What I learned when a Brooklyn bookstore canceled a discussion of Judaism over my Zionism - opinion

What a crazy week it was. I’m still thinking about what it means that in a Jewish town like New York in a Jewish borough like Brooklyn and in a bookstore, a place that is a touchstone of culture for Jews, a talk between two Jews can get canceled because one of them — yours truly! — is a Zionist.

Alas these are the times we live in and such is the price we are paying for dangerous divisions, hateful and unhinged ignorance, and an atomized popular culture of self-aggrandizing social media feeds that create deafening echoes of saturated sameness. The Gaza war has deepened this already horrendous divide in new and dangerous ways.

God forbid one should show up at a bookstore (or a library or a college classroom) and be challenged to expand their mind in a civil, constructive way — which is what the author Joshua Leifer and I had intended to do last Tuesday night to discuss his brilliant new book, “Tablets Shattered: The End of An American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life,” at Powerhouse Arena in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

Though the bookstore had my bio for weeks; and had it posted on their website for some time; apparently one of the employees decided to Google me, discovered that I was a Zionist, and summarily canceled the talk because, in her view, Zionists ought not to appear on stage at Powerhouse Arena. This bigoted and self-righteous idiocy, of course, hid in plain sight behind the false premise of “unforeseen circumstances” leading to the events cancelation that was posted on a sign on the venue’s door. I took a step back and laughed. It was either that, or lose my mind.

For half a day the ownership of Powerhouse Arena hid behind the false story that the author’s publicist had canceled the event until a recording surfaced proving that the store’s employee had taken it upon herself to ban Zionist Jews from the store. She subsequently lost her job and to the owner’s credit, a public apology was issued. Josh and I rescheduled for next week.

But first, after being canceled, we all stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes, getting our wits about us. Josh, family and friends went to a bar for a discussion and drinks; I headed up the hill from Dumbo and sat with my friend Joni Kletter as she tweeted the news out to the world. Within minutes, she received sympathetic messages from former Mayor Bill De Blasio, City Comptroller Brad Lander and Congressmen Ritchie Torres and Dan Goldman among many other friends, colleagues and Jewish professionals. A staffer from Rep. Dan Goldman’s team actually called me from the floor of the Democratic National Convention to express his shock and support, which was pretty cool.

Censoring a conversation at a bookstore 

Over the next 48 hours I received texts, emails and Facebook messages from colleagues, friends and strangers from all over the world and across the political spectrum. Censoring a conversation in a bookstore in New York City in 2024? The store employee’s action hit a nerve for everyone — especially anyone who has ever had the experience of learning and expanding one’s heart, mind and soul by reading a book. A foundational pillar of civil society had been violated. Period. Countless emails and messages included the words, “We may not agree on everything, Andy, but …” Nothing more needed to be said.

In those blessed 48 hours I was reminded of many important lessons. One is that there is the greatest strength in difference, not sameness; that there is more learning done in disagreement than there is in the staid uniformity of sloganeering; and that without being made to traverse the rocky terrain of civil discourse, we lose strength, atrophy and weaken as a society.

I learned again that friends matter. I learned again that when you work in a community for 33 years as I have in Brooklyn, you build up the muscle of relationships forged in good times and bad. I learned again that I am so proud to be a Jew, to be a member of a most resilient people, who have persistently modeled to the world that argument is sacred, that argument is, in religious terms, for the Sake of Heaven. If there is purpose to the structure of our lives, in other words, if God demands of us that we find meaning in learning from books, ideas, argument and disagreement — holy and secular — then our learning is better, sharper, and deeper when we create sparks of conflict.

I actually feel bad for the bookstore censor. What an intellectually flat world she must live in. What a diminishment of the mind’s potential. It just can’t be very fun to be that way.

There is a story that the historian George Mosse’s students used to tell about the 1960s anti-war protests in Madison, Wisconsin. A number of George’s students were on the New Left and they were angry with him that he — a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany — was not taking more forceful public stands against the war. Protesting in front of his house one morning and chanting that he was supporting a fascist regime, George stood out on his drive in bathrobe and pajamas engaging with his students over precisely which kind of fascism was he being accused of supporting? Liberal or conservative? German or Italian or French or Soviet or Spanish? Words and the movements they represent matter. “This course is designed to rid you of your slogans,” George famously taught us. The driveway seminar became legend.

Oh, to have the chance to engage this bookstore censor over which particular Zionism she was objecting to. Cultural? Socialist? Liberal? Revisionist? Religious? How much richer our night would have been.

I’ll save for another time the question of what this less-than-24-hour-censorship means in the context of this horrific war between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Without question, there is a hideous antisemitism at play in general in the anti-war movement. And there is a hideous and fundamentally immoral othering of Jews who don’t subscribe to the cult-like demand that any Zionism be disavowed in order to exist in the company of the self-proclaimed exemplars of justice, commonality and peace. Some just want us gone.

But I was most deeply impressed with and moved by how quickly people came together from such diverse backgrounds; how vociferously ownership eventually condemned this censorship; and how people buying Josh’s book — to read, debate and argue — became the best response of all. Want to shut up a bigot? Beat them at an argument.

A version of this piece originally appeared on Water for Rocks, the author’s Substack. It is reprinted with permission.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.