, and the freaks.

Before the conference, a friend of mine listed off some of the speakers she thought I’d find most engaging. The crème de resistance, she told me, would be Anat Hoffman. Truth be told, it was a fairly good assumption to make: Jewish, feminist, and definitely interested in speaking truth to power, Hoffman certainly represents a step in the right direction for Jewish female leadership.

Regrettably, I was less than impressed. Was I really supposed to be inspired by her stories of arrest? Call me meshugga, but I prefer not to judge an activist’s resume by their number of arrests, felonies, or criminal charges. That kind of talk sounds too much like a version of manarchism, a phenomenon in which male activists prove their stripes by getting arrested for a cause. Aside from being mostly disinterested in symbolic actions, I’m also left wondering… What about the people who can’t risk arrest? Let’s not forget about the single mothers, the elderly, undocumented workers, and other marginalized folks. If risking arrest is the way we show our dedication to a cause, then we’re not going to be a very colorful or diverse crew.

But earlier during the weekend, I blogged about how J Street is an exercise in “letting things go.” So I let go of my dissatisfaction with Hoffman’s lackluster call to action. I woke up bright and early for the “Bringing Women to the Fore and Advancing the Peace Process” session in which Rachel Levine and three other feminists gave a report-back on their trip to Israel. The trip brought five women from US Congress to Israel to meet with Israeli and Palestinian business people, lay leaders, citizens, and activists. The goal of their trip was to see how the conflict would be discussed if the participants were all women.

Again, I was disappointed. Their words fell flat when I asked them to what extent did intersectionality play a role in the “feminist manifesto” they created prior to the trip. They brushed off the question as a generational issue and a Second-wave feminist reprimanded me for using overly-academic jargon. Needless to say, this crowd did not want to discuss “radical politics.” Where were my freaks?

After grinding my molars to smithereens, I took a couple of deep breaths and joined the “LGBT Issues & Israel: Pinkwashing or Legitimate Advocacy?” session. It didn’t take long. As soon as Idit Klein opened the session, I knew I’d found my freaks. The three panelists had me sitting on the edge of my seat, hungrily eating their words like sufganiyot during Pesach. I couldn’t contain myself.

Amichai Lau Lavie’s two anecdotes got the analytical ball rolling. He told us how he was perceived as a bad Jew when he wouldn’t attend an Israel advocacy event because they wouldn’t accept J Street. But then he was bad gay when he allowed his son to wave Israeli flags at a Gay Pride Parade. Message received. Progressive Jewishness and Jewish queerness are not yet commensurable.

But Jay Michaelson was the hero of the panel, maybe even of the entire conference. He first acknowledged that the panel was skewed because it didn’t include a hard-left perspective (or a non-white male perspective, for that matter). He then argued that if there is pinkwashing in hasbara, then there is also techwashing and greenwashing. He was also the first to mention intersectionality, explaining how for some folks, the occupation isn’t just a facet of Israel, it IS Israel. “It’s not a very sophisticated lens,” he said. “It’s a wild oversimplification.” And he left us with the mind bomb, “When you go through a checkpoint, your sexuality doesn’t matter.” The audience took a moment to react before applauding as they chewed on the sentence.

I was thrilled. Perhaps it’s not about letting things go. Perhaps it’s about storing your analytical weapons in your cranial holster and being ready to whip ‘em out when the time is right. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that I finally found my freaks at the LGBT panel. After all, who better to discuss power, privilege, and accountability than a couple of progressive feygeleh? So to the leaders and staff of J Street, I’d like to offer the following advice for next year’s conference: Don’t be afraid to invite the freaks. They just might know a thing or two.

Tags: activism, community, conference, J Street, zionism
Posted in activism, community, j street conference, New Voices Magazine, politics | 11 Comments »

I was accosted by a Jewish Second-wave feminist… Awesome! [J Street 2012]

Thursday, March 29th, 2012

Just after the “Bringing Women to the Fore and Advancing Peace” session, an elderly woman approached me to respond to a question I had asked about intersectionality, a term used in modern feminist theory to describe how all forms of oppression are connected. The idea is that you can’t eradicate racism without getting rid of sexism, or homophobia. Thus, women’s rights activists should also fight for the rights of people of color, LGBTQ, immigrant workers, and similarly marginalized folks. (Forgive me, bell hooks, for the really crude oversimplification of the term.)

