Antisemitism: Canary in the Coal Mine to Destroying Democracy with Rabbi Jill Jacobs

REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:

And now to my guest. Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the CEO of T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, mobilizing Jewish communities to advance human rights globally. She's a leading voice in the Jewish social justice movement, and has written extensively on the intersection of Judaism, labor rights, and human dignity. Her books include Where Justice Dwells: A Hands-on Guide to Doing Social Justice in Your Jewish Community. With the world in turmoil and many people feeling pressure to take sides, it's particularly important to raise up the work of Rabbi Jill Jacobs and the organization she leads. And I'm so happy to welcome her back to The State of Belief.

Rabbi Jill, thank you so much for being here.

RABBI JILL JACOBS, GUEST:

Thank you so much for having for having me. It's wonderful to be here.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

So why don't you introduce us first to the organization, T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. It's an organization I have known, admired, supported, and I just want all of our listeners to really understand what this organization is and the wonderful person who's leading it. So can you introduce us to kind of the history, the genesis perhaps, of the organization? What are your priorities in this critical moment?

JILL JACOBS:

Thank you so much. T’ruah is an organization that organizes the membership of more than 2,300 rabbis and cantors across the United States and Canada. We have members, rabbi cantor members, in 47 states and six provinces who are committed to human rights. About half our work is focused on where we live, the US and Canada, and half our work is focused on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. And we're committed to fighting for the dignity of all people who are living in those places.

So in the United States, our work focuses on democracy, which is really crucial right now; on worker justice, on immigration, and on incarceration. And in Israel and the Occupied Territories, we're focused on a just solution for both Jews and Palestinians building toward two states, so that both people can realize their national aspirations and can achieve dignity and human rights that everybody is due. So that's some of the organization. We're really proud that we can be here and bringing a rabbinic moral voice to that fight, both in the US and Canada, and also in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The organization was founded in 2002 by a group of rabbis who got together and said, we want a way to lift up rabbinic voices. And we've been going for, now, 22 years. And I don't know that the original founders could have predicted how badly we'd need this organization over the past many years - including in the Trump administration, including during the time of the early pandemic, and of course, now, in this past horrific year since October 7th.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, it's one of those organizations that it really feels like it's always been there to me - the need is so great. And I think it's so important that you're really leaning into what it means to recognize that leadership, especially religious leadership, especially on progressive issues, needs to have a voice; that we can't assume that people understand what the religious point of view is on issues like worker justice or incarceration or immigration. And what you're doing, it seems, is stepping into that and saying: Actually, it's really important that Jewish leadership – rabbis, cantors - speak into this very clearly, so that no one else, including, you know, we have a lot of Christians who want to talk about how they own religion in America. It's just so important that Jewish religious leaders speak up, speak out, show up with these communities that really need a moral voice to frame the issue that they're facing.

JILL JACOBS:

Thank you. I think it's really important that progressive religious leaders - Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, everybody - really speaks up and says that religion belongs to all of us, and nobody gets to define what religious practice or religious belief or religious participation in the political sphere means. Unfortunately, in America, many of us have ceded the space of religion, and religion and politics, to a certain far-right element for whom religion and politics is only about banning abortion or banning LGBTQ rights or trans rights, or otherwise interfering with people's bodily autonomy and personal liberty. And of course, when you look at our religious traditions, they actually generally say not a whole lot about those particular issues. And they have a lot to say about how we're supposed to build a society together.

