In 2014, Rab­bi Brant Rosen resigned his post at the Jew­ish Recon­struc­tion­ist Con­gre­ga­tion in Evanston, Ill., after serv­ing for over 15 years. His Pales­tin­ian sol­i­dar­i­ty work had become a divi­sive issue with­in the com­mu­ni­ty. Rosen was not always an advo­cate for Pales­tin­ian human rights — he start­ed a blog in 2006, Shalom Rav, in which he chron­i­cled his grow­ing dis­il­lu­sion­ment with much of the Jew­ish community’s blind sup­port for the state of Israel. His painful and pub­lic reck­on­ing with Zion­ism unfold­ed in the midst of the 2008 – 2009 Israeli assault on Gaza, code-named Oper­a­tion Cast Lead.

"Operation Cast Lead was where I finally said, 'I can’t do this anymore.'”

In July 2015, Rab­bi Rosen found­ed Tzedek Chica­go, a non-Zion­ist and social jus­tice-focused syn­a­gogue, where he serves as rab­bi. (Full dis­clo­sure: I’m a con­gre­gant.) He also serves as the Mid­west region­al direc­tor for the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee.

In These Times sat down with Rosen to dis­cuss Tzedek Chica­go, Israel and Palestine.

What led you to become an advo­cate for Pales­tin­ian rights?

It was grad­ual. Israel had always been a part of my life, and I iden­ti­fied — if I had to put a label on it — as a lib­er­al Zion­ist. I, like many Jews, iden­ti­fied with the Zion­ist nar­ra­tive. It’s a very pow­er­ful, intox­i­cat­ing, redemp­tive sto­ry: These peo­ple who have been hound­ed for cen­turies around the world final­ly find a way to make it back to their ances­tral home­land and lib­er­ate them­selves. But there were also, along the way, nag­ging voic­es. I did a good job of keep­ing those voic­es locked away and nev­er real­ly fol­low­ing them to their con­clu­sion. I always won­dered about this busi­ness of cre­at­ing a Jew­ish state when there are so many peo­ple who are not Jew­ish in this land — and how to cre­ate a state that was pred­i­cat­ed on the iden­ti­ty of one peo­ple in a place that his­tor­i­cal­ly has been mul­ti-eth­nic, multi-religious.

And the whole issue of demo­graph­ics: Lib­er­al Zion­ists talk a great deal about what’s called the ​“demo­graph­ic prob­lem”: In order to cre­ate a Jew­ish state, you need a demo­graph­ic major­i­ty of Jews. Back in the day, I used words like ​“demo­graph­ic threat” [in ref­er­ence to the growth in Israel’s Arab pop­u­la­tion] to advo­cate for the impor­tance of a two-state solu­tion. When the two-state solu­tion was still a very edgy thing to be advo­cat­ing for, it was very, very lib­er­al to talk about it in those terms. But every once in a while I’d think, ​“They’re a demo­graph­ic threat, because they’re not Jew­ish?” As an Amer­i­can, if I called anoth­er peo­ple a ​“demo­graph­ic threat” to the nation­al integri­ty of my coun­try, that would just be racist. Those were the kinds of things I would enter­tain for a while but nev­er com­plete­ly unpack.

Was there a moment when you ​“wiped the slum­ber from your eyes,” so to speak?

It was a grad­ual process. I can trace impor­tant mile­stones. The first impor­tant one was the 1982 Lebanon War and Sabra and Shati­la mas­sacre. I remem­ber think­ing, ​“This is Israel’s My Lai.” That was the first time that my roman­tic Zion­ist ideals devel­oped cracks. The Sec­ond Intifa­da and the col­lapse of the Oslo peace process and see­ing what hap­pened in the wake of Oslo — and the cre­ation of the sep­a­ra­tion wall, the block­ade on Gaza — was when it start­ed to crumble.

Then the final break­ing point was in 2008 and 2009 with Oper­a­tion Cast Lead. By this point, I had been a con­gre­ga­tion­al rab­bi for a lit­tle over 10 years, so it became very com­pli­cat­ed for me to break with this Zion­ist nar­ra­tive, which is so cher­ished still in lib­er­al Jew­ish cir­cles. Oper­a­tion Cast Lead was where I final­ly said, ​“I can’t do this anymore.”

Why do you think that so many Jews who are oth­er­wise pro­gres­sive ignore Israel’s vio­la­tions of human rights?

In the cir­cles I trav­el, it’s called the ​“PEP phenomenon.”

Pro­gres­sive Except Palestine.

Yes. That phe­nom­e­non is where the strug­gle for the soul of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty is tak­ing place right now. I know that because I’ve been liv­ing in that nexus point almost my entire life. For lib­er­al Jews, large­ly, it goes back to the Zion­ist nar­ra­tive, which is a sacred nar­ra­tive, even for Jews who don’t con­sid­er them­selves reli­gious. It’s a redemp­tive sto­ry. It emerges out of the ash­es of not only one of the worst cat­a­stro­phes in Jew­ish his­to­ry, but in human his­to­ry. The lega­cy of the Holo­caust still looms large in the psy­ches of even young Jews today. The trau­ma still lingers, and in many ways, it’s exploit­ed by the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. A lot of it boils down to fear.

