The following is an excerpt from “Fragments III: Democracy, “ a journal from T’ruah.
Living in Texas is a whole different kind of Jewish education. Picture this: me and my child sitting on a polished wooden bench, a month before my kid’s bat mitzvah, my kid thumb-typing away on the phone with utter concentration. We weren’t at shul to meet the rabbi about a d’var Torah draft. We were in the Texas Capitol, preparing to give public comment against a bill allowing public schools to replace guidance counselors with uncertified school chaplains. It was one of a slew of bills last year on everything from education to healthcare to voting rights, all aiming to make fundamentalist Christian values the law of the land.
This isn’t the version of Texas I’d imagined for our life as a family here. When I moved back to Austin with my Tejana spouse and our toddler in 2013, we already knew about Texas politics. We joined thousands of others the week we came home in demonstrations against a 20-week abortion ban, our toddler on my spouse’s shoulders on Congress Avenue with the Capitol dome before them, both in the bright orange that abortion rights supporters wore that summer.
We didn’t know that we were returning to a decade of shifts toward the hard right in Texas politics. The speaker of the House was a moderate Republican that year. Today, the Texas Republican party is dominated by the extreme Christian right. Our state’s Republican platform insists abortion is homicide, gender-affirming care is child abuse, and marriage is for straight people only. It subscribes to the antisemitic, white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy, in which Jews are imagined to be bringing in Latin American, African, and Arab migrants to undermine white civilization. It calls the U.S. one nation under God and urges the state to require public schools to teach the Bible and “Christian self-governance.”
Republican leaders in Texas say they’re standing up against the intimidation of Christians and protecting Christians’ expression of faith. They do this by clearing the way to practice state-sponsored religion, with impunity for anyone — including medical providers — who refuses service to someone on personal religious grounds. This ideology may seem fringe, but nearly half of Texas Republicans say Christians suffer a lot of discrimination in Texas. More than a third say the same about white people. Only about 10 percent think gay and lesbian people suffer such discrimination.[1] At the grocery store, the playground, or meet-the teacher night, I have to look around and wonder whether the people we’re sharing a community with believe in the civil rights of my queer, Jewish, interracial family. Traveling Texas backroads, we think twice about where to stop. If we’re in an accident, we consider how the EMT might react to the “men’s clothes” my wife wears or a chai necklace around my neck. This is the background hum of worry that comes with living here.
That hum has only gotten louder in the last few years. Some of our friends who are parenting trans kids have fled Texas because the government is threatening them with family separation or outlaw status just for accessing care for their children. The state’s hand grows heavier daily. While I was drafting this piece, the flagship public university purged DEI positions, leaving 60 of our friends and colleagues out of their jobs.
As Texas politics grow ever more hostile toward human rights, my teen often asks why we live here. On one particularly rough day during the last legislative session, when we knew we’d witness the passage of a brutal bill at the Capitol, I asked if we shouldn’t just stay home. “No,” my kid said. “If this is going to happen, I want to be with our people when it does. With the people we’ve been protesting, working, and together with all this time. And I want the legislators to have to look at my face while they do it.”
The diaspora Jewish mama in me kvelled. That response was the essence of doikayt. Doikayt[2] is Yiddish for “hereness,” the Eastern European Jewish political principle of fighting where we are for the right to a just existence. As long as we’re in Texas, then this — the Capitol, the streets, the meetings and the Zooms, the Slack and Signal threads, the campaign block walks, and the polls — is where we need to be. I use the word doikayt because of my Ashkenazi heritage, but I know that Jews everywhere in the diaspora have found specific ways of being engaged in their surroundings, wherever in this beautiful and broken world we’ve found ourselves.
But showing up isn’t easy, and it can feel especially vulnerable for us as Jews. Antisemitism in the U.S. has been on the rise since 2017, which saw the largest single-year jump in the ADL’s tracking of anti-Jewish incidents to that point. Tiki-torch-wielding white supremacists chanting “Jews will not replace us” in 2017 were followed by fatal shootings at synagogues in 2018 and 2019. Three years ago, in 2021, we faced a months-long spate of coordinated neo-Nazi activity in Austin, with anti-Jewish banner drops from highway overpasses, hate-group stickers posted throughout the city, and white supremacist propaganda thrown into driveways and mounted on playground equipment. That Halloween, a young white supremacist set fire to our family’s synagogue. Our congregation is still recovering from the arson. I hadn’t imagined that part of raising a Jewish child in the 21st century would be helping them deal with so much overt hatred of and violence towards Jews.
As we confront a violent revival of antisemitism, a surprising new faction is emerging that claims to offer Jews support. In the wake of October 7, 2023, the right’s language has evolved. While the Texas Republican platform already used Jews as symbols — like its rhetoric about “Judeo Christian” society — I now see the right snapping its attention toward antisemitism and Jewish people in very particular ways.
The same people who push Christian nationalism are now posturing as allies to Jews. In Texas, a recent legislative hearing on antisemitism and campus speech was spearheaded by the very committee chair who sponsored a bill requiring the King James version of the Ten Commandments to be posted in every public school classroom. In the hearing, his questions pivoted just as quickly. Although he started out by discussing Jewish experiences on campus, he soon switched to talk of constitutional strategies to promote the government’s power to boost “free exercise” of religion. How ironic that the right twists religious “freedom” to deepen a Christian hold on power.
