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On 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.

Rethinking How Jews Advocate Transcript

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

Elana: Hi everyone. Welcome back to TEXTing IRL: Ideas for Real Life, where we wrestle with the big dilemmas of our time through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Hain, and we’re recording on November 12th, 2025. TEXTing is supported by the generosity of Micah Philanthropies and the Walder Charitable Fund. You can find the sources referenced in this episode in our show notes. 

So this week we’re continuing our travels alongside synagogues all over the world through the book of Bereshit, Genesis. This week’s parasha, Vayetzei, continues the narrative of Yaakov, of Jacob. Jacob’s life takes up so much real estate in the book of Bereshit. He is present in over half of the Torah portions. His various adventures bring to the fore really important questions for us today about honesty, resourcefulness, and survival. 

In last week’s parasha, we saw Yaakov resourcefully take advantage of his brother’s Esav’s fatigue to get him to trade his birthright away for soup. And then we saw him outright tricking his father Yitzchak into giving him the firstborn blessing, of course, with his mother Rivka’s guidance. 

Now in this week’s parasha, the shoe is on the other foot. We see him getting tricked by Lavan into marrying Leah first. And then he fights back. He employs what seems to be a resourceful strategy using some carved sticks once Lavan changes the term of their financial arrangement. So there’s a lot going on here. 

The life of Jacob raises questions about how to advocate for yourself, how to survive. And of course, the default posture is, you gotta fight fair. But what if you can’t win if you fight fair? Or if you’re engaging with a Lavan figure, who won’t fight fair? Or what if the stakes are just too high to depend on the usual tactics working? I really like these questions for right now. Because so many Jews are feeling that the stakes are very high in Jewish advocacy, and that the deck can feel stacked against us. This is a question about the ethics of Jewish self-advocacy. 

So we brought a ringer to discuss this issue through the lens of Yacov’s life. I’ve invited Stacy Burdett. Stacy is a public policy strategist who works with policymakers, philanthropists, and other nonprofits on strategies to prevent and respond to anti-Semitism. Stacy previously served as Vice President for Government Relations at the Anti-Defamation League, leading policy advocacy and coalition work on Jewish and civil and human rights issues. She was also the director of government relations at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C., where she engaged political leaders on both sides of the aisle to examine very evocative questions through the lens of history. Not as well as biblical history, but America’s response to Nazism in the 1930s. 

Welcome, Stacy. 

Stacy: It’s great to be here, Elana. 

Elana: I am so glad to have you on the show. I mean, you’ve been navigating these questions for a long time. And in general, I just really like thinking with you. So really, thank you very much. 

Stacy: It’s a pleasure. Pleasure to learn with you. ‘

Elana: Yeah, so let’s learn. Let’s learn some Torah. We’re going to see a range of perspectives on Jacob’s actions. We’re going to see from justification to rebuke. And I think the ins and outs will really give us what to talk about in terms of the ethical questions. 

So I want to start with justification as, you know, a nice provocation. This is actually a passage in the Talmud that gives you a little bit of a sense of how Jacob thinks about himself. And he seems to be proud of his ability to use the rules of the game that somebody else might set up that he may not have set up to begin with, but he feels are necessary. 

So it goes like this. You have Yaakov introducing himself to Rachel, Jacob introducing himself to Rachel. And he says, instead of saying he is Lavan’s nephew, he says he’s Lavan’s brother. Very strange. So the Talmud picks up. It says, “Va’yagid Yaakov l’Rachel ki achi aviahu,” Jacob tells Rachel that she’s, basically that he’s her uncle. Right? He says, “I’m your father’s brother.” He’s not. That’s not what he is. He’s actually her cousin. He’s her father’s nephew. Right? “v’achi ben Rivka hu,” and at the same time he says, “I’m Rebecca’s son.” Again, are you uncle or are you cousin? 

So the Gemara picks up on it. “Va’alo ben achot aviahu,” he’s not, he’s not Lavan’s brother. He’s Lavan’s nephew. “Elah amar la,” but rather here’s what happened. He said to her, “Mintz avat li,” I want you to marry me. “Amar le,” she says, “you don’t know my dad. This isn’t going to work. You’re not gonna be able to beat him.” And he says, “Yes, I will.” “No, you’re not. He’s a ramai. He’s a trickster.” He says, “Well, guess what? Achiv ani be’rama’ut,” I’m his brother in trickery. I can trick just like the best of them. 