A participant asks a question during a panel at the 2012 J Street conference | photo by flickr user jstreetdotorg (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The woman introduced herself, did a quick run-through of her feminist resume, and then ripped into me. She said that I was wrong to assume that Second-wave feminists weren’t concerned with “those things.” She didn’t like the fact that I used the term intersectionality because it is too academic a term for this context. If I’m so concerned about these issues, I should call them “multiple voices or something to that effect.” It was great.

Maybe she had a point. Microsoft Word’s spell-checker has no spelling suggestions for “intersectionality.” Sorry Angela Davis, guess it’s not a word yet! Still, my initial instinct was to correct her. Intersectionality isn’t about “multiple voices.” It’s about moving beyond “men are equal to women” and into the territory of accountability, solidarity, and privilege. It’s about using our power to address really uncomfortable issues.

But I just blogged about the infuriatingly challenging task that is knowing when to discuss what. So I let it go. I waited for her to finish her rant, smiled, and thanked her for her advice. Pointing out her mischaracterization of the term would only have resulted in a screaming match between two really opinionated people who actually admire each other very much. I wasn’t about to change her mind on that issue. But I did hopefully convince her that my generation isn’t a bunch of Facebook addicts and twitter brats. Among other things, the incident illuminated a generational gap facing not only the feminist community, but also the Jewish community. And that’s awesome! It means we’re changing. If the older generation isn’t pissed off at the younger generation and vice versa, something’s wrong. You can measure the potency of a particular moment by the amount of tough love the older generation must show its offspring.

Hey, Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize “Facebook” either. Maybe there’s hope after all.

Tags: bell hooks, Feminism, J Street
Posted in j street conference, politics | 3 Comments »

Reflections on the J Street Conference [Blogging]

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

J Street U's student session. I Photo by Rachel Cohen

As a student leader of J Street U, I was really looking forward to my first national conference in DC. Now that the conference has come and gone, I head back to campus feeling inspired and exhausted. I also feel motivated to try and figure out how to improve our organization in light of new challenges that became more evident at the conference.

Some major developments took place:

Just generally, the fact that over 650 students showed up, making up a quarter of the conference’s entire turnout is incredible. Over 125 campuses were represented, which is a testament to J Street’s message resonating with students all across the country.

At college all the time we hear from certain Pro-Israel advocates about how there simply is no partner for peace. How the failure to reach a peace agreement is completely at the fault of the Palestinian people. It was refreshing to hear Israel’s current President, Shimon Peres, say unequivocally to 2,500 of us that not only are most of the Palestinian people and the heads of the Palestinian Authority convinced that peace is the best answer, but that peace is achievable.

Likewise, hearing from former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that, “There is a partner for peace. Don’t tell me there is no partner,” was important and motivating. He argued that his many lengthy meetings with Mahmoud Abbas affirmed his belief that the Palestinian Authority renounces violence and desires peace.

Beyond Peres and Olmert, the list goes on. We heard from Knesset members. Israeli social activists. Members of the Obama administration. American military experts. And what I’m most proud of the conference for is that while of course the threat of Iran’s nuclear developments was rightly discussed and debated, the urgency and importance of a two-state solution was brought back to the forefront of the conversation of Israel’s security and safety—which has been drowned out in recent months by other issues.

So what could be improved about the conference?

I realized after these past few days that a real challenge J Street U faces and needs to learn how to handle as we move forward and grow as an organization is how we strike the balance between our essential Jewish community involvement and also engaging with those who do not feel as emotionally tied to the Jewish community.

J Street U was founded in 2009, and while there were 7 chapters in September of 2010, 38 chapters exist officially today, with a dozen more currently in the process of becoming official. At J Street U’s conception, there was a lot of backlash from individuals within the organized campus Jewish community who doubted J Street U’s Pro-Israel commitment. J Street U was branded as “bad for the community.” Because of this, J Street U has made many attempts to say to the Jewish community that not only are we committed to peace, justice and security for the state of Israel, but we also believe a refusal to engage with us is antithetical to Hillel’s message of pluralism.

And J Street U, in my opinion, is succeeding in this regard. The strong and respectful persistence of J Street U leaders on campuses to meet with their Hillel staff and other Pro-Israel leaders is proving to yield results. So many members of J Street U are campus Jewish leaders in their community in other ways too, from interns to religious chairs to LGBT activists. Major publications have written about our fight, ranging from Haaretz to the Atlantic. The fight for acceptance within the Jewish community is one that is really being recognized.