“What place would a Jewish kid like me have in a Christian classroom?” my teen wrote, in a public comment on that Ten Commandments bill. Indeed. And what place do Jewish people like us have in this white Christian nationalist agenda?
A few short years ago, headlines pointed out antisemitism taking root within the Republican party and connected the dots between Trump’s embrace of far-right white nationalist ideologies and the rantings of the Tree of Life shooter. But now, in a year when the American Conservative Union’s flagship Conservative Political Action Conference welcomed openly-identified Nazis and racist antisemitic conspiracy theorists, the headlines speaking of Republicans and Jews are about Republican grandstanding against antisemitism on campus.
The right has flipped the algorithm. They’re rebranding themselves as saviors of the Jews, even though their core policy platform remains anathema to mainstream Jewish interests. Despite widespread attempts to paint equivalencies between left and right antisemitism and efforts by right-wing think tanks to reframe incidents of right-wing extremist violence against Jews as evidence of a threat posed by the “secular left,” studies continue to show that the far right is far more antisemitic than the far left. Nearly half of supporters of Christian nationalism agreed that “Jewish people hold too many positions of power” in the U.S., in a 2023 survey.[3] The Christian right’s repositioning as our champions is worse than hypocrisy; it is gaslighting. Like the actions of many abusers, this false narrative divides us from our own people and isolates us from our historical and potential future allies.
As the far right’s agenda unfolds from the South through the U.S., I’m watching our people’s featured role in this drama with horror. They are using us to make their Christian nationalism seem like religious freedom. They are using us to smear and divide progressives, and they are using us to turn the complaint that they’re oppressed as white people and Christians into a more sympathetic narrative, gilding their anti DEI politics of aggrieved entitlement with the imagined halo of Jewish victimhood. Presenting themselves as heroes who are fighting Jew-hatred plays much better than being revealed to be a powerful majority pushing back against losing any of their privilege.
When we are being used in this way, how best can we reject it? I have found that collective struggle in cooperation with non-Jews disrupts the political machinations that attempt to cynically manipulate our fear for right-wing gain. In the process, this coalition work has given Jews in my community a chance to align ourselves with the fight for multiracial secular democracy and build deep relationships with allies. We couldn’t stop the Texas Legislature from approving the school chaplain bill. But a broad interfaith coalition of Muslims, Jews, Unitarians, and progressive Christians successfully mobilized in local communities to convince school boards to vote against adopting the chaplain option. They stopped implementation of the new law in the 25 largest school districts in the state, which together serve one third of Texas’s public school students. Emily Bourgeois of the Texas chapter of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism said, “When we raise our voices together against the spread of this policy across the country, we will win. And if we can win in Texas, we can win anywhere.”
Movement solidarity is powerful. It’s also challenging. Linking arms with 1,000 people on the Texas Capitol grounds in 2017 so Muslim students could enter free from Islamophobic harassment was uplifting, and so is organizing against proselytizing in public schools. But what about standing with the Texas chapters of CAIR and the ACLU against the governor’s executive order on campus antisemitism, an overreach committed ostensibly for our sakes?[4]
In this period of real danger to Jews, many of us are unsure where, and with whom, we are safe. I see Jews in my community struggling with fear and isolation — feelings that can prevent us from entering into coalition with trust. When I lead Jewish antiracist study and action groups, I see how certain words or names can take on preternatural power. Just the mention of Ilhan Omar, Linda Sarsour, BLM, the Women’s March, or intersectionality — leaders or movements who have been branded by the right as irredeemably antisemitic, despite a much more complicated reality — can leave my curious and compassionate group members shifting into fight, flight, or freeze.
Being in social movements requires that we balance being for ourselves and being with and for others, as Rabbi Hillel taught. The work is to stay grounded in who we are, while remembering that ours is not the only context. A phrase that rings all the bells of my history and tells me someone is my enemy may mean something entirely different in the context of that person’s struggle.
And it is true that coalition work will expose us to challenges in the relationships we build. We may encounter coalition partners who tell us that antisemitism is an obsolete concern, or solely a ginned-up political tactic of the right. Coalition work feels good, until it doesn’t. That’s the nature of coalitions large enough to support broad-based movements: Everyone involved finds ourselves outside our comfort zones at some point. Back in 1981, Black feminist civil rights leader and cultural worker Bernice Johnson Reagon said it: “Coalition work is some of the most dangerous work you can do. And you shouldn’t look for comfort.”
Speaking in Yosemite on coalition politics, Reagon referred to the physical strain of meeting at altitude. “I feel as if I’m going to keel over any minute and die,” she told the crowd. “That is often what it feels like when you’re really doing coalition work. Most of the time you feel threatened to the core, and if you don’t, you’re not really doing no coalescing.”[5]
Many of us, as Jews, have the tendency to act on our political distaste — or our sense of exclusion or unsafety — by withdrawing from scenarios that feel wrong. Absenting ourselves from things we don’t agree with is such a deeply felt impulse that we joke about absenting ourselves from ourselves — like the old joke about a Jew shipwrecked alone on a desert island, who, when rescued, is discovered to have built two synagogues so that he has one place he’ll never set foot in. But in periods of political risk, showing up matters. When we absent ourselves from coalition, we will find ourselves as alone as that shipwrecked man.