So I think about, I have some of my books behind me, but there's a whole section of Jewish law - Jewish law is traditionally divided into kind of four categories or sections, and one of those has to do with civil law, which covers everything from how landlords and tenants are supposed to relate to each other, and how workers and their employers are supposed to relate to each other. There's Jewish laws that govern how much of your money you're supposed to give away in tzedakah and gifts to the poor, and what counts as gifts to the poor, and lots of laws about how you're supposed to create the infrastructure for a community. Just basic laws about how people are supposed to live together

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

It’s incredible. You know, sometimes you're reading the Bible and like, Amos, Isaiah, any… But not just the prophets; others, you know, they'll be saying stuff about workers' rights or the poor and stuff and you're like, whew, this is... You know, if you took this out of context, there would be someone saying, why are you quoting Marx at me? It's that radical. It's very clear that there is a moral way to live with one another, and I think it's so important that we lift up those aspects, because sometimes you’d think the Bible is just like, you know, 99% about abortion and then a few other things about how you're supposed to eat right. And instead, it has so much about the poor, so much about the incarcerated, so much about the immigrant welcoming the stranger, you know?

Maybe it's just me, but a rabbi has a certain stature for me; someone who's really gone through rabbinic training like yourself. I'm like, oh, okay, they're coming serious, now. Like they're going to be laying down some truths. So I think it's just great that T’ruah is doing this.

JILL JACOBS:

Thank you. And by the way, of course, there's only one verse - that gets mistranslated, actually, to mean pretty much the opposite of what it actually means in the Hebrew. It gets used by some parts of the mostly far Christian right, but not only, to outlaw abortion. And so the Bible absolutely does not, at least the Jewish Bible, does not outlaw abortion at all. In fact, there's always a priority on the life of the parent, of the mother, the parent, and not on the fetus. And so that is consistent throughout Jewish law. And so to hear some people in the Christian right speak, you would think that the Bible is basically verse after verse banning abortion. And it's actually not there. You have to mistranslate, badly mistranslate a verse to get to a ban on abortion.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And also, this is where it's so interesting when we cry out: religious freedom, religious freedom; but who's religion, who's freedom? It's always, when we talk about issues around abortion or LGBTQ rights or other rights of people, race and other things, people are very quick to say, well, my religion says… But they ignore Jewish law on these same issues.

This is a point of privilege, but I've been doing research about my grandmother, who was the daughter of Louis Brandeis, and all of the women around her, many of whom were Jewish, who were just radical women working for labor rights in the late 19th, early 20th century; going into factories saying, you can't do this. Now, you know, whether or not they were explicitly talking about their Jewish heritage, but if you look at Lillian Wald and Nathan Maud, and my great aunts, Pauline and Josephine Goldmark, they were all just so righteous, in the best way, about, you can't treat people like this. And I just think it's important that we carry these histories on with us, and recognize how important this has been to American society as a whole, but the contribution of the wider Jewish community - which was a small percentage, but really making an impact on moving us forward as far as how we treat one another, and especially moving into the New Deal in really important ways.

JILL JACOBS:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a long history of Jewish women - and men - but organizing labor unions, as you said, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory and the government workers strike… There's a lot of history there. And I think even though those women weren't necessarily sitting and reading Jewish legal works, I think that it had seeped very deep in, that this was something that you fight for.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Right. We're in a moment where the latest FBI statistics on crime were very interesting. Crime of every kind was falling except for hate crimes, in which hate crimes were the only kind of crime that have a special category that were rising. We also know that hate crimes are notoriously underreported; but even with that, hate crimes were reported as rising. And of course, antisemitism is one of the main foci of the areas of hate crimes, including anti-Muslim, Arab hate, anti-Sikh hate. But I am curious how you understand this moment of antisemitism.

I do want to say to our listeners, Rabbi Jill Jacobs has written the most important work on antisemitism. I really look to it towards helping me understand what antisemitism is in this moment, also what it isn't. And so I just want to, first of all, say thank you for that work. I mean, I bet you rarely get thanks for speaking out about antisemitism because everybody's so invested. It's very laden. But I want to say thank you for being, I would say, righteous and brave and clear about how to define antisemitism in this moment. And so if we can start by you just saying how people can find your work on antisemitism and then just maybe unpack a little bit of it for our listeners.

