The Brief

In the days following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, as people mourned and Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza intensified, a group led by young Jewish progressives began holding vigils around Los Angeles.

They would recite the Mourner’s Kaddish, a prayer in honor of the dead — for both Israelis who died in the attack and Palestinians killed in the airstrikes.

Asher Kaplan was at one of these vigils in Sherman Oaks when some cars pulled up alongside them, “blasting music, yelling at us, telling us that we were Nazis, you know, all this stuff,” he said.

Kaplan said those critics — like him and many in the crowd — were also members of the local Jewish community.

Since the attacks took place, American Jews have drawn together in their grief. At the same time, longstanding divisions within the Jewish community over Israel have been deepening.

It’s felt here in L.A., where the Jewish community leans liberal and criticism of the hardline Israeli government, at least pre-war, was not uncommon.

But even among Jewish progressives, feelings about Israel’s response are complex. Some are calling for a ceasefire. Others are grappling with mixed feelings, trying to reconcile their progressive values with outrage, grief, and a sense of feeling abandoned by the larger left.

“They’re on the one hand trying to balance their commitment to the rights of Palestinians with their commitment to Israel's rights,” said Dov Waxman, a political scientist with UCLA’s Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, “and the rights of Jews to live in the land, in Israel, in peace.”

‘A diversity of opinions’

Kaplan volunteers for IfNotNow, a national Jewish progressive group founded in 2014 that opposes Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. Last week the group protested in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ house in Brentwood, calling for an end to the airstrikes.

“I'm connected through friends and family to people that have been impacted by this, that have lost their lives and been taken hostage,” Kaplan told LAist. “I don't think that dropping 6,000 bombs on Gaza in the span of a week is an effective strategy for returning the hostages safely.”

Asher Kaplan of IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish group that has called for a ceasefire.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Kaplan, who grew up in Pico-Robertson’s Jewish enclave and is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, has found himself defending this stance with bystanders, friends, and relatives lately. Conversations sometimes turn angry.

“There have always been a diversity of opinions within the Jewish community about the state of Israel,” he said, “and criticism of the way that the country conducts itself is not criticism of Jewish people or Judaism.”

But emotions over the conflict are extremely raw, informed by the ever-present trauma of the Holocaust, and ongoing concerns about antisemitism.

As many Americans on the left have taken to the streets in support of Palestine, some of L.A.’s most progressive Jewish leaders say they feel isolated from other Americans who otherwise share their views.

‘I’ve never felt so alone’

In her sermon on Yom Kippur, less than two weeks before the Hamas attack, Rabbi Sharon Brous made clear her feelings about Israel’s conservative government.

“The fact is there can be no democracy with occupation,” she stated, speaking to her progressive IKAR congregation in Pico-Robertson.

Brous still feels this way. But she also feels abandoned by non-Jewish progressives, who she says have been less vocal and supportive about the loss of Israeli lives. Brous made this analogy:

“To imagine if there, God forbid, had been a massacre like this on American soil under the Trump administration,” she said. “And then, if the world responded to that massive loss of life by saying, ‘Well, but they lived under this government, so it's really their fault.’”

It’s a frustration that’s been shared by other Jewish progressives, among them Rabbi Joel Simonds with the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

“I've never felt more connected to my Jewish community, and I've never felt so alone in the larger world,” said Simonds, who directs the Jewish Center for Justice, which works with other progressive groups on issues like voting rights, environmental justice, LGBTQ rights and other causes.

Simonds said that while he’ll remain dedicated to his work with progressive coalitions, “Will I sit at the table with coalition partners that I sat at the table with a month ago? Maybe not, because I feel a sense of hurt."

He said he can’t speak for all Jewish progressives, but Simonds knows where he stands on the conflict.

Rabbi Joel Simonds at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple University Synagogue campus in Brentwood.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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“I like to consider myself a progressive and a liberal,” he said. “I'm not going to abandon those terms just because I have been frustrated with individuals who claim to be progressive. All that being said, I'm not a pacifist. I do believe in just war.”

Multiple truths

As the war escalates, it’s become clear that there’s no lockstep, just as there are no easy answers. UCLA’s Waxman said that right now, it’s difficult for people to accept and speak to multiple truths.

“It’s important that we can do both of these things, that we can denounce Hamas unequivocally for its terrorist attack, and also criticize the conduct and the way in which Israel is conducting its war against Hamas,” Waxman said. “But in this moment where passions are running so high on all sides and tempers are so inflamed, it seems, it is difficult for people to do that.”

As Rabbi Brous observes, the struggle for Jewish progressives is to reconcile the gray areas.

“The challenge of our time,” Brous said, “is to hold more than one truth at once, and to continue to hold above all else our humanity and one another's.”