MARCH 5 • 2020 | 15

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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