Out of step with the times?

ADAM CHANDLER

On Oct. 7, roughly 1,000 people gathered in an outdoor plaza across the street from Zuccotti Park in New York City – the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street movement – to participate in a Kol Nidre service. The service was organized entirely through Twitter and Facebook. With a turnout beyond even the wildest imaginings of its organizers, the attendees constituted something of a Jewish ecosystem, one inclusive of participants of different ages, backgrounds and denominations. There was also a throng of non-Jewish participants and passersby who were no doubt taken by the sight of a massive, public religious service being held on a corner in downtown Manhattan.

That service, which was led by a musician and two rabbinic students, included all the requisite prayers and a call-and-response section on social action issues that had the energy of a Baptist revival. A stirring sermon invoked the story of the golden calf, a theme befitting the call of Occupy Wall Street, which at its base targets the issue of economic inequality in America. Reactions to the service were overwhelmingly positive, and its success spawned Occupy Judaism, a branch of Occupy Wall Street that has grown along with the movement to other cities across the world, enmeshing Jewish issues, celebrations of Shabbat, Sukkot and Simchat Torah and interfaith events with the protests. Downtown Vancouver has seen at least two Occupy Shabbat events this month.

Despite this innovation and the calls for social justice in its protests, major Jewish organizations are keeping a safe distance from Occupy Wall Street. Seemingly the only reaction has been a sideshow about whether or not the movement is antisemitic. Meanwhile, the conversations that usually galvanize Jewish communities – on economic equality, human rights, education – are taking place in squares across the country without the participation of Jewish advocacy groups whose hallmark has long been engagement.

As thousands of Jewish professionals descended upon Denver earlier this month for the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, the extensive conference agenda – aimed at groups that, among many initiatives, raise and distribute funds for essential services and social welfare – contained no reference to Occupy Wall Street or its global offshoots. The issues on the agenda were as diverse as Israel’s security, hasbara, social media and philanthropy, and were as specific as Israel’s Arab citizens, aging baby boomers, disability rights and interfaith families. Somehow, even without the lens of Occupy Wall Street, the discussion of economic inequality escaped the conversation.

While it’s true that Occupy Wall Street still lacks a cohesive agenda, and that the causes of some (but not all) of its participants may be anathema to what would be called mainstream Jewish politics, the interchange of ideas taking place in Zuccotti Park and elsewhere around the world are not without merit or import. The omission of dialogue about economic justice at conferences like the General Assembly, and the ambivalence on a larger scale among Jewish organizations, still seems like an indication of shortsightedness if not wilful blindness.

From afar, participants in Occupy Wall Street don’t seem much different from the collection of GA delegates who occupied the Sheraton Hotel in Denver, representing causes both broad and niche, and exchanging ideas on how to work more effectively for a greater good. A telling moment was when an Occupy Denver march passed by the hotel and the conference security locked the doors.

More concretely, the linchpin of the Occupy Wall Street movement has to do with the financial health of the global economy. For Jewish organizations – especially those that serve the under-served and whose donor bases rely on the good work of their funders – what cause could be more pressing? This may not be the question to put forth to a conference that counted Bank of America among its principal sponsors but, if Jewish organizations can’t get behind at least the idea of Occupy Wall Street – as a diffuse minyan of unions, students, activists and politicians have – or even engage, it signals brightly that Jewish aspirations are out of step with North American ones.

Judaism has survived throughout the centuries because it is a portable, adaptable religion. It has survived exile, persecution and rebellion. Jewish institutions have played a vital role in major social movements across the time lines of American and world history. Occupy Wall Street is a moment in which a new generation is contemplating whether its existing institutions are worth preserving. No matter what comes of it, ignoring the frustration behind this movement in its infancy or dismissing it as idealistic chaff are the kinds of responses that see Jews go out into the streets on the holiest day of the year to seek a new community.

Adam Chandler is a writer who lives in New York City. A version of this article appeared on haaretz.com.

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