Jews should be wary of the ‘War on Woke’

In recent years, pro-Israel Diaspora Jews (especially in North America) have been turning up the heat on their rhetoric against “wokism” and “woke culture.” 

This has been especially true since the Simḥat Torah massacre of October 7 and Israel’s subsequent war against Hamas in Gaza.

“Wokeness” seems to have become a catch-all phrase to describe the more progressive views held by millennials and Gen Zers in the West and it is said to lie at the core of shifting attitudes that make Israel’s supporters in North America feel less secure.

From increasing anti-Semitism to hostile university campuses to a generally more chaotic political stage, Jews – particularly those who are ostensibly more connected to their people’s story – have added their voices to the conservative war against “wokism” in American and Canadian politics.

There certainly are valid criticisms we can offer on some of the conclusions reached by the so-called woke worldview, but the challenging of the hegemonic structures that the bourgeoisie relies upon and that those in positions of privilege take for granted should be seen as a noble effort that can align with Israel’s deeper interests and historic mission. 

Challenging capitalism, the patriarchy, white supremacy and liberal hegemonic structures could actually serve to advance the struggle for Jewish liberation.

The anti-woke discourse as presented in right-wing Jewish spaces generates a positive view of US history, perpetuating myths of American exceptionalism and portraying the superpower as more or less a global force for good – but one that is currently being ruined by wokeness.

The call to “Make America Great Again” – a clear repudiation of wokeness – is an appealing one. To restore “sanity” and some romanticized imagined past. This discourse also often lends legitimacy to other Republican positions within Jewish spaces, despite the fact that this Jewish repudiation of wokeness has recently began to appear bipartisan, with Diaspora Jewish liberals suddenly voicing uncertainty regarding their future in a woke North America. In fact, the dividing lines seem to be less liberal-conservative or left-right but rather young-old when it comes to wokeness. The fault line appears to be generational.

The anti-woke discourse in Jewish spaces is problematic for a number of reasons. Chief among them is that it exposes a faulty analysis of the Jewish relationship with the West.

In defending the Western tradition and worldview, our community is casting Jews as Westerners, which is both short-sighted and ahistorical. Over the last two millennia, as we lived in the lion’s den that was Europe, we have perverted Jewish identity for a continued sense of security while power holders in the West have generally oscillated between including us in their societies at the cost of our true identity or casting us as the perpetual Other (and accusing us of trying to manipulate their people by pretending to be part of their societies).

In short, the Jewish self-identification as part of the West – a civilization in which we suffered countless layers of traumatic oppression for being Jews – demonstrates the depths of our colonization and the urgent need for us to collectively heal.

Further, the anti-woke discourse plays into anti-Semitic tropes of Jews as the oppressors punching down. In defending structures that are experienced as oppressive by North America’s most marginalized and racialized groups, we are unwittingly creating distance and animosity between Jews and other oppressed peoples. This has resulted in 67% of young Americans describing Jews as an “oppressive class.” It has also manifested in violent attacks against Jews being perceived as “punching up.”  

The discourse’s reactionary nature also stymies the expression of the Jewish people’s true  revolutionary character. Even if we determine that the structures that the “Woke Revolution” seeks to dismantle are the best that humanity has come up with so far, our ever-dynamic vision for humanity demands better. 

It’s interesting to note that the most vehement enemy of wokeness, white nationalism/Amalek, has cast the Jewish people as the power behind wokeness. 

Both the shooter of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and the Charlottesville protesters a few years prior imagined the Jew in this role. But they were not the first Amalekites to do so. In Mein Kampf, the founder of the Nazi Party detailed that the “Marxist weapon of Jewry descends like a nightmare on the mind and soul of decent people.” 

This role of social disturber and destabilizer of Western civilization for the sake of a universalist mission is both at the core of our identity and at the heart of the white nationalist’s imagination. North America’s woke youth and the Jews most deeply connected to our collective story and historic mission therefore have a common goal and a common foe.

For some North American Jews who now call themselves politically homeless, the embrace of this war on wokeness is deeply connected to foreign policy and the false perception that the US and Canadian right will be better for Israel than the liberal incumbents they seek to replace. 

The notion that an administration’s policies toward Israel is a matter of partisan politics is a folly held up by the structures that wokeness seeks to undermine. The US relationship with Israel is grounded in material benefits for the empire’s capitalist class. The policy objectives of both US ruling parties have historically lined up in the pursuit of specific interests in the Semitic region. Israeli sovereignty in all the territory between the river and the sea, for example, has been anathema for all US administrations since the 1967 Six-Day War, regardless of political party.

For Jews in North America to participate in our own liberation, they must be careful not to fall into the trap of pining for better days in exile. According to our sages, it was this mistake that prevented 80% of Israelites from leaving Egypt. These Hebrew slaves wanted to be free of subjugation while remaining in Egypt under a new, more friendly Pharaoh. It is incumbent on us as Jews to be a light onto the nations from the land where our light shines the brightest, reject this war on wokism while aspiring to bring humanity to an even more equitable and just society in line with universal values that reach far beyond the goals associated with wokeness.