Not in My Name: Jewish Perspectives on Identity, Democracy, and Justice in a Divided World: Alan Minsky

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Join Robert Scheer and his guest Alan Minsky, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, in this first of a new series of the Scheer Intelligence podcast exploring  the complex issues of Jewish identity, the fight for religious and political freedom, and the urgent need for justice in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Through candid conversations with voices rooted in Jewish tradition and progressive activism, this series delves into how the principles of debate, human rights and democratic liberty can guide us toward a more compassionate and equitable future, as opposed to the deep shame of this dreadful historical moment we disown as “Not in Our Name.”

Credits:

Host: Robert Scheer

Producer: Joshua Scheer

Guest: Alan Minsky

Transcript

Robert Scheer

Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of my podcast series, Scheer Intelligence, which sounds presumptuous. And I also mentioned, which I believe, that the intelligence comes from my guests, not the hosts. That’s why I do this. I’m an old guy now, but I still learn. And I even learn about subjects that I think I know quite a bit about. And that’s what this new series is about.

The title that I’m still working on is not in my name. There is a group called Not in Our Name. But I want to make this quite personal in terms of the podcast. And I want to talk primarily to people who come out of a Jewish tradition, which the very idea of a Jewish tradition, are we talking about a vast, I don’t know, often it feels like vast majority that are secular to one considerable degree or another. 

If they’re religious, are they reformed, as many American Jews are, but that’s a religion not recognized in Israel with any serious status and reform. Rabbis can’t even perform basic rights of marriage and so forth. And even if you say Orthodox, what kind of Orthodox and to what degree is literal and set in a certain age. And how it relates to Israel.

Or Jewish activism in general, or whether Jews are progressive or conservative, nationalist, whatever, also a subject to great Talmudic debate and so forth. And of course, the very idea of Israel is heresy, at least was historically to many religious Jews. is also the Messiah creates Israel, not ordinary human beings. So these are all contentious. 

But what’s happened is, which is healthy, good. It’s true of every religion. It’s true of every philosophy. People can, you know, and in fact the Jewish experience is one of contention, ideological ideas, Talmudic scholarship, debate, and so forth. And there’s a lot of, you know, even stand-up comedy humor about different opinions on everything. 

But what’s happened is now is that because of the position of Israel in the context of American foreign policy and I’ll use the word American imperialism, as it has also been in the context of British imperialism when the state of Israel was created. Others are basically making those decisions and the case in point right now is the US Congress and the House of Representatives defining what is an anti-Semite, and by definition, then what is a Jew? 

And when his criticism of some Jews, like Zionists, who maybe the group that’s particularly in power now in Israel, if you criticize them, criticize Netanyahu, then they’ll call you anti-Semitic. And particularly if you’re Jewish, they’ll say you’re a traitor. Trump even talks about, I don’t know why I say Trump even. He specializes in sort of demonizing anyone that disagrees with the group that he wants to favor. 

And so I want to start here before I introduce Alan Minsky, who’s somebody I know professionally, because he was really sort of the main person running a terrific Pacifica radio station, a great one in Berkeley, a great one in LA, KPFK. And during its heyday, hopefully that will come back again, but during its heyday, I know Alan because he was the program director.

And just did a great job, particularly in the high content of discussion on every issue. And now he’s the executive director, I guess, of the Progressive Democrats of America, which is a group that’s trying to bring vitality and purpose and reason and decency back to a Democratic party that I would say is in disarray, but that’s probably the best thing you could say about him.

When you’re organized, actually can be quite dangerous, not to excuse the danger of Trump and his Republican Party now. But I want to begin with a technical point here about freedom in America as defined by our First Amendment. Because we’re in this crazy situation now where, since I mentioned Trump, let’s talk about him. 

He seems to feel that as president the United States, he can define what is anti-Semitism? What speech is off limits is anti-Semitism? And in the process of doing that, he defines what it means to be Jewish. So when is speech threatening and challenging the right of Jewish people to be Jewish? Or when is it merely speech that’s challenging the political decisions of a party that happens to be in power in Israel? 