For lib­er­al Zion­ists, it is an attach­ment to a cer­tain Zion­ist nar­ra­tive. It’s not only about the ​“land with­out a peo­ple for peo­ple with­out a land.” There is a strong cur­rent of lib­er­al assump­tions that are embed­ded in Zion­ism — lib­er­al Euro­pean notions that are rem­i­nis­cent of colo­nial­ism. But these notions have been under­stood by lib­er­al Zion­ists to be the oppo­site of colonialism.

It’s sort of a mind-fuck, if you par­don the expres­sion, that I have heard Zion­ism referred to by lib­er­al Zion­ists as the nation­al lib­er­a­tion move­ment of the Jew­ish peo­ple. They have tak­en what is essen­tial­ly a colo­nial move­ment and flipped it on its head. Peo­ple from Europe who were col­o­niz­ing a land to cre­ate an eth­nic-nation­al state saw this as their nation­al lib­er­a­tion strug­gle when, tra­di­tion­al­ly, nation­al lib­er­a­tion strug­gles are waged by indige­nous peo­ple against those who are com­ing in to take their land away from them. That hypocrisy runs very deep in the psy­ches of lib­er­al Jews.

On Dec. 28, 2008, dur­ing Oper­a­tion Cast Lead, you post­ed on your blog, ​“We good lib­er­al Jews are ready to protest oppres­sion and human-rights abuse any­where in the world, but are all too will­ing to give Israel a pass. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing dou­ble stan­dard, and … I’ve been just as respon­si­ble as any­one else for per­pe­trat­ing it. So no more ratio­nal­iza­tions.” You then add: ​“There, I’ve said it. Now what do I do?” Sev­en years lat­er, do you have an answer for yourself?

At the time that ques­tion was mis­un­der­stood by many peo­ple. I wrote this on my blog and there were many com­ments from peo­ple say­ing, ​“Oh, there’s lots of things you can do. You can march in our ral­ly, you can sign this peti­tion.” They were giv­ing me prac­ti­cal advice, when I was ask­ing an exis­ten­tial question.

I was in a lot anguish when I wrote that. I wasn’t sure if I could still be a rab­bi and say these things. I wasn’t sure I could still be employed at my con­gre­ga­tion. I wasn’t sure if I could be a Jew. I was just say­ing, ​“Who am I?” I got the answer to that ques­tion pret­ty quick­ly. It didn’t take sev­en years, although I’m still real­iz­ing the answer to that question.

Almost imme­di­ate­ly, many peo­ple reached out to me. Peo­ple in the Pales­tine sol­i­dar­i­ty move­ment, but also peo­ple in an orga­ni­za­tion called Jew­ish Voice for Peace, some of whom were mem­bers of my con­gre­ga­tion and were patient­ly wait­ing for me to come around on this issue. They real­ly gave me a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty where I real­ized I could engage in Pales­tine sol­i­dar­i­ty work and be a tru­ly pro­gres­sive Jew on all issues and still have a Jew­ish insti­tu­tion­al, spir­i­tu­al home. Jew­ish Voice for Peace since then has grown by leaps and bounds.

Soon after that a rab­bi friend of mine, Bri­an Walt, and I cre­at­ed an ini­tia­tive that was called Jew­ish Fast for Gaza and that was the nascent begin­nings of the Jew­ish Voice for Peace Rab­bini­cal Coun­cil. We start­ed to gath­er around oth­er rab­bis who shared our val­ues. So very quick­ly, the ​“what do I do now?” ques­tion was answered, which is: cre­ate an alter­na­tive Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty that cher­ish­es these val­ues unabashed­ly and bears wit­ness to them in the world and stands as part of a larg­er Pales­tine sol­i­dar­i­ty movement.

In a post from Nov. 29, 2010, you stat­ed, ​“The cor­ner­stone val­ue of my reli­gious tra­di­tion com­mands me to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with all who are oppressed. It would thus be a pro­found betray­al of my own Jew­ish her­itage if I con­scious­ly choose not to stand with the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple.” That ​“Jew­ish lib­er­a­tion” is ​“intrin­si­cal­ly bound up with Pales­tin­ian lib­er­a­tion. It’s real­ly that sim­ple.” You then say ​“there is noth­ing sim­ple or uncom­pli­cat­ed about it.” As a Jew, how do you nego­ti­ate this tension?

At the time that I wrote that, I was the con­gre­ga­tion­al rab­bi in a lib­er­al con­gre­ga­tion where there were many peo­ple who either didn’t agree with me polit­i­cal­ly or who were deeply pained when they heard me say or write words like that. I tried to nego­ti­ate those com­pli­ca­tions for a long time. I came to my con­gre­ga­tion in Evanston in ​’98 — I wrote those words in 2009 — and I end­ed up leav­ing the con­gre­ga­tion in 2014 main­ly because I wasn’t able to bridge those com­pli­ca­tions. It became impossible.