So when he says I’m Lavan’s brother, the way the rabbis read it is, he can trick. I can trick. Now, to me, this is very clear. Lavan’s a bad guy. His own daughter says so. And this is not a friend of Jacob’s. This is somebody who he’s looking at as an adversary. And sometimes you need to fight fire with fire. 

And I’m curious that when you read this, like, what do you see? What does it evoke for you? And do you agree with the ethics? Let’s just start with that. Have you experienced something like this in your own career? 

Stacy: Of course. And everybody has those moments, right? When they go low, meet him in the basement. You have to, if your adversary is playing chess, don’t play checkers. And, you know, to him, this was a very consequential event. And politics and advocacy are like that. You can only either, you have two choices, win or lose. There’s nothing in the middle. You don’t get graded on a curve for fairness. 

But over the course of a career or this Bereshit, there are like 31 different types of flavors of factors that can go into your decision making. And how important is the battle? How important is it to win? And is winning this battle the best thing for Jewish survival over time? We don’t want to survive in this press cycle or election cycle; we want to be here forever. 

And so sometimes it’s a question of, is winning this in the short term right now the most important thing? Because the way you fight can impact your ability for sure to win over time. So Yaakov was looking at what type of guy is this? I want to meet him where he is for this purpose of this battle. 

Elana: Well, that’s very interesting because I do wonder if, just thinking about Jacob’s life with Lavan, he actually doesn’t get the better of Lavan at the beginning of the story. Lavan totally gets the better of him. He doesn’t get to marry the woman he wants to marry first. He’s forced to marry somebody else out of trickery. So he doesn’t, but eventually he wins. And I guess there is a burning of a bridge in a way at the end because he has to leave with his family. 

But I just want to throw one more thing, one more “but” in there. He does gain Lavan’s respect as an adversary, I might say. Lavan does say, okay, I’m going to make a covenant with you. You’re not going to harm my daughters. I’m not going to harm your people. So I see what you’re saying about short-term, long-term, but isn’t it also possible that sometimes by being tough, people recognize that they can’t step all over you? 

Stacy: Right. There’s no question. All lobbyists and advocates think about Hillel’s maxim, “If I’m not for myself, who will be for me? And if I’m only for myself, what am I?” And that is not a choice between two things. It’s both at the same time. It’s like Pilates. If you don’t develop both sides of the muscle, you can’t stand up straight. 

And so the days when you’re fighting for your own interests, not only are you doing the right thing for your interests, you are gaining the respect of your adversaries. So when I work with people, I don’t let them think that I’m one of those people who’s not a Zionist or who only is trying to help the other group. That’s not what I need to do to get their respect. The fact that I very much dwell in the Jewish community, it’s coming out of my ears when I work with people. I’m proud of it and they definitely respect me more because I’m standing also in their shoes to understand what they need from a situation, but I am who I am. And absolutely, I think you do get respect, not for being tough,  but for caring for yourself, like you said, self-advocacy. 

Elana: Oh, but I like this. Can you help, because not an insider, can you help me understand what is the difference between caring for yourself and being tough? And obviously we’re not talking about trickery. That’s not our ethical question. The ethical question that you’re offering here is the question of being tough, right? So I’m curious, what’s the difference between caring for yourself, standing up for yourself, and being too tough? 

Stacy: So every Jew should stand up for themselves in this moment. Antisemitism is dangerous, scary, painful, and the stakes for us are very high and we should never be shy to say that. It doesn’t diminish the fear of another person. And a lot of Jews are learning to do that for the first time, especially in the far-left of the progressive community, and many are doing it, and it’s really important. 

But it’s a question of when you can share power with others. It’s not by diminishing the importance of what I’m trying to do, but there are moments when groups of people can be protected together, and we are less and less willing to share that space. And sometimes it’s important not to share it. There are moments—after gay people are murdered in the Pulse nightclub, nobody sticks up their head and condemns antisemitism; you talk about homophobia. But there you have to also share the stage, especially when it comes to policy. 

