J Street Joins Ocasio-Cortez: ‘Our Ancestors Might Have Been Jewish Too’

Director Jeremy Ben-Ami boasted that some of his distant ancestors spoke Yiddish and likely participated in such Jewish rituals as Passover seders.

Credit: El Borde via Wikimedia Commons

New York, December 12 – A lobbying organization billing itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lauded a Congresswoman-elect from New York City today for disclosing possible Hebraic roots among her forebears, noting that they, as well, had some Semites among their progenitors.

J Street, which gained ascendancy under President Barack Obama as the latter sought a progressive counterweight to AIPAC to secure support for the nuclear deal with Iran, announced Wednesday morning that like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the organization’s leadership could identify among its ancestors a large number of Jews. A subtext of the announcement included the observation that just as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez does not herself claim to be Jewish, neither does J Street feel bound to uphold Jewish obligations or values. J Street endorsed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez in last month’s midterm elections, and has remained silent on her entertaining the promotion of boycotts or sanctions targeting Israel.

“We commend the Congresswoman-elect for coming forward with this information,” the organization proclaimed in a statement to the media. “It dovetails with the values J Street cherishes, chief among them the leveraging of Jewish identity to weaken the bond between Jewishness and Zionism, or at least to redefine either Jewishness or Zionism such that they appear unrelated.”

J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami boasted that some of his distant ancestors spoke Yiddish and likely participated in such Jewish rituals as Passover seders, circumcision, eating kosher food, and talking during the Rabbi’s sermon and other portions of the synagogue service. “Those roots are a source of pride,” declared Ben-Ami in a telephone interview. “Well, some of them. We don’t like to talk about the ‘Next year in a rebuilt Jerusalem’ part of the Passover seder, or about the prayers for the reestablishment of the Temple service in its proper place, or about the Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel in existential terms. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t go so far as to claim she actually is Jewish, and I’m not going to go too far out on that limb, either.”

Other organizations echoed J Street’s response. A Jewish Voice for Peace spokeswoman told a journalist of the high likelihood some members of the group had at least one Jewish ancestor a few generations back. “That makes our voice as important and legitimate as anyone else’s,” she asserted. “Other people can’t define for us who is and isn’t Jewish. We, however, do get to define for everyone what being Jewish means in terms of Palestine, and if you disagree you’re a fascist warmonger.”

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