All About Change - Ben Freeman: Gay, Jewish, & Proud

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Ben M. Freeman is an author, internationally renowned educator, and is among the founders of the modern Jewish Pride movement, for which he created the Jewish Pride manifesto, Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People. Ben’s second book Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride looks at internalized Jew-hate and ways to overcome it. Throughout his work, Ben seeks to educate and empower Jewish people to reject the shame of antisemitism imposed on Jews by the non-Jewish world. In this conversation with Jay, Ben discusses his youth in Glasgow, Scotland as formative in building that Jewish Pride. He also addresses the role of Zionism in Jewish Pride, as well as the historical context and misinformation around anti-Zionism as it relates to antisemitism. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Ben relates his experiences coming out as gay to his developing and continuing Jewish Pride. Please find a transcription of this episode: https://allaboutchangepodcast.com/podcast-episode/benfreeman/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My work's always about a solution. It's always about empowering, inspiring, and educating Jewish people to feel their Jewishness is a source of pride and never shame. Hi, I'm Jay Rudiman, and welcome to All About Change, a podcast showcasing individuals who leverage the hardships that have been thrown at them to better other people's lives. This is all wrong. I say, put mental health first, because if you don't... This generation of Americans has already had enough. I stand before you not as an expert, but as a concerned citizen. Today on our show, Ben Freeman. In my opinion, anti-Zionism is Jew hatred. It is anti-Semitism.

It is a modern post-war manifestation of thousands of years of hate. Ben Freeman is an author, internationally renowned educator, and is among the founders of the modern Jewish pride movement. My journey to pride was very long, and it wasn't necessarily because the people that I was surrounded by were homophobic. But the world in which I lived was pretty overtly homophobic. Ben grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, in a community that was proudly Jewish and Zionist. But while growing up, he struggled to accept his gay identity. While attending university,

he came out and started the journey that he's been on ever since. It's a journey to find acceptance as a gay man from his peers, his Jewish friends, and family, but most important, from internalized homophobia within himself. Along the way, his eyes were also opened by the anti-Semitism he experienced as a Jew who believed in the movement of self-determination, supporting a Jew's right to return to their indigenous homeland,

or what we call for short, Zionism. I was on Glasgow University campus, and it was overtly hostile. And at that point, it was sink or swim, and I had a choice. And this was a choice I've been faced with a few times in my life. You can either shut up, or you can fight. Ben, as you are sure to find out for yourself from our fascinating conversation, is not one to be silenced. Ben, so thank you so much for joining me on my podcast of All About Change.

Thank you so much, Jay. You've written two books, and I want to recommend them to the audience. The first one, Jewish Pride, Rebuilding a People, and the second one reclaiming our story, the pursuit of Jewish pride. Jewish people have been in a dysfunctional relationship with the non-Jewish world for over 2,000 years. To be accepted, we have tried over and over again to change who we are. In our thousands of years of history, has this sacrifice ever worked? No. Every time we change ourselves to be accepted, we look at the non-Jewish world with hope. We think that maybe this time they will accept us and embrace us. Yet they continue to reject us and shame us.

This has to stop. The way to stop this abusive, destructive, exhausting cycle is to turn to ourselves for that acceptance and love. Our journey is not about fighting anti-Semitism. That is the non-Jewish world's journey. The Jewish journey is one of self-discovery, self-acceptance, and self-love. In the name of collective pride, turn inwards, learn our history,

understand our diverse experiences, and connect to our collective Jewishness in order to define our own identity, rather than basing that identity on the latest fantastical image that the non-Jewish world is trying to impose on us. This is where our Jewish pride begins. In just a few sentences, tell us what these books mean to you,

and what was your passion behind writing them? So my passion behind writing them was to help the Jewish people understand their identities more and to feel pride in their identities. I had personal experience with internalized homophobia, and I feel pride in their identities. I had personal experience with internalised homophobia and I had to work through that. So I have like, I already have a framework on how to deal with internalised hate. The first book, Jewish Pride Rebuilding a People, is the manifesto of the modern Jewish pride movement. It is really what kick-started this global thing that we're seeing. It's a revolution, a global revolution taking place where Jews are

