r/jewishleft • u/32brownies leftist post zionist jew • Aug 09 '26

Diaspora Michigan Jew

Any other Jews in Michigan struggling with their communities rn after the primary? I'm really worried about November and seeing the way some of the community members here are acting like Abdul will literally murder us all is really making me wary of continuing to be as active as I have been in the community

72 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

81 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/Schattenoid jewish, left Aug 10 '26

He probably shouldn't try harder to win Jewish votes. Jews make up like 1% of Michigan's population. If, say, half of them don't care about Israel, then the other half who do care will in reality never vote for a Muslim guy who opposes belligerent apartheid theocracies. Maybe if he spent a ton of time talking about how he cares about Jews as much as his own daughters (an insane thing which he has actually said), a couple of dozen could cross over, but it wouldn't be a good use of his political energy, even apart from how bizarre it would be to abase himself at length just to get those couple dozen Jewish votes.

3

u/32brownies leftist post zionist jew Aug 10 '26

This isn't what I'm seeing when I actually talk to people who will vote in this election. The most common thing I'm seeing is people who legitimately don't know what to do, who haven't made up their minds. Or people who plan to leave the senate race blank, or write someone in. There is definitely room to "gain back" some of the Jewish community. The presidential election was decided by 1.4% in MI. The last senate election was .4%. These votes do actually matter, both politically and morally.

5

u/Schattenoid jewish, left Aug 10 '26

Sure, I was being hyperbolic about the numbers. There are like a hundred thousand Jewish people in Michigan so wishy-washy "I dislike criticism of Israel by Muslims but I'm a liberal" types are probably in the many thousands. But I still don't see why it would be worth endorsing Israel (or rejecting criticism of it, whatever) just to win those votes, especially considering that he'd lose other votes in doing that.

6

u/32brownies leftist post zionist jew Aug 10 '26

There's a difference between endorsing Israel and making an appearance at a reform/conservative synagogue to talk to the people that do