Organizers: Justice March Can Be Moved From Yom Kippur If Jews Agree Not To Come

“We and the movement we represent have never been comfortable with Jews.”

Washington, August 16 – Leaders of the DC Justice March have offered a compromise to Jews who cannot attend the event scheduled for the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, whereby they will move the march to a different date on condition that Jews still stay away.

Organizers responded Wednesday to a vocal backlash by religious Jews objecting to the timing of the march, September thirtieth, which this year coincides with Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, on the Jewish lunar calendar. Public figures such as actress Mayim Bialik decried the choice of date and accused the organizers of deliberate antagonism toward Jews, who have been specifically targeted by white supremacists in recent rhetoric and violence, and despite the prominence of Jews in the social justice and civil rights movements. In reaction to the criticism, march leaders underlined the importance of maintaining September 30 as a date with historical significance – the largest lynching of blacks in the country’s history, nearly a century ago, but tendered an olive branch by offering to move the march to a different date if Jews would voluntarily not participate.

“The DC Justice March will take place on September 30 as scheduled, on the anniversary of the race riots of 1919,” the organizers wrote in a statement. “However, if Jews agree to stay away from the march, we will give due consideration to switching the date.”

“It was perhaps a mistake not to make this offer at the outset instead of scheduling the march without consultation,” the statement continued. “We apologize for that oversight. But the fact remains, we and the movement we represent have never been comfortable with Jews. Are they white? Are they people of color? Can we put them in a convenient conceptual box? The answers to those questions are unclear. Jewish lore has always emphasized ambiguity over certainty, and that is an intolerable position for a movement that values ideological purity, clarity, and unquestioning adherence to the tenets of progressivism.”

“Additionally, the suffering of Jews has always posed a problem for progressives, since so much Jewish suffering has taken place at the hands of leftist movements and the allies they keep,” they further stated, “even though Jews were prominent in the development of those movements. We prefer not to be reminded of our heritage of perfidy toward Jews, and therefore insist on excluding Jews from our midst.”

“We’re still OK with accepting generous funding from Jews and Jewish organizations, though, so keep that coming,” they concluded.

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