Shortly before 6 on Tuesday evening, Joshua Leifer was on his way to an event for his new book, “Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life,” when he got a call from his publicist.
In about an hour, he was to be in conversation with Andy Bachman, formerly the head rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, one of the best-known reform synagogues in the country. The talk had been planned a month ago; tickets had been sold and many people eventually showed up, but now there was a big problem.
The staff at Powerhouse, an arty but not aggressively political bookstore on the waterfront in Dumbo, where the discussion was being held, was objecting on the grounds that Rabbi Bachman was “a Zionist.”
He was not a Zionist who remained uncritical of Israel; he was not a zealot of the right. He believes in the Zionism of its literal definition, the animating principle of which is unacceptable to some faction of the pro-Palestinian left. “I mean that Jews have a right to self-determination and a homeland of their own,” he said.
In that call with his publicist, Mr. Leifer learned that she had been given the message that the conversation should avoid “uncomfortable territory,” Mr. Leifer, a doctoral student in history at Yale and a contributor to The New York Review of Books, told me the following morning. “My initial response was ‘Wow, that is a surprising and unsettling thing to hear from the bookstore.’” He presumed that those who had organized the evening had read his book, and he told his publicist to reassure them that the conversation would not deviate materially from it.
This proved in vain. A half-hour later, his publicist called him again to tell him that Powerhouse was “not willing to have Andy do an event at the bookstore.” Mr. Leifer, who describes himself as “an anti-occupation Jew” in favor of a democratic Israel, was welcome to speak on his own, but Rabbi Bachman was not invited to join him onstage. The writer was angry and mystified by this reversal of course — the event was to be a conversation, not a monologue; he was not going to address the audience by himself. Many people had come to hear Rabbi Bachman, a celebrity cleric who remains a beloved figure in Brooklyn even though he moved to Maine last year.
Mr. Leifer proceeded to Powerhouse anyway, thinking he might be able to resolve things if he spoke in person to whomever was in charge. A recording his wife made of the dialogue that followed indicated he had been mistaken. The young manager, who did not respond to my request for comment, remained polite but unwavering, insisting that Powerhouse had not canceled the event — even as a sign on the door declared, “Sorry, due to unforeseen circumstances tonight’s event is canceled.”
Before instructing Mr. Leifer that it was time to leave, the manager reiterated the reason for the change: “The moderator that your publishing team sourced is a Zionist, and we don’t want a Zionist onstage,” she said. In the recording, Mr. Leifer struggles to understand how and why the rabbi had suddenly been tagged as offensive to the store’s sensibility when he had been approved weeks earlier.
Daniel Power, the owner of the Powerhouse enterprise, which includes a publishing house and other bookstores, said on Wednesday afternoon that he hadn’t been quite sure what had happened either and had called the manager later that night to find out. She had found a piece online about a panel discussion in which Rabbi Bachman had been heckled, and she was worried about disruption. He attributed what he viewed as an ultimately regrettable decision to the doctrinaire politics of the young.
“It’s all about how uncomfortable you are, with the kids,” he said, echoing a well-established generational cry. “I have a lot of young book staffers,” he continued. When one of them in the Industry City branch in Brooklyn wanted to display a group of books about Palestinian statehood and Palestinian life, he agreed, but asked if there would be a display focusing on Jews and Israel. His employees want the store to take a stand; he does not see himself as running a partisan think tank. “I said, ‘We’re like a deli or restaurant; we sell things.”
“There’s a certain irony to this,” Mr. Leifer said, “because Andy is one of the most progressive rabbis in the United States.” When Rabbi Bachman left Congregation Beth Elohim a decade ago, after attracting atheists and agnostics to service with his cerebral orientation, it was to work more immediately to help the disenfranchised. “I think that I deliver really good and really inspiring sermons about social justice,” he said at the time, “but is that really enough?”
As the internet got a hold of what had happened, he began hearing from politicians who expressed their enraged sympathy. Tweeting after he had heard Doug Emhoff speak at the Democratic convention, the New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, wrote: “You’ve allowed this Zionist (i.e. me) on your premises many times to buy books — but now you won’t let us speak there??” He went on to say that he was excited to buy “Tablets Shattered” at a competing Brooklyn bookstore.
When Rabbi Bachman arrived at Powerhouse and learned that the event had been canceled, he wondered if something terrible had happened. “I said, ‘Is Josh OK?” Then he laughed in disbelief, he said. “You’re selling the book but we can’t talk about the book?” He marveled at how chilling it had all become.
“I’m not a territorial maximalist,” he explained. “My Zionism demands that we also recognize Palestinian claims on a national homeland. I believe in sharing the land. Full stop. Period. But the only acceptable Jew in this movement is the Jew who does not believe that Israel should exist.”
The experience put him in mind of the disillusionment George Orwell expressed in “Homage to Catalonia. Caught “between Franco’s fascism on the right and Stalinist Communism on the left, Orwell barely escapes purges,” Rabbi Bachman reflected. “He has a line which I’ve always loved: ‘One of the dreariest effects of this has been to teach me that the left wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the right.’”
Powerhouse has said it is open to rescheduling the talk in its original configuration. Mr. Leifer is not interested. He and his people are working on putting together something new — at an altogether different place.
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