But what we’re realizing now is that while the fact that more than half of the major leaders in J Street U are graduates of Jewish Day Schools and Jewish summer camps is a truly great strength, it can also at times be a source of weakness.

The 2 and a half hour J Street U session presented student after student making speeches that explained what brought them to the organization—be it their strong Jewish background, their commitment to Jewish values, or their love and devotion for the state of Israel and its future. The student session featured Hillel leaders, Israeli international students and other respected Jewish activists.

We know based on polling and experience that the majority of young Jewish Americans align themselves politically with J Street U. They believe in open discourse and debate, they don’t believe that to support Israel means you must support every policy of the current Israeli government. They want to see justice and human rights guaranteed for Palestinian people and they want to see a secure, Jewish and democratic Israel. We know this.

We also know that the majority of young Jewish Americans do not attend Jewish day school and are not involved in organized Jewish Establishment life.

I went to public school. I went to a non-religious, sports-oriented summer camp for eight years. But my public school was over 60% Jewish, as were the majority of campers I spent my summers with. These are the types of Jews I now regularly engage with on my campus for my peer-network engagement internship. These Jews appreciate Jewish culture and ideas. They feel comfortable and enjoy spending time with other Jewish people. They have special affinities for social justice causes. But they aren’t cheerleaders for the Jewish community itself; they rarely go to Hillel and they feel no particular connection to it.

The student session struggled in this regard. I spoke to students after who felt alienated by the large presence of Jewish community leaders representing the face of J Street U. It made them question whether they belonged there at all because they didn’t have the same sentiments as the speakers.

Hanging out at the conference. I Photo by Rachel Cohen

I know they belong. We at J Street U know they belong. People come to J Street U for all types of reasons—among them, humanistic, religious, political, pragmatic, and intellectual reasons. And all of those reasons should be given due attention. I think we’ve definitely reached a point where we can worry less about what “the haters” might say, and make more concerted efforts to demonstrate the other important and integral voices of our organization too.

I know we will, and I’m excited for the future.

Tags: Hillel, J Street, J Street U
Posted in activism, community, Culture, j street conference, journalism | No Comments »

An exercise in letting things go [J Street 2012]

Monday, March 26th, 2012

Before the conference began, David blogged about “Israel-haters” at J-Street. He wrote that they’re here, and that’s okay. We have room to discuss their one-state solutions in the in-betweens, walking out from the plenaries and schmoozing. This place is the only place where “Israel-haters” can still feel like Jews.

So I asked a couple people what they thought about the open dialogue at this conference, what made them uncomfortable, and what they were letting go of. I got – not surprisingly — polar opposite reactions. One woman described a situation that made her uncomfortable earlier this morning: During one of the opening sessions, a person who was clearly new to J Street asked a “right-wingish” question was met with heckling and booing. She said that although her own politics align with that of J Street’s, our goal should be to open our arms to all perspectives, even those perspectives with which J Street openly disagrees.

On the other hand, during the J Street U student session this afternoon, I spoke with a young man who felt that most of the speakers were overly optimistic. He, unlike the woman I spoke with, was not convinced of the viability of a two-state solution.
But both of the people I spoke with realized that the only way to achieve a solution is to let go of their discomfort.

And there are all sorts of things that are making me uncomfortable. The “Israel-haters” are not the source of my discomfort. What makes my arm hairs stand on end are the religious folks. Back when I was studying for my Bat Mitzvah, I rejected religion outright. In fact, I was so disgusted with the whole idea of religion that I rejected Judaism outright.

Amos Oz at the conference | photo by flickr user jstreetdotorg (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

So when Amos Oz spoke, I was totally captivated. But even his speech made me squirm with anxiety. His metaphors had us all in the palm of his hand. When he made the comparison between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and marriage, we ate his words up like safta’s kugel. And he sealed the deal when he spoke of the tragedy of the conflict, arguing that we don’t want a Shakespearean ending in which everyone in the play is dead, but a Chekovian ending in which everyone is dissatisfied, but alive. But at the end of his speech, when he mumbled something about “God bless you, J Street,” I was immediately furious. I couldn’t believe my ears. For me, that comment undermined his earlier point, that “there is more than one way to be a good Jew.”