casting off shame and reclaiming their Jewishness with pride. And the second book, Reclaiming Our Story, The Pursuit of Jewish Pride, is a deep dive into internalized Jew hate. To rebuild a Jewish community that is whole and unified, we have to understand and embrace the specific and unique experiences of various Jewish communities and individuals throughout the world. My seven interviewees were purposely and carefully selected because they each represent various facets within the Jewish community. Each of the seven has had a different Jewish life in different parts of the world. Yet each of their experiences is as valid as the next

and are essential for the rebuilding of the Jewish people in pride. You were born in Glasgow, in Scotland. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up? So growing up in Glasgow, generally speaking, was great. But I had this kind of extra challenge to deal with, and that was my sexual orientation. My journey to pride was very long. And it wasn't necessarily because the people that I was surrounded by were homophobic, but the world in which I lived was

pretty overtly homophobic. There was no representation of LGBTQ plus people. The only representation that did exist was kind of fairly stereotypical. And I grew up at the tail end of the AIDS epidemic. I was born in 1987 during the AIDS epidemic. So for me, being gay was kind of a life sentence of misery and unhappiness. It was a huge challenge for me. And I was filled with huge amounts of kind of self-hatred and internalized homophobia. And do you feel that the community that you grew up in in Glasgow was accepting at the time that you were coming of age and coming out as to who you were? You know, I didn't necessarily talk about it, but I always felt accepted. And I remember after I'd come out, I worked for the Jewish community and I went to meet a rabbi. And this

is a man I'd known for years, and he was just as polite and kind to me as he'd always been. And again, it wasn't even necessarily that the school community was overtly anti-gay. It was just that the world was. And I mean, at school then, people would say that's so gay, and that kind of thing. So that was very challenging. And there was certainly stigma attached to it at school, but it was the media. And I also think that the language we had, the understanding that we have of these issues today was just so unevolved then. And it wasn't discussed at school. I remember we did sex education at school. There was no mention of same-sex relationships, which is so damaging. to talk a little bit about Glasgow and what it was like being Jewish in a community where the Jewish community was so small. Were you accepted? Was there a level of anti-Semitism towards Jews in Glasgow? Yes, absolutely. But back then, I don't know if we had the language to describe the specific experiences that we were having, because I'd say that for the most part in the UK,

and especially Scotland, we experienced left-wing Jew hatred. And it was really focused on Israel. I mean, I remember I was at a JNF function. It was in the Hilton in the city centre of Glasgow. And I was there because I was invited, they always invited kind of a youth contingent. If we did big events in the community, we'd always have to have CST, which is the Community Security Trust, like the Jewish security, but also the police. The anti-Jewish protesters became so violent that they started to try and break into the building, to break into the Hilton, and the staff who were serving the meal, they left. So there definitely was anti-Jewishness.

Five people were killed. Among the dozens injured were two 18-year-old students from Glasgow. One of them, Yanni Jesner, is in a critical condition. I remember that the first British person to be killed by a Palestinian suicide bomb was a young man from Glasgow called Yanni Jesner, And he was my youth leader growing up. I remember coming into school and it was either the day he passed away or the next week. And some of the Muslim students were wearing pro-Palestinian badges. So there were things happening all the time. I mean, my father was told to go back where you come from. But to grow up, I mean, in a sense sense growing up in the glasgow jewish community

was kind of magical you hang out with other jewish kids so you're kind of like bonded together you're fused together you have very similar experiences and there is something pretty amazing about it and in a sense i don't really relate to the experience of some North American Jews who grew up in huge Jewish communities with kosher delis on every corner. That was not our experience. I remember when the kosher butcher closed and that was a big deal. And there now is no kosher butcher, but there is a kosher deli. I guess for my parents, it would have been a challenge because you're trying to cultivate a very strong Jewish anchor, a very strong Jewish identity, but you're in a very small community. I mean, we really were a minority. However, the funny

thing is, there was about 5,000 Jews living in Glasgow when I was growing up, and five Jewish families lived on my street. So I lived in a very Jewish area. So we were a minority, but within our own community, there was lots of Jewish people. And you would sometimes see Jewish people kind of walking to Shul and Shabbat. I was aware that there were certain areas I would feel less safe in than others. And I didn't wear a kippah then. But my friend's father who wore a kippah, he was physically attacked. So it was the community that you grew up in, while warm and welcoming and tied together, the general community walking around, showing that you're Jewish, carried a certain risk to it.

