Two antisemitism summits occurred this week: one hosted by the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, and the other by the federal government in Ottawa. And while, in both countries, there is an understanding that these sorts of summits and conferences rarely lead to change—is the alternative any better? As the world backslides into populist-style illiberalism, can we safely assume that “antisemitism is bad” is a shared belief?
To discuss these trends, and how to achieve real results, The CJN’s podcast producer Zachary Judah Kauffman joins co-hosts Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy. They begin with one of the most eye-popping pieces of digital content to come out of the ADL’s conference: self-described “Jewish women with big racks” out to combat antisemitism online.
Transcript
Transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors.
Avi Finegold: We are going to talk about two very important things that have happened this week. One that happened already, and one that is happening today. As we record, we’re going to talk.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: About two large things.
Avi Finegold: Yes, antisemitism summits. Both of them are summits. We are going to climb the mountains of this. Let me preface this by saying, you know, this to me goes back to early January when the head of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, testified before the Knesset. He admits that there are failures in their mission to fight antisemitism. So one might assume that there is a bold rethinking of their missions and their tactics. And yet this week, the ADL held their FaceIt conference on fighting antisemitism. Judging from the live streams of the sessions that I watched, it doesn’t seem like much has changed. And while the sessions are closed today to the public for the Canadian summit on antisemitism, it doesn’t seem like it’s that much different from the previous ones that have been held. So I want to get into that. But one of the things that Jonathan Greenblatt was really into is content creators and influencers and TikTok. He had this to say at the Knesset, where he says capturing TikTok might seem less meaningful than holding on to Mount Hermon. Libellous tweets certainly might seem less deadly than missiles from Yemen, but this is urgent because the next war will be decided based on how Israel and its allies perform online as much as offline. The focus on content creators really took a leap forward this week when I came across a video from some content creators. Phoebe, what do you make of this?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Well, it falls within a tradition. Like I’m thinking about when there was that lady who was going around at a pro-Israel protest hoping to find her husband. Remember?
Avi Finegold: Yes.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: So it does fall within that tradition as well. There are a lot of things I’ve noticed. Probably the first was there’s a kind of barely covering, bust-orange off, sort of one-shoulder shirt situation happening. And I believe the orange is in tribute to dead red-headed babies, which is a whole… This is going to be like, what? I don’t know. I find this concerning and strange but also very much of this moment. Zach, you had some theories about this video, and that’s what we brought you on to talk about. Well, please.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Well, before I get to my theories, like, Avi sent this video to us, and he seemed very vexed. He seemed activated by it. It seemed there was something about it that, like, really got to you, that either offended your sensibilities or skeeved you out about it. Is that right?
Avi Finegold: Not skeeved out. I was just like, okay, so women are using their breasts to fight antisemitism, and they’re whacking it and not by hitting people with them. I don’t know, it just seemed like shallow. It seemed weird.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Like, let me sit back. Like, what’s wrong with having big breasts would be like, what is like, are you offended by seeing women with big breasts? Like, what?
Avi Finegold: I am not. I’m aware of the existence of buxom women’s sites. We’re in talks to fans of their buxomness.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: On today’s Bonjour Chai, we introduce Avi to the concept of the buxom woman.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: But there’s something that disturbed you about it?
Avi Finegold: No, not disturbed. I just thought it was like, like, what the heck? Like, what’s going on here?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Is it the problem? Okay, so is the problem. Let’s try to pick this apart. Is it that it’s lowbrow? Is it that it’s the lowest common denominator? Is it that it’s feminine-coded? So like last week, we talked about the Kahanist or not influencer who had definitively posted a bikini shot of herself calling it a Zionist thirst trap. She is not a buxom woman particularly, but there definitely is this existence of influencers being political and being both sort of feminine, hyper-feminine one might say, and political. And you can agree or disagree with their politics. And given that they have all different politics, you will probably agree with some of their politics and disagree with some of the other ones’ politics, you know what I’m saying? But like, is it that they are unserious people because they are presenting it in this way?