Why does it always have to be about God? And why is God always so well-received by the audience? It feels to me like even though non-religious Jews are totally welcome and encouraged to participate, we still make up the minority of our representation. If a speaker is religious, then they’re really important and what they have to say really matters.

And this overly-represented religiosity is a narrative we’re all swallowing. Even I myself applauded when Anat Hoffman asked J Street U students to purchase the Women of the Wall tallit. Why should I care whether or not women are allowed to say the sh’ma aloud near the Western Wall? I have absolutely no connection to the site, other than its historic value. But it’s remarkably effective, this integration of feminism and activism and religiosity. It’s a narrative that is extremely attractive, even for those of us who remain firmly on the secular end of the Jewish spectrum. But I’m not buying it.
And that’s okay. I don’t have to buy it. It makes me extremely uncomfortable, but that’s okay. Nobody’s forcing me come to shul. Nobody’s forcing me to cover my shoulders. Nobody’s forcing me to pray to God or follow halacha.

But there are other things besides the religious rhetoric that make me uncomfortable. I’ll admit it: as a die-hard practitioner of a social science (of the anthropological pedigree), I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to comparisons, especially metaphors. So I’ll be perfectly frank: there are a whole bunch of comparisons that are, to be polite, lacking.

For instance, even before Oz made that little remark about God at the end of his speech, I was really perturbed by his comparison between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and divorce. A divorce implies marriage, that at one time the two parties entered the contract willingly. To the best of my knowledge, this is not the case for many Israelis, and certainly not for Palestinians.
And I was hit again with the a similar repulsion for the rampant misuse of metaphors when Ilyse Hogue spoke at yesterday’s plenary. She compared the coming out of a non-heteronormative individual to coming out as a supporter of J Street. While this comparison offers much in the way of addressing the discomfort we will all inevitably feel when gather around the seder table and discuss the things we learned at this conference with our less critically-minded friends and family, it also does something pretty gross.

How can we ever come close to understanding the oppression queer folks endure on a daily basis? How dare we compare our own discomfort to the challenging task transgender individuals must face every moment? And what about the queer Jews in our midst? How did they feel when Hogue made this comparison? I’m not trying to play the oppression Olympics here, but I felt that Hogue would have done well to at least mention the holes in the metaphor.

But as I keep reminding myself, it’s okay. Just like I can let go of my distaste for religious Judaism, I can let go of my distaste for faulty comparisons. At J Street, I’m accepted even if I don’t make the minyan. Whether or not a speaker’s comparisons are totally sound is kind of irrelevant. When a speaker thanks God or blesses us, I don’t have to get mad.

They’re just words. They’re words that, for me, evoke an old feeling of radical resentment. But it’s time to let go of that story. This place is an exercise in letting things go, in acknowledging that maybe what you feel really, really strongly about should be set aside for a moment in order to work towards a larger goal. That’s really freaking hard, but when you’re fighting for a better future… if the work isn’t hard, you’re probably not doing it right.

Posted in activism, Daily Recap, Israel, j street conference | 4 Comments »

College Students Flood J Street Conference [J Street 2012]

Saturday, March 24th, 2012

The J Street U table at last year's J Street conference. Credit: David AM Wilensky.

Of the 2,500 attendees of J Street’s “Making History” Conference, a lot of them are skipping class.

About 650 students, 24 percent of the conference’s attendees, turned out in droves for the movement’s third national conference in Washington, D.C. (500 were at last year’s conference). Just to break that up for you, that’s:

125 universities,
24 states and
five different countries.

Israel advocacy on campus will be a major part of the discussion this weekend as nearly every time block has a subject relevant to college students. J Street U board members, student leaders and executives pepper the agenda, discussing “Telling Your Story to Make an Impact,” “The Future of Pro-Israel” and “The Next Generation: How Young Israel Activists and Young American Jews are Transforming Zionism and Pro-Israel Advocacy.”

But before any of that happens, March 24′s opening plenary featured a parade of students announcing the presence of 33 chapters of J Street U, the campus branch of the dovish pro-Israel lobby. Shortly thereafter, author Amoxs Oz, Yerucham Mayor Michael Biton and activist Stav Shaffir applauded J Street’s mission for representing the majority of Israeli public opinion.

“You, J Street, are the only ones brave enough … to have this difficult conversation with us,” Biton said.

As is to be expected, when you gather a bunch of liberal Jews in one room, there’s going to be excitement over criticism of the pro-Israel right, who, according to speakers, shut down conversation and don’t have the answers to solving the peace process.