For sure. Absolutely. And I think it does for Jews all over the UK, and I would say, especially now the world. But yeah, that was absolutely our experience then. And that is the kind of interesting thing about more recent developments in North America, because the experiences that are happening in North America now are the experiences that British Jews, European Jews, Jews in other places have had for a really long time. I mean, my experience at Glasgow University very much mirrors what's happening on campuses today. So you went to university in Scotland, and you experienced what I would describe as an overt, hostile environment. How did you make it through it? I think one of the reasons I made it through was that I had just returned from Israel in a gap here or from a gap here. I was in Israel with RSY Netzer, a British Jewish youth movement. I was in Israel with RSY Netzer, a British Jewish youth movement.

And then I was on Glasgow University campus. And it was overtly hostile. And at that point, it was sink or swim. And I had a choice. And this was a choice I've been faced with a few times in my life. You can either shut up or you can fight. And because I had just returned from my gap year, because I had actually a pretty good level of literacy and history in Israel, I was able to argue and I did politics. My degree was politics, political science. So I fought for four years and

it was incredibly isolating and incredibly disheartening. And I don't really think I started to process the trauma until many, many years later, until into my thirties, because it was just something that I accepted. This is just the way it is. And friends in other British universities were experiencing similar things. I guess some of the differences with my friends who, say, went to university in Nottingham or Birmingham or Leeds was that there were sizable Jewish communities there and communities of students, Jewish students. You know, I was probably the only out Jew on my course. So it really was my responsibility. And it wasn't a choice I

kind of consciously made. I just knew, I was like, well, that's just not true what people are saying. Although back then, I wouldn't have had the language to describe it the way I would now. Right now, I'd say, okay, I experienced leftist Jew hatred that came from the Soviet Union, anti-Zionism, etc. Back then I just said, well, they're anti-Israel. But I knew that it wasn't just criticism of Israel. But I got it from my professors, from my peers, from university staff. I mean, I think I was failed on an essay because I wouldn't demonize Israel,

because I wouldn't say that Israel is the worst country in the world. And it was very interesting because during my time at university is when I came out. That's when I came out as a gay man. And as I said, I really struggled with it. And definitely in my final year at university, it affected my ability to work. I like had a very difficult time with regards to my mental health. And I remember writing to one of the professors and he was so nice and so sympathetic and empathetic, but only towards me as a gay person. To do with my Zionism, my Jewishness, any support I had was secret. You know, the man who was my tutor for my dissertation was amazing. And I won't name him because he said to me, how are you? And I was like, oh, I'm okay.

And he's like, no, how are you? Because I know how hard it is to be here on this campus because you're Jewish. And he said, please don't tell anyone I had this conversation with you, because I could get fired. Did you ever approach the authorities at the university and say, hey, I'm, as a student, experiencing this all the time, I'm not the only one. And this is not a very welcoming academic environment. a very welcoming academic environment. The prejudice came from all parts of the university. So I imagine that I didn't feel that anyone would listen to me. And there were examples when Jew hatred was overtly expressed and nothing happened. It wasn't shut. I mean, the conversation

was shut down. The Jew hatred was not. And this one professor who did help me with my dissertation was the only person that I could talk to about it, because a lot of other professors made it clear that it was not, that they didn't approve. How did you deal with that dichotomy of being accepted as gay and part of the progressive community? On the other hand, being very proud of your Jewishness and your connection to Israel, and being demonized for that? How do the two of those go together? So you're right. I mean, to be a gay Jew is to kind of experience the double standards, which Jews experience all the time, and it's to experience it firsthand and in living time. The same people at university who accepted

me and celebrated me for being gay and supported me were not so thrilled when it came to my Zionism. LGBTQ plus spaces are unfortunately not always very friendly to Jewish LGBTQ plus people, which is pretty tragic because as I, I had to work very hard to be proud of my LGBTQ plus identity. To be excluded from those spaces is very hurtful. And only because of another immutable identity. And that's the thing. I cannot change my Jewishness. It is so much more than just faith.