What if we didn’t treat escape as an option? When people ask if I find antisemitism in progressive left spaces, I ask: Is there any predominantly non-Jewish space that doesn’t contain antisemitism? If we’re waiting for antisemitism to end before we get involved with non-Jews, we’re going to be alone a very long time. Jewish fear is real, but so is Jewish courage. We need to figure out how to be for ourselves while being with others. Conversations with coalition partners about antisemitism aren’t necessarily easy, and the moments of discomfort that spark them are stomach-churning. But just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
At a seder I attended this spring, the space of raucous, joyful disagreement our hosts have held for decades became a delicate dance on eggshells. We were celebrating liberation in a roomful of people who have long been one another’s comrades, allies, and cheerleaders; yet this time was different. Some Jews who’ve long felt held at arm’s length in their families and congregations, whether for their support of Palestinian rights or their passionate advocacy for antiracism in Jewish spaces, now feel unwelcome or unsure in larger progressive movements, or even within progressive Jewish communities that had been a refuge. In a time when progressive Jews with various leanings feel alone even when we are together, building relationships with anyone — Jewish or not — can feel challenging.
Long-time organizers know that relationship-building is the foundation of organizing. When people eat together, sing together, hang out together, watch each other’s kids together, show up for strategy meetings with cheesy ice-breakers together, do mutual aid together, then we can genuinely talk with each other — including about our needs as Jews. We can say, can you help me understand how you’re seeing this? Can I talk to you about what’s going on for me as a Jewish person here? Will you think with me about building this workshop on antisemitism in our communities?
But sometimes we enter social justice struggles without the benefit of a prior basis of trust or understanding. At those times, we need to make efforts to find this balance: to find the people we collaborate with best, stay open to new worldviews, and be honest with ourselves, and others, about what place in the work feels right for us. Bernice Johnson Reagon says if people are judging a coalition based on feeling good or not, “they’re not looking for a coalition, they’re looking for a home!” Reagon describes a process of going back and forth between coalition and your home place.
I love this model for us as progressive Jews. Those of us who are LGBTQIA+ Jews, Black Jews or Jews of color, Mizrahi Jews, non-Zionist Jews and more, already know the value of affinity groups, where people who share common identities caucus together to support their involvement within wider community spaces. It’s a framework that can benefit any Jew trying to navigate the challenges of coalitions.
Let’s give ourselves the gift of other progressive Jews who can help us tease out the difference between discomfort and disregard, who won’t question why we’re in coalition when we need to talk about how coalition can get tough. Let’s help each other stay clear and emotionally supported enough to connect with non-Jewish progressives in effective ways, and to be in real relationship with Jewish family, friends, congregation, and community even through heartfelt disagreements. Let’s make these home-space chavurot, these places where we can show up raw and confused, and go back out wiser, more skillful, and closer to our best selves, so we don’t have to hide from the work we know needs to be done.
NOTES
1“Discrimination against Whites (August 2023),” (The Texas Politics Project, September 6, 2023) texaspolitics.utexas.edu/set/discrimination-against-whites-august-2023#party-id.
“Discrimination against Christians (August 2023),” (The Texas Politics Project, September 5, 2023) texaspolitics.utexas.edu/set/discrimination-against-christians-august-2023#party-id.
“Discrimination against Gays and Lesbians (August 2023),” (The Texas Politics Project, September 6, 2023) texaspolitics.utexas.edu/set/discrimination-against-gays-and-lesbians-august-2023#party-id.
2 Pronounced DOH-ih-kayt, from the Yiddish do, meaning “here.”
3“Support for Christian Nationalism in All 50 States: Findings from PRRI’S 2023 American Values Atlas,” (PRRI, February 2024) https://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/PRRI-Feb-2024-Christian-Nationalism.pdf.
4 Governor Abbott’s March 2024 executive order GA44 relating to addressing acts of antisemitism in institutions of higher education faces a legal challenge from Texas Muslim advocacy groups and the ACLU. The order has drawn criticism from a host of academic associations, Muslim advocacy groups, and civil liberties organizations for its singling out of particular student groups for increased scrutiny, its heavy handed interference in the internal policies of academic institutions, and its requirement that Texas colleges and universities adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism, which the ACLU argues chills protected speech and expands government power to act against disfavored political expression.
5“Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology,” Edited by Barbara Smith, (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983)
JENNIFER MARGULIES (she/her) is a writer and independent consultant for social change organizations. Jen was one of the founding facilitators of the Chavuraction Racial Justice Circles at Austin’s Congregation Beth Israel. She co-founded Evelyn Street Press, a small press with a focus on promoting queer of color literature. Her writing has been published in New Politics magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and “Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian poetry.”