Oz had this zinger to share:

I’ve been traveling in America for 45 years, once or twice a year, to Jewish communities and campuses and for 45 years they were always trying to hush me by telling me that, ‘Well, in Israel you may you’re your differences but here in America we opt to be united.’ My answer is: United by all means, absolutely. Let us all be united, but why unite under the militant, hawkish, extremist manner of AIPAC? … There is more than just one way to be a good Jew. There is more than just one way to be a good Zionist.

At the end of the day, speakers, particularly J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami, hoped attendees would leave the conference more energized to help solve what Oz called the Israeli-Palestinian “tragedy” with a “Chekhovian solution.”

“As a Jew,” Ben-Ami said. “You’re simply not allowed to throw up your hands and walk away.”

Follow editor @DavidAMWilensky, D.C. Bureau Chief @Zachary_Cohen and web editor @renaissanceboy for regular updates and insight on J Street U in the nation’s capital.

Tags: aipac, amos oz, Israel, J Street, J Street U, jeremy ben-ami, michael biton, palestine, stav shaffir
Posted in Israel, j street conference, palestine, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Cutting through the rhetoric: J Street is centrist, not leftist

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

I got about halfway through this Boston Globe editorial before I realized what seemed so remarkable about it to me: This editorial is the first thing I’ve read in the press that acknowledges that J Street is really a center/center-left organization.

It’s not radically leftist to promote a two-state solution, which is at the heart of what J Street wants. They’re not in favor of BDS. They’re not in favor of a binational state. They are in favor of peace, and end to settlements and–at the core of their ideology–they’re in favor of two states.

Which is literally about as center as it gets. There are two groups of people. Both want their own state. In the middle of those two groups and their desired states is a solution in which both get their own state. That’s the center option.

Yet, most journalists–left, right or not–seem to be hellbent of discovering the most radical people who have anything good to say about J Street and giving them a platform.

JTA’s Uriel Heilman couldn’t even manage to begin his story about the 2011 J Street Conference with anything but the right’s attempt to paint J Street as radically leftist, putting that rhetoric front and center in his article:

The detractors of J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying organization, like to portray the organization’s leader, Jeremy Ben-Ami, as so far to the left of mainstream American Jewish opinion as to be out of bounds.

Posted in Israel, j street conference | 1 Comment »

As Knesset Prepares J Street Hearing, J Street Offers Students as Proof of Viability

Friday, March 11th, 2011

J Street U President Moriel Rothman addresses the 2011 J Street Conference opening plenary

At the J Street Conference in DC two weeks ago, we noted the strong, visible and audible presence of students among the attendees. J Street itself noticed too and is using the big student turnout and the quick pace of growth of J Street U as proof of J Street’s viability.

J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami mentioned student involvement in J Street in his announcement today in response to news that a Knesset hearing on J Street will get underway this month:

[...]

We are particularly excited that so many younger American Jews have embraced J Street as a home where they can express a love of Israel that comports with their values. Our recently-concluded national conference was a statement of our emerging strength, as over 2000 people attended including over 500 college students.

[...]

Here is the rest of the announcement from Ben-Ami and JTA’s article about the planned hearings.

Posted in Israel, j street conference, politics | No Comments »

J Street U has come a long way, and has a long way to go

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

Update: I’ve issued a correction to some of the information in this post.

I’m really impressed with the passion that the leaders of J Street U bring to their work. At the student session on Sunday night of the J Street conference, they emphasized the role that students can play in the larger movement. This is very satisfying to me personally, since I’ve felt in the past that J Street U was artificially separated from J Street. Organizationally, a certain amount of autonomy is important – the kerfuffle last year when J Street U dropped the term “pro-Israel” from their name (a decision I’m still grappling with, especially due to some really good conversation on it on Sunday night) shows as much, but I’m glad that J Street U is starting to focus on what students can do to help J Street at large.

J Street U has made remarkable progress in harnessing raw activist power from its students. People spoke with real passion last night about real, substantive changes that are going on on their campuses. Having been off-campus for the past year, I sometimes felt a bit out-of-place, but I also had an outsider’s perspective, and I’ll take the liberty of employing that to offer a view of what J Street U needs to focus on moving forward.

