In NY, 1st conference gives Orthodox Jews a forum to seek out Palestinian perspectives
Transplanted from Israel, grassroots movement Faithful Left to hold large gathering this month to create dialogue on thorny issues such as the West Bank occupation and Gaza war
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
NEW YORK — As casualties in Gaza mounted following the Hamas invasion of Israel in October 2023 that launched the ongoing war, Meylekh Viswanath grew frustrated that the issue was not being discussed in his Orthodox circles in Teaneck, New Jersey.
“I appreciate the security issues and the need to bring back the hostages,” he said. “But it seemed to me that I should have been hearing, at least, ‘It’s terrible that there are so many people who are being killed, but we don’t have a choice,’ or something like that.”
Viswanath, a professor of finance at Pace University, was seeking an outlet for dialogue that brought in both sides of the conflict when he heard about a series of talks in Manhattan. The discussions were hosted by a movement called Smol Emuni, Hebrew for “Faithful Left,” for religious Jews with progressive views.
“It just seemed like nobody was even recognizing that there was so much death and destruction and sorrow on the other side. When I heard that there were going to be these talks focused a little bit more on that, I wanted to hear,” Viswanath said.
In Israel, Smol Emuni, a grassroots movement that has grown in recent years, seeks to give voice to an often politically homeless population of left-wing, religious Jews. The movement is now taking root in the US with the discussions in New York and its first US conference scheduled for later this month.
The group says it “considers the pursuit of justice, equality and dignity for Jews, Palestinians and all people a fundamental religious imperative,” and aims to create a forum for religious Jews to grapple with issues such as nationalism and socio-economic disparities.
The majority of Orthodox Jewish Americans are politically conservative, according to polling, leaving some progressive community members feeling isolated.
One of those community members, Esther Sperber, an architect in New York, watched live streams of Smol Emuni’s conferences in Israel. Inspired by the Israeli initiative, Sperber and other volunteers on Manhattan’s Upper West Side started organizing salon talks around eight months ago. The talks aim to provide a nuanced forum for discussions that are difficult to have in Orthodox spaces.
“There was the sense that in our communities and schools, there wasn’t really enough of an honest conversation about what was happening in Israel, about the war, about the occupation,” Sperber said, adding that around 400 people attended at least one of the 13 salon talks.
She described Smol Emuni as more of an affiliation or movement than a formal group. The US initiative does not have a formal or financial structure.
“It’s a particularly difficult time,” said Rabbi Yosef Blau, the spiritual adviser at New York’s Yeshiva University, who will deliver a video message to the Smol Emuni conference. “The brutality of Hamas, even the way it has treated the hostages, has met understandable anger, which makes it hard for people to move beyond that.”
“It’s all black and white,” Blau said of discourse surrounding Israel. “I don’t think it’s correct.”
Some of the speakers at the salon talks were Hassan Jabareen of the Arab-Israeli rights group Adalah; New York University law professor Karin Loevy; Haaretz reporter Amira Hass; pro-Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi; Haggai Matar of the far-left +972 news outlet; Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller of Hillel at UCLA; and Prof. David Meyers, a UCLA Jewish history professor.
In addition to Blau, speakers at the conference include Dr. Yasmeen Abu Fraiha, an Arab Israeli physician; MK Naama Lazimi, from the leftist party the Democrats; Rabbanit Dasi Fruchter, who heads a congregation in Philadelphia; and Mikhael Manekin, an activist with the Israeli branch of Smol Emuni.
The voice of the ‘other’
Michelle Friedman, a psychiatrist in Manhattan, said she started attending the talks because they were “a good way to educate myself about diverse points of view.”
She heard from speakers who “love Israel and believe in Israel as a Jewish state,” but also heard “the voice of the other.”
“The Palestinians, people living in Gaza, are a voice that I’ve always listened for,” she said. “There isn’t one perspective, but there are voices that I think are really important to consider from a religious and a political and moral point of view.”
Some of the New York volunteers are in touch with Smol Emuni activists in Israel and the two sides have collaborated, and while the two groups share a name and worldview, they mostly operate independently.
Sperber described the movement’s targeted audience as “a big, quiet minority.”
“There’s definitely a community out there looking for this,” she said. “People said that they feel like they can’t speak up in their synagogues and they feel very lonely.”
Viswanath said he had become aware of others in his circle who were interested in the dialogue through the Smol Emuni events. At the salon talks, he met two attendees from the Orthodox community in Teaneck, and while doing outreach for this month’s conference, found more people “open to listening,” he said.
The New York movement’s roots stretch back to protests against the Netanyahu coalition’s judicial overhaul in 2023. The legislative effort set off unprecedented protests against the Israeli government by New York Jews. The movement’s leaders were mostly secular Israelis, but some observant Jews also participated. Sperber said she got her start in activism then and highlighted a Tisha B’av prayer service and protest outside the Israeli consulate in 2023 as an example of the religious, liberal movement starting to coalesce.
After the October 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel, the protest movement shifted to hostage advocacy, an effort that religious participants saw as not just a humanitarian effort, but inspired by Jewish values. Prayers are read out at weekly hostage rallies in Central Park.
Participants said their progressive views were grounded in religion as well as politics.
“It goes with some of our other values that stem not just from our American liberal Western sensibility, but really come from our Jewish traditions of respect for the other, meeting all people with kindness, caring for the stranger and the orphan and the widow,” Sperber said.
Viswanath cited the tradition of “Tzelem Elohim,” that all are created in God’s image, as a reason for empathy.
“It’s almost impossible that such a God would have a very limited view of his creation and say, ‘Okay, you know what? I created all those millions and millions of other people, but who cares about them?” he said. “It seems to go counter to our notion of what is God, who our God is.”
The March 30 conference is set to take place at the B’nai Jeshurun Synagogue on the Upper West Side. It was initially set to take place at Baruch College, but early registration exceeded the site’s capacity of 200 people.
At the conference, there will be plenary talks, break-out sessions for discussion, and a prayer session. Some of the topics of discussion include “Observant Jewish identities in an unjust world” and “Religious identity in relation to Israel.” Organizers expect to fill the venue, which has a capacity of 200 people, while others can view the discussion on a live stream.
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