The job of cler­gy is to com­fort the afflict­ed and afflict the com­fort­able. It’s a very del­i­cate bal­ance. The bot­tom line: I came to real­ize, to be a lib­er­al rab­bi today, in most lib­er­al con­gre­ga­tions, means serv­ing a pret­ty com­fort­able population.

Describe what Tzedek Chica­go is and how it came to be.

I left my con­gre­ga­tion because of the cir­cum­stance that I’ve described. I didn’t have any inten­tion of start­ing a new con­gre­ga­tion when I left. Short­ly after that, I start­ed my full-time job with the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee. But it became clear to my wife and I that we didn’t have a Jew­ish spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty. A num­ber of us — includ­ing some who left the Jew­ish Recon­struc­tion­ist Con­gre­ga­tion when I left because of the pain of the breakup, and oth­ers I knew who, because of this issue, didn’t have a con­gre­ga­tion where they could feel com­plete­ly at home — would get togeth­er in a havu­rah, an infor­mal par­tic­i­pa­to­ry group, most­ly for Shab­bat din­ners. A group of them approached me with the idea of start­ing a new con­gre­ga­tion that was pred­i­cat­ed on val­ues of jus­tice and val­ues of human rights and uni­ver­sal democ­ra­cy, and not pred­i­cat­ed on nation­al­ism and Zion­ism and such. I became very excit­ed about cre­at­ing a new kind of Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion that was pred­i­cat­ed on the social jus­tice val­ues that are deeply embed­ded in the Jew­ish tra­di­tion and are not attest­ed to in most Jew­ish congregations.

What has the response been from the wider Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty?

The response to Tzedek Chica­go exceed­ed what even I was hop­ing for. When we had our High Hol­i­day ser­vices in Sep­tem­ber 2015, I was a lit­tle ner­vous because I didn’t know what to expect, but we end­ed up aver­ag­ing about 300 peo­ple for all of the ser­vices. It was clear there is a deep thirst for a com­mu­ni­ty like this.

Israel is at the heart of Jew­ish com­mu­nal life for many peo­ple. If we shift the focus of Judaism away from Israel or take Israel out of the equa­tion entire­ly, what fills this space?

A ven­er­a­ble, cen­turies-long spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tion that looks at the entire world as our home, the entire dias­po­ra as our home. One that is pred­i­cat­ed on val­ues of jus­tice and decen­cy and moral­i­ty, and being able to find God wher­ev­er we live, and see­ing all peo­ple as cre­at­ed in the divine image, as the Torah teach­es us. One of the things Zion­ism did was to col­o­nize the Jew­ish reli­gion itself. It eclipsed that incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful and pro­found Jew­ish notion which saw the world as our home.

God isn’t geo­graph­i­cal­ly spe­cif­ic to Israel or Jerusalem or the tem­ple. We bear wit­ness to an ancient truth that is still very rel­e­vant in the world today— more than rel­e­vant, essen­tial. Uni­ver­sal­ism is cen­tral to our core val­ues and our con­gre­ga­tion. And that is a prob­lem for many Jews, too. There’s a strand of Judaism that is very parochial and trib­al. It looks at the out­side world with sus­pi­cion and looks at the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty as the be-all and end-all. Our future is pred­i­cat­ed on find­ing com­mon cause with all peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who are oppressed.

Any­thing else you’d like to add?

There’s a word you hear bandied about a great deal these days: Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty. The Jew­ish estab­lish­ment com­mu­ni­ty has final­ly dis­cov­ered that word too. It’s a new term for some­thing that’s very old, which is ​“com­mon cause.”

Or ​“sol­i­dar­i­ty.”

Sol­i­dar­i­ty, yeah. That’s a bet­ter word. The Civ­il Rights move­ment was all about inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty in this coun­try, and it wouldn’t have suc­ceed­ed with­out it. The anti-apartheid move­ment in South Africa was incred­i­bly inter­sec­tion­al. But that’s how move­ments of sol­i­dar­i­ty are created.

It’s real­ly impor­tant to under­stand the sacred impor­tance of sol­i­dar­i­ty and inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty. That police bru­tal­i­ty in Chica­go is absolute­ly insep­a­ra­ble from mil­i­tarism in Israel/​Palestine, the mil­i­tarism of our pris­ons, the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of our immi­gra­tion sys­tem. It’s all part of a much larg­er issue that in many ways neolib­er­al­ism has giv­en rise to and cor­po­rate influ­ence, in the rise of mil­i­ta­riza­tion around the world.

When we’re talk­ing about build­ing this move­ment of com­mon cause, we need to be mind­ful that there’s no sep­a­ra­tion between the local and the glob­al. And that’s ulti­mate­ly how we’re going to find our way out.

This inter­view has been expand­ed from the print version.