A transcript of this episode is available below

.

Subscribe on all major platforms

In this special series, TEXTing: IRL – Ideas for Real Life, Elana Stein Hain brings the big dilemmas facing North American Jews into conversation with classic and modern Torah texts.

Allyship at the Edge: Navigating Difference Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Elana: Hi everyone.

It’s been a while since we’ve aired texting. I’ve actually been living in Israel for that long while and have seen a lot of the issues in Israel up close. But I have to say we decided to come back at this moment, not only because of what’s going on in Israel, but because of what’s going on in America. As I ran in and out of my shelter for 12 days during the war with Iran, I didn’t just hear well-wishing from friends around the world. I was also watching and following unsettling news coming from America. And so we’re going to have this mini-series that’s dedicated to what we’re supposed to do about some of this unsettling news.

Welcome to TEXTing IRL: ideas for real life, a special series of texting where we examine the dilemmas impacting American Jews at this time. I’m your host, Elana Stein-Hain, and we’re recording on July 1st, 2025. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can follow along with our source sheet in the show notes.

We have a really big dilemma. The dilemma is on two sides. On the one, most American Jews are liberal or progressive in their values, and yet, progressive spaces—and even liberal spaces—have become increasingly normalizing of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. So these Jews feel anything from uncomfortable and alienated to outright rejected in terms of their participation. They also may be wary of strengthening anti-Zionism by participating with people who hold other values with them in common.

And on the more conservative side of American Jewry, there are people who are looking to the Republican Party to support Israel, but they’re not looking for a Republican Party or an administration that is going to assault democratic norms. They’re not looking for an administration that’s going to have draconian measures like picking up a six-year-old with leukemia—arresting a six-year-old—at their immigration hearing. They’re not looking for defunding of medical research. And they’re certainly not looking for turning a blind eye to right-wing anti-Semitism or to causing more anti-Semitism by claiming that the draconian measures and the anti-democratic commitments are actually in the name of saving the Jews.

And just to add a little piece here to our cognitive dissonance, I am one of those people who believes that President Trump did something incredible in Iran. And yet I’m also one of those people who is dedicated to fighting against his domestic agenda. How is that supposed to work? What are we supposed to do and say and be during this time?

So in this special series, we’re going to examine a number of different angles, and today our angle is “progressive allyship.” Jews who stand as activists within progressive and liberal communities and causes, how are they managing this moment of, anywhere from discomfort to rejection to being asked to strengthen causes that they disagree with, in the name of causes that they do agree with?

This isn’t so new. The truth is, for about 10 years, you could talk to people who are in Hillels on campuses and they’ll tell you how sometimes they can’t co-sponsor a progressive event on campus because they’re a Zionist institution. You can talk to activists about what they’ve experienced over the last 10 years. But since October 7th, it’s really ratcheted up. And I think it’s for two reasons.

Number one, October 7th allowed those who support full-blown resistance by any means necessary to show their faces proudly and to proclaim that stance in public. And number two, the war in Gaza, which has wreaked such havoc on both infrastructure and human life, has turned many people who were critics of Israel into anti-Zionists. And so we are at a fever pitch.

Now, I am so fortunate that I have a friend and a colleague who I can talk to specifically about being in progressive spaces during this time. Someone who has dedicated his life to leadership and to the ability to figure out these tricky alliances. And that is Jacob Feinspan. Jacob, just to give people a little bit about your bio, he’s the executive director at Jews United for Justice in Washington, DC. I really value your voice on these matters. Jacob, welcome and thanks for being here.

Jacob: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Elana: So we’re here for some layups today. This should be fairly simple. I’m not really worried. You’ve got this covered, right?

Jacob: Absolutely.

Elana: Well, as you know, Jacob, Torah is the central feature on this show for helping us think through these big questions. So I actually want to dig in with you to a concept offered by Maimonides, by the Rambam, that I think will point us in a direction for thinking about allyship and alliances. And I want to understand how you as an activist leader relate to and riff off of this in your own thinking about activism during this time specifically for progressive causes.

In order to get to Maimonides, you know, there always has to be something before, because Maimonides is commenting on something. He is commenting on Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Great Ones, Chapter 1, Mishnah 6, where Rabbi Yehoshua, son of Prachya, says the following: “make for yourself a teacher; acquire for yourself a friend, and judge everyone to the side of merit.” In other words, give people the benefit of the doubt.

So even before we delve into what Maimonides is going to do here, I’m curious how you interpret these three pieces of guidance. Kind of a Rorschach test.