JILL JACOBS:

Thank you. Well, T’ruah actually just republished a very popular booklet on antisemitism. We published this booklet originally in 2022, but we realized it needed to be updated this year. So you can find it if you go to truah.org slash antisemitism, all one word.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Can you spell Truah? Can you spell Truah for us?

JILL JACOBS:

Sure. So T-R-U-A-H slash antisemitism, all one word, no hyphen. Then you can either download or you can order copies of just really pocket-sized booklets that we have that go through some of the basic history of antisemitism, some of its manifestations, some stereotypes; and also, I think crucially for this moment, how to know when it's criticism of Israel and when it's antisemitism. Because of course, Israel is a country that can be criticized like any other country on its human rights or other record. And sometimes criticism of Israel does cross the line into antisemitism, which was seen absolutely this year, including with justifications of violence against Jews, with attempts to ban Jews who don't disavow Israel from certain spaces, etc., etc.

So I want to say about antisemitism in general: Antisemitism is a very persistent hatred. It goes back more than 2,000 years, but really came into its power in the Roman Empire after the Roman Empire had converted to Christianity. Then antisemitism also acquired state power, and has come up in different times in different places, often drawing on the same group of tropes or ideas: Jews as greedy, Jews as all-powerful, Jews as trying to do horrible things to Christians, Jews as kind of a nefarious force inside of society. So these come up in different ways from across the political spectrum.

So very famously, Jews get blamed both for being Bolsheviks and for being capitalists, right? It's a very convenient kind of hatred. And something else that we know about antisemitism is that it tends to rise in times of social, political, economic upheaval. So when times are shaky, it's very easy to look around and say, well, who do I blame for my economic woes, or for the instability of politics? Oh, here's a convenient scapegoat.

And it also means that antisemitism is often the canary in the coal mine to destroying democracy. I mean, we see that in places like Hungary, where autocratic leaders can use antisemitism as a way of then slowly attacking democracy. And so sometimes I think people think, oh, antisemitism, that's a Jewish issue; I'm not Jewish. Or, I am Jewish, but I can take care of myself. It's not a big deal, or other people have worse oppressions. But actually, it would be enough to fight antisemitism to protect Jews, but it's also about protecting democracy, because we often see that antisemitism is the first step toward much broader deterioration of democracy.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And I think connecting this moment, actually, with a hundred years ago, with immigration, with imminent collapse after World War I, the 1920s, you know, there was the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and that was anti-Black hatred, of course, but also anti-Jewish hatred and a real sense of like, they're coming from the outside, they're changing our history, they're changing the nature of our country.

And, you know, if we look at today with this Great Replacement Theory, which is an antisemitic idea that somehow Jews are behind all of the immigration that is happening. And we see this popping up in a lot of the mass shootings that are happening, and it's just a very dangerous ideas that, unfortunately, gain a kind of mainstream dog whistle when you say something like, Soros is trying to bring in all the… And people who are listening for it know exactly what that means: Soros is Jewish, Soros is controlling things. There’s a very dangerous system out there that, really, a bright light has to be shined on it, and we have to be very, very clear about what’s happening, why they’re saying it, and ultimately, who they’re trying to benefit. And, you know, lives are at stake.

JILL JACOBS:

Absolutely. I mean, I think we've seen this, as you mentioned, in a number of horrific shootings that were also hate crimes. So of course, the man who opened fire and killed 11 Jews in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, or the person who killed one Jewish person in a synagogue in Poway, California, they really clearly put out manifestos or social media posts that referenced the Great Replacement Theory and were clearly anti-Semitic. But so did the people who carried out a horrific mass shooting in a grocery store in Buffalo that was aimed at killing Black people who were shopping there, or aimed at killing immigrants in El Paso at a Walmart. The victims of the shootings weren't Jewish, but a lot of the ideology behind that shooting was.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And things like, to move it a little bit into the current moment of our politics, it's just so irresponsible for, in the light of what's happening, in light of this rising antisemitism, for the candidate Trump to say if I don't get elected, the Jews are to blame. It's crazy. The Jewish population is something like 3 or 4% of America.