As with any grassroots organization with a national focus, the key is organizing. Daniel May, the director of J Street U, spoke to this last night. But due largely to circumstances beyond the control of the organizers of that session, many of the students were distracted, exhausted (the session was at the end of a very long and taxing day), or just not even there. So, moving forward, we need to turn the energy that so many students working with J Street U feel into substantive policy and program proposals. I think the national leadership needs to organize talkback sessions at campuses around the country, with local J Street U chapter heads and national staff in attendance. The aim of these sessions would be to gather feedback on J Street U’s campaigns, and to help bring the student activists together in understanding of what needs to be done to effectively carry out those campaigns.

For instance, at the end of Sunday night’s session, a few minutes were devoted to a brief update from each of the J Street U national student board’s committees on their current work. While it was great to hear from them, I would have preferred a format that a) allowed each of the committee representatives more than the about 30 seconds they were each allotted for their update, and b) was more of a two-way discussion. I can identify at least one proposed/potential program that was named there that I think is just a bad idea. I don’t know the political calculus behind this proposal, but that’s exactly the point. These are conversations we need to have.

J Street U has already made incredible progress. They’ve built a functioning national leadership structure mostly from scratch, gone through some very difficult political decision-making processes, and vastly increased their membership. They’re no longer a “new” organization. As such, they (the leaders, and we, as constituents) have some big choices to make going forward. The extent to which we’re able to inspire campus activists to look beyond the next campaign, the next speaker, the next debate, and to think (inter)nationally at this moment will make or break the organization in the future.

Daniel Levy said at the conference, “There won’t be another J Street.” The same is true of J Street U. The campus Israel-Palestine activism scene is crying out for a group like J Street U. We are positioned to transform the political landscape on Israel-Palestine and more, but we’re not going to get another chance. We need to get it right now.

Tags: J Street U, organizing
Posted in Campus, Israel, j street conference | 5 Comments »

J Street Conference: How and why I disagree with what I said earlier

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

J Street U Director Daniel May, the only person who said anything to convince me that the press really should be restricted from the students-only session at the J Street Conference

The J Street Conference, a weekend-long affair from which myself and New Voices Editor Ben Sales have just returned, was an odd experience for me.

On the one hand, my personal politics bring me to sympathize with J Street. On the other hand, I usually don’t know what to think about specific issues within the larger Israel-Palestine debate because it’s not a primary issue of mine and I don’t do as much reading about as I do about other things. So I often feel unprepared to know what I think about Israel-Palestine issues.

And on the third hand, I was there not only to blog in this opinionated fashion, but to do some more standard objective reporting on college students and J Street U and that sort of thing. So, despite my urge to sympathize with J Street, I had my journalist cap on, which has the distinct effect of making me slightly more skeptical of everything than I otherwise am.

One result of that was my much-discussed (or is that over-discussed?) post on Sunday, J Street Conference: Lots of college students: no press allowed.

After posting it, I had a number of interesting conversations with J Street U staffers, J Street U students, other members of the press and a smattering of other conference attendees. The consensus among virtually everyone that spoke with me about it–except for me–seemed to be that I had lost my mind. By the end of Monday–yesterday, the day after I wrote the post–I was inclined to agree, not that I was out of my mind, but that I had been wrong. However, I agree that I was wrong for reasons different from everyone else.

So I’ll lay out again the bare bones of what my argument was and what the arguments against me were and then I’ll give you the reason I’m now contradicting myself.

My argument was this:

There are lots of students here and J Street sees that as a selling point and proof that what they are doing is working.
Therefore, J Street should want to encourage the press to spend as much time around those students as possible.
Therefore, it makes no sense that the only session that was designated as specifically for students–in fact, it was mandatory for them to attend so they could receive their travel stipends, or something like that–was closed to the press.
Therefore, I proclaimed that the access of the press to the students at the conference was being stupidly limited.

Here are the wrong reason that others gave for my being wrong:

Students shouldn’t be on the record in college because college is a time for experimentation.

Wrong. Both as a college student and as a campus journalist who has been threatened with lawsuits for just this reason, I see no merit in the notion that people who are legally adult should be given a four year pass on personal responsibility and accountability. While it’s bad when mistakes made when people are young come back to bite them in the ass later, this is just an unfortunate potential consequence of being responsible adults in a free society. Unless there’s something good about prolonged adolescence and we want to treat college students as children. I certainly don’t want that.

I’ve already been given a free pass to attend the conference as a member of the press and now I’m complaining that my free pass doesn’t give me access to everything that the people who paid get.