Avi Finegold: I don’t know anything about these women, so I’m not going to say that they are unserious. I just… I guess I was. I was asking myself the question of can you fight antisemitism with anything possible? Can you fight antisemitism with makeup? Can you fight antisemitism with pizza? Can you fight antisemitism with softcore pornography?
Zachary Judah Kauffman: I sure hope so.
Avi Finegold: I mean, like, that’s what I’m trying… Like I’m looking at.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Well, that’s what is the pizza in the pornography? Is it being delivered?
Avi Finegold: Perhaps?
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Yeah. I’m thinking about if you’ve ever seen these pictures of like sexy soldiers promoting pride in the IDF, promoting pride in Israel. But they’re often like sexy IDF ladies with big guns.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: They’re often the sexy men.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: And sexy men, yes, but there’s something about using sexuality in that way. But so they keep saying we’re women with big racks. And we, of course, were at an antisemitism conference. And so I think that they’re reacting to something or like responding to the. You might think that this wouldn’t be a place for women with big racks.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Who is that? Who is the straw man who doesn’t think that there would be a large-busted woman at an antisemitism conference at the ADL? Yeah. Have these people not worked in Jewish nonprofits? Like, what world do they imagine the zaftig woman has a long history of.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Well, that’s what I’m actually wondering if they’re reacting against this idea that if you talk about antisemitism or if you talk about racism in general, that you’re a liberal scold. You know, I’m beyond the binary and whatever. And they’re being like, no, actually you can be a sexy woman and be talking about anti-racism.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I think there’s something to that, but you made another point when we were discussing this offline, which is about the sort of right-wing embrace of the red-blooded heterosexual male urges, right? Oh yeah. And I wanted to talk a little bit about where this fits with that because last week, when Avi and I were talking about the influencer in the Zionist bikini, I was trying to explain, like, yeah, she does consider herself an Orthodox Jew. She considers herself a pro-Trump Orthodox Jew. Why is she in a bikini? Why is she not more conservatively dressed if she’s so conservative? Well, because these days, the conservative thing is this kind of “girls are girls and men are men” sort of approach. And it fits with that.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Well, what’s interesting to me about it is it’s not like classical ideas of femininity going back to, like, 1900. It’s like the gender norms that it’s reflecting are like Baywatch or Las Vegas of the 70s, Sydney Sweeney being the kind. I don’t know who that is, but.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Is this an actress who I believe there was some right-wing commentator who was saying something about that, like that this is the end. This shows that wokeness is done because now attractive blonde women with large breasts are in style again. And people were like, did they ever go out of style? Whatever. But I think there is something to the fact that there were a number of years where, like Victoria’s Secret got rid of the angels in favor of, like, having—I believe it was, I’m not up enough on who people are, but a professional soccer player who is a lesbian and not a feminine-presenting lesbian was like instead, you know, so there was this kind of idea that beauty standards of the kind of conventional, like big-busted young women were passé. Well, so that is the other piece, though. I want to put a pin in that because we. I do want to talk about that aspect too. But there is something, I think, where if fighting antisemitism has, as I’ve been saying for a while, become a kind of right-wing coded activity, it makes sense that there’d be aesthetics in line with right-wing coded things, if that makes sense. This despite, as I keep reminding, the fact that most American Jews are still Democrats, not Republicans.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: In terms of what we started on, on this, in terms of red-blooded Americans. This is of a piece a little bit with the idea that we shouldn’t shame young men for being into traditionally masculine things. We shouldn’t shame young men for not being able to sit at a desk all day or liking big breasts. These are natural urges, and if women want to be women, the way forward is actually going to be stepping back to some sort of gender norms from the 70s and 80s.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: And the irony of ironies, one of them is Canadian.
Avi Finegold: Yeah, I’m glad you’re bringing up their identity because I looked up these two women and one of them is a proud, as she writes on her social media, Canadian pizza bagel. So I guess she is half Italian, half Jewish. They are both members of a site or have profiles on a site called Fanfics, which is sort of an OnlyFans lite that is known for being non-explicit. So that’s important to put out there. But I do believe that the purpose of the site, like FanFics, or like OnlyFans or any of these other pieces of social media, is that you get exclusive content where you see these women, but you also have exclusive access to these women for a certain amount of money every month. You get to message them, they will message you back, and you get to talk to them. What’s going on here is not that they are using their bodies to fight antisemitism; they’re using the ADL to raise their own profiles on social media.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Right, but why, why is it one? Why do you say that it’s one or the other?