JILL JACOBS:

Two percent.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Two, sorry. Even I’m inflating it. The idea that Jews are going to control the election, and if he doesn't get an election, it's Jewish people. There are people who hear that. It's just incredibly dangerous rhetoric. I just couldn't believe it. And he was talking to a Jewish audience.

JILL JACOBS:

It's absolutely an invitation to violence if he doesn't get elected.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And we've seen that violence can happen. I do want to say, also, at the same time, I'm just very heartened by some of the amazing Jewish political leadership that we do have, including Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania; we have a candidate who's very strong in North Carolina. I mean, I just think that there's lots of really incredible Jewish leadership that's out there. And I also think it's really exciting that right now, the second gentleman has really shown up in a beautiful way and has been involved appropriately in his current status as second gentleman. And just also really seems to be a huge part of the worldview of the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, that's part of who she is, along with Black Baptist, along with her Hindu background. You know, she's navigated all these different spaces. I think it's very American, in some ways.

Have you had a chance to meet him, by the way? I've never met him.

JILL JACOBS:

Doug Emhoff? Yeah. Yeah, I have, just briefly, but I have. Yeah. And he's certainly been a real voice, almost at the very top, against antisemitism, which has been important.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

So I do want to turn to the reality of what's happening in Israel right now, in the Middle East, and the wider Middle East. And I know T’ruah has been on the ground over there since October 7th, well before October 7th, but on the ground. And I've really valued being on your mailing list and getting updates around what you've seen, what you've witnessed. And it just feels really important to have a voice that isn't filtered necessarily, through… I'm not anti-media, but I think it's just helpful to hear your voice.

And so this has been an incredibly difficult time for everyone over there. And especially those of us, and I include myself in this, who really have been imagining a future where Palestinians and Israelis can live together in peace. This has been just one of those, perhaps the most difficult time we've seen in our lifetime. And I'm just curious, one, how have you been able to move forward personally? What spiritual tools you've been accessing for that? And then we can get to a little bit of what you've observed.

JILL JACOBS:

Yeah, those are big questions. I mean, the last year has been the hardest that I, certainly that I remember, from just that moment on October 7th, starting to see the atrocity that was happening. And it's been horrific on many levels.

So first of all, just that day of more than 1200 Israelis who were murdered by Hamas terrorists, and more than about 250 who were taken hostage, and so many others who were injured, and homes destroyed and communities destroyed. So that's one level. The level that I honestly wasn't expecting was some of the reaction of people on the far left. I'll say that when October 7th happened, it was a Jewish holiday here. It was a two-day holiday. So it was the first day of a two-day holiday here. And it meant that I was hearing news because people were coming into synagogue and sharing news or just hearing it around the street, but I wasn't actually online because I don't use electricity on those major holidays. And so I didn't see the reaction of some of the outside world until afterwards.

And it was actually quite a shock to me to learn that there'd been a march, a gathering in Times Square, that was calling those Hamas terrorists who came in and murdered families, that they were calling them saying that was a liberation force. And I've been shocked throughout the year at people who are justifying violence against Jews and Israelis - including yesterday, as my friends and family were in their bomb shelters, I saw there were some people online talking about the Iranian resistance and celebrating these bombs when Hezbollah and Iran do not have anything to do with the legitimate Palestinian claims for an end to occupation and for a state of their own, like Hezbollah and Iran do. They're not doing anything for Palestinians. But Hezbollah decided to enter this war anyway, because it was an opportunity, and has been shooting rockets at Israel since October 8. So it's been very unfortunate, surprising, to see people who generally fight for justice and human rights, and who one expects to be against violence, sometimes coming out in favor of violence when it's directed at Israeli Jews.

And of course, then after October 7th, Israel's retaliation - I mean, Israel had the right to self-defense and a right to retaliate against Hamas. But the way that the war has proceeded, the way that Israel has carried out the war, has been horrific, and most likely has included war crimes. And we know, of course, that more than 40,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children, have been killed. And the humanitarian situation in Gaza is just really, really dire.