This wrongly assumes that I would have come anyway and that I just want everything for free, but I would not have come anyway. It also assumes that I’m only in this racket for all the free stuff and great perks. I don’t think I need to explain why that’s an odd notion. I was at the conference not just as a member of the press, but to report on what was going on with college students at the conference. Clearly, J Street believes my presence and pursuit of this task to be beneficial to them. Otherwise, they would not have approved my press pass. If that’s the case, why would they want to restrict my access to the very thing that I’m there to cover?

The press has plenty of access to students. In fact, they’ve been interviewing students in droves all over the place.

I don’t disagree with the fact that we had lots of access to students and that we were interviewing lots of them. But this fact does not mean that access to them when they’re together as a group should be restricted. If access to them when they’re together should be restricted, argue for it on its own merits, rather than arguing for it by saying that there are other times/ways to hear from them.

Students should get a free and open space to talk about student issues without the intrusion of the press.

This one I buy now, but didn’t initially, as opposed to the three reasons above which I didn’t buy then and still don’t.

I finally talked with J Street U Director Daniel May about it. And he cited one or two of the above reasons, but then he said something to actually worked. He said that J Street U has initiative under development that aren’t ready to be made public yet and that those would part of the discussion in the closed student session. So that makes sense.

Thanks to everyone who patiently argued this out with me over the las couple days.

Posted in Israel, j street conference | 3 Comments »

J Street Conference: Hillel Hearts J Street

Monday, February 28th, 2011

J Street may still be fighting for acceptance in the Jewish community almost three years after its founding, but there’s one place where that battle is over and the self-proclaimed “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group has emerged victorious: the college campus.

J Street U displayed its secure position in the established Jewish campus world today by organizing a panel at the J Street conference that included two J Street U college activists and two Hillel professionals. After an introduction by Yale senior Ben Alter, J Street U’s East Coast representative, each panelist spoke about his or her view on campus discourse about Israel. Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, Hillel International’s director of campus initiatives, advocated pluralism in the campus pro-Israel conversation and stated Hillel’s much-publicized guidelines on which groups are and are not accepted in Hillel’s space. The clear implication was that J Street U, regardless of its criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights, falls within the bounds. Rabbi Lisa Goldstein, the executive director of the UC-San Diego Hillel, noted that even though Hillel does exclude certain Jewish groups (among others, JVP), every individual Jewish student is welcome in the community regardless of political affiliation. “Being part of the Jewish community does not mean you have to sign on a line that these are your values,” she said.

The J Street U panelists conveyed frustration over Hillel’s guidelines for inclusion, with one student–Princeton freshman Aliyah Donsky–noting her ambivalence about Hillel’s declaring “who was in and who was out.” Columbia freshman Cole Leiter spoke about facing tension from Hillel when the school’s J Street U chapter decided ot cosponsor a speech by John Ging, the head of UNRWA (the UN Palestinian refugee agency) in Gaza. Leiter said that the group’s board members had to sit down with Hillel staff and each state that they were Zionist, after answering a series of other questions. He added that restricting campus discourse is “un-American, undemocratic and simply not Jewish.”

But on the whole, the J Street U students seemed to have a good relationship with their respective Hillels. Donsky said that she became involved in Israel activity on campus because a staff person from her Hillel invited her to speak on a panel about the conflict. And Leiter noted that his group ultimately pulled their co-sponsorship of the Ging event because it recognized the value of staying withing Hillel’s community.

Other events speak to this recognition as well. While AIPAC won’t co-host events with J Street, a couple of months ago Leiter’s group hosted an Israel event with LionPAC, Columbia’s largest pro-Israel group. In September, Hillel President Wayne Firestone had a productive meeting with the J Street U student board.

To be sure, J Street U will face challneges in the future over its pro-Israel credentials, its commitment to regional peace or its Jewish values. Some donors to Hillel may pull their funding because of J Street U’s presence. But as it stands now, they’re in and there to stay.

This is a good sign for J Street regardless of its position on the hill. The organization has certainly placed much of its stock in college students–there are about 500 at the conference this year–and that investment looks to be paying off. We’ll see whether these student activists will end up being game changers in the American pro-Israel conversation down the line–if they aren’t already.

Tags: Hillel, j street conference, J Street U
Posted in Campus, Israel, j street conference | 3 Comments »