It's so much more than that. It is who I am. I was born this way, just as I was born as a gay person, I believe. So it's really sad. And it's kind of interesting, because I think a lot of people would expect the Jewish side to be the side that was intolerant. Whereas actually, I've got to say that is for the most part, not the case. I've been very, very accepted by the Jewish community, not so much by the LGBTQ plus community. I recently had a guest on the podcast

and she said that there are two types of anti-Semitism and they sort of exist simultaneously at the same time. There is the hitting down at the Jew, like you are a dirty Jew, you're subhuman, we don't want you amongst us. And there's the hitting up at the Jew saying, you are the elite, you're the super white, you're supporting an effort that they see as colonialist, suppressing a minority, and your association with that. So it's coming from

the right and the left. And it sounds like your experience was more from the left, more from people saying, you are part of the elite and you're part of the problem. And being a Zionist and supporting Israel is the problem. Did you also experience the reverse, the traditional anti-Semitism? Absolutely, yeah. And as your other guest said, they exist simultaneously and they absolutely do. And in a sense, we can't even really separate them because they can exist within the same person. I mean, Jeremy Corbyn is a very good example of that. Jeremy Corbyn was the former leader of the Labour Party in the UK and he is a leftist Jew hater. But there was a very kind of infamous incident that actually has just been resolved in court where he said to a British Jew, you may have lived here a long time, but you don't understand British irony, which actually is classic Jew hatred. It's the, you're foreign, you don't belong as part of us, you're this other group, go away, get away from us, which is quite different than the whole

anti-Zionist perspective. So that's what I meant when I said it can coexist in one person. And that coexisted alongside the anti-Israel perspective. Let me dig in a little bit about Zionism, because I think Zionism has become demonized, whereas many of us see Zionism as the rebirth of the Jewish nation, Jews whose homeland is the land of Israel, which is also described by the name of Palestine historically before the creation of the modern state of Israel, and that we have been dispersed across the world. My wife is from a descent of Indian Jews and Iraqi Jews, and I'm a descent of Eastern European Jews. But we all sort of came from the same place and were dispersed around the world. But this is our homeland, a homeland that we happen to share

with other people who are there. And there's a political issue that's been going on for over 100 years as to how to split this land, how to share this land. And it's still going on. But how did Zionism, which is essentially a very beautiful philosophy that the Jews deserve their own homeland, become so demonized where we don't demonize other people for saying this particular land is our homeland? How did that come about? It was a purposeful manipulation by the Soviet Union and the Arab world. Russia has a very complicated history with Jews. And when the Soviet Union was born that complicated relationship continued and it targeted Zionism and the connection of Jews to our indigenous land. So the study of Hebrew was banned. And let's just compare and contrast that with the banning of

indigenous languages in North America. It's the same thing. They banned the indigenous language of the Jews. In North America they banned the indigenous language of the indigenous people there, the First Nations in Canada, Native Americans. So it's a similar process of trying to strip Jews of their indigeneity. And the Soviet Union was engaged in that for a very long time. But really, after 1967, they started a very purposeful campaign where, first of all, they reframed anti-Zionism and then they spread their warped definition as an official part of their policy, foreign policy and domestic policy. And that was deeply encouraged, deeply promoted by the Arab states as well. Then we see Israel being described as a white country, for example. Africa was described as being between a white stranglehold, Israel in the north and

southern Africa in the south. So it was being reframed as a kind of colonialism, imperialism, it was reframed as akin to Nazism, and this was purposeful manipulation. It wasn't organic, it was the purposeful spread of misinformation, and the Soviet Union targeted universities, they targeted black civil rights campaigners like Angela Davis and kind of brought them into the fold. And that's one of the reasons Angela Davis's work is one of the reasons we see the Palestinian and Israeli conflict kind of having the North American or the United States binary of race imposed onto it. And it was purposeful and it was manipulation and they spent money promoting this. So when people today are saying, oh, I'm an anti-Zionist or when they start critiquing Israel as a white colonial imperialist Nazi state, what they're doing is parroting Soviet propaganda.

Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian dystopian nightmare. You know, yes, we fought alongside them to defeat the Nazis, but they were not our ideological cousins. They were also an extremist state. And the only reason they joined the fight against the Nazis is because they were tricked by the Nazis and were invaded in 1941. So that is how Soviet anti-Zionism was reframed and how it was spread. Palestinian population that was living on a land that was not a state, that was not a country, and that the United Nations, the British were very involved in trying to understand and come up with solutions as to how to divide the land. It's a political issue, just like Northern Ireland or any other conflict around the world, we could probably name dozens of them, were political conflicts that had to be resolved. And unfortunately, this one still has not been resolved.

