The inevitable finally happened. The public presentation of Confronting Hate Together, the joint exhibit by the Washington State Jewish Historical Society, the Black Heritage Society, and the Wing Luke Museum, has been called off.
Instead, it will be shown privately for Jewish community members on a date and place to be announced in the future.
The exhibit, which took 18 months of collaboration among the partners, launched in May at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle’s historic Chinatown/International District. But as soon as the curtains lifted on the series of panels about the history of redlining and discrimination that faced all three groups here, some 26 Wing Luke staffers seized on a minor reference to Israel and walked off the job. The crisis shut down the museum and led to revisions, a new panel, and planned relaunch in June at a new location.
Confronting Hate Exhibit Not Quite Ready to Confront the Public
After its opening was thwarted by an activist walkout in May, Confronting Hate Together, an exhibit about historic and ongoing Jewish, Asian, and African American discrimination in Seattle hosted by the Wing Luke Museum, is not ready to reopen and may have to change locations.
That day came and went, and on August 7th, the other shoe dropped. According to a press released from the Washington State Jewish Historical Society and the JCRC:
It is with great disappointment, pain, and sadness we share that, due to circumstances out of our control, the Confronting Hate Together (CHT) Exhibit will not be presented jointly to the community in a public venue by the Black Heritage Society (BHS), Washington State Jewish Historical Society (WSJHS) and the Wing Luke Museum (WLM).
The circumstances beyond their control are still unclear, but have to do with the new venue, not the partners. WSJHS executive director Lisa Kranseler did not go into details.
Wing Luke spokesperson Steve McLean says that he was caught off guard by the decision. “We are naturally disappointed that the Jewish Historical Society felt they needed to do that,” he said. “I’m still processing this and trying to evaluate what this means.”
It wasn’t for lack of trying, McLean says. “We all leaned in. None of these organizations is large. We have limited resources and staff. We all put our hearts into it. The greatest disappointment is the work everyone put in.”
Still, none of this would have gone down had Wing Luke staff not gotten away with causing a scene in the first place. The underlying problem is that anti-Israel activists aren’t looking for common ground or dialogue or peace. They are playing a zero-sum game to isolate Israel and the Jews who are sympathetic to its existence. Many of our leaders, internally and in the general Seattle community, are still operating in a worldview where dialogue is the key to peace. Isn’t listening and working with others a tenet of a healthy democratic society?
“There are no winners in this when a project was created to promote togetherness and a partnership that at the present time looks like a situation where people are divided,” says McLean. “These different conversations didn’t play out like people had hoped.”
As executive director Joel Barraquiel Tan wrote in an op-ed to the Seattle Times in July about the fallout: “Fluency in holding complexity that spans a range of perspectives is essential. Active listening, a growth mindset and skills to navigate uncomfortable conversations are the norms, coupled with effective decision-making processes and communications.”
This is just not the playbook anymore. The Wing Luke was apparently unaware that their institutional alignment with progressive values could have led to this stress fracture, and that allegiance seems to have pushed them back into the arms of activist staffers. A pro-permanent ceasefire statement on their website from June 2024 apologizes for the “harm” they caused by “delaying a public expression of our moral position.”
Our own leadership needs to absorb this message, too. The WSJHS-JCRC statement echoes the saying that the anti-Semite doesn’t accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something, but rather because he enjoys watching him turn his pockets inside out to prove his innocence:
Throughout this process, the WSJHS has been open and responsive to feedback from partners, sensitive to the international climate and challenges, and we have leaned into honesty and transparency. We worked tirelessly for months to prepare for the CHT exhibit. Furthermore, since the initial launch on May 21st, we made adjustments and modifications to help people better understand the exhibit by clarifying language regarding the exhibition's intent to focus on confronting hate locally by three historically redlined communities.
In the end, the activists protesting the Jewish experience of anti-Zionism blending into anti-Semitism used anti-Zionism to shut down the Jewish community. Somehow this isn’t discrimination, just politics. And we still try to accommodate them.
The organizations end with a desperate plea for Seattle’s leaders to step up and assert “that Seattle is still a welcoming and safe home for Jews and that antisemitism has no place here.” But as the activists made clear, any attempt to link anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism must be stopped. As long as leaders capitulate to this demand or stay blind to the radicalism that underpins it, Seattle will become increasingly less welcoming and less safe for Jews, and ultimately everyone.
Cover photo: WSJHS executive director Lisa Kranseler with the exhibit panel in question. Courtesy Wing Luke Museum.
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Candlelighting in Seattle is at 8:12. The parasha is Devarim. Tisha B’Av, a full-day fast mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, falls at sundown on Monday.
Shoutouts
Shoutout to comedian Eitan Levine, who is going for the record for most opening pitches and raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. He threw the opening pitch for the M’s Wednesday night. —Greg Scruggs
Mazal Bueno to Etan Basseri on the publication of his new children’s book, A Turkish Rosh Hashanah. —Ty Alhadeff
Shout out to Suzi Levine who is working to keep Democracy alive through all of her work. —Stacy Lawson
Shoutout to Jacob Bichachi for singing the National Anthem at the Mariner’s game on July 24. —Emily
Shoutout to Rivy Poupko Kletenik for her appointment as interim head of school at Denver Jewish Academy. —Emily
Not surprising, just outrageous. Seattle showing its true prevalent colours, which have always been there covertly most of the time. Only the progressives truly belong here, everyone else is either excluded or doesn't have a voice, tacitly or not so tacitly. I apologize for this generalization, and I imagine that there are many Seattleites who are not aligned with the radical narrative. It may also be that the exhibit wasn't reopen not necessarily or not only because there was no desire to do so on the part of those who could, nor because those in charge were anti-Jewish (it's nice to be idealistic at times), but because there was fear of the so called "public opinion," which is prevailingly, vociferously radical "progressive."
I've read the article twice and I'm still confused. Who is this 'vendor' who put a stop to it all? Sounds like all parties were willing and then the historical society blinked. A better explanation is owed to all. Of course the Wing Luke Museum should have fired all those employees who protested. Unfortunately, the museum caved, but the historical society should have held out until justice was done. In this case, justice delayed was justice denied. Note to Emily - you really should submit a guest editorial to the Seattle Times about this.