One 19th century Gentile described California as “the Jews’ earthly paradise”. Itis paradise no longer. Reports of attacks on Jewish businesses, homes and institutions are becoming ever more commonplace, while university campuses – hardly considered to be bastions of hate – have allowed acts of flagrant anti-Semitism to go unpunished.
Just last week, pro-Hamas students interrupted a graduation party for UC Berkeley law school graduates at the home of the school’s Jewish dean. The ‘protest’ occurred on private property, but that didn’t prevent the leader of ‘Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine’ from smearing the professor who confiscated the microphone from the interrupting student’s hand as an “Islamophobe”, accusing her of “assault”.
It appears that California’s Jews can’t even relax in their own homes without being confronted by zealous radicals. Prior to the event, posters had been shared on social media showing the dean holding a bloody knife and fork, captioned “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves.” It’s little wonder that dean Chemerinsky, a well-known progressive, wrote in response that “nothing has prepared me for the anti-Semitism” currently festering on Berkeley campus.
Whathappens in California says much about the future of the beleaguered Jewish diaspora. California, with 1.2 million Jews, has almost three times as many Jewish people as the three largest foreign diaspora countries – France, England and Canada.
The redefinition of Jews as serial oppressors harbouring genocidal ambitions has its roots in the educational and cultural industries that constitute the heart of progressive power. The anti-Jewish shift is all the more heartbreaking given that Universities like Berkeley, which I attended a half century ago and where some of my family have lived for 70 years, produced numerous Jewish Nobel prize winners.
Today in the University of California system pro-Hamas professors and studentsrun riot on campuses, with the school seemingly unable or unwilling to stand up to them.Jay Sures, a member of the UC Board of Regents, characterised a statement releasedby the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Councilto the board, as being full “falsehoods, inaccuracies, and anti-Semitic innuendos” that “seeks to legitimise and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre of October 7”.
More worrisome still are efforts in grade schools to push a deeply divisive political agenda. Steeped in progressive ideology, California schools haverejiggered their math curricula to emphasise “social justice”.The state’s adopted ethnic studies program, shaped by‘Critical Race Theory’, is openly anti-Zionist, all but erasing a millennia of Jewish history and experience.
Anti-Semitism isn’t just restricted to the schools. Recent pro-Hamas demonstrations have forced at least one LA synagogue to relocate its services;others have been vandalised while demonstrators halted traffic in the traditionally Jewish Fairfax district. The home owned byAIPAC President Steve Tuchin was recently attacked with smoke bombs and red paint. Many Jews, including members of my own congregation, are increasingly concerned about their safety. Gun sales in Jewish neighbourhoods have soared.
Two California stalwart industries, tech and film production, have buckled under the pressure of fashionable activist anti-Zionism. Organisations like the Writers Guild, long a bastion of progressivism, suddenly decided to display neutrality when it comes to attacks on the Jewish state. Two thousand actors signed a statement outlining Israel’s “war crimes”, with no mention of Hamas’ atrocities.
Silicon Valley, which once embraced anti-Israel groups like Black Lives Matter with open arms, has kept remarkably quiet about the Hamas pogrom. “A lot of [tech oligarchs] are more concerned with their social justice profile than their Judaism,” longtime Jewish activist and Palo Alto native Nickolas Targ tells me, in an area where “secular progressivism is part of the air.”
Given these developments, will California Jews, long fixtures in the Democratic Party and progressive circles, shiftto the Right? Not anytime soon. California’s Jewish democrats are instead engaged in an intra-party struggle against the increasingly anti-Jewish Left.
Well-organised pro-Hamas demonstrators were able to all but shut down the state party convention this year. The nine CaliforniaCongresspeople backing a ceasefire before Hamas is destroyed are all Democratic progressives.Gavin Newsom’s temporary Senate appointee and former union organiser Laphonza Butler has also joined the crowd seeking to remove support for Israel’s war effort.
The truth is that anti-Israel advocacy has found its base within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, while the strongest support for Israel in the state now comes from Republicans.Still, some Democratic moderates have launched a counter-coup, with the well-connected Bay Area publicist insisting his group ‘Democratic Majority for Israel’ will succeed in halting the pro-Hamas trend. Rep. Adam Schiff, the next Senator of the state, won a campaign against two far more anti-Israel candidates.
Jews in California, as elsewhere, will need to prioritise not ideology butcommunity survival. They will needto work with whatever politician, in either party, who embraces the security of our communities, as well as Israel. Now is not the time for party loyalty, or making excuses for a Democratic party that has long since stopped caring about the safety of Jews. If not, this fabled outpost of the diaspora will weaken and whither, leaving Jews with only one homeland, the perpetually threatened Jewish state.