And so we're trying as an organization to hold all of these things, which honestly shouldn't be hard: to say that the attack of October 7th was an atrocity, to say that Palestinians deserve to be safe, that this war needs to end. It needed to end months ago, so that the killing can stop, so that the hostages can come home, so that people in Gaza can hopefully rebuild their lives with a lot of international support. There should be an agreement that will avoid a much broader regional war, which will bring untold disaster on civilians, both in Israel and in Lebanon and possibly Iran, depending on the scope of the war.

So it shouldn't be hard to say all those things. But unfortunately, a lot of the world has taken sides, right? We've become much more polarized, where people feel like if you want to be pro-Israel, you can't say a word about the 40,000 Palestinians who've been killed, and you can't say a word about the Lebanese civilians. And if you want to be pro-Palestine, you have to somehow justify October 7th, justify the attacks by Iran, justify the Hezbollah rockets, the year of Hezbollah rockets on Israel. And that's just not right. It's not moral. The moral position is to say that we need the war to end, and we need an agreement that will both bring back the hostages - there's another place where people think that if you're going to be pro-Palestine, you can't talk about the hostages, should not be true. We need an agreement that's going to bring back the  hostages, that’s going to end the war, and hopefully avoid a broader regional war that is already showing how disastrous it's going to continue to be.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, I just think it is amazingly hard to hold this space. And I'm grateful to you for holding it. It's a space that I'm trying to hold as well. I honestly think, ultimately, we're representing the majority of the people with this, even though even though the majority of the people don't have a voice in this. And one of the things that you were reporting from Israel, which I thought was so important for me to hear, was - in this country, the hostages, and people were putting up posters, and it was used in such a way that it became a right-wing thing, and then to tear down the hostages became like a radical left-wing.

The use of this hostage thing in this country was one thing, but hostages meant something different in Israel. I mean, or not different. Maybe you can explain that to me, because that's, I think, something that's maybe lost in translation to many people in this country: what hostages mean, what the hostages, unfortunately, many of whom have died now, but what they meant in this struggle.

JILL JACOBS:

Thank you. This is absolutely a place where there's just a total breakdown in communication between the dialogue in Israel and the dialogue in the United States. So, first of all, I want to say that taking civilians as hostages is a war crime, full stop. And of course, Hamas should have returned the hostages a long time ago. They're not going to. That is 100% a war crime, and they continue to commit war crimes every day that they hold on to them.

And it became really clear very quickly in Israel that this government, which is the most extremist government that Israel has ever was had, was not going to prioritize the hostages. And it became really clear almost immediately to the families and to others, to the Kibbutzim that were attacked, from which many of the hostages were taken, that this government wouldn't prioritize them. And that's become just more and more clear, including that the prime minister has barely met with the families of the hostages. He's barely met with residents of the Kibbutzim. I mean, it took months and months.

And we know that in November - I was actually in Israel for this at the end of November, beginning of December, when we had the first ceasefire deal. And we had more than 100 hostages, including women and children, come home from that. And we also had a break in the fighting for as long as that ceasefire lasted. Unfortunately, Hamas then decided to break the ceasefire and return to fighting. But we saw that that was what brought home the hostages. And also what brought temporary relief to people in Gaza was that ceasefire agreement.

And since then, the Netanyahu government, also Hamas, but also the Netanyahu government has just over and over torpedoed any ceasefire deal, adding new conditions and new regulations and tying the hands of the people who are sent to negotiate. And that is really clear to Israelis, which is why hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been out on the street behind the families of the hostages who have been leading. who have been leading.

And I was in Israel, I guess this was in early May, and I was out at a protest that was blocking the Ayalon, which is a major highway in Tel Aviv. And on one of the cars that was stalled was Inan Zankaur, who's been one of the most prominent voices of the families of the hostages. Her son Matan is a hostage. And she is a former Netanyahu voter. And she's been really clear: She voted for him. She's not going to do it again. She's been unbelievably brave. And I don't even know how she does it as a mom after a full year. 