Jacob: When I think about these words, I’m thinking about my work and the centrality that relationship and partnership plays in the way that I do my work in the world, whether it’s at Jews United for Justice, whether it’s as one of the national co-chairs of the Working Families Party, and the relationship between teacher and friend is one that I found to be really profound in my life. That the people who have helped me grow the most, not always, but often are people that I’ve then developed deep and meaningful and longstanding relationships with that then enables me to see them and also, to give them the benefit of doubt, but also to expand my understanding of what’s happening in the world and how other people see a situation, which gives me the ability to try to put myself in their shoes and give benefit of the doubt or assume good intent through the learning from my teachers.

Elana: Oh, wow, so you’re really looking at this as one creates the other. One actually moves you to the other. You’re willing to learn from someone else. You develop a deeper relationship of friendship, and then you’re actually able to give people the benefit of the doubt in ways that you wouldn’t have been able to before.

Jacob: My first read is in that way. You know, I think if you started from a different place, I might have come up with a different, a different read.

Elana: Of course, welcome to the beauty of Jewish interpretation.

Jacob: Exactly. and it’s, I would say it’s often less about being able to give the benefit of the doubt to the person I’m already in relationship with. And it’s more about being able to have a deeper understanding of a lived experience of a worldview, of a way of seeing the world that is not my own, that I gained through the relationship, the friendship and the learning from that teacher, that then enables me to…

Elana: Apply that elsewhere.

Jacob: Not with everyone, but with more people be able to imagine a way in which they’re acting where what they’re doing makes sense and is… that they’re acting in a way that they believe is a good or meritorious way to act in the world.

Elana: Yeah, it’s so interesting and maybe this is gonna presage a little bit of where we’re gonna go, because I look at this and I say, concentric circles. This is a rabbinic teacher-student culture. Concentric circles, your most important relationship is your teacher, that’s the most trusted. Your next level out is your friend circle. Who are your peers? How are they reinforcing some of the things that you’ve been hearing from your teacher and how might they be detracting from it? And you should keep an eye on that.

And then there’s kind of everyone else, where you have an open posture, which is kind of what I am as a person, but just know that that’s how it starts. An open posture is not always how it ends. So we’ll see where it goes.

But let’s get to Maimonides, because Maimonides does something really magnificent here. He quotes Aristotle, right? So we say Torah is the center, but Maimonides is quoting Aristotle. He quotes Aristotle and he says, I actually want to talk about three types of friendship. There’s three types. There is a friend for utility. A chaver to’elet, it’s called in Hebrew. There is a friend for pleasure or comfort, chaveir nachat. And then there is a friend for virtue, chaver ma’ala.

Now let’s talk about each of these. A friend for utility is, and the example he gives is a monarch and their army. There are things we need to get done. There’s something, there’s a mission. We’re going to accomplish the mission. That’s what we’re going to do.

A friend for comfort might be someone who will listen to all your problems and all your foibles and they’ll accept you how you are. But you don’t necessarily have to have all of your virtues in common. They’re just accepting. And to an extent, these two, it’s a little bit what you get out of it, right? Like the utility, what you get out of it, and the pleasure, what you get out of it.

And the third layer, which he says is actually the teacher-student relationship, when it goes well, is no, no, we are, our relationship is one of shared virtue, shared values, a shared vision of what the world is supposed to be like. It’s a Venn diagram that overlaps as much as possible. And I think this is incredibly helpful for thinking about how we make alliances.

And I’m just gonna put this on the table as the non-activist here. I think American Jews thought our alliances were of the third type, that we share everything, and we’re totally Venn diagram, and I think after October 7th, a lot of us said, turns out this was a little bit more utilitarian than I realized. And I’m not necessarily of use in the same way as I was. So I want to just put that at your feet and see what your perspective on what we’re looking for out of allyship. What are we looking for out of our alliances with people? And with groups, I should say.

Jacob: First, I’ve so enjoyed listening to your podcast to learn from you that way and to have a chance to learn with you in a room once before. I’m so appreciative of getting to learn directly with you right now. I mean, my, my first response is, I have some questions about the, the, the, the, teacher student relationship is one of shared virtue, because for me, the teachers I’ve learned the most from, are ones where it has not been a total overlapping Venn diagram. And the idea that that’s what the center, like the highest aspiration is, I have some questions about.

Elana: Jacob, this is why you’re on the show. This is why you’re on the show. We take a different tack at this.