It is always better, it has always been better when Jewish people were advocating for policy that protects all groups, and that gets hard to do when you’re scared. 

Elana: Right. So this sounds to me like a classic distinction that I’m seeing between right and left on how to deal with antisemitism, meaning you look at statements from more right or center-right groups, and it’s about making sure that people understand how unique antisemitism is, and that antisemitism has to be something that people are calling out, recognizing that it is something of its own, like a creature of its own, you know. 

And then people more on the left, I see, are more interested in, it’s a hatred like other hatreds, and we’re going to stand together against it. Am I hearing you right that you’re putting your finger on the scale more on one of those than the other, not even because you’re trying to understand what antisemitism is or isn’t, but because you think in terms of making a better future, even for ourselves, that one works better than the other? Am I hearing it right? 

 Stacy: We should not have a rule that antisemitism should always be alone. We should look to share it because when we can’t fight kinds of bigotry together, we deprive the non-Jewish person of the one way they have to really connect to our experience. It has a very practical, tactical benefit. It’s, and we look at it as watering it down, or afraid to say it. I’m never afraid to stand up and shout that antisemitism needs attention. In sharing anti-hate work and civil rights work with other groups of people, I’m inviting them into understanding me, and I’m also, my work is better on behalf of Jews because I understand how hate works and how it moves through other societies and how it harms other people. It makes me a better protector. 

Elana: So it’s interesting because in some ways, what you haven’t said is something that I think the next text that I want us to look at together in some ways does say, which is—actually, you did say it a little bit before, but I want to pull it out a little bit more, which is, what are the consequences of fighting fire with fire? Is that there’s just a lot more fire, right? 

You could shape this story of Yaakov and the way that people read it in so many different ways, but I’m actually trying to find the most provocative statements to really think with. And so, for instance, there’s this midrash in the Midrash Tanchuma, which is like a later midrash where basically Yaakov confronts Leah after she tricked him on their wedding night to pretend that she was Rachel. And he says, well, what are you doing? Like, Bat Haramai, daughter of a trickster, lamah ramit oti? Why did you trick me? Right? Why did you trick me?

And she says, what do you mean, atah lamah rimitah et avicha, why did you trick your own father? Right? When he said to you, are you my son Esav, you said, yeah, I’m your oldest son, Esav. And you’re asking me, why did I trick you? Right? I tricked you because you’re a trickster too.

Now, it’s interesting. I look at that and on the one hand, I see her saying the consequence of acting a certain way is that other people are going to act that way to you also. But in some ways, I also see her saying, hey, you understand that sometimes there needs to be trickery. So do I. And that’s what had to happen here. 

So I’m curious when you look at that, like sometimes when people, if we’re so tough and people are tough against us, I know sometimes that’s their way of saying like what goes around comes around. But sometimes isn’t that also their way of saying, yes, sometimes you got to fight tough. And that’s what we’re doing right now. 

Stacy: Absolutely. And trickery is a negative word, but there are 45 decisions you make in one issue campaign. When do I tell my partner a secret? Or if a Jewish organization is doing something I want them to do, who I’m advising, and the landscape changes and for them, they might want to rethink it. Do I tell them? Do I tell them quickly? It’s just always, you know, how quickly do you share information or warn or educate someone? 

And we all have those filters, especially in coalitions. How much do you want to divulge, share information, which is power? So I think we make those kinds of calibrations all the time. And whatever moral force you want to attribute to consequences, it’s just a stubborn fact that we don’t have permanent alliances. Nothing’s forever. The person who’s down today could have power over you tomorrow. We are a minority. We’re a powerful minority, but we are small. We are few no matter where we live. And no upper hand lasts forever. And our miscalculations that mistreat someone today who may not matter, they can have a price for us later. So it’s a self-interest to treat people well. I prefer to do it. 

Elana: Let’s do a concrete example. Because as an educator, I think about the need for change in two ways. I think that sometimes you need education. If you want to make long-term change, you need education. And education is not aggressive. It’s not oppressive. It’s education. It’s not forced. It’s bringing hearts and minds along. Right? It’s relational even. 

