jewishcurrents.org: https://jewishcurrents.org/with-fighting-factions-ifnotnow-zeroes-in-on-mainstream-synagogues

Speaker: —
Subject: O000174
Source: GDELT news · original
Published: Tuesday, May 26, 2026

With “Fighting Factions,” IfNotNow Zeroes in on Mainstream Synagogues Skip to content Articles Magazine Membership Subscribe Donate Log In Account Log Out Open main menu Articles Magazine Membership Subscribe Donate About Submissions Podcast Newsletter Careers Events Shop Retailers Contact Institutions Log In Account Log Out You should follow us on Twitter or Instagram . And listen to our podcast . News Desk With “Fighting Factions,” IfNotNow Zeroes in on Mainstream Synagogues As the left gives up on conventional Jewish institutions, IfNotNow still sees members to mobilize. Josh Nathan-Kazis May 26, 2026 An IfNotNow activist at a rally in July 2020. Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via AP Tweet Copy Link Email Print This article first appeared in the Jewish Currents news desk newsletter. Subscr

Full text

3,000 chars

With “Fighting Factions,” IfNotNow Zeroes in on Mainstream Synagogues Skip to content Articles Magazine Membership Subscribe Donate Log In Account Log Out Open main menu Articles Magazine Membership Subscribe Donate About Submissions Podcast Newsletter Careers Events Shop Retailers Contact Institutions Log In Account Log Out You should follow us on Twitter or Instagram . And listen to our podcast . News Desk With “Fighting Factions,” IfNotNow Zeroes in on Mainstream Synagogues As the left gives up on conventional Jewish institutions, IfNotNow still sees members to mobilize. Josh Nathan-Kazis May 26, 2026 An IfNotNow activist at a rally in July 2020. Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via AP Tweet Copy Link Email Print This article first appeared in the Jewish Currents news desk newsletter. Subscribe here . In the summer of 2014 , as US Jewish leaders across the political spectrum backed an Israeli invasion of Gaza, a group of young Jewish activists calling themselves “#ifnotnow” delivered a letter to the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, asking him to “join with us” to “stop the war on Gaza” and “end the occupation.” He ignored them. In the months and years that followed, the IfNotNow activists built a movement that drew significant communal attention, with noisy rallies outside the office doors of local Jewish federations , Birthright Israel , and AIPAC . Their wager was that the central institutions of the Jewish establishment would listen to the young people who had grown up in their Hebrew schools and summer camps. They were wrong, and many on the Jewish left—including early IfNotNow activists and leaders themselves—now see those early efforts to reform the establishment as a dead end. “The last decade of organizing from IfNotNow has revealed that some of the [institutions] that we may have thought were movable are not,” said Yonah Lieberman, who was director of communications and a campaign strategist at the organization from 2015 to 2022. Even so, IfNotNow isn’t giving up on mainstream Jewish institutions. This month, the group announced plans to spend the next two-and-a-half years on a campaign aimed at strengthening support among US Jews for ending US arms sales to Israel. A central part of the campaign, the group’s leaders say, is an effort to organize what it’s calling “fighting factions” willing to go to bat for blocking bombs to Israel inside of liberal synagogues. These “fighting factions,” said Morriah Kaplan, IfNotNow Movement’s executive director, are a “group of congregants that the clergy knows is going to make a huge stink if they sign on to a letter that says Zohran Mamdani is a danger to the Jewish people,” referring to a letter opposing the progressive mayor that circulated widely among liberal rabbis during his campaign last fall . A “fighting faction,” Kaplan said, “complicates the calculus for what may have previously been an easy decision for the bo

More on this subject (8)

Mentioned in /ask threads

pac.dog is a free, independent, non-partisan research tool. Every candidate, committee, bill, vote, member, and nonprofit on this site is mirrored from primary U.S. government sources (FEC, congress.gov, govinfo.gov, IRS) and each state's Secretary of State / election commission — no third-party data vendors, no paywall, no editorial intermediation. Citations to the originating source are on every detail page.