Avi Finegold: It’s not a.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: These are young people looking to make an income.
Avi Finegold: And would the ADL be really happy if somebody was like at their conference and touting their new product that was being sold, like their laundry detergent that was better than anybody else’s and they were trying to sell and effectively what.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: You said, commercialization, you just said that they expanded explicitly want social media to be a weapon in the propaganda war or whatever.
Avi Finegold: Well, the ADL does, correct, right?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Because Avi, I think you’re talking about a kind of purism. Like these are influencers, they want influencers. That these be influencers. That’s what they are. Right? So if they say, okay, well we want influencers, we want to have influence, but we’re only going to have somebody who’s, you know, a Jewish studies professor who, you know, whatever. Like I don’t think that that’s really gonna cut it. No. But I do see another vibe shift in the fact that like just to talk about the zaftig thing, there is a time really, really recently when women of a build similar to these women, and I’m allowing myself to speak of people’s bodies because that is the topic is the bodies. Right. Would have been describing themselves in, in terms of body positivity. It’s interesting that they are now presenting it as about their busts. Specifically because it’s not that these are big busted women. These are just big all around women. Right? Like they’re, they’re larger women, which is fine. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I’m saying it’s interesting that they are talking about this in terms of their breasts because that is really in keeping very much with this conservative ethos and like what they’re choosing to foreground, as it were here.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: I mean, do you guys agree that they’re sort of reacting to an assumption that big-busted woman wouldn’t be at an antisemitism conference?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: No, I don’t think that that’s it at all. Because I think the assumption is that a woman would not be showcasing her large bust. I think again, if you’ve ever worked at Jewish nonprofits, if you’ve ever worked in any office, there are women and men of all builds, shapes, and sizes. Yeah, people come in all shapes and sizes. What’s maybe unexpected is that this would be, like, discussed or showcased in that way, right? Like that you wouldn’t be sort of wearing an outfit to not showcase that too much because, you know, like, it’s Trumpian basically, whatever their politics are, it is MAGA aesthetics.
Avi Finegold: Yeah, I think the. Of course we’re this and of course we’re at that is part of that meme of saying these things where it’s not like anybody was thinking the opposite. They’re just trying to like get themselves out there using this video. If you’re saying that the ADL wants porn-adjacent or vaguely sexual influencers or explicitly sexual influencers to be proudly pushing anti.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: How did they become Avi? Like, before we get into trouble on this, they are not explicitly sexual influencers. I think you are rounding.
Avi Finegold: I didn’t say they are. Well, hold on.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: It sounds like their online personalities lean into the erotic.
Avi Finegold: Correct?
Zachary Judah Kauffman: You know, I don’t, I don’t know.
Avi Finegold: I don’t have a problem with saying that this is who they are.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I think there’s a limit to what we actually know here, and I just want to be.
Avi Finegold: They’re selling from 6 to 20 plus dollars a month. They are.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Well, who knows? Who knows what they’re selling?
Avi Finegold: I’m on their thing. I’m on fanfics, looking at their profile.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Okay, so what’s your point?
Avi Finegold: I’m saying that what you’re trying to get at is the ADL wants these people out there in the world saying, hey, I’m here. I’m selling erotic content and I’m fighting anti-Semitism at the same time. And that that’s going to be one of the new ways in which we’re fighting Avi.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: We need to talk about just like what erotic content is in a sort.
Avi Finegold: Of big sense, like, Phoebe, are there Jewish porn stars?
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Of course.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I think everybody knows that there are Jewish porn stars. Am I personally expert on this? No.
