“Being a Jewish leftist means being the inheritor of a really long-running tradition of standing for justice for all peoples.”

– Zohar Berman, Boston Workers Circle

BOSTON — A wide swath of activists, academics and organizations convened here this month to explore what it means to be a Jewish leftist today, with many conference participants connecting events in Israel and the Palestinian territories with anti-immigrant activities in the United States.

The 2026 Conference on the Jewish Left, held at Boston University on Feb. 12, attracted almost 1,000 people, split evenly between in-person and online attendees, according to organizers. The free event featured four major addresses, 16 in-person and online workshops, and an exhibitors hall of 30 Jewish grassroots organizations, progressive nonprofits, religious and congregational groups, and artists.

City University of New York Professor Peter Beinart, author of the recently published “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning,” set the tone for the conference when, in his keynote address, he said the governments of both Israel and the U.S. share an unwillingness to accept the equal rights of all individuals.

“It starts from the principle that you believe in the idea of equality under the law: that people should be treated equally by the state, irrespective of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, all these things,” he said. “It also means to think about how Jewish tradition, Jewish texts, Jewish culture, relates to those basic principles.”

In an interview, Beinart told the Journal that being a Jewish leftist today means supporting the struggle for equality under the law, human rights and human dignity.

“That struggle is very alive in the United States, with the Trump administration’s effort to basically create a kind of white Christian supremacist state,” Beinart said. “It’s also the core of the struggle with Israel/Palestine: between Jewish supremacy and people who believe in the principle of equality under the law.”

When told that a contingent of Hebrew College rabbinical students – a number of whom attended the conference – recently traveled to Minnesota to defend immigrants’ rights, Beinart nodded. “It’s not surprising to me that people who supported that principle in Israel/Palestine would also support it in Minneapolis,” he said.

Among the conference participants, Journal readers may be most familiar with Rabbi Greg Hersh, formerly of Wakefield’s Temple Emmanuel. In 2025, Hersh left Emmanuel to found a new congregation, V’ahavtah: A Judaism Beyond Zionism Synagogue, in Cambridge.

At V’ahavta – Hebrew for “and you shall love,” from the prayer following the Shema – Hersh strives to reclaim the Judaism “that still speaks to us from the ancient book – the Torah – that is still relevant to this day.” Central tenets of the congregation’s creed include welcoming the stranger; pursuing justice; believing all humans deserve compassion; and loving our neighbors as ourselves. “We practice a Judaism that is noncolonial, nongenocidal. We embrace who we are here,” he said.

Hersh, a member of Rabbis for Ceasefire and the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council, envisions the Jewish left as “a beautiful, energized community that is ready to let their religion and their values and their politics all be the same.”

This third annual conference was again presented by BU’s Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, and organized primarily by CURA’s director, BU Associate Professor Jeremy Menchik. Menchik described the “wonderful” diversity of groups at the event, from the Orthodox Halachic Left and the secular Workers Circle to the environmental group Dayenu and the political nonprofit Seeds of Peace.

Menchik told us his personal motivation for encouraging Jewish collective action to struggle against discrimination and oppression.

“When my great-grandfather left Russia because of antisemitism, because of persecution, he came to the United States,” he said. “He joined the Workmen’s Circle in order to be part of a Yiddish-speaking community that was working in radical solidarity with other labor unions. Workers Circle has done that for 126 years, including fighting for civil rights in the 1920s and the 1930s as well as the 1960s.”

Menchik defines himself as a Jewish internationalist, working in solidarity with other nations. “I don’t love the language of Zionism and anti-Zionism,” he said. “I prefer a language where you view the safety and the security and the thriving of the Jewish people as intimately connected with other nations, regardless of race, religion or passport.”

Another conference organizer, BU Law Professor Jonathan Feingold, saw the event as an opportunity to build solidarity. “One of the primary things,” he said, “is finding community with other people who are just as fully and unequivocally committed to fighting for a world in which everyone has equal rights and can live with dignity domestically and anywhere else.”

Feingold, a member of Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff – which held a session on campus organizing at the conference – spoke of developing resistance to rising authoritarianism in the United States. “We see the ways in which the Trump regime has really hurtled to a fascistic approach to governance,” he said. “I think it’s critical for all communities – and Jewish communities in particular – to be part of the resistance to that.”

Legacy Jewish labor groups represented at the conference agreed that Jews’ safety and future is wrapped up in those of oppressed peoples everywhere.

“Our founders established the Workers Circles [in 1910] because there was no one coming to save them,” said Zohar Berman, social justice and cultural organizer for Boston Workers Circle. “This was pre-New Deal, before the assumption that the state has any obligation to provide for everyday citizens. Orthodox Jewish authorities were not showing up for Jewish working class people. If there was going to be anyone showing up for Jewish working class people, it had to be Jewish working class people showing up for ourselves.

