When neo-Nazis staged a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and called for ridding America of Jews, their slogans and the carnage hit particularly home for New Haven activists Jennifer Klein and James Berger: They met each other at Charlottesville, at the University of Virginia campus Hillel, 25 years ago.
They weren’t at the August rally in Charlottesville. Now married, the two professors (she teaches history at Yale, he American Studies and English literature), who are active in immigration reform and labor politics, live in New Haven’s Westville neighborhood. They showed up at a local solidarity rally for the victims of the Charlottesville rally — only to receive a second reminder of their Jewishness: The rally organizers lined up speakers to represent African-American, Latino, disability rights and other causes. No one represented, or spoke, about the Jewish aspect of the Charlottesville event.
As many of the ralliers left the scene for a march, Klein and Berger approached one of the organizers. They pointed out that the rally “forgot to mention one interesting thing about the Nazis: that they killed Jews,” recalled Klein, a regular contributor to national publications. “These people in Charlottesville were explicit about wanting to expunge Jews.”
The organizer apologized and mentioned Jewish targets of the Nazis in an impromptu speech to people remaining at the rally.
It wasn’t the first time Klein and Berger — stalwart members of activist groups like New Haven Rising and participants in social-justice and Yale union rallies — have felt a need to interject a Jewish perspective while working with people of different backgrounds. They noticed, for instance, that early meetings of the group that became New Haven Rising began and ended with explicit Christian, Jesus-focused prayers. They spoke up about it; the prayers became more ecumenical.
“I’m a person that is always going to fight the fight. I’m not going to be alienated by that and way away. The fights for justice are too important,” Klein said during an appearance with Berger Wednesday on the WNHH FM radio program “Chai Haven.” She said she stays focused on the question: What are the ways we are going to build solidarity?
Klein and Berger said they drank early on in their Jewish upbringings from the fountain of tikkun olam — the religious imperative to “repair the world.” That doesn’t mean completing the social justice task, but rather working with people from many backgrounds toward the goal.
Klein was doing that when she joined other immigrant-rights demonstrators in blocking the entrance to a federal building in Hartford. It was the Monday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Before police moved in to arrest and lock up Klein and her fellow demonstrators, she felt moved to make a speech about her own relatives’ flight as refugees from the Nazis — and about tikkun olam. The speech was captured on Facebook Live: It appears at the top of this story.
On “Chai Haven,” Berger closed the episode by reading aloud from a new book of movement “manifestoes” about how to create “OBU” — “One Big Union” or “Oligarchy Busters United” — in the Age of Trump.
Click on or download the above audio file to listen to the full interview with Klein and Berger on WNHH radio’s “Chai Haven” program.
This is something I've noticed as well. In all of the coverage, reaction, etc. of the rise of "Alt-Right" Nationalism and Neo-Nazi rallies, it seems everything is focused on Black, Latinx, Muslim, or LGBT Americans, but very little mention of Jewish Americans. I don't know why, exactly, but I do find it interesting, especially given the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi rallies were very quite explicit about how they felt about Jews.