MARCH 5 • 2020 | 15
continued on page 16
discuss Sanders’
potential
presidency over coffee at
Avalon Café and Biscuit Bar.
Reuben Telushkin, 31, of
Detroit, is a coordinator with
JVP Action, an arm of the
activist group Jewish Voice
for Peace, which supports
Palestinian self-determina-
tion and is highly critical
of Israel. He says Sanders’
position on Israel/Palestine
reflects his values.
“Those of us who want
more progressive policy,
trying to bring our family
and our communities along,
I really think
that he resonates
with the major-
ity of where
American Jews
are at, or at least
a great number
of us,” Telushkin
says. “
And then you have
Bloomberg, who calls
[Israeli] settlements ‘
new
communities’
in the debate,
which is ridiculous. And it
just shows that he is not the
person to be dealing with
this issue.”
Susannah Goodman, 32,
of Detroit, says, “Bernie
embodies a kind of dialogue
with Jewish elders that I wish
we could have more often
around here.”
Goodman sees Sanders’
concern over college debt
and his promise of free
tuition as ostensibly Jewish
ideals. “One of my deepest
Jewish values is the instruc-
tion to not worship idols. I
think our society across the
board has been worshipping
unregulated capitalism.”
Goodman grew up in the
Reconstructionist move-
ment and is a member of
Congregation T’
chiyah in
Oak Park. “It used to be an
American ideal to care for
other people,” she says. “Just
having more empathy across
Eight Mile is something that’
s
really important.”
For many in the group,
Sanders’
Jewishness does
not play directly into their
support, though there is
a shared sense of identity.
“Just aesthetically, I love
that basically my grandpa,
but much more
to the left, is
on the debate
stage yelling
about all the bad
stuff that the
U.S. is doing,”
muses Jackson
Koeppel, 27,
who lives in Highland Park
but grew up in New York
City.
The group of Sanders sup-
porters spends a lot of their
time critiquing Bloomberg.
Koeppel recounts an incident
in which he was arrested for
smoking marijuana while liv-
ing in New York as a college
student during Bloomberg’
s
term as mayor. “Every sin-
gle other person in that cell
was a black man, and this is
also the height of ‘
Stop and
Frisk,’
” Koeppel, who is white
and of Ashkenazi descent,
recalls. “I’
m literally afraid
[Bloomberg is] worse than
Trump. I’
m scared that he is
going to be a more effective
racist because he will not be
as obvious about it.”
Telushkin says, “I’
m Jewish.
I’
m also black. I look at
Bloomberg; I see his docu-
mented history of racism and
that’
s a dealbreaker for me. I
would hope that other people
in the Jewish community
would see that and think
Reuben
Telushkin
ANTHONY LANZILOTE
Jackson
Koeppel
ANTHONY LANZILOTE