And so I want to go to the First Amendment for wisdom about religious freedom. And I asked Alan if he had and we had a little chat before we started. You’ve got it up on your screen. So can you read the part of the First Amendment, which is, after all, supposed to be governing our limits or freedom of discussion? Yes.

Well, the final two thirds of the first amendment speak to the rights of free speech, the press, and to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. But the first amendment begins with these two phrases. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. And I think clearly what you’re talking about with the Trumpian and the

Trump inspired legislation in Congress certainly speaks to the second of those that prohibiting the free exercise thereof, that the government is interfering with that in terms of what defines Judaism.

Yeah, and in terms of this podcast series, spinoff of my others, and I like the title Not in My Name, I’m going to be, at least for the beginning stages, talking to people who come out of a Jewish tradition. And when they say not in my name, they’re saying, don’t tell me that blowing up Palestinians, or wrecking freedom in American universities in the name of stopping anti-Semitism is good for the Jews or is good for me. 

It’s not in my name. I don’t believe in it. And it’s not the kind of Jew that I am. And so I’m turning to people like you and yes, it’s stacked because clearly I’m talking to people who are not represented in this debate. We hear from big Jewish organizations. We hear from lobbyists like AIPAC, you know, we hear from so forth. But I know and feel it certainly myself, that it doesn’t fit us. 

But more important than that, it goes against what I, and let me put my own prejudice out there, think is the greatest thing about being Jewish. Because even when we disagree, as the whole Talmudic tradition is about what scripture might say or whether you should indeed pay attention to scripture, whether it should be literal or so forth, at the heart of it is the debate and the right to debate and for no government, certainly no government to tell us how to resolve that debate. 

Because otherwise they might decide that Jews killed Christ and therefore you could kill Jews, right? After all that has been done. That’s what the Holocaust was all about. So I want to ask you about that in terms of your own personal experience. Your name is Minsky, Alan Minsky, you’re the son of a very famous economist, the author of The Minsky Moment in Economics. 

You grew up in that kind of intellectual, primarily Jewish family, I say primarily. So just talk about your own background and your own connection with being Jewish and then how you relate to this use of the anti-Semitism concern, which obviously is an enormous problem in the history of the world, not just of Jewish people but how it’s being used now to destroy the thing that was most important to Jews, which is the freedom to establish their own relation to a divinity, to social justice, to the meaning of life.

Alan Minsky

Well, I think first off, before we get into my family, I think one of the most incredible episodes in human history is that Jewish culture and the Jewish religion have such a gravity, almost meant literally, it tracks things in to it, that for at least 16 centuries, probably 17 centuries, you had the maintenance of a vibrant Jewish culture in the diaspora without a state, without a geographic location. 

And in fact, it moves around, the Jewish population moves around at various points. First off to Babylonia, and then you have, of course, a strong Jewish presence across North Africa and somewhat Southern Mediterranean, Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, but then over to Spain. And then, of course, a huge concentration in Eastern Europe. At no point is there a Jewish state.

And at no point does the vibrancy of the Jewish culture diminish during that time. Now that can be taken as a commentary on the state of Israel, but just the fact to establish that. And I can go into personally my relationship to the Jewish teachings of those 17th centuries and before and after, but my family, first of all, by Orthodox law, I would not qualify as Jewish. My mother was born to an Italian household.

My father was born to a Yiddish language household in Chicago. To give you a sense of the kind of background that my father came out of, his parents literally met at a, actually on the way to a Yiddish language celebration hosted by the Socialist Party of the United States of Karl Marx’s 100th birthday. My grandfather saw this young woman on a trolley and thought she was cute, apparently, attractive.

And then she was going to the same location he was going, which was the Socialist Party, USA party for Karl Marx’s 100th birthday. That’s May 5th, 1918. My father was born about 15 months later to a Yiddish language household. His father was not, his father may have been Bar Mitzvahed. He has a very difficult relationship with his father. 

So he may have been, but he told him he wasn’t. And my father was not because the household was broadly speaking, a socialist internationalist household. And that’s, have we frozen, Bob, or can you hear me?

