Perhaps the phrase “a teaching moment” is overused, but there is no better way to describe what happened Tuesday night in Brooklyn. Progressive Jewish writer Joshua Leifer was due to give a talk about his new book, which is about the challenges facing liberal Judaism, at PowerHouse Books in the chichi Dumbo neighborhood. The event, which was to be moderated by local former pulpit Rabbi Andy Bachman, was canceled at the last minute because, according to Leifer, PowerHouse was “unwilling to host the conversation with Andy because they would not permit a Zionist on the premises.”
Progressive Jews professed to be stunned. “I was expecting to be heckled but this was utterly shocking,” said Bachman, who told Jewish Insider that he has actually officiated weddings in that building. “This is completely ridiculous,” objected Jill Jacobs, who runs a leftist organization called Tru’ah. “It is antisemitic to demand that Jews disavow Israel before being allowed into your space.” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander found the whole thing “utterly outrageous.”
Indeed it is. A specific employee is being blamed for this act of overt anti-Semitism and is reportedly being fired. But I bet this ex-employee simply cannot understand what she did wrong, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she considered her actions to be a tribute to the very people she banned from the premises. Indeed, she might have been following Leifer’s own dictates!
In 2023, writing in Jewish Currents just before the Hamas attacks, where he was a contributing editor, he portrayed Zionists as violent ethnic cleansers. The article he published before that one described the Zionist project as a lie that perpetuates other lies. In the article before that, Zionists were “authoritarian.” The one before that painted them as permanent warmongers. Zionists appeared lawless in the one before that.
How to teach the Zionists a lesson? Well, Leifer suggested that Americans drop their opposition to boycotts. He’s been consistent about this. He once passionately posted: “Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions are peaceful strategies of resistance to oppression. It’s depressing to see Jewish groups that ostensibly deal with social justice signing onto a resolution that deems these illegitimate.”
So what, in Leifer’s own despicable terms, did the dismissed employee at PowerHouse Books do wrong? Wouldn’t he have done the same, if he weren’t selling his own book?