For me, it's a term to be used with pride, that I believe that the Jews who were dispersed for thousands of years across the globe are able to come back to their historical biblical homeland. Do you feel that the anti-Zionism, that the reason that it's so strongly felt, is directly tied to anti-Semitism, to a view of a Jew as not deserving of a homeland, not deserving of self-determination? In my opinion, anti-Zionism is Jew hatred. It is anti-Semitism. It is a modern post-war manifestation of thousands of years of hate. And there are some people who say, well, you know, an anarchist, for example, is anti-Zionist because they don't believe in any state. And it's like,

yes, they might not believe in any state, but to describe them as anti-Zionist, I believe, is kind of misleading. Anti-Zionism is Jew hatred. It is anti-Semitism. Because remember, why would people all over the world have a problem with this little state, with this conflict that's happening thousands of miles away? Do you think anyone cares about Northern Ireland or Southern Ireland or the Basque region in Spain? No one cares. The reason that people care about Israel and the Palestinians is because they are primed to care. Because for thousands of years, Jew hatred has been circulating in our societies. And actually, I'd say more than that. Jew hatred is a pillar and is a foundation of Western and Muslim societies. It's of our culture, our civilization.

and Muslim societies. It's of our culture, our civilization. So people are primed. People are ready, and they're not even aware of it. Because so much of this goes unsaid. So much of it is subtle or is in dog whistles. But that is why this issue, this conflict, has become so important globally. And that's not to say you can't criticize Israel or Israel hasn't done stuff wrong. Like, whatever, fine. It's a country locked in a conflict. Every country does stuff wrong. However, the disproportionate amount of attention given to Israel,

the demonization of Israel, the reframing of Zionism as a form of imperialism and colonialism is Jew hatred. I am Jewish. My relatives came from Eastern Europe. I look white. My wife is Middle Eastern from Iran and from India and looks Middle Eastern like anyone else in the Middle East from any country would look. Friends of ours are Black and African, any mix of colors. What is a Jew? Are we white? Are we not white? Are we,

you know, because we seem to be a mix of all different, you know, races and people from different parts of the world. Well, number one, races don't exist. So there is no biological basis for race. It's a social construct. Number two, we're not from all over the world, actually. We're all from one place, and that's the Levant. And we were dispersed, as you said, and we lived out with our homeland for 2,000 years. And in 2,000 years, skin colour can change. And the Jewish people saying that, the Jewish people are a diverse people. We have people from all over the world, and we should celebrate our diversity. But we cannot celebrate our diversity at the expense of kind of reimagining Jewish identity. So it's important to talk about diversity, but it's

really important to talk about diversity through the lens of Amichad, which is one people. So in terms of whiteness, I do not believe Jews are white. Some Jews do not pass as white, that is clear. But there are Jews, like me and like you, who would pass as white. Now, sometimes this conversation refers to Ashkenazi Jews. They say Ashkenazi Jews pass as white. That is false. It's incorrect to define it that way. You know, my brother, same parents, Ashkenazi, he looks Middle Eastern. We look nothing alike. So the reality is much more complex than just Ashkenazi equals white. Now, as I said, there are, however, Jews who pass as white.

But I'm using the word pass there because I don't believe that Jews are white. Why? Because when we discuss whiteness, we're not talking about skin colour. If the conversation was solely about skin colour, then yeah, sure, whatever. But it's not. It's about the position that Jews occupy in a specific hierarchy of power or oppression, because Jews have been considered not white in the last century. Actually, in this century, the far right still doesn't see Jews as white. So we have this situation where the far right doesn't see us as white, and the left often sees us as white. For me, a Jew is a member of a Middle Eastern diasporic community, some of

whom pass as white, or some of whom benefit from the advantage of being perceived as white in certain circumstances. But for me, my primary identity is Jewish. In Britain, it's quite common on the census form for when you have to tick your kind of ethnicity for Jews to tick other. I would always tick other and write Jewish. I would never tick white. And this was before this kind of conversation really emerged. And it was before this kind of conversation really emerged. And it's not really a European or British conversation. It's very much North American that's being, or American and being exported. But I will say Jews are not white, but some can benefit from the advantage of being perceived as white in certain circumstances. We have a distinct

civilization. We have a distinct culture. We have a distinct culture, we have a distinct religion, and we are to be respected as much as any other civilization or society is to be respected. As a Mizrahi Jew, Hen identifies as a Jew of color. This term originated in the United States and is used to describe Ashkenazi Jews who do not pass as white, or Jews who are specifically B'ed Israel, Mizrahi, or Sephardic, or who have other minority ethnicities for various reasons. Henn explains why he uses this label. I don't think any Jew is white. We are a different category.