Robert Scheer

I can hear you very well. By the way, just say that was a very typical experience. Socialism was not alien to. Right. I dare you mention Marx, who after all was Jewish. You know, but and and and anti. Well, Hitler used the fact that there were quite a few Jewish people as a source of anti-Semitism. So red baiting, calling Jews communists or socialists, whether they were or not, became the major prop really of Nazism. We talk about the Holocaust, you know, yes, take it

Well, Jews, of course, they get both sides of it, right? They’re both the bankers and the worst of the capitalists accused of being. then there, course, communism and Bolshevikism is blamed on the Jews in Central Europe and United States as well. And some of the anti-Semitic tropes over the last more than century now. But to give you a sense of the texture of Judaism that I was raised in, yes, exactly what you said, that there was this great left wing, certainly highly ethical and morally grounded political tendencies. 

Obviously Jewish Americans have voted liberal left, progressive left, and radical left, and they’re highly represented among left radical movements in the United States throughout my entire life, although they threw up until at least very, very recently and probably still through to the present. my father was a socialist internationalist. And in that sense, he wasn’t a supporter of the state of Israel.

Alan Minsky

But simultaneously, as much as that was a part of my father’s identity, so was his Jewishness. And in so many ways in my household, where my mother, when she took my father’s name, understood that she was living in what would socially be identified as a Jewish household, and we never turned away from that. And so, so much of Jewish culture is a part of the household that I grew up inside St. Louis, Missouri in University City, which to the areas outside of University City, was known as U City or Jew City. Okay. 

And there’s about a population of 50,000 Jews in St. Louis, most of them concentrated in and around University City. And every Saturday morning, my father wouldn’t go to temple, but he would go pick up bagels, cream cheese, lox, know, herring and cream sauce, whitefish, et cetera. And always my dad would highlight authors I was reading who were Jewish.

framing culture, literature, art, sports through a Jewish American matrix. And that’s the sort of air I breathed growing up. And I adopted it personally. And so to me, it’s not insignificant that tonight, actually, Bob, I’m going to Dodger Stadium to get the giveaway t-shirt, which is a Sandy Koufax jersey of the Los Angeles Dodgers tonight. 

And that I got heroes who were in literature, in film, in comedy, in music. One of the first serious authors that I attached to was Franz Kafka when I was 12 or 13. Of course, I loved Woody Allen movies and grew up inside Jewish comedy and culture for people who don’t know the most famous lower Manhattan burlesque house was Minsky’s and no relationship to my father’s family as far as we know.

And then Bob Dylan. I obviously grew up in the generation after the 1960s where rock music was completely culturally hegemonic. I really got into it. And then I discovered the master of it was a Jew. And that meant a ton to me. Bob Zimmerman, Robert Zimmerman, correct. And then look later on in life, I did get very interested actually in Jewish scholarship, Jewish teaching, post-diasporic Jewish writing, including the Talmud.

And I remember it was actually after I graduated college. I had a girlfriend who was taking a class at Brooklyn College. And I was waiting to pick her up and I found a copy of I Am Thou by Martin Buber and I started reading it. And that got me interested in, you know, really post Old Testament Jewish writing. And then later on, I was taking classes at UC Irvine with the Tunisian Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida. But in particular, he was highlighting the work of a 20th century Jewish ethical philosopher named Emmanuel Levinas. And to this day, Levinas is a writer who’s, again, my interest in for a couple years after college. 

I actually, you know, read into the Talmud, tried to understand and learn about, you know, some of the most celebrated rabbis and their writings and their debates. And I found a lot of wisdom in actually Jewish writing without ever becoming religious or relieving and entertaining the idea of pursuing converting formally to the Jewish religion. That just wasn’t going to be my habit. But in Levinas is a Jewish 20th century philosopher very, very much inscribed inside that tradition. And through Derrida’s work, I encountered Levinas’s, which I encourage everybody to look into. 

It’s a very, very beautiful, very human approach to what philosophy is about. How do humans have meaning? How do we understand and construct the world and Levinas grounds it in our relationship in the eyes of the other. And now if we can turn to the political moment, one of the tragedies and the things that I even reflected on being familiar with Levinas’ writing is again so much of Jewish teaching there’s compassion towards the other and what’s transpiring right now in Israel and in Gaza.