“Being a Jewish leftist means being the inheritor of a really long-running tradition of standing for justice for all peoples.”

Jonathan Feinberg, director of the New England Jewish Labor Committee, said his group’s approach to defending immigrants’ and workers’ rights is to build coalitions with other organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts and JALSA, the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action.

(Neither group participated in the Conference on the Jewish Left. JALSA CEO Cindy Rowe noted in an email, “It seemed like most of the sessions were focused on international issues and JALSA only works on domestic issues, so it didn’t feel like a good fit for our mission.”)

Feinberg said the New England Jewish Labor Committee continues to engage in union struggles locally, including partnering with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU 32BJ) on behalf of Harvard’s custodial staff and security guards.

“These are the people who make the university a safe, functional place,” he said. “They do difficult, physical labor, and that labor should be respected with a fair contract, especially from an organization like Harvard, which is not only one of the wealthiest organizations in the world, it’s also the largest landowner and one of the largest employers in the state of Massachusetts.”

While the union that represents the state’s K-12 teachers, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, did not have an official presence at the conference, several association members did attend. Longtime high school librarian and English teacher Sue Doherty belongs to Together for an Inclusive Massachusetts, a coalition of Jewish, Muslim, labor, education, student, civil rights and other groups and individuals that advocates for justice and equity.

“TIM organizes concerned Massachusetts residents to try to make sure that any work that’s done around antisemitism is done in a way that doesn’t harm some groups at the expense of other groups,” said Doherty, who is also a member of MTA Rank and File for Palestine.

Particularly worrisome, Doherty said, is the report of the recently concluded state Legislature’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism. “We’re especially concerned about the recommendations for K-12; but we’re also concerned about [the commission’s recommendations] for law enforcement, higher ed, and health care and the workplace.”

Together for an Inclusive Massachusetts is raising alarms over state legislators weaponizing antisemitism to inhibit free speech and academic freedom. Another coalition member, Mattea Kramer, expressed her concerns about the Trump administration’s using claims of antisemitism and creating fear of antisemitism to justify cracking down on free speech, as well as to justify arresting and deporting noncitizen student protesters for speaking out in favor of Palestinian rights or criticizing Israeli policy.

“I’m here today to step up and say, ‘Not in my name: Do not weaponize Jewish identity,’” said Kramer, who also belongs to Jewish Voice for Peace Western Mass. “There are many, many of us – some of whom are gathered here today, and many others who are not – who do not believe in these policies, who do not want our identities weaponized to justify authoritarianism in this country. The stakes are high.”

In our conversation, Beinart criticized establishment Jewish organizations for their being controlled by a small number of very wealthy, politically conservative donors. This, he said, reflects the larger problem of oligarchy in society.

“Those people have no interest in the historic questions of economic justice and economic concerns that American Jewish organizations once cared about,” Beinart said. “They don’t have democratic internal processes.”

This critique was echoed by Arielle Angel, editor of Jewish Currents, in her session, “We Need New Jewish Institutions.” The alternative to Jewish organizations being driven by big-money donors, she suggested, is a model where groups are funded by dues-paying members. Such organizations, she said, would be more democratic because they would be accountable to broader bases of financial support.

In an interview, Angel stressed the relationship between activism and fundraising. “There’s no institutional activism that exists without a funding structure,” she said. “There is no idea of a grassroots activism that isn’t tainted by money. It doesn’t make sense.”

Angel also said that without a professional class of paid organizational activists, only the idle rich could afford to engage in activism. “You need money to be able to do things,” she said.

Working toward that end is the Jewish Liberation Fund – itself a project of the social justice philanthropy the Proteus Fund – an intermediary grantmaker that raises money to redistribute to progressive Jewish groups. In 2025, the Boston-based JLF distributed over $600,000 to almost 60 Jewish organizations, including local groups JOIN for Justice, Boston Workers Circle and JALSA.

JLF co-Executive Director Joanna Ware, along with Rabbi Becky Silverstein, a principal of Horizon Philanthropy, led a workshop on “Money to the Movement: Building Philanthropic Infrastructure.” (Horizon, along with its fiscal sponsor NEO Philanthropy, connects progressive Jewish organizations with philanthropists, funding professionals and advisers.)

In the workshop, the presenters noted the centrality of fundraising to Jewish activism. Ware explained JLF’s fundraising model with two charts. In the first, many donors made small donations and a few donors made large donations. In the second, the least money was raised from many small donors and the most money was raised from a few large donors.

“Money is medicine,” Silverstein said. Θ

Contact reporter Brett M. Rhyne at brett@jewishjournal.org.