By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent
The Seattle premiere of “The J Street Challenge,” a documentary film critical of the self-described pro-Israel and pro-peace group J Street, drew over 250 adults to Congregation Ezra Bessaroth November 12, according to organizers, but the screening drew fire in a written letter of protest sent before the screening from 13 clergy in the Washington Coalition of Rabbis who said they “fear the screening — divorced from direct dialogue and respectful exchange with those of differing views — will lead Am Yisrael to further division.”
“When we got the letter, we said ‘Take the first three questions, they’re yours,’” Ari Hoffman, volunteer director for Seattle NCSY, a co-sponsor of the movie, told The Jewish Sound.
“We said it would be an open Q and A and that anybody could ask a question,” he said. “They didn’t just ignore us. They said ‘no.’”
“The J Street Challenge,” the first movie in the “Love of Eretz Yisrael” film series at Seattle Orthodox synagogue Ezra Bessaroth, features interviews with Harvard professors Alan Dershowitz and Ruth Wisse, deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post Caroline Glick, Boston University history professor Richard Landes, and Bret Stephens, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, among others, all stating that J Street’s policies are bad for Israel.
It also highlights two of J Street’s funders, hedge fund billionaire and activist for liberal causes George Soros, and Genevieve Lynch, who is a board member on the National Iranian-American Council.
J Street president and founder Jeremy Ben-Ami declined to be interviewed for the film. Instead, it includes several clips from public statements made by high profile J Street leaders, including Ben-Ami, and Daniel Levy, one of its original organizers and a current political consultant.
In a personal response in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper to Dershowitz’s accusations that J Street’s main goal is to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Israel, Ben-Ami detailed a long list of “existential threats” facing Israel, and suggested that anti-J Street Jews refocus their ire.
“We urge those attacking us to spend a little less time leveling baseless accusations against a now-established Jewish organization and a little more time addressing these fundamental challenges facing the Israel we love,” Ben-Ami told Haaretz.
“The J Street Challenge” was released by Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a Newton, Mass.-based nonprofit “dedicated to promoting peaceful coexistence in an ethnically diverse America by educating the American public about the need for a moderate political leadership that supports tolerance and core American values in communities across the nation.” Much of the group’s work deals with pro-Israel activism and exposing dangers of Islamic radicalism. It was produced, written, and directed by Ilya Feostikov and Avi Goldwasser.
Goldwasser, a Boston-based, Brooklyn-born entrepreneur who lived in Israel for much of his life, joined the group in Seattle by Skype to take questions from the audience.
Speaking to The Jewish Sound from Boston, Goldwasser said that after screening the movie in more than 70 U.S. cities, he has seen this reaction before, but that it’s never risen to quite this formal of a level.
“It’s exposed the kind of irrational censorship attitude that people have about something they don’t like,” said Goldwasser. “In Boston, where we screened it at the JCC, they received phone calls from people who objected to the film being screened, but the leadership of the JCC stood their ground.”
The Washington Coalition of Rabbis is described as providing “an important moral and religious voice for Washington State and spiritual leadership for our local Jewish communities,” according to its website.
One of the signatories to the Seattle letter, Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation’s Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, told The Jewish Sound that the rabbis’ letter was a call for dialogue, and that the dialogue is already happening.
“I signed the letter because I feel the Jewish community needs to have an open conversation about how to speak to each other,” said Rosenbaum.
The letter cites that past screenings have reportedly “sown dissension and mistrust in the communities in which the film has been shown.”
“People wrongly assume that someone who supports J Street is a hater of Israel, and that someone who supports AIPAC is right wing, or completely uncritical of Israel,” Rosenbaum said. “Those are false assumptions and we need to start breaking down those assumptions.”
Due to requests from the community to offer another screening of The J Street Challenge, the film was shown again on Nov. 25 at the South Bellevue Community Center.