But we can't deny that some Jews pass as white, which obviously shapes their experience, particularly in the U.S. The label Jew of Color makes it clear that not only am I not white because I am Jewish, but I do not even pass as white, which of course particularly in America changes my lived experience. As Henn explains it, Jewish Pride is about empowering Jewish people to celebrate themselves while also offering tools to address important internal issues within the Jewish community. No community is perfect, he reiterates. People are people, but we have to

recognize our failings and work hard to better ourselves. To me, this is also real love. To love in spite of imperfections while working hard to improve, and describes his Jewish pride being centered on history, culture, and resilience of the Jewish people, specifically his Mizrahi community, but also, of course, the wider Jewish community. The history of the diverse Jewish communities, Penn argues, also contains a common thread. No matter where they were, no matter what was done to them, they kept their Jewish identity. No matter where they were, no matter what was done to them, they kept their Jewish identity. Hen's eyes shine with pride when he says this, and it is true. It is remarkable that despite everything that we've been through,

we are still two proud Jews sitting in different countries with different time zones, discussing how much we love being Jewish. One of the ways I express my Jewish pride is through the work that I do, Hen explains. I want to show young people that, despite what many on the left say, you can be progressive and proudly Jewish and Zionist. I want them to be proud and not ashamed. You know, I look at my grandparents and great-grandparents who grew up in Eastern Europe and what was considered Russia back then, which was probably Lithuania, were never part of general society. We're always

in a shtetl, a separate community. We're always seen as the Jew. America as a melting pot started to redefine them. Obviously, they were Jews, but you look like you're part of the white society. But I identify with what you're saying, that Jews are not really white. We are a separate people. And I do think because of many, many, many generations, we've come to take on the aspects of the culture and look like the people amongst, you know, who are living, but we are really, you know, a separate group. I will tell you, and you know, in many societies that we land up in, we are not seen as separate, as part of the diverse community. Why are we not seen as diverse as someone from a different part of the world?

Well, firstly, it's because of Jew hatred, and we're now perceived as being part of the white majority, which is really a fairly recent concept, considering the length of Jewish history, but there we are. So we are considered white, we're considered powerful, we're considered privileged, so that's one of the reasons. And then also we have, I think, the Jewish need to be accepted. So my second book, Reclaiming Our Story, The Pursuit of Jewish Pride,

talks about internalised anti-Jewishness. And it's the struggle that Jews have with being accepted. And we war up and we change ourselves to be accepted. And I think that Jews were happy and were eager, in a sense, in different societies to join the majority because they wanted to escape persecution. This eagerness and desperation to be accepted is totally understandable, given our history. I actually want to challenge something you said earlier. You said my grandparents were Eastern European Jews. And I would say that that's probably the wrong descriptor. They were Jews, from my opinion, who lived in Eastern Europe

because exactly as you said, they were excluded from Eastern European society. So thousands of years of trauma and hate, and in the United States, they get to go to this place and they get to have the possibility of escaping everything that they have experienced. Who can blame them?

So I think that's part of the problem. And this is not to blame Jews for it at all. The primary reason is Jew hatred. But because of Jew hatred and because of our experiences, Jews are willing to warp and change themselves to be accepted. And because of the trauma we've experienced, we might not raise our voices up. We might not advocate for ourselves.

We might accept that, OK, we're a white privileged group of people and it's our job to help others. Whereas, of course, we should be helping others. But I believe primarily we should be supporting our own people because the more negative aspects of our experiences is not historic. It's happening today. not historic. It's happening today. This is what happened in North America or in the United States, is that Jews were kind of forced to forget or put aside their historic experience, because where does that fit in a racial binary? We have to acknowledge the reality in which we live, so a light-skinned Jew in the United States certainly has advantage in that context, and we should not for one second deny it. However,

there always must be room for us to define our own experience and identity. That is what was taken away from us in America. You know, kind of Jews had to see themselves as white, and in many ways they wanted to, because as I said, they wanted to free themselves from persecution, but it has not been, in my opinion, a successful rebranding of identity. And again, it's not to blame them or to criticize them. I understand why people did what they did. However, we're dealing with the ramifications today. And I think that the ramifications are not just being uncomfortable and being attacked verbally. But as we've seen in America, with the Tree of Life Synagogue in

Pittsburgh and the synagogue in Poway, you know, people act on these beliefs. Jews are attacked physically. There's a heightened sense of, you know, we could face further attacks. And things are changing here. Part of your identity is definitely aligned and feels possibly attached to that community. Part of you feels ostracized from that community. So where are you? What do you do in terms of the progressive community? I would say I'm no longer a member of the progressive community, but my values remain the same. And other Jews have different opinions about whether they stay in these spaces or don't stay in these spaces. My perspective is I'm not going to go to a party I'm not invited to.