Jacob: Yeah, and that might be, I would say that’s from my lived experience, not from an idea orientation, from a daily work orientation. One of the things that this framework is reminding me of is a teaching, an essay by Bernice Reagon Johnson, who’s a Black feminist who wrote a piece more than 40 years ago on coalition politics, that is about the difference between home, which I think in this context would be a friend for virtue, where we feel totally safe. We can take off all of our armor, we know that the people around us agree with us completely, and coalition, which, she’s thinking about in the context of working with people who in some cases in other contexts have threatened her life, working as a Black woman in the post civil rights era where there were Klan members who all of a sudden were taking off their cowls, and that she was supposed to be living with and working with.

The way she says it, some people will come to a coalition and they rate the success of the coalition on whether or not they feel good when they get there. They’re not looking for a coalition. They’re looking for a home. And it’s very important not to confuse them—home and coalition. And so where I agree with you is I think that there, there has been a lived experience of believing that spaces that we were in were homes when they were coalitions all along.

And for some folks in those coalitions, it was very obvious and clear to them that they were coalitions all along. And for some Jews, whether it be because what was salient in those spaces was not raising differences in them, or because of a privilege and assumptions about what other people, if I think it, everybody else thinks it, that they tripped over the truth of what has been a coalition all along.

And it was profoundly disorienting, because I know for many of us that the work we do in the world is a manifestation of our commitments and our core values. And when we’re used to agreeing with each other, when we disagree, it is particularly surprising in a way that is different than when we disagree, in our families, for instance, which is, I mean, it’s one version of home, but in fact, families were used to arguing with each other all the time. In our shuls, we’re used to disagreeing with each other all the time. But in these spaces, there was an assumption that sort of was unmasked.

Elana: Right, so meaning the ideology, the shared ideology around certain values made us think we were at home. And that doesn’t mean there was shared ideology around all values and there has to be a recognition of what your home is and what the coalition is. So what I love about this and what I think is so provocative is that what you’re saying is, one second, discomfort is gonna be a feature. It’s not a bug. Discomfort and some level of divergence is gonna be a feature.

So let me ask you some tachlis questions about how you deal with that. So you’re trying to figure out alliances, real concrete blood, sweat, time, tears, putting your reputation on the line with people. How open are you? How important is it to already, from the beginning say, listen, we have to understand that I have some, we as a group, have some commitments that may clash with your commitments, and we need to actually think together about how we are going to navigate those. How does that work in reality?

Jacob: Yeah. So I’ll start by saying most of my experience is in working in institutional spaces where I’m representing not only myself, but also an institution. And in those contexts, the coalitions, the spaces that we’re coming together in almost always have a specific purpose in mind that is the organizing feature of us coming together. So working together to protect immigrants from being deported by the Trump administration, or working together to try to create a paid family and medical leave system so that everyone has access to 12 weeks of paid parental leave and medical leave.

And in those kinds of contexts, the organizing principle is who agrees with this core feature? And then, once we’re in the work together, frequently what makes those coalitions most successful is the personal relationships that among partners that comes from that, in that kind of context, that would be a place where I would then start to ask in a one-on-one conversation, why are you guys part of this? What calls you personally to it? Why is your institution involved? What are some of the other things that you work on? What’s at stake for you? Consistently and regularly, we’re navigating differences of core values with coalition partners.

I’m thinking about that paid family medical leave campaign that I mentioned? The Catholic church was a core partner in that campaign. I have colleagues and staff who are, are, are queer, who are women, who’ve been personally affected by the Catholic church’s teachings on those issues. And we are constantly having to have conversations about what’s at stake for us. Do we have to, do we agree with each other?

Elana: And do we have to.

Jacob: And in, in almost all the cases that our work happens in, we have a core goal that is about benefit, like materially impacting people’s lives and creating a community of belonging. And we’re, we come together to make that happen.

Elana: So let me ask you a question. There may be a difference where the clash is in the background. It’s still painful and people still have to make the decision to say, utility is actually going to override my sense of comfort right now, as in the examples that you gave, which were quite poignant examples. These are not simple things for people’s real lives when they’ve been impacted.

But what happens when actually the dissonance is front and center? Because a particular issue is actually connected to, let’s just say, the conversation about Zionism or Israel or anti-Semitism. So you might be fighting for due process, and the example of the person for whom you’re fighting for due process is an example of who is anti-Zionist and therefore has a lot of support from that community, right? And the alliance is actually front and center. I’m wondering if you’ve experienced that and how you navigate it.

Jacob: Yeah. So, I guess a couple of thoughts. The first is my general belief is that we believe what we believe and we’re not going to let what other people who agree with us believe about other things affect what we want to do in the world. It might affect how we do it, but it shouldn’t affect whether or not we are committed to that, to that goal.