And she said, I remember in that moment, it was the day before what became the extension of the war into Rafah, the first invasion into Rafah. And she was standing there on top of a parked car, saying, do not go into Rafah, end the war. Saying this in Hebrew, obviously. And the most important thing is bringing my son and the other family members back.

And that has been a constant. She's been a constant voice. The other family members have been a constant voice. They've gotten kicked out of Knesset for going in and yelling at cabinet members. 

And we saw the horrific, the beginning of September, when the bodies of six hostages were discovered in a tunnel. They had been apparently murdered, just shot, when their captors heard soldiers overhead. When that happened, I mean, that just sent shockwaves through Israel. And we had, the Saturday night afterwards, there were an estimated 700,000 Israelis on the street demanding a ceasefire, an end to the war, bring home the hostages. And just in context, we're talking about a country of less than 10 million people. So I think it works out to the equivalent of about 23 million Americans out on the street, which I don't think we've ever seen for any issue ever.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Right. That's the reason it's so helpful to have your voice, and also your witness and persistence. And I want to lift up a name of a woman who was killed in October 7^th or in the aftermath, Vivian Silver. Did you know Vivian Silver?

JILL JACOBS:

I knew her only a little bit, but I knew her work really, really well.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I just think it's good to remember someone like that who had worked her whole life for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Can you tell us a little bit about her work and what she stood for?

JILL JACOBS:

Vivian Silver was one of the founders of Women Wage Peace, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's Israeli women, which includes both Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, who were working for peace and insisting that there's no military solution, there's only a political solution. And they had a partner called Women of the Sun, which is a Palestinian organization. So as people might know, there's Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. About 20% of Israel's citizenship is Palestinian, and they are 100% citizens of Israel. And then there are about 5 million Palestinians who don't have any citizen orientation.

So Women Wage Peace works with a Palestinian group based in the territories, and they really have lifted up this idea that you need women at the table to make peace, and that women are, without being gender essentialists, that often women are able to push forward solutions that are going to keep their families safe, which generally military solutions don't do. We know there's a group, an organization called, I think it's called the Institute for Inclusive Security, that has research that shows that when women are at the table in peace negotiations, they are, I believe, 35% more likely to succeed and to last for at least 15 years. It's not just a nice idea, but it actually has a real impact on peace negotiations.

And Vivian was, until the end, as she was hiding in her safe room, she was on the phone at one point with a radio personality, an interviewer who had interviewed her and saying, again, that she still believes in peace. And that's something that her sons have continued to fight for. Her sons had not been public personas before her death, but now they've been very, very public saying that they want to continue their mother's work, that they know that their mother would not have wanted there to be more death in her name.

And also Maoz Inon, both of his parents were murdered on their kibbutz on October 7th, has been a really important voice with Palestinian partners. And in my experience, we work, our partners on the ground in Israel, are human rights organizations, and to a person, every single person, including in some cases people who were trapped in their safe rooms for 7, 8, 11 hours, they will say, you know, Hamas murdered my family, they murdered my friends, they murdered my neighbors, but they cannot change who I am. Like, they cannot change my moral core. And that's been unbelievably powerful to hear over and over.

I'll mention one more person, Avi Dabush, Rabbi Avi Dabush, who is the head of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, which is a close partner of ours. And he lives in a kibbutz in the south. He was in his safe room with his family and could have easily been killed, and has gone on to just fight for the human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians, to call for an end to the war. And he's somebody who lost people who are very close to him in his community, and has turned around to say, there's no military solution. There has to be a diplomatic solution.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I remember seeing a really striking poll that came out after the war started, they did a poll of Palestinians in Gaza and something like 60, 70 percent of them wanted peace with Israel. They wanted to move forward to develop better relationships. And yet maybe in part because of that, Hamas chose another. And what I really appreciate, what you're lifting up these names is because it's important to recognize that this is a very low point, but it doesn't mean that it's an end point for the peace movement.