It seems absolutely inimical to the ethics of the Magna 11S. And so, yeah, that’s a bit of my background as an American Jew as I see myself. I’m very much self-identified as Jewish. You know, I’m the kind of guy who sits around with friends of mine and we figure out if Steve Sachs was Jewish, was David Cohn Jewish, a baseball player? Nah, he wasn’t. We hoped he was, that kind of thing.

I’ve always been really with the Jewish baseball players and Jewish athletes. And I can tell you, can tell you that Mick Jones of the Clash was a Russian Jewish immigrant in that band.

Robert Scheer

Yeah, but I want to bring it back because that is exactly what the Constitution was protecting. Your right and your father’s right and I guess your mother’s right too because, you know, she identified with a Jewish family and to do that free of government interference, prohibition, and what have you. I have to bring that up because people don’t mention that about the Constitution and that particular thing. 

The wording you read, I mean, it’s that they can’t tell you how to think about your own religion. Because after all, they were giving this instruction primarily to people who thought they were Christians of one kind or another. Only they didn’t like those other Christians in the neighboring community. They didn’t like the Church of England, to begin with, many of them that had been the official inheritor after the Catholic Church and so forth.

So I want to get that across because the reason I’m doing this series of podcasts, I think there’s two things to stress. One is that Jews are being denied their right to practice their religion in the ways that they personally feel is meaningful. That’s to begin with. We’re being told by AIPAC, we’re told by politicians that some wealthier Jews can give a lot of money to. We’re being told by Netanyahu in Israel what it means to be a Jew. 

So a very well-known Jewish economist, and by the way, Jews used to be discriminated against in the academic world. I remember when I was going to City College, and by the way, when I was growing up, some anti-Semites referred to New York City as Jew York City, and City College was derided because at that point we had a lot of Jewish kids there, and actually we got all these smart kids, because they were told don’t apply for Harvard or Yale because they didn’t want Jews from New York. 

They might take a few from outside of America, but there was stern discrimination against Jews from Bronx or Brooklyn. I don’t know, maybe in Manhattan they could sneak through. And so that’s one really critical thing here, which is it’s an anti-Semitic in its heart.

Alan Minsky

Right. Be able for a government to tell you what it means to be Jewish. I mean, after all, the Nazis had Jews in the concentration camp. They said, well, they were pretty good. We can use them. There are agents. They’ll herd the other Jews around. They’ll betray them and so forth. But the second point I want to throw in and now turn it back to you was that it is also so it’s taking away fundamental right to define one’s relation to religion in whatever way you want.

from the individual giving it to the state. And secondly, it’s used as a weapon to prevent anyone else in the society from thinking independently about how their military money is spent, what are bombs, if well, 2,000 pound bombs paid for, whether you’re Jewish or not Jewish, paid for by American taxpayers can blow up schools and Gaza, kill people, know, commit this horrible carnage. And yet,

If you reject to it, you’ll be called anti-Semitic. It’s bizarre. Absolutely bizarre. And I wonder, invoking your father, how would he feel about this? A very well-known Jewish academician, what would he say?

And right now I think one of things that my father would point out is that there’s, and again, he was hypersensitive to anti-Semitism, loathed it in all of its forms, was worried always about its reappearance and rise. And by the way, was recognized that Jewish life in America was as free and as outside of the threats of anti-Semitism as he understood had ever been the case for Jews since the diaspora, if not, of course, with the Roman occupation beforehand. And so that this was a very welcoming place, not that

Anti-Semitism wasn’t present in the United States, but it was much, much more toned down. And Jews had become, obviously, in some of the very highest profile cultural products in the United States. Across the board, Jews became so prominent and so commonplace to have prominent Jews that increasingly so I’m sure over his life, that this was very welcome to him. However, he was very attentive to beware of them blaming the Jews. 