Elana: Wow.

Jacob: I’m thinking particularly about a case of a fellow at Georgetown University, Dr. Suri, who was one of the first students to be detained by the Trump administration earlier this spring. He was picked up returning to his home from a ritual meal. And they’re actually the facts in the case were not so clear. His wife is Palestinian American. Her father was an advisor to Hamas. He publicly had announced that he would not have supported the attacks on October 7th. But she was an American citizen.

Elana: But what’s so interesting, Jacob, is that you are able to go down this rabbit hole with such equanimity, whereas I would think those of us who are not in the progressive activist space are sort of like, am not, I mean, we’re talking about somebody who’s father, you know what I’m saying? Meaning you are really…

Jacob: Whose father-in-law.

Elana: But I’m just saying, I just want people to notice even the orientation towards the discussion is, you’re asking, due process, let’s actually think about the facts here. And it’s not about how this affects Jews per se. It’s actually, is this actually just or is this not just?

Jacob: Yes, and…

Elana: Yeah, fix it, fix it.

Jacob: And, this is the process that authoritarianism uses, where first they go after the most controversial figures, or the least sympathetic, in their mind, in the public view. And when they can get away with that, then they go over the next. So I actually think that these kinds of detentions are directly putting Jewish safety at risk, and especially when it is being done in the name of protecting Jews. And that is the public reason that is given for detentions without process.

So that’s an example of a time where we sat down with our rabbi in residence, Rabbi Miriam Liebman, worked with other rabbis in the community, and collectively, a hundred clergy in the Washington region wrote a letter saying, this is not, this does not protect us.

Elana: A hundred Jewish clergy or a hundred interfaith?

Jacob: A hundred Jewish clergy, a hundred Jewish clergy wrote a letter together. And, and I want to actually read back just, it took months, but Dr. Suri was released. And now we’re going to read back in a piece of a note that he sent to the, to some of the clergy of appreciation.

“I’m writing to express my deep appreciation and gratitude for your kind initiative to come to the court.” This is, he’s talking to rabbi, one of the rabbis who was there physically. “I know the Jewish community drafted a statement of support of my cause. It will always guide my approach in the future. I conclude by assuring you that like many Jews, my support for the Palestinian cause never meant implicitly or explicitly any inclusionary rhetoric, any exclusionary rhetoric for our Jewish brothers and sisters. To the contrary, I believe in the special responsibility of the community of scholars to find ways for peaceful coexistence and mutual respect. As an Indian Muslim, I pursued this discourse in my country. I continue to be guided by this rhetoric. I seize this opportunity to thank you and the Jewish community for supporting me. I truly realize it might’ve been tough on you all.”

So this is, this is somebody who was detained in the name of protecting Jews, who is, this is…

Elana: Okay, so let me tell you what goes on in my head. My split screen is between him and Mahmoud Khalil, who’s actually just way more brazen now in his anti-Semitism. I don’t know if it’s more brazen or just equally brazen and outspoken. I am, I, this is, I think you and I would not accept the same coalitions on certain things, but I think it is so important for people to hear, especially people who are more inclined to be like me, for them to hear how principled what you’re trying to do here is and what the long-term vision is, what the short-term vision is, and the kinds of responses that you’re getting, which is something that I think it’s not popular to talk about because we are in the polarization business, right? That’s where we are as human beings.

So can I ask you a question? Are there red lines? Like have there been situations…

Jacob: Yeah, we have red lines.

Elana: Have there been situations where you said, look, we tried, we had the conversation, we tried and we can’t… can you share a little bit about that? Cause I think, especially given how much of a capacity you clearly have for keeping your eye on the prize and the prize being those values for which you are being active, right? I think it would be really important for people to hear how far it goes.

Jacob: So for us, I’m thinking about one situation where a now former partner published a piece that said, that was an article, “Zionism is white supremacy.” And we reached out to, and the examples of Zionists that were being used were only white Jewish folks, knowing that there’s actually a much larger number of Christian Zionists in America than American Jewish Zionists, and some of whom have very particular and divergent views on race than I would say most American Jews do.

And his response was when we asked, why didn’t, we’ve been working together for a long time. Why didn’t you come and speak with us if you were feeling these things before publishing? And he said, I didn’t want to know what you would have to say because I thought you’d disagree.

