Who Gets to Run Judaism's Marketing Department?
Plus: Tanya Woo for District 2?
Who gets to make the marketing decisions for Judaism?
A few weeks ago I covered JewBelong’s snarky billboards targeting Seattle’s disengaged Jews, what JewBelong CEO Archie Gottesman calls “DJs” for short.
Turns out not everyone was happy about the billboards, particularly the one about coming to Judaism for your girlfriend and staying for the lack of hell.
“In the Washington Coalition of Rabbis, many of us see the benefit of JewBelong.org, but we felt strongly that this particular billboard was offensive and problematic,” says Rabbi Allison Flash of Seattle.
The Washington Coalition of Rabbis is comprised of Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist rabbis from around the state. When the topic of the provocative billboards came up in a recent meeting, they concurred: it had to go.
Rabbi Jim Mirel, currently of Bet Chaverim in Des Moines, Washington, says he brought the billboards to the attention of the Coalition at their July meeting. He noticed the Dearborn/Rainier billboard on his way to his congregation and found it negative, offensive to women, and generally not in the spirit of Seattle’s Jewish tradition. He supports free speech, he says, but was worried about the impact of insulting Christians.
“I don’t feel that you have to denigrate other religious traditions to feel good about being Jewish,” Flash says. “Other religions do believe in hell, and there were so many ways to show Jews that it’s really great to be Jewish. I don’t think you feel you need to compare Judaism to other religions to make yourself feel good about yourself.”
Rabbi Daniel Weiner of Temple De Hirsch Sinai also found the message to be in extreme bad taste. “What works in Brooklyn doesn’t work anywhere else, and probably not even in Brooklyn,” he says, in reference to JewBelong’s New York locale. In a personal message to the Coalition, he called the message “chuztpahdik,” “tone-deaf,” and a “theological turd.” He says congregants reached out to him, some wondering if the billboards were created by an anti-Semitic group.
Flash scheduled a call with Gottesman to express the rabbis’ concerns. “I was asked to reach out to Archie, and I had a lovely conversation with her. She listened for quite a while about my concerns and explained their take and their sign, and I very specifically said we would like it to be taken down.”
Gottesman knows that not everyone likes JewBelong’s in-your-face style. The seasoned marketing veteran is unconcerned with people who don’t like the messages. “It’s not the DJs that get mad,” Gottesman says. “It’s the people who feel threatened.”
Yet she doesn’t want to make a theological misstep or contradict Judaism. When she questions herself, one of the people she turns to for advice is Rabbi Adam Mintz, a Modern Orthodox rabbi at Yeshivat Maharat in New York. Mintz loves the work of JewBelong and is personally involved with lowering barriers to conversion. Mintz laughs off the criticism of the Washington rabbis. “They’re overly sensitive,” he told me. “We’re not critical of Christianity or Islam.”
Gottesman was left feeling a little bit bullied, especially after a second call to pull the board after it was defaced with some ambiguous graffiti. Gottesman got the impression the rabbis were overplaying their hand by connecting the message to fears of anti-Semitism.
“You want to take it down because you don’t agree with it,” Gottesman says. “When people have confusion about messaging, when it’s provocative, we direct people right to the website. It’s amazing how many people don’t take the time to hop on the site to see what it’s about. Why don’t they do that before they write an email or complain?”
Flash and Mirel like what JewBelong does, in theory. “What I don’t want this to do is degenerate JewBelong, because I think they do incredible work,” says Flash. “They are benefiting a demographic of Jews that need the support that JewBelong offers. I think they do good work, but I think this sign was an unfortunate choice.”
Interestingly, the Coalition didn’t express concerns about the other billboard, “So you eat bacon. God has other things to worry about.”
“The ones that say God doesn’t care if you eat bacon…that doesn’t have to do with any other person,” Flash says. “That’s for Jews who feel they can’t be Jewish.”
Perhaps the offensiveness of any given message lies in the values of the beholder. And who decides what that message is? Who gets to be the Jewish community brand manager? It’s a question that dates back to ancient times. Hillel and Shammai couldn’t agree. The Pharisees and Sadducees duked it out. Even in the Torah, when God is literally revealing Himself to the Israelites, Moses’s own brother and sister question his leadership message.
In the end, Gottesman left the billboard up. They were scheduled to come down at the end of July, anyway.
In an email followup, Gottesman expressed that she “never thought of the ‘hell’ billboard as criticizing another religion,” and didn’t get that feedback from anyone else. “If you look at the comments [on Instagram], you will see that some people love it, others don’t. But there is a lot of interesting conversation going on about it, and that is positive.”
Tanya Woo for District 2?
On Wednesday evening, a small group met in the backyard of a Seward Park home to hear from Tanya Woo, a community activist running against Seattle City Councilmember Tammy Morales. Woo shared her vision for the South End and her top agenda items: public safety, housing, the homelessness crisis, and transit (specifically, traffic safety).
Woo is politically greener than a spring bud, and she faltered a bit on policy questions, always returning to her strongest talking points: her long family history in Chinatown/International District and Beacon Hill (her family has been in Seattle since 1887!), her frustration at the city for not listening to CID residents when planning a homeless shelter there, the 14 recent home invasions around Beacon Hill that have targeted Asian families, and her community organizing work. She believes in staffing up the police department and repudiates Morales’s decisions to defund the SPD, but retreated from questions about what exactly she thinks should be done about the drug crisis other than focusing on diversion and treatment.
Woo may be inexperienced politically, and she has little familiarity with the South End’s Jewish community, but her frustration at the current council’s ability to even show up is palpable. “What we’re seeing is the result of four years of bad policies,” she said. “When our community was in crisis, [Morales] didn’t show up.” Woo also questions where funding is going and wants to see more fiscal transparency.
The evening ended with copious check writing (yes, people still write checks) by attendees ready for a change from the routine violence and instability in South Seattle.
In the primary, Morales pulled in 52% of the vote, with Woo coming in at 42%. Time will tell if Woo’s community activism and frustration will push her over the finish line, or if the South End will stick with the status quo.
I’ve reached out for an interview with Morales, so I hope to do an update this fall. If you’d like to see any other election-related stories regarding other neighborhoods around Seattle, let me know.
Joe Kennedy, the praying football coach, is back on the field in Bremerton. Here’s my coverage of that from the Jewish perspective last year.
I find it interesting — and I might be wrong about this — that there seems to be less discomfort around religious practice in public among younger generations than in older ones. This may be due to the fact that older generations had to fight more for separate spaces in an era of discrimination that has largely been erased, thanks to their very efforts. Thoughts?
Community Announcements
Check out the Seattle Jewish community calendar and the virtual calendar.
This week’s parasha is Ki Tavo.
Candlelighting in Seattle is at 7:31 p.m.
Check out Rabbi Anson Laytner’s new book, out September 8, Choosing Life After Tragedy: An Experience-based Theological Journey.
Calling all singers! Seattle Jewish Chorale is holding auditions Sept. 6th. More info: https://www.seattlejewishchorale.org/audition
Shoutouts!
Wishing all the students, faculty, and staff at all the Jewish day schools, a fantastic start to this new school year! —Connie Kanter
Shoutout to the film Golda. Helen Mirren's performance was amazing. She should get an Oscar. —Stephen A. Cohen
"If you’d like to see any other election-related stories regarding other neighborhoods around Seattle, let me know." Kim Schrier's town hall in Issaquah on the fentanyl crisis.
I disagreed with my rabbinic colleagues. I thought the billboards were clever--and I'm not even from Brooklyn. We need to learn to lighten up a little.