Beware of them blaming the Jews. And so now the most sacrosanct of all American traditions, that is per the United States of America and our constitutional republic, our right of free speech, what is the cudgel being used to undermine it in claims of antisemitism? I think my father would see that very clearly and find it very threatening and very, very dangerous. 

And I think he felt that while the United States was a safe place, the broad array of historical tropes that are anti-Semitic are so well known to so many people around the world. mean, of course, first and foremost is, yes, Judaism produces in Christian mythology, mythology in the Christian religion, I apologize for that, the Christian religion, the arrival of the Messiah as a young Jewish man and then of course that the Jews killed the Messiah, right? 

And then, you know, what was the excuse for the popularization of the rise of Nazism in terms of the virulent anti-Semitism that informed that movement from the beginning was the idea that the Jews had turned out of German people, that they were, right, they did not share the German people’s allegiance to Germany.

And this, course, was bullshit, but it was widely embraced. Certainly would have been of the generation that remembered the Dreyfus affair, even though it happened before he was born. And of course, coming from the czar’s empire, he knew all about the pogroms. By the way, my father’s family, my grandfather’s family, came from the town of Bebroisk and his mother from around there in Belarus as well, obviously with the last name of Minsky, though we believe that my grandfather, who was a Menshevik, and was expelled from the czar, at least this is the story he told. 

My dad took everything. His dad said some with a grain of salt. had a difficult relationship. did, of course, I did not know my grandmother. She died when my father was 40. Sorry, she died when she was 40, when my father was only 20. I knew my grandfather who was in his 80s and 90s by the time I met him. had my father at an old age relatively as my father had me at an old age. And so my

Grandfather was born in like the 1880s. But the town of Royce that he came from, and you can look this up, this simple Wikipedia search, was believed to be the largest town that had a majority Jewish population in the czar’s empire. And my dad never failed to remind me that by 1946 or 47, there were no Jews there.

And I went back to my mother’s area in Lithuania and all the Jews had been killed or forced to run away. But let me ask you, because I want to just take the four or five minutes we have left because I want to leave these reasonable and not take up too much of your time. You’re the head of executive director of Progressive Democrats. And when we think about progressive Democrats or progressives in the United States, we know that Jewish people have and to their credit, to our credit, have been vastly, disproportionately, in terms of their numbers, represented in every progressive movement that you could think of. 

You find it even at the revolutionary time you find the representation, but certainly right down through American history and the labor movement, the civil rights movement, and so forth. And there is an example now of that in Bernie Sanders.

Robert Scheer

Sure. Bernie Sanders, it’s odd, here is the closest any Jew has gotten to be president. He’s probably the most admired Jewish politician in the United States. And Bernie Sanders has had the courage to speak up in condemnation of this rabid, horrible violence committed by a government that claims to speak for Jewish people at this time.

You it’s just, you just were in a shanda, you know, it’s just a scandal. And so let’s talk about that and, you know, take the remaining.

Alan Minsky

Just if you’re if you’re unfamiliar, Bob, or the listeners of Progressive Democrats of America, we were the organization that drafted Bernie to run and to run as a Democrat. I was not the executive director at the time, but that is true. And so obviously our history as an organization is very tied to that. And of course, from my point of view, couldn’t be more proud of the really the most successful Jewish politician in American history by at this hour, other successful Jewish politicians, but Bernie came a close second in two consecutive runs for president within the Democratic primaries. 

And once again, I believe he polls as being the most popular politician in the country, which has not been uncommon over the past decade. yeah, and again, highly ethical in his thinking through the issues around Israel and after October 7th and how to approach it. And we at PDA,

You know, we’re very clear in opposing any more arm shipments to Israel at this hour. Very much not in my name and not in our name at PDA is the slaughter transpiring in Gaza. We, I would like to see PDA take a leadership role in a revived peace movement. Look, the peace, Trump is very, very, you know, horrible American president, uniquely so in my opinion.

But Richard Nixon was no, you know, cuddly kitten either. And the peace movement didn’t go away when Richard Nixon became president. And I think we’re getting to a point, given what is transpiring as we talk today, on a daily basis in Gaza, the starvation of people, the firing upon people who are coming to try to receive food, the remaking of the rules day in, day out about where Palestinians are allowed to go. 