And at that moment, we realized this wasn’t a partnership. This was a situation where we sometimes agree on what should be done. And that means that we’re not going to refuse… if we’re, if there’s a letter about a piece of legislation around racial justice, we’re going to sign that letter. We’re not going to look and see, has this other institution signed the letter? If there’s a press conference where we have something to say, we’re not going to refuse to be in a room, we’re not gonna, like, that’s not what partnership looks like. Partnership looks like being in ongoing dialogue and respect, even when we disagree on something. And that was the end of that partnership.

Elana: So you’re really adding to our types of friendship, right? We said there’s a friendship of utility, but you’re saying, one second, what I actually want is I want a partnership of utility. It doesn’t have to be my home, but it has to be, I have to know when something is a partnership versus when something is sort of a parallel play. And you’re willing to do parallel play with people who are now partners, but everybody needs to know the difference. So in terms of what the difference is practically, because you’ll be in the same room, you’ll sign the same thing. What is the practical difference in terms of how that alliance looks in the future?

Jacob: Yeah, so in our particular case, when we’re thinking about our partners, we’re developing a strategy together of, which elected leaders do we think we can already to be the champions on something? What is the strategy by which we’re going to work with the rest of the elected leaders in the community to build a majority, which is what you need to pass legislation? What are our best strategies for convincing folks? Where are we going to go? Where are you going to go? Where are we going to go together? Those kinds of, those kinds of activities, that’s what partnership is. And, you know, parallel play is, we’re going to work with our partners to develop our strategy. It might be that we’re going to be in the same rooms. It might not. We’re not courting in advance. We’re not avoiding. We’re gonna do the work that we believe in. Does that help? Does that make sense?

Elana: I think it helps explain. What have I not asked you? What am I missing from an outsider’s point of view? What am I missing?

Jacob: One of the initial questions you asked was, how do we, how do we talk about our, what our core beliefs are? And how do we help our partners understand who we are? And as an organization, my organization works, engages the Jewish community on local issues. We don’t work on Israel and Palestine. In general, my personal belief is that local elected leaders, city council, county council should not be engaged in foreign policy efforts. That’s at the congressional level. So our electeds aren’t the primary drivers of this set of issues. That means we have all kinds of people inside our organization.

But when I think about, you know, imagining for you, if you were wanting to be in a coalition and you had a set of concerns about where does Zionism fit, how does it work? One of the central questions I’d be asking is, what do you want out of that conversation? Is it that you want Zionism to be part of the agenda of the coalition? Is it that you want people to agree with you, whether or not it’s part of the coalition effort? Is it you want people to hear your perspective and really grapple with it? Is it that you want to come to a place where you can agree to disagree, and know that this coalition space is not going to be a space where anybody feels excluded based on their analysis of Zionism?

Elana: Yeah, this is a great structure that you’re offering.

Jacob: Those are really different requests. And one of the key things that I think is maybe one of the most important skills in navigating coalition and strategies is to really have clarity about what one is asking of others and how hard that is for them, because looking back, one of my hypotheses about what was most difficult for many American Jews in the month following October 7th was that many Americans were feeling uncertain, unsafe, unseen. And when we reached out, or what we expected others to do was to stand with us at the march for Israel to return the hostages and against anti-Semitism, and that was actually not an easy ask of others, even many who believe in the state of Israel’s Jewish character and, and, you know, different people have different definitions of Zionism, whether or not they would describe themselves as Zionists or not, I think a lot of people are somewhat agnostic about that, or like they’ve never really thought about that word. That’s what we thought people would do to show up for us.

And that was actually quite hard, because people were uncertain if the ask had been, can you say something to say that you care about the wellbeing and safety of Jewish community members in our community or around the world, people would have said yes.

Elana: Wow. I wish I had an hour more to talk to you. And I actually, I think we will continue talking, not on the podcast, but I think we will continue talking because I think the whole way that you look at this, there are some people who would say, well, that’s why I’m going to the right right now, because they would come to that rally, and they would speak at that rally, and that’s what I need them to do.

So there is a posture here that you’re describing, that I think American Jews need to understand, because there are many American Jews for whom the posture that you’re describing is essential, is actually what is going to allow them to continue walking through the world as proud progressives and proud Zionists at the same time. So I really just want to thank you for starting off this series and helping people start to think about how we deal with these dilemmas.

Jacob: I’m so appreciative of the invitation to be part of the conversation. I learned so much from these discussions and I’m so grateful that I can share back some of the learning that I’ve gained from these over many years. Thank you.

Elana: Thank you so much and I hope all of our listeners will join us for our next two installments where we’re going to be taking different dimensions and different perspectives of this issue. Thanks Jacob.