On March 11-13, a small conference of around 200 gathered on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia with potential significance extending far beyond its modest attendance. This was the national membership meeting of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group founded in San Francisco in 1996, which in the wake of the siege of Gaza in late 2008 has aggressively grown into a national organization with 27 local chapters and seven full-time staff members.
The meeting and its discussions were closed to the press, but this only highlights the newsworthiness of the meeting in itself. Late last year, the Anti-Defamation League named JVP on a list of the ‘Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America,’ and since then well-known members of the group have in some cases met with violence or threats of violence, particularly on the West Coast, and lesser forms of intimidation from various Jewish community leaders.
The furor with which JVP is greeted by the official Jewish community centers largely around the group’s outspoken identification with the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli occupation, increasingly known by the acronym BDS. JVP appears to be conscious of these concerns and wants to allay many criticisms. It delineates few rigid boundaries of discussion and nuance, acknowledging disadvantages to academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, though it draws a firm line against academic institutions involved in the occupation and the Israeli military.
In one of the most remarkable manifestations of the organization’s growing national reach, JVP announced the formation of its Rabbinical Council which numbers 30, including several rabbinical students and one cantor. This represents the largest organized dissent by Jewish religious leaders from the first principles of the Jewish establishment since 1943.