Can’t Jews Take a Break From Being Liberals to Worry About Israel?

At a figure-drawing gathering in Santa Monica, some 40 artists put down their pencils for a five-minute break and raised glasses of sparkling apple cider to celebrate the Democratic blue wave sweeping America.

Everyone was jubilant.

Everyone except me.

My refusal to participate was an act of social self-sabotage. I am reasonably well-liked in this group, and declining to join the festivities seemed as incomprehensible as picking up a stray kitten and stomping it in the parking lot.

But I couldn’t celebrate.

While my fellow artists toasted Democratic victories, I was thinking about Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed had just been elected to the United States Senate.

I was thinking about his hostility toward Israel, his opposition to American military assistance, and what his victory might mean for the Jewish state.

And I was thinking about the Jews who voted for him.

Nearly half the artists in the room were Jewish. They were precisely the people I hoped might understand my silence.

A few weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, I left my work as a Los Angeles emergency physician and traveled to Israel to serve as a physician on Magen David Adom critical-care ambulances in Jerusalem.

It was an experience that transformed me.

Jerusalem’s beauty and spiritual intensity are overwhelming. But what moved me most was the extraordinary decency of its people.

I worked alongside Jewish and Muslim physicians, young Muslim women wearing hijabs, Ethiopian Jews, and Israelis from every corner of the world. We cared for the injured and ill without regard to religion or ethnicity.

During a war threatening their own families, these medical professionals demonstrated astonishing kindness and competence toward strangers.

There were moments when I felt that someone else was there with us, protecting us.

I also met Jewish health care professionals who had fled the antisemitism of France. Some confided that even during a war, they felt safer in Jerusalem than in Paris.

Think about that.

A Jewish physician felt safer in a country under rocket attack than in the capital of a modern European democracy.

That is why Israel exists. That is why Israel must exist.

Since returning home, I have devoted approximately 20 hours a week to studying Hebrew. I have become convinced that Israel has not merely a right to exist but a duty to exist. It is the one country where Jewish survival does not depend upon the continued goodwill of someone else’s government.

I have become convinced that Israel has not merely a right to exist but a duty to exist. It is the one country where Jewish survival does not depend upon the continued goodwill of someone else’s government.

Which brings me back to Michigan.

El-Sayed campaigned against American military aid to Israel and described its military campaign in Gaza as genocide. These are not minor disagreements about settlements or Israeli politics. They concern Israel’s security.

A survey of Jewish early voters found that 57% supported El-Sayed, while 78% supported Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson.

Clearly, many Jewish Democrats were willing to draw a line. But a majority of those surveyed still supported El-Sayed.

I found that heartbreaking.

Can’t they even take a break from their identity as liberals to worry about Israel?

Must being a Democrat be so central to one’s identity that even a candidate whose policies threaten Israel’s security remains preferable to voting for a Republican?

Is there no point at which Jewish survival becomes more important than party loyalty?

I understand American Jews’ historic attachment to the Democratic Party and its commitments to civil rights, tolerance, and social justice. I share many of those values.

But what moral hierarchy places loyalty to a political party above concern for the survival of the world’s only Jewish state?

One doesn’t have to approve of every Israeli policy, like Netanyahu, or vote for Trump to recognize the danger of leaving Israel increasingly isolated and vulnerable.

Perhaps some Jewish voters were registering their opposition to Trump. Perhaps others accepted the genocide accusations that have become almost an article of faith on college campuses.

But votes have consequences.

The Israelis I worked beside were not abstractions. They were doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, mothers, fathers, and young people who wanted to live decent lives in their homeland.

Their safety should matter.

And if it doesn’t matter to us, why should we expect it to matter to anyone else?

Back in Santa Monica, a few artists finally asked what the hell was wrong with me.

I answered simply:

“I love Israel. And it’s terribly important to me that Israel be safe.”

One man complained that Israel itself was endangering his safety as a Jew in America.

I wondered whether some American Jews now regard Israel less as their people’s homeland than as an inconvenience to their own social acceptance.

It is easy to be proudly Jewish when our identity is celebrated. It is harder when Jewish solidarity demands disagreeing with one’s friends or political party.

Jewish history did not begin with the Democratic Party, and Jewish survival cannot depend upon its electoral fortunes.

I am not asking Jews to abandon liberalism. I am asking them to remember that solidarity sometimes requires saying to political allies: You have gone too far. You cannot have my vote when you endanger something this fundamental.

That afternoon, my refusal to raise a glass may have cost me a little social affection.

A small price.

I wish more American Jews were prepared to pay it.

The glasses were raised. The artists cheered.

And I stood there wondering whether, in our determination to be good liberals, too many of us had forgotten how to stand up for ourselves.