On March 12, the American Jewish community awoke to a familiar horror. A man drove a pickup loaded with fireworks and gasoline into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Whenever something like this happens, every rabbi has the same thought: This could have been us.
That Friday evening, my congregation, the Astoria Center of Israel (ACI) in New York City, was scheduled to hold our largest Shabbat dinner of the year. Like Jewish institutions across the country, we had already invested heavily in security. But after the attack in Michigan, we worried that people would stay home – and that our request for additional police protection was not being taken seriously.
So I did what any responsible leader should do: I asked for help.
I texted our
city council member, our state assembly member and our state senator. Within minutes, all three offices were pressing law enforcement on our behalf. Additional police presence was arranged, our dinner proceeded safely and our congregation gathered without incident.
But here’s the twist: Every one of the elected officials I contacted is endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America's New York City chapter.
Our synagogue is represented by some of the most prominent democratic socialists in the United States. Before becoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani represented our district in the New York State Assembly. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, represents us in Congress. The Washington Post recently chronicled Astoria's emergence as a center of democratic socialist politics. After June's Democratic primary, the roster of DSA politicians in our area will only grow.
Would my rabbinate be easier if this weren’t the case? Absolutely. Some of my congregants loathe the politics of the DSA, others love it and some are supportive of their policies but put off by their rhetoric around Israel.
Do I agree with everything they say about Israel and Zionism? Absolutely not.
But do I have good working relationships with them? Yes.
Every Friday, I send these elected officials a text wishing them “Shabbat Shalom.” Not because we always agree, but because relationships are built through ordinary acts of decency and respect long before they are tested in extraordinary moments.
Fighting antisemitism requires cooperation and key relationships
If we want to fight antisemitism effectively – and not simply visibly – we need strategic imagination that much of the institutional Jewish community is sorely lacking.
Yes, Jewish leaders are advocates, but we are also diplomats; we need to be people others can turn to even when they feel at odds with our community. And if our only strategy is maximal denunciation and minimal cooperation, we should not be surprised when the only relationships left are adversarial.
In Astoria, those relationships have mattered. Our elected officials have intervened when we needed help from law enforcement, issued proclamations celebrating our synagogue’s centennial and supported our applications for state and federal security funding.
After Oct. 7, 2023, and on various nights when Israel’s sky was blanketed with Iranian missiles, several of our elected officials checked in to see how I was doing and if anyone in the community had friends or family who had been injured.
None of this requires Jewish institutions to surrender core beliefs about the importance of a safe, democratic state of Israel. Nor does it mean ignoring moments when anti-Zionism veers into antisemitic tropes. But defending our principles should not require cutting off relationships with everyone who sees the world differently.
At our synagogue, we live this tension every day. But shutting down communication with everyone who disagrees with us about Israel is neither practical nor productive, neither within our congregation nor with our elected officials. We can work together where we agree while trying to better understand one another when our disagreements are consequential.
DSA friends often ask if I'm a Zionist. Here's how I respond.
When friends in the DSA ask me whether I identify as a Zionist, I tell them that Zionism emerged from a simple idea: Jews around the world need legal protections that could not be taken away by the government of whatever country they happened to live in.
That is why I am a Zionist. There are many potential pathways to achieve that goal. But anyone who believes that Jews deserve that kind of security and self-determination is welcome at my Shabbos table.
You would be amazed at how many people agree with me.
That is what happens when you take the time to build a real relationship: Positions that once seemed irreconcilable become conversations. And conversations, unlike denunciations, give us somewhere to go.
In “How to Disagree Better,” Julia Minson argues that when people have spent much of their lives believing something to be true or holding a value dear, “no single conversation will compel them to change their mind.” Instead, “the only consequential thing that a single conversation can do is destroy the chance for future conversations.”
That is an important standard. The goal of every disagreement cannot be conversion. Sometimes the goal is simply to disagree without making the next conversation impossible.
American Jews and democratic socialists are just two of the many groups who have struggled to do that.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Not for American Jews and democratic socialists, and not for anyone trying to navigate a country increasingly defined by political division. The challenge is to care a little less about winning every argument and more about cultivating the relationships that allow us to keep having them.
My experience in Astoria has taught me that those relationships are not a retreat from our principles. Sometimes, they are how we protect them.
Joshua Rabin, rabbi of the Astoria Center of Israel in Queens in New York City, is author of “Moneyball Judaism” on Substack.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: I'm a Zionist rabbi. My friends are DSA. Here's how that works.
