Jewish Family Service's New Project

The organization created in 1892 to help Jewish immigrants finds itself helping Israelis and local Jews.

“People don’t like to live in complexity.”

Jewish Family Service was founded in 1892 by 70 local Jewish women to help Jewish immigrants from Europe and the Mediterranean resettle here. It has touched myriad other local organizations and has gone on to uplift refugees and immigrants from a multitude of other countries. Many of those countries have been shredded by war.

Could the founders and leaders over the years have imagined that one day they’d be helping Israelis? Jews fortified by a state created to keep them safe seeking refuge here, of all places? Not to mention the thousands of Israelis already living and working among us, suddenly faced with a nasty hatred from which they had been sheltered.

JFS CEO Will Berkovitz recently returned from a trip to Israel to meet with other social service agencies and to understand what they’re going through, and to help. He shares his experiences and reflections as well as insight into how JFS is rising to meet new challenges here in the Seattle area. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Cholent: What were the biggest takeaways from your visit to Israel?

Will Berkovitz: The takeaway is that I don’t think the Western media does a good job of describing the level of trauma that that the entire society is under, and just how deeply the events of October 7th shook the foundations of the country and of the people. I would say I was most struck the sense of mutedness. It’s a sort of real sadness that just is pervasive across the country. It’s either on the surface or just below the surface. I saw so many people whose faces were just haunted or had no expression whatsoever. They were just in total shock. The hotel I stayed at, the only people that were living there were there because there’s 200,000 displaced internal refugees within Israel. And these are people who left more or less with whatever they had and are really trying to make sense of a new reality. The children are just sort of roaming around in the halls, trying to make meaning out of what they just experienced and endured and are enduring. I think that was what was most shocking.

When I was driving up the freeway, we came to an underpass. There was this graffiti, and I was so certain it was going to be sort of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel graffiti. I realized it was in Hebrew and I was like, wait, I’m not going to have to deal with that here. I’m not going to have to deal with that feeling of being under attack, being misunderstood, or having to defend myself. I physically felt myself relax, like a psychological safety. What was interesting is that the psychological safety led to a physical sense of safety. I don’t think many of us realize just how much in the United States we’re carrying with the incredible levels of anti-Semitism we’re seeing and the lack of real interest in curiosity or an interest in complexity.

Let’s start with how you’re interpreting the Western media’s interpretation of what’s going on. That’s near to my heart.

I think the challenge we have is, people don’t like to live in complexity. We like to live in simple binaries of fairy tales, of good versus evil, of righteous and not righteous. But but that’s just not reality. The reality is way more complicated. Once you’re talking about the Middle East and Israel, it’s an extraordinary complicated time and an extraordinarily complicated place. It always has been. I lived there for two years, during the height of the peace process, and Hamas was blowing up buses and cafes in Jerusalem. That is the same Hamas that perpetrated October 7th.

I think people don’t ask the followup question when people say “end the occupation.” They don’t ask, “what do you mean by occupation?” And because they don’t ask that question, they are allowed to sort of let the complexity slide by. I think that’s deeply problematic. Now, obviously, another thing I would say is, I think the Western media has done a phenomenal job of covering the tragedy in Gaza. I never heard from one Israeli who felt happy or good about the loss of innocent lives. You don’t hear that, either. And so you hear a very characteristic view of the Israelis and Israeli experience. I think that’s because it’s so hard to comprehend that everybody could have blood on their hands, and that it’s not a one-sided conflict.

I think it’s really easy for people to be look at Israel as Doctor Evil. Like you were saying, we think in superhero terms. Hamas is Robin Hood and Israel is Darth Vader. We as Jews are very comfortable with complexity, and have faith that other people can use their logic and come to these conclusions that we come to, and then they don’t, and it’s confusing. How do you see your role here as a community leader?

I would say that everything has become much more complicated. We are all in the business now of having to respond to anti-Semitism. When there’s graffiti on our building, when there’s graffiti across the street, when there’s clearly anti-Semitic posters that are popping up half a block from here, you can’t not respond to that. One of our things is education and emotional well-being. We’re an agency that is built on trying to take care of our community. Since October 7th we did hire a woman who’s leading a project called Israeli Community Services to take care of the the unique needs of the Israeli community who have been displaced and is facing tremendous anti-Semitism in the schools. What’s happening in the schools is horrible. We are trying to do our best to help people hold that space and interpret it and create places where people can connect.

And I would say my role is trying to interpret, because JFS is not a a global organization. We’re a local social service agency. But so much of the trauma affecting the Jewish community is affecting the Jewish community locally. It’s a societal problem that comes when you turn everything into a distillation. That happens when people are protesting and blocking freeways, and it causes fear. Holocaust survivors remember the experience — they’ve seen some of this before. So it is very triggering. It creates a very unsafe environment. People say that what they’re doing is political activism. But when you say “Zionists did this,” you’re saying the Jews did this, and I think it’s dishonest to pretend that you’re saying that we’re really just protesting Israel. I think to protest Israeli government policies is one thing, but you can look at the the slippage of language, which I don’t think is slippage. I think it’s either conscious or unconscious, but it’s attacking Jews for our existence. I think that is incredibly hard for people.

