This week, demonstrators in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., brought the High Holidays to the Jewish Federations of North America — one of the largest Jewish organizations supporting Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine. These series of actions were part of another wave of activity by the group If Not Now, When?, as it seeks to build a new narrative around American Jewish identity in relation to the occupation.
Pele Irgangladen, an organizer of the #IfNotNow action in Philadelphia on Tuesday, explained the moment out of which the group emerged: “A lot of Jews — a lot of young Jews — don’t see how Israel can continue to do the things that it’s doing in the name of the Jewish people. For it to continue with … bombings, with occupations, with blockades — none of those things are Jewish.”
Tashlich, meaning “cast” in Hebrew, is a centuries-old Jewish ceremony traditionally performed on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, which marks a new year on the Hebrew calendar, and Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. Participants throw a small parcel — typically bread — into a body of water as a means of casting away and symbolically repenting for the sins of the past year.
#IfNotNow sprung up this summer during the most recent war in Gaza. Taking their name from Rabbi Hillel’s three questions, the group held similar religiously themed actions — including civil disobedience — outside of prominent Jewish institutions in New York that quickly spread elsewhere. Like those actions, this week’s #TashlichInterrupted demonstrations injected a distinctly political character and tone of mourning into Jewish tradition — participants wore black, instead of the ceremonial white, to symbolize the impurity of the Jewish soul.
Protesters cast dirt for their own sins of silence and complicity with the occupation. They then called on Jewish Federations of North America to end its own active support of the occupation as a leading representative of American Jews. As Irgangladen put it, “This year has been a particularly bloody year at the hands of Jewish weapons, and we need to think about that.”
Created by former J Street staffers and Occupy organizers, the group creates a broad platform for Jews of all backgrounds, ideologies and relationships to Israel to come together and speak out publicly against the occupation. Sarah Giskin, a participant in Tuesday’s action and student at Temple University, said, “For a long time I felt like I was alone as an anti-Zionist Jew in my community … It makes you feel like you can’t really be Jewish anymore. I didn’t know there were other people who felt the same way as me.”
After a period of intense growth over the summer, organizers will figure out how to absorb the season’s momentum into the coming year; the war that sparked #IfNotNow into existence may be over, but the occupation continues. Next, the group will host a series of Shabbat dinners in cities across the country as a means of building Jewish community amongst members and charting paths forward.
Thanks, guys. You are very courageous. It is super hard to go against your own community and be called a traitor. Israel needs this tough love, and the media needs to give you your voice.
Please focus on our politicians who are our biggest problem, giving away taxpayer money for their own political agendas.
Without a stake in their land and future, what is left for Palestinians but to fell despair, and that if their lives have no value, then why not throw them away in fatal resistance acts. The whole cycle preventable, as you can clearly see. you will be saving lives n the long term by your acts.
Dan, good comment, thanks!
I love this protest. Sure Jews have dirty souls. But so do we all. None of us are perfect. I too have a dirty soul, which needs cleaning from time to time. I hope Muslims will give support to your noble cause. The most important divide is those who want peace and those who want war, not Jews and non Jews.
It is crucial that Jews stand up against Israel, which does not act in the interests of practicing Jews or Christians. Zionism, which is a multiracial cabal of elites, seeks world domination and destruction of freedoms, like free speech and gun rights. And I am a liberal. Wake up America. Read about Yinon Zionism, America.
Your title calls them “peace activists” Who decided on that designation? So, are the rest of us war activists? This is the narcisstic attitude that claims that somehow they are more moral than the rest of us. Peace activists are people who forget peace from conflict. Menachem Begin was more of a peace activist than any of these self-important self-proclaimed activists.
Pele Irgangladen, says none of these things are Jewish. Getting quietly onto cattle cars and walking into gas chambers was the way Jewish people behaved in the not too distant past. See what is happening to the Yazidis and the Kurds and the Syrian people, what do you think would be done to us? The Yazidis can’t fight back, so they are butchered and their girls and women raped and sold into sex slavery.
Bravo! Keep at it. We cannot let them win!! FREE PALESTINE! END THE OCCUPATION.
I’M PROUD OF YOU GUYS, PEACE IS BETTER THAN KILLINGS.
I applaud these honest Jewish Americans for standing up for true Judaism.
The State of Israel has killed, occupied, strangled, blockaded, imprisoned, tortured, racism, genocide, etc… all in the name of Judaism, which is inconceivable in the 21st century!
I urge you the American people to go to the concentration camps called the West Bank & Gaza and see for yourself what really is going on there in this 21st century!
Congratulations to those brave American Jews whom has the guts to stand up for peace in the middle east specially Palestine and to expose the propaganda about democracy in Israel. Palestinians have been denied the freedom they log for sense 1948 and the blind eyes of those who don’t care in America listen to the lies that Palestinians are war mongers don’t bother to know the truth ,I support this Jewish peace movement perhaps it will wake up the conscious of our country ttttttttttttttto take a fair stand against the inhuman policy of Israel and not veto every resolution in favor of Palestine
“If Not Now, When?” sounds like a wonderful organization and thank goodness for their good work. They realize that Israel is becoming a racist , genocidal, land-stealing nation and they are trying to stop that.
Bravo, the world should know the Jewish people as people with conscious, integrity and above all Humanity.