MN Judiciary and Public Safety Testimony: 6/25/2024

Thank you Chair Latz and Members of the Committee. My name is Beth Gendler. I am a University of Minnesota graduate, and a parent of an alum and a current graduate student. But today I am testifying on behalf of Jewish Community Action as its Executive Director.

JCA organizes Minnesota’s Jewish Community for economic, racial, and social justice. We organize in solidarity with other marginalized communities in Minnesota through state and local coalitions, interfaith initiatives, and local neighborhood groups. These relationships drive our investment in and accountability to each other. We honor our history and ancestors, we commit to our shared future, and we activate our community to make real social change. 

We like to say that we organize with “chutzpah,” which is a Yiddish word meaning boldness with a touch of audacity.

JCA organizes locally for housing justice, and at the intersections of the immigration and criminal justice systems. We also lead Minnesota’s Communities Combating Hate Coalition, where we were proud to work with members of this committee and others on updates to hate crime legislation that makes all of us safer. 

Another part of our combating hate campaign involves teaching about antisemitism using a historical and solidarity-based framework, which we have shared with hundreds of Minnesotans at their synagogues, churches, schools, community groups and workplaces. 

The core message of our combating hate campaign is that we are safer when we build more bridges, not higher walls.

Especially in these moments when many Jews, Muslims and other members of marginalized communities feel less safe, we know that we must build stronger bridges in solidarity with other marginalized groups so that together we can create an inclusive, equitable, multi-racial Minnesota where all people are free to live, love, and thrive. We know that when we are less safe, all of us are less safe. Our safety depends on solidarity.

I am speaking today because I am concerned that this conversation and other recent conversations about antisemitism have become divisive and polarizing, which, ultimately, makes all of us less safe. This is an ongoing issue, but the recent events at the University of Minnesota have inflamed passions on all sides. While JCA doesn’t have an education portfolio, the work we do on community safety,  combating hate, religious freedom and promoting an inclusive democracy make it necessary for us to speak out. 

It is also important to remind you that the Minnesota Jewish community, like every marginalized community, is diverse in many ways, including ideologically. JCA members hold a broad range of perspectives, and we reject the claim that one discrete part of the Minnesota Jewish community can speak for all of us, including and especially when it calls for actions that have the potential to damage the credibility and mission of important democratic institutions like the University of Minnesota. 

I do not want my testimony to be interpreted as speaking in opposition to any other Jewish organization, or in support of acts of violence  that have taken place. I am not.

While no organization, including mine, can claim to speak for all jews, I think it IS safe to say that we share a deep belief that Jews should not be dehumanized, harassed, discriminated against, or face violence because we are Jews. But I am deeply troubled by assertions  that one organization is the consensus voice of the community. I  would encourage suspicion when any part of one group claims to speak for the whole.

My ask as you move forward is for you to Include a much more diverse perspective of Minnesota voices in this conversation.

Do not accept the false assertion that there is consensus within the Jewish community on these complicated topics. We ask you  to seek out perspectives that represent the broad diversity of our Jewish community, and, perhaps even more importantly,  to also consult the voices of multifaith, multiracial constituencies outside of the Jewish community who have been impacted by genocide, hate and bias who have an equal stake in our shared goal of promoting a multifaith, multiracial and democratic Minnesota.

This is an important Jewish community issue, but it is not only a Jewish issue, and to characterize it in that way makes all of us less safe. Thank you.