But I also think you need enforcement. Sometimes you just need to say, “Nope, that’s not okay. Nope. You’re not allowed to support that. Nope. That’s not free speech. That’s violent speech.” Meaning, so you’re talking a lot about the education side of things, right? In a certain way. And I’m saying to myself, can you give me an example where you feel that the education side of things is just, it’s more important than the enforcement side of things? Or you’ve seen it work better? Or where you think we’re going wrong? Just for the non-specialists among us to get it. 

Stacy: Yes. So look, when someone talks about awareness raising or coalitions, it’s weak sauce. My husband calls me “Kumbayista” because I always want a kumbaya. And we all have a bias. Some people have a preference for engagement. But one of the differences between the groups in the Jewish community who choose more kumbaya and more enforcement is also how much are they interacting with the world? Are you a member of the Democratic Socialists of America or Working Families Party, which you’ve had a Jewish guest on who was? And your proximity to the public square definitely influences your experience, the way you’re encountering the non-Jewish world. 

So from my vantage point, as someone who’s been a lobbyist and wants to win, the “aha” moment, reaching someone’s heart and mind is the only win that’s sustainable. You can punish and do punitive things and enforce. It will blow back on you. 

You know, I once asked a friend when anti-Semitism and anti-BDS laws began to really cross over onto the First Amendment, I said to a dear colleague of mine, an A-100 lobbyist, how many times a year do you want to make all members of Congress gag and then vote the way you want them to? And my dear friend said, it’s not my job to keep them from gagging. It’s my job to pass those resolutions. So I said, that’s a great, great short-term strategy. Fabulous. Win-win. 

Elana: But I want to hold this up as somebody who is not drinking the Kool-Aid here on either side, because I always have an ampersand. It’s always an ampersand. I just want to highlight for people that this is a major argument, a major machloket within Jewish leadership on fighting anti-Semitism. That is something that—it’s undeniable that that division has gotten so incredibly real, but I want to throw in why I think it’s gotten so real. 

I think because there are a lot of people who look at the Democratic Socialists of America and say, they’re Lavan. I can’t. They’re not my ally. I can’t work with them. And again, we’re going to go back and forth. I might say, well, maybe the greatest version of bribery is getting to know people personally, and then you no longer see the dangers that they pose to you. You know what I mean? Like maybe keep your distance, because getting too close actually blinds you. 

Stacy: So you can go native, right? And every Jewish organization tends to have a Washington office and a New York office. The Washington office always says, “Let’s give that embassy a chance. Let’s give the White House a heads up before we do something.” And the New York office always says, “What are you talking about?” 

So the relational proximity and maybe geographic proximity changes the benefit of the doubt you want to give people for sure. And I think it’s like the Hillel thing. You have to mix it, because I do think that in the ’60s, during the heyday of our coalitions and the civil rights movement, we got out more. And we are a big flourishing community, and you can live a whole life without very, very close non-Jewish friends. 

People sometimes ask me, do you have a Palestinian friend, an Arab friend, a Muslim friend? Well, less than other people, but it’s possible to be very insular in today’s world. It’s not a Jewish affliction. We are all in silos. 

Elana: Humans bowling alone. We’re bowling alone. 

Stacy: Exactly. So we have less faith in engagement. And when you hear someone accused of being a naive, self-hating Jew, a danger to the Jewish people, eight times out of ten, they haven’t done something anti-Semitic or pro-somebody bad; they’ve given the benefit of the doubt to a partner, a university, a union, an organization from another community. You’re naive. You’re enabling endangering us, because you don’t want to sanction, punish. 

Elana: It’s so funny. I do not mind calling someone naive. I don’t go with the self-hating. That’s not my… But I don’t mind saying, “I think you’re naive.” I was so disappointed by some of the relationships that I had. It wasn’t on October 8th that I was disappointed by those relationships. It was as soon as the counteroffensive started. And to be honest, I was disappointed. And I wasn’t really looking to fix it, because I essentially said, all right, it’s hot. It’s hot. And it’s going to be hot for a while. And it’s still pretty hot. But things might be cooling down. And maybe at this point, people can get back to each other. But I think when it’s hot, that benefit of the doubt, it’s like, for what? What do I need that for right now?

Stacy: What I think changes my perspective is not just proximity. So for me, it might be toward more liberal Democrats or multi-faith coalitions. I think being out more, getting out a little more than my Orthodox grandparents who immigrated to Washington maybe did, before they came here. 

