A coalition of groups active in the Black Lives Matter movement recently published a platform filled with demands. Most were important, like an end to mass incarceration. A few were silly, like low-interest loans to promote food co-ops. And one included a passage seemingly designed to enrage Jews. By way of discussing foreign aid, it claims that Israel is “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.” [...]
But the major issue I see is that many Jews who will use this platform as an excuse to reject Black Lives Matter aren’t much interested in African American issues, anyway. Despite our history of social action—including vocal participation in the 1960s civil rights movement—Jews have become increasingly detached from the needs of oppressed people, of all races. [...]
For most of Jewish history, we were relatively poor. But in the United States today, only ethnic Indians rival Jews for household income or education levels. With rising affluence, Jews left urban centers, where they knew people of many ethnicities, for suburbs. Our synagogues followed, and every major American city has a synagogue — often many synagogues — that abandoned an old, downtown building for a new suburban campus. [...]
ut in general, we write checks from our affluent enclaves, vote Democratic, and call it a day. We worry about the safety of Israel, and Jews in anti-Semitic Europe, but have basically given up creating structural change in America. That doesn’t excuse ugly anti-Semitism in Black Lives Matter, but it makes us poor messengers for a better way.
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