Avi Finegold: And yet the ADL wouldn’t necessarily honour these, like giving them their, like, social media award for saying, hey, let’s fight anti-Semitism. I don’t think they want porn stars fighting anti-Semitism. Maybe they do. I don’t know.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: It just seems like these women are not porn stars.
Avi Finegold: They are not. I’m sure that’s what I’m trying to get at.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I think Avi is committed to the idea that they are porn star adjacent.
Avi Finegold: They are. They are porn star adjacent. Yes. They are selling access in an explicit manner. I’m not judging them for that. I’m not stigmatizing them for that. That’s fine. That is what a lot of people do.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: You think the ADL should not be doing that?
Avi Finegold: I don’t know what the ADL is doing. I’m asking, does the ADL know about this and do they care? And they say, yes, you know what? We want explicit adjacent social influencers. And that’s the future of fighting anti-Semitism.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: It would not be in their interest to be like, we’re going to have a closed tent. We’re going to be the place that polices how you can show your body or how you make money.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: So what should… Let’s… Here’s as good a place as any to maybe switch over to the topic of how to fight anti-Semitism.
Avi Finegold: Yeah. So that, to me, is much more of the question and the issue of what’s going on. So that leads us to the larger topic of these, to this conference, and this summit. Let’s get to that right after the break. Back in January, Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, was, as we said, at the Knesset, and he gives this quote where he says, you know, if we’re not changing the way we do things and admitting that we have failed. And he talks about, he comes from the tech sector, and he believes in failing forward. And he says otherwise, if we don’t do that, as Einstein said, we’ll be doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. He says it’s the definition of insanity. So starting with the ADL and the rest of the NGO sector in the US and around the world, we have got to start doing things differently. He says that quote almost verbatim at the beginning of this conference. And yet, if you look at the content of this conference and you look at the summit that’s happening this week, it seems like business as usual. It doesn’t seem like there is that much different that is happening at this conference than any of the fights against anti-Semitism that have been happening over the past decade plus from the ADL. So I start asking myself, what is the value of having this conference? What is the value of having conferences in general fighting anti-Semitism?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: So I guess the question that we’re sort of talking about, and Zach, you should share your thoughts as well, is there’s still anti-Semitism. Right. There’s been all this fight against anti-Semitism, this whole movement to fight anti-Semitism in their latest incarnation of it before October 7th. Right. There were all sorts of things, like Barry Weiss’s book about how to fight anti-Semitism. I reviewed it for JTA before I worked at the Canadian Jewish News. Like this was a long time ago, like. Yet anti-Semitism exists, is arguably a larger issue. So is there an effective way to fight anti-Semitism? There’s certainly apparatus of, or various apparati. Apparatuses whatever, of attempts at fighting anti-Semitism. But do they do anything? And then there’s another question which, Avi, I think you have a lot of stuff to say on, which is, is there a better use of Jews’ time than fighting anti-Semitism that would be more strengthening to the Jewish people, the Jewish community, Judaism, whatever, than fighting anti-Semitism?
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Yeah, I think that especially in the Canadian context. So like we mentioned today, as we’re speaking, there’s this federal government organized for anti-Semitism and that the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has actually surprisingly been less sort of gung ho excited about than I might have expected. Of course, they’re supportive of it, but in recent months and weeks, they’ve been much more likely to say, you know, we’re only supportive of this conference in so far as it creates action. And I think that there is a feeling among a lot of Canadian Jews that they hear a lot of speeches, rhetoric, nice words saying, you know, there’s no room for this in our country, whatever. And they’re like, we don’t need more words, we don’t need more panels, we don’t need more committees. We need action.