Elana: Where were they from, by the way? 

Stacy: Jerusalem. Well, Jerusalem and Kfar Tavor. 

Elana: So you probably do get out a little more. 

Stacy: Than they did. Yes. So I think that a big difference for me is I am cynical, you know me, but I’m so idealistic. I have met so… Literally, someone’s buzzing in my phone, and it’s an African American leader of a big organization who, we are in tears together when I talk to her about anti-Semitism and how the issue is being used against certain organizations. I have never met with a DEI department where when I explained why their Jewish employees or students are scared, they did not understand. There’s one person in a 25-person group, but the 24 are beautiful people who just need a chance. 

And so I see so many wins. There are more Americans who believe in pluralism and just don’t know a Jewish person than hateful anti-Semites, anti-Israel defenders of Hamas. Numerically, there are more, and the more you meet, the more you know them. And the more they know you.

Elana: Well then, I think you’re gonna love this last source. It’s so gorgeous. And I can say that it’s so gorgeous. So Rashi, actually his commentary to Bereshit chapter 32, where Jacob’s name gets changed to Yisrael, right? Now, Yaakov, actually it means heal, but it actually, it means trickery, essentially. 

So what does Yisrael mean? So the Torah itself says Yisrael means, “Ki sarita,” you have fought. But Rashi actually goes in a different way. He says, “Lo yei’amir,” it shouldn’t be said, “she ha-brachot ba’u lecha be’ukva u’rimiya.” I don’t want it to be said, ot won’t be said of you anymore that the blessings came to you through trickery, right? “Ki im bisrara vigilui panim,” but actually through “srara,” nobility. Yisrael is “srara,” nobility, he says, and transparency. 

So there is something about the aspiration to want to be the person, to want to be the people who people look at and say, “Wow, that Stacy Burdett. She has integrity. She has integrity. When she fights for something, she fights in a way that has nobility to it.” 

 Stacy: Yes. I mean, look, working in coalition with other people, it’s not a suicide pact. And I like to win. And there are times when someone is not a constructive partner. And there are a lot of rooms or initiatives where we say, who is going to do this work together? When I pick, when anybody picks who is in their campaign or their project, you pick carefully because you want constructive people. They don’t have to believe the same thing about me. They don’t have to love Israel, but they have to value equal protection for all of us. And they have to be open to listening. And they have to respect that I’m open to listening to them. 

But Rashi kind of nails it. First of all, this is a good time to tell you that my Hebrew name is Yisraelah. 

Elana: No. 

Stacy: I never think about it. 

Elana: We did not plan that, everybody. That’s beautiful. 

Stacy: And now it means something even next level to me, but I would rather win with integrity  any time that I can. And I just think too often, we think every battle is existential. And if you ask Jewish professionals inside of organizations, is this resolution going to save a Jewish baby or send Israel one more Iron Dome battery? No. There are symbolic battles and we are not compromising.

And I think, you know, in the sixties we shared power because we didn’t have it. We had a little, they had a little, together we had a lot, and now we have it. You got to share it a little more. And it’s really human. As a lobbyist, I love winning without compromising. It’s really fun. Or winning faster or telling your donors, “We pushed this bill. We won this bill.” But I would rather win some and lose some or win only the important ones. 

Elana: I truly, truly appreciate you bringing to light the values that you take with you and the principles that anchor you in the work that you do. And in some ways, the more you’re able to shed light on that, first of all, those who agree with you have a deeper sense of who they are and why they do what they do and how they do what they do. And the people who disagree with you actually hear the most well-reasoned version of something they disagree with and may also be able to think to themselves why they think differently and how they think differently.

As always, I’m very boring. I think the truth is in the middle and a little of this and a little of that. And it’s very typical. That’s just what I am. That’s the ampersand. But I can’t tell you how much I appreciate getting to speak with you and think with you. And it’s not about agreement. It’s actually just about mutual respect. So thank you.  

So I want to thank everybody for listening. And special thanks to my chavruta this week, Stacy Yisraela Burdett. 

Stacy: Thank you. What a joy, Elana. 

Elana: Right. And we’ll be learning with you all next time. Thanks for joining.