For me, I want to feel comfortable. I want Jews to feel comfortable. I want Jews to feel safe. And so I would no longer consider myself a progressive, although my values are still progressive. My values have not changed at all. There's a cost of living crisis in the UK and I'm appalled and horrified by the kind of reality that families are going to be going through.

So it's not that I have actually become right-wing, although that is something people describe me as, because I'm a Zionist. And it's really unfortunate because they're using it as a smear. And actually, listen, people can be right-wing if they want to be right-wing, whatever, right? Like who are we to judge the political opinions of our fellow Jews? But it's used as a smear. So when people call me right-wing, they're saying it to try and delegitimize me, to say that I'm an imperialist, a colonizer, a fascist, which is hideous demonization of Jews and is in line again with what we've seen happening to Israel since the 1960s. And as you say, Jews are being physically attacked. I've not been

physically attacked, thank goodness. But I now live in London. I just moved here from Hong Kong. And I have had things said to me in the street because I wear a mug and dovet. I wear a kippah. This is my reality. I'm aware of my Jewishness all the time, not just because I put on a kippah, but because I know that putting on that kippah makes me vulnerable.

Let me ask you about the warning signs. What were the experiences in Great Britain that, you know, are warning signs to other Jewish communities? Well, I mean, really what I was referring to when I said that was Corbynism, was left-wing Jew hatred espoused by Jeremy Corbyn, who was the former leader of the Labour Party, who was at that time Her Majesty's most loyal opposition. So he had an official role to play in the British state, the British institution. And I said it at the time, and I believe I was correct. It was coming for the United States. It wasn't just a British problem.

The radicalisation of left-wing politics, the mainstreaming of the Soviet anti-Zionism has taken place in American politics as well and because of that it's an American society and the warning signs were having high-profile individuals talking about Israel in a way which was anti-Jewish and no repercussions taking place and also the volume. There were always people saying things about Israel, but it's the volume of people and the boldness of them. That is something that was very striking to me. It wasn't just about people using code words or dog whistles. This

was very overt language. And they were talking about Zionists, and sometimes even they would talk about Jews. In different places and times, different forms of antisemitism pose different threats. What is certain, and proven historically time and time again, is that all forms of antisemitism endanger the lives of Jews. Despite there being differences to each specific manifestation, they all share the same roots, the economic libel, blood libel, and conspiracy fantasy. These libels and fantasies all frame Jews as a perverse, inhumane, supranational, evil group who are often wealthy and powerful, and who maliciously and immorally manipulate and exploit the non-Jewish world. The racial libel is these tropes come to life in the physical depictions of Jewish

people. One crucial aspect of the Jewish experience today is that these specific framings of Jews as an all-powerful group make it difficult for some, particularly on the left, to recognize and address anti-Semitism. Because they perceive Jews to be powerful and privileged, it also shaped the manner those on the left express their own anti-Semitism. In other words, anti-Semitism punches up. Jews are hated for their perceived power. Ben, I want to thank you for your activism, for your education, for what you've given the world, and for your courage at standing up and talking about, you know, real issues that

many people are afraid to talk about. Thank you for being our guests on All About Change. And I wish you to go from success to success. So thank you. It was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much, Jay. All About Change is a production of the Ruderman Family Foundation. This show is produced by Yochai Meital, Jackie Schwartz, Mijon Zulu, and Rachel Donner. As always, be sure to come back in two weeks for another inspiring story. In the meantime, you can go check out all of our previous content live on our feed and linked on our new website, allaboutchangepodcast.com.

Lastly, if you enjoy our show, please help us spread the word. Tell a friend or family member or consider writing a review on your favorite podcasting app. I'm Jay Rudiman, and I'll catch you next time on All About Change.