JILL JACOBS:

Yeah. Yeah. I can say something about that research. And that was done by Dr. Shikaki, who is just a very respected Palestinian public polling expert, public opinion expert. And the numbers go up and down depending on people's despair. So I think that, like you said, in the spring, there were some numbers that 62% of people in Gaza, Palestinians in Gaza, said that they favor a two-state solution. I think the last poll that was done in September, it went back down to the 30-something percent. But it's still, of all the solutions that are presented, it's the one that people, even though it's a very small number, it still has a plurality.

But also, ultimately, it's not about public polling. It's about actual leadership who are willing to take risks and to explain to their people, this is the solution we need to move forward. I mean, I think so much about the peace deal with Egypt, with Begin and Sadat, both of whom had very long, very bloody histories behind them, and were able in that moment to say, the most important thing is for us to make peace. And these were not countries that loved each other. You know, it's a cold peace, but it's a peace that's lasted more than 50 years, and has been just unbelievably important and stabilizing for the region. And I don't even think we can estimate how many lives have been saved by that peace. And we need leaders like that, and Sadat, obviously, in the end lost his life because of that, and I'm not saying that I want anybody else to lose their life to make peace, but we need people who are going to step up and be brave enough to say: this is the way to move forward.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

We just observed President Carter's 100th birthday, and I had a chance to talk to him about those negotiations at Camp David. And it was 1very tense - he said it was really important that everybody had their own room to pray and practice who they were in real time, but then also was able to come to some agreement.

I’m so grateful for you and so appreciate you taking the time with us. And if you could set one kind of strategic goal for T’ruah for the coming year, what's the primary thing that you guys are thinking about, along with which so many other things can be included?

JILL JACOBS:

We're thinking about so much for this year. And I think the two things that are probably the most in our minds, one, we haven't actually talked about a lot, but protecting the vote and protecting democracy. And so we are training rabbis to be at polling stations in 10 states as poll chaplains, to make sure that everybody can vote; to de-escalate if there's any kind of confrontation. We're helping rabbis to understand what might happen after the election so that we can organize them in their communities to ensure that the vote is respected and to protect against any violence that might happen. So we're very focused on that.

Obviously, what happens after that, we'll see in November. It's a little bit hard to plan a lot of what the year will look like. And then also bringing an end to this war in the Middle East before it expands any more, before more people are killed. And we're going to continue to bring that rabbinic moral voice to that really urgent effort.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Thank you so much. Well, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, I'm going to end this interview by asking you the question that I ask everyone, which is maybe the most difficult in this moment, but, what gives you hope?

JILL JACOBS:

Well, what really gives me hope is the people who, even in the most difficult circumstances, are fighting for justice or working to end the war, to bring about peace. I mentioned the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are out in the street every Saturday night, sometimes even under threat of a missile attack, to call for an end to the war. I think about the Palestinians who are standing up to Hamas, or Palestinians who are partnering with Israelis to work for peace.

Just this morning, the morning before Rosh Hashanah starts, I got a voicemail overnight from a Palestinian partner just to wish me a happy new year and hopefully for a year of peace, et cetera, et cetera. This is somebody who lives under very difficult circumstances, and has made it a priority to have Jewish and Israeli partners. And Palestinians who are pushing back, who are committed to nonviolence and nonviolent defense of their villages; sometimes when violent settlers are coming in and causing damage and carrying out attacks against villages, and Israeli activists who come to stand with those Palestinians. So just all the people who have had such great loss in their lives, and are not giving up and not walking away and not turning to violence, but instead are recommitting to partnership and to working for justice.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Rabbi Jill Jacobs is CEO of T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. Rabbi Jill, thank you so much for being with us today on The State of Belief.

JILL JACOBS:

Thank you so much for having me.