Avi Finegold: Okay? So first of all, Zach, I want to point out the elephant in the room of what you just said, which is one of the reasons why CIJA is really power of on this summit is that this summit has become politicized, and CIJA has become politicized. And who was not invited to this conference? Most conservative. I think virtually all members of the Conservative Party were not invited. This is a liberal-driven event and CIJA, it’s pretty blatant at this point, is kind of anti-liberal and pro the Conservative Party. And so, of course, they’re going to be like, well, we can’t be against an anti-Semitism conference, but they’re going to have an arm’s length to it because in their minds, nothing that the Liberal Party can do actually has any good.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Possibly they claim to be nonpartisan. Do with that what you will. Like you can always say, what’s the point of what you’re doing? You could go to a protester in the street and say, like, what, you really think you’re going to stop climate change by being out here? You really think you’re going to the climate conference is going to do something? What is it going to do? It’s just talking and it’s not always obvious in that moment or to the participant exactly what the outcome is going to be down the line for these things, for these conferences. Who knows, there’s speeches, there’s palling around and people could be having a drink together and have a great idea. Sort of all people who care about the same thing coming together and talking about it. Are they going to change the world? Maybe not. But I don’t think that that is the prerequisite for doing anything. And like there is this big call to do something. People are like, why isn’t the government doing anything? Why are our institutions not doing anything? Someone has to do something. But there’s not like a silver bullet to solve this problem. People want them to do something that is more than words, but I don’t know if that thing exists. So all they can do is like, okay, let’s get together.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Well, I was gonna say, I mean, that does kind of lead a bit into the points I wanted to make about this, which is there is value, I think, in the fact that we live in a society that thinks to do this, that thinks of antisemitism as enough of a problem to organize a summit about it. And I think for a long time, until very recently, until both post October 7th and post Trump reelection, there was the sense that, well, everybody just agrees antisemitism is bad. Surely everybody except for some fringe extremists agrees with that, right? I don’t think this is something that can be as taken for granted these days, that that’s how everybody feels. Jews feel that way; you know, Jews differ on how to define antisemitism for sure. But as cringe as I myself have been known to find things like an antisemitism summit, I’m glad that people are free to organize against hate, even if I don’t think their strategies are necessarily effective, even if I think the strategies are sometimes counterproductive. There is something reassuring in living in the kind of society where people are free to do that.
Avi Finegold: Look, is there still racism in society? Is there still homophobia in society? Is there still sexism in society? All of it. I don’t think they will go away.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I think there’s no more sexism, though; that one was solved when Hillary Clinton became president.
Avi Finegold: Hatred will not. My point is when you say, Zach, what are the effective strategies? What are to do? There are many think tanks, there are many researchers that have looked and said what are the more effective and less effective strategies that are usable against combating hate. I looked this up. There is so much stuff about face-to-face interaction, about the nature of the types of education that happens. There are discussions around media, around policy, and at the end of the day, I think all of those things are being implemented. It’s just that, as you said, Zach, it’s messy. It’s not so easy to go and get rid of this stuff, and at the end of the day, also to recognize that if it’s not going away, sometimes you have to develop a thicker skin, right? I think gay people have had to deal with homophobia for a very long time and don’t go and, you know, say, hey, I’ve had a homophobia against me, I’ve had a racism against me. They learn to figure out that it’s not going away, and pointing everything out every single time is a problem.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: You think people of other groups apart from Jews do not point out microaggressions?
Avi Finegold: They do, but they also, I think, learn to recognize that it’s not going away. And it’s, you know, saying that microaggressions are bad doesn’t mean that microaggressions go away. There’s an awareness, as I said, it takes time, and not all hate crimes get prosecuted from across the spectrum of things. And the government does that. So when you have a summit gathering police leaders and gathering government officials saying you have to prosecute, they’re already doing that.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: The thing that I was taking from what you’re saying at the base is that, like, you think these conferences are sort of silly, that they’re not. They’re not doing anything, correct? It’s just a…
Avi Finegold: It’s patting each other on the back. It’s literally giving each other awards. That’s what they did at the ADL. They had an award ceremony for the people fighting antisemitism. Yay, you.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: And they had all these celebrities, they had Gal Gadot, they had David Schwimmer. They had all of these people go up on stage and talk about why they support this cause. And you think it’s a little bit silly?