I’d say that the level of trauma that is in the community is very difficult, and it’s very difficult for people who have the belief of a two-state solution. I consider myself a Zionist, and yet that doesn’t mean I don’t believe the Palestinians should have a right to a state.

Have you adjusted your mission or your programming at JFS?

We have people here because they had flee their homes, whether it be the north or the south. We’ve given to date roughly $30,000 to support the Israeli community here. Sigal, the Israeli community services coordinator, has helped organize conversations about the rise in anti-Semitism at school. The Israeli community is unique in terms of their cultural experience and how this is manifesting.

We’ve helped about 21 specific families with finding jobs, getting resumes, making connections, helping them connect to the schools. A lot of kids aren’t feeling safe in their public schools, so they’re transferring to Jewish schools. We’re helping them with legal support. We’ve also helped with some psychological supports by connecting them to Israeli therapists in town. I think that is just indicative. And we don’t know how expansive that need is right now.

One of the things that’s very different, and I don’t think people understand, is that the war in Ukraine is a horrible tragedy, but it doesn’t occupy all of my mental space. It’s not constantly in my mind. For many, many Jews, the war with Hamas is very present in our minds. And for Israelis it’s even more present because it’s their immediate families in many cases that are under threat. So that creates a unique set of challenges. When you look at what’s going on at the university campuses, when you look at what’s going on in the high schools, and the frankly, the middle schools, we’re not teaching our children how to think in complexity. The result of this is, if you’re in a school you become “othered.” Kids have to hide their identity, hide their Jewishness. Kids will ask, “are you on Team Palestine or Team Israel?” The question doesn't compute. This is about humanity. A kind of meanness has been accepted.

I’ve also done a a fair amount in helping local politicians, local civic leaders, understand this conflict and understand how it’s impacting the Jewish community in Seattle, and trying to frankly get people to speak up and use their voice [to say] where someone’s political activism, which is appropriate, slides over into anti-Semitism.

The protests appear to be very grassroots with things happening spontaneously. But this isn’t spontaneous at all. It’s extraordinarily well organized. It’s hard to see the whole thing unless you’re looking for it. That’s one of the things that I’m trying to point out: Look, this is not a one-off thing, this is part of something much greater. It’s just deeply problematic right now.

Again, critique of the Israeli government actions in Gaza — I think everybody can agree. I don’t know anybody who has a heart that doesn’t see the death of innocent civilians as a tragedy. But I also think there isn’t enough conversation about what is happening in our local community and what are we doing to destroy a sense of safety by creating a hostile environment for the Jews and the Israelis that live in our local Jewish community. [The protestors] want to feel like they’re having an impact on something that’s a world away that they’re not going to influence, and in the process of doing that they’re creating a very hostile environment for people in the Jewish community here.

I would like the mayor to be more vociferous about the sort of breakdown of civil society and civil discourse. Free speech is one thing, but when you’re silencing somebody else in order to to make your point, and you’re creating a hostile environment, that’s not about free speech, that’s about threat.

Well, then, that’s what we get blamed for. The Jewish community gets kind of framed as this powerful lobby group.

I don’t remember what rabbi said it, but when you point your finger at someone else, they’ll have three fingers pointing back at you. People are really good at justifying really bad behavior. “By any means necessary.” I mean, listen to the language. Those words have consequences. Words have violence, but only when it’s convenient. The the lack of understanding of the way anti-Semitism is erased from many, if not most, if not all, DEI conversations. The way in which two truths can simultaneously exists in complexity, and that it’s our job to hold complexity and to live in the gray. If you really don’t believe in dehumanizing people, then don’t dehumanize people. If you really care this deeply about a topic, are you really willing to create a hostile environment for citizens in Seattle? Because that’s what’s happening. I think that hostility is really palpable. It’s present. It is the lived experience of the Jewish community today.

Cover photo: an Israeli woman holding the image of her daughter, who was killed on October 7th. Photo by Will Berkovitz

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Shoutouts

Shout out to the NYHS Mane Idea writers and editors for winning two Jewish Scholastic Press Association awards. —Ty Alhadeff

Shoutout to Senator Schumer, for saying what a lot of supporters of Israel are thinking. —Peter Bacho

Mazel tov to Pamela Lavitt, Eloise Wukmir, and all the staff and volunteers for another fabulous film festival. SJFF 29 rocked! —Jessica Prince

Mazal Tov to Mimi Broches who was selected to be a student speaker at Columbia University commencement’s baccalaureate service in May. —Connie Kanter

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