America’s Failing Jewish Establishment: The Case Of The Rochester Federation

Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. Rochester’s Federation spent the past two decades ignoring the Corbynism growing like cancer within the American left. Even enabling it:

• It had brought Eric K. Ward to lecture us on “racism.” Ward sponsors JLF as a “fiscally funded project.” And he funds Hamas-tied CAIR via his position as chair of the Proteus Fund
• Our Federation sent its local JCRC head to a Bend the Arc Selah Training without community knowledge. Bend the Arc is virulently anti-police, and constitutes a clear and present danger to a Jewish community in need of police protection.
• In Rochester, out-of-state anti-Zionist, pro-BDS activists are invited to speak to the community while local Black Zionist Jews are not. In addition to their anti-Zionism, the invited speakers promoted such notions that sexuality is a political statement, and that the nuclear family is a bourgeois institution preventing oppressed minorities from getting free. My Federation is so besotted by the new Progressive religion that it has helped spread these anti-Jewish ideas.

Radical anti-Zionist activists and their allies are building a new religion inside of Judaism, and it has seeped inside the Jewish community’s mainstream organizations. A fusion of anti-Zionism and paganism, some versions promote the belief that African-American Jews are the “real Jews.” All versions mandate neutrality towards the Jew-hating Nation of Islam.

My Federation’s accommodation, if not adoption of this new dispensation, especially its negative treatment of Israel, has been noticed: Back in 2014, I had coffee with a lovely white Christian minister active in the BDS movement. She spends much of her time taking a pro-BDS roadshow to churches across New York State. I explained to her how misguided she is, especially given the history of the Christian church. She seemed surprised. She told me she had assumed every Jew was pro-BDS. Why?

She is part of an invitation-only New Testament interfaith Bible study held at the local Federation. The head of the Federation had never brought up BDS, she explained to me. Surely, if he had any objection to BDS, he would have brought it up to the room full of Christian ministers.

Rochester’s community leadership has become so wedded to the new “progressive” ideology that it forbids community discussions, inquiries or challenges to it. Topics such as BDS, J Street, critical race theory, the Nation of Islam, Durban, Bend the Arc, Progressive Churches, black conservatism and the Iran nuclear deal have been placed off-limits for discussion.