Avi Finegold: I do.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Okay.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: But I would say any affinity group gets together and talks about what the causes are concerning them, whether it’s women in the workplace, trans acceptability.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I was once in a… in a women… I worked at a workplace that did not have many women and was sort of like very… I don’t want to go into specifics… very masculine.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Was it Bonjour Chai?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: It could have been, but it wasn’t, because I was going to say it was women of that organization. And it’s me in this context, so it would be me sitting by myself talking about it. A slightly less masculine environment than Bonjour Chai. And yes, I remember the women’s groups. I don’t… I don’t know that much came of it, but we had coffee and chatted. But yes, I think this is true. Like, this is not unique to Jews doing this, whether it’s getting anywhere or not. I mean, I think they’re like, not to bring this back again for the thousandth time to DEI-type topics. But, like, there are people who question whether these things are effective because they want them to be effective and are frustrated that they’re not. And then there are people who are questioning whether they’re effective because they think bigotry is great and don’t like people fighting bigotry. Right. So both of these things exist now in the world. Does that make sense at all?
Avi Finegold: Yes, it does. And I’m looking at it in the same sort of way. And I’m saying, you know what? Maybe it’s not effective because it’s always going to be there. You are never going to eradicate. Right. Antisemitism. You’re never going to eradicate antisemitism. There will always be people that will say bad things about Jews.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: So, Avi, I think your stronger point is in the, like, then do something else. Then build your Judaism in some other way. That, I think, is… go do your thing.
Avi Finegold: Go fight antisemitism. Don’t make it the central part of your faith, the central part of your whole life. Go be Jewish and go do your thing. And that’s, you know, that’s a whole separate topic of what I think is, you know, what can be done. But, you know, maybe they’re sitting there spinning their wheels and saying, let’s fight antisemitism. Why isn’t this working? Why isn’t this working? Because nothing will work at the end of the day. There will always be this. And the best we can do is remind people again and again, antisemitism is bad. Right? And so that the majority of people will get there.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: For the people attending these conferences, there’s like an expressive value in being there. There’s an expressive value of being at a protest. There’s an expressive value of thousands of people in the same room who are going through the same experience that you are. Usually you feel isolated, and this creates senses of community that doesn’t seem like something you can necessarily dismiss wholesale.
Avi Finegold: That’s fine, but don’t structure it as a… we have to do this. We have to fight this. This is two days of coming up with the tactics. This is like, hey, let’s just have a conference. Let’s not make it the biggest thing in the world. And I don’t understand this.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I’m sorry.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: And I also think that Avi… Avi is frustrated by his… what you said at the beginning of that, the head of ADL said, we’re going to do more than just talking. We’re going to do… we’re going to do action.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I see.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: And now they’re… they’re continuing to just do these…
Avi Finegold: Okay, so this is what it is. There’s two types of conferences, okay? There’s, as Zach said, the affinity conferences where everybody gets together and talks like, we’re here, we’re doing our thing. And then there are professional conferences that gather little to no media coverage, where it’s just like, “Hey, let us get together, figure out the strategies, learn from each other. Have professionals.” We don’t need all of the hangers-on and wannabes saying, “Yes, I’m here to fight antisemitism.” Let’s get the professionals in a room, talk about this stuff, develop more effective methods if those things actually exist, and then get out there in the world and do it. Having 4,000 people just say, “Rah, rah, rah, we love fighting antisemitism,” is a whole different thing. I think it is silly. I’m not sure either of them really belong. But at the end of the day, you’re drawing attention to yourself. You’re saying, “Hey, we’re doing this. We’re fighting it,” but it’s not working. That itself is not doing anything right. And, yes, Phoebe, the more important point that I want to be making here is that if your entire identity is your large breasts and fighting antisemitism, then I do think it shallows. Like, you have to have a strong Judaism, and it doesn’t mean religious. It can be cultural. You can have a strong identity as a Jew and not make fighting antisemitism the central part of it.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: The big question that I have is, if you go to these conferences, are you more likely to walk away feeling affirmed and like, “Oh, there’s all these people around me who are fighting for the same thing?” Or are you more likely to walk away feeling like you’ve just spent four days talking about every single terrible antisemitic thing and your sense of being under attack has increased?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: That you leave as your Uncle Leo from Seinfeld, where you see antisemitism everywhere.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: It deepens your discomfort.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: But I think that is an interesting point, and I think you would probably be thinking more about antisemitism and be more on edge about it. I mean, at the same time, sometimes you do have to say, like, pinpoint what exactly is happening. And if there’s a hate crime, it can be helpful to say who’s being targeted, you know, because otherwise you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Avi Finegold: It just frustrates me to no end. I wonder whether we are ever going to get out of this spiral of, “We have to fight antisemitism.” Why? It’s rising. It’s not effective. And as Zach pointed out, I do think there is definitely an element of people who fight it all day and professionally fight it will tend to see it in places where you might want to just let it go sometimes. As I said before, at some point, our entire stress level as a Jewish community is raised higher and higher because of this. We just really need to lower the tone, de-stress, and get out of this spiral of saying, “This is the worst thing ever. This is the worst era ever.”