And then everything Hamas did on October 7th was incredibly horrible and I hope people can recognize from my somewhat from my own initiative the born into the family I was born I love the Jewish people I mean I the Jewish cultural literary artistic philosophical work is the air I have breathed my entire life and I love it okay about half I seek out

The most intelligent company I can find with the people of the greatest insight I can find wherever I can find them. And that informed my program directorship back at KPFK because it’s just what I do anyway. And yes, overwhelmingly I have been surrounded by friends who have been disproportionately Jewish. I don’t know what, what percent half of my friends, of course, I know loads of brilliant people also, but I know so many kind and wise and ethical Jewish people in my life.

I’ve also known some were scandalous jackasses, but that’s because there’s a cross section of people. But I absolutely do not want to see damage done to the Jewish people. But what is going on now? The priority is the end of the death and suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israeli government. And yes, the U.S. government remains at this hour, even as Trump is sort of dislodging the U.S. place in the global order to a degree.

But it remains the primary ally of Israel that’s allowing this to transpire. And we need to step up for ethical and moral reasons that I see entirely in line with the Jewish tradition to make a case to the world that this has to stop. The peace movement didn’t stop in 1969 when Richard Nixon was inaugurated, but because of this counteroffensive against the peace in Gaza movement, that’s occurred under Trump, right now the peace movement seems somewhat stalled. I would like to see PDA play a leadership role in reviving that. And yes, always to make clear because it’s a live consideration, right, that this is in no way an anti-Semitic movement and that no anti-Semitism is allowed within the movement as we call for peace in Gaza. 

And look, I can also talk about the Holocaust. Look, one thing that does define a Jews after 1945, is their relationship with the Holocaust. And it is true that this is a shared collective trauma of the Jewish people. And at this hour, the main thing there is I think it does mean it still requires some finessing in our messaging because we’re dealing with obviously an Israeli state that defines itself as a Jewish state to which Jewish people have a strong relationship. 

Elan Pappé, the great Israeli historian and critic, trenchant critic of the Israeli government says that American Jews remain uniquely positioned to be able to transform the situation as it exists now. And I believe that American Jews can now be persuaded to see that certainly what is in the best interest of Jews who have experienced so much historical trauma over the past 100 years, as we know, the best thing.

The most important thing for me in immediate consideration, don’t get me wrong, is the end of the slaughter and suffering of Palestinian people. But the best thing for Jews right now is to bring this to an end, to advocate for the human, civil, and political rights of Palestinians, and to set out then to rectify this. But right now what is transpiring is horrible, horrible, and unbelievably horrible, of course, for the people in Gaza beyond anything we can imagine. 

Certainly nothing you or I or most people have ever experienced other than those people who’ve lived in war zones and to be targeted in this way. But at the same time, what is transpiring right now is also terrible for the Jewish people. I think even Thomas Friedman is publicly recognizing that at this point. And we have to raise our voice and say, not in our name, not in my name, enough is enough. Let’s change this scenario. Let’s end it and let’s return to what justice looks like for all people in the region.

Robert Scheer

Yes, okay, I’m gonna end on that note and thank you for doing this and maybe I’ll check back with you to see how things are going. I wanna thank Joshua Shear, our executive producer who used to work with Mr. Minsky here at Pacific Radio Show and I think it was a good experience, great experience. Diego Ramos who writes our introduction is a Managing Editor of ScheerPost.

Max Jones who does the video. I want to thank the JKW Foundation in memory of a fiercely independent writer, Jean Stein, who was very supportive of Edward Said, great Palestinian scholar writer at Columbia University, the old Columbia, for giving us some support for the show. In Integrity Media, Len Goodman, again from a prominent Jewish family in Chicago, as Jean Stein was from a prominent Jewish family and Los Angeles having the courage to support us and others in doing work of independent journalism and to stress its independence. And we’ll continue this particular topic in a series of folks. And what do we agree on? Yes, not in my name because this is really a personal story. Okay, that’s it. See you next time.

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