this is really just a teaser for an essay that i just posted here – it’s a piece of writing from 2007 that i just found again and decided was still quite relevant.

it’s in two parts: first an initial piece based on a statement by ruth messinger about her organization, American Jewish World Service; then a response to a wildly bad-faith reply by jill jacobs (who you may remember as one of the “liberal” rabbis leading the attack on the Movement for Black Lives’ accurate identification of the Zionist project as genocidal, and assorted other inventive blends of Zionism with other forms of racism).

it takes a critical look at the difference between the project of using jewish religious texts and practices to bring religiously-oriented jews into social justice work, and the project of using social justice work to offer (in messinger’s words) “new ways to build a meaningful faith connection”.

the former is a strategy for strengthening social justice movements, by using a religious hook to shift the politics of people from the most conservative sectors of the u.s. jewish world, and hopefully involve them in justice movements.

the second is a strategy for missionary work among jews who are not committed to rabbinic authority (personal, institutional, or textual/canonical), by using a social justice hook to draw them in to religious practice, which typically shifts their politics rightward (and, specifically, towards Zionism).