Zachary Judah Kauffman: This is very meta because you’re very freaked out about the conference.
Avi Finegold: Yeah, but I know that. I know that in half an hour, I’m going to leave, and I’m done.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Yeah, Avi, I hear everything you’re saying, but you’re a rabbi. You understand that communities have pastoral needs. Whether you think they ought to be or not ought to be, they are freaked out and feel like antisemitism is rising. They need to see that people are doing something. Their institutions are in action. There’s someone at the switch, that someone is doing something. How do you telegraph that to them? How do you telegraph that we’re working on it, that we’re trying here?
Avi Finegold: If I was a rabbi at somebody’s bedside and they are very ill and they’re like, “Rabbi, I don’t know. I feel despair because I’m so sick, I might die. I don’t know what to do.” My job as a rabbi is not to go and try to medicate or become a doctor all of a sudden and to try to solve that problem for them. My job as a rabbi, if you’re talking about the pastoral nature of it and if we’re talking about large communal institutions, my job is to be there as a spiritual presence and say, “Hey, it could be okay. Look at the bright side. Look at all the things that we have accomplished. Look at who you are as a person. Look at the faith that you have.” There are a lot of things you tell somebody in a pastoral context that is not about raising the hackles and raising their stress level beyond where we’re at.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Like that you can see the community has a need for this. They’re freaked out and they’re saying, “We are scared.”
Avi Finegold: And my job is to say, “Don’t freak out.”
Zachary Judah Kauffman: We need something. We need some signal from leadership about how this is being solved.
Avi Finegold: My job as a pastoral individual is to say, “Don’t freak out.” To say, “I understand that you’re freaking out. It’s okay. But let’s try to figure out how not to freak out.” That is always going to be my position in a pastoral context. I don’t have a ton of pastoral training. I have, like, this amount. And for those people who can’t see, it’s a wee amount. But, like, that’s where I’m at. We’re doing the exact opposite. Where people go to their rabbis and say, “Hey, Rabbi, I’m sick. It’s horrible. I’m being attacked.” And the rabbi’s coming to them and saying, “You know what? You have every right to be scared. Let’s figure out how to get even more scared. Let’s figure out how to even get more stressed out.” And that’s not good. Does that answer?
Zachary Judah Kauffman: Yeah, I think that people are saying, demanding action, and you’re saying we need to address the need for action in a different way.
Avi Finegold: Totally different way. And you know why the community does this type of thing and raises the stress level? Because that’s how you raise money. You raise money based on fear, and you don’t raise money based on, “Let’s chill out a bit.” I’m sorry to make that statement out loud, but it’s true. It’s clear to me that many organizations, not all Jewish organizations, do this, but many Jewish organizations absolutely raise money and raise their centrality in the community by creating this culture of fear that is hard to get out of.
Zachary Judah Kauffman: I guess I have more empathy for the organizations who are like, “We have all of these shareholders, all of these people sending us emails saying, ‘We want to see you do something about this.'”
Avi Finegold: I’m not telling people. As I said, my job is not to say you’re wrong and you don’t have any reason to fear. My job is to say you’re right. There is fear here. We have to figure out how to get away from that. We have to figure out how to move away. All right, let’s wrap there.
Show Notes
Credits
- Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
- Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor)
- Music: Socalled
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