The Tikvah Fund, a conservative Jewish organization, was all set to host a conference at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage in June when months of planning were suddenly derailed by the last-minute addition of a once-undisputed speaker. been. : the Republican governor of Florida.
The fund had invited Governor Ron DeSantis to discuss the vibrancy of Jewish life in Florida, a topic the fund wrote about in the April issue of its magazine, a month after Mr. DeSantis signed legislation banning classroom teaching and discussion about sexual orientation. and gender identity in primary schools. Opponents have called the law “Don’t Say Gay.”
Tikvah signed a contract and sent it to the museum before Mr. DeSantis was added to the lineup, and the trouble started when the group updated its program with the governor.
“Thank you for sharing this with me,” read an email to the fund from Trudy Chan, a museum official. Ms Chan noted that providing security for the governor would not be a problem, but she added: “We should look into possible conflicts with your invited speakers. Please stand by.”
The next day, Ms. Chan asked the fund to “pause” the $11,500 deposit and requested a meeting with the leaders, according to emails. In subsequent phone calls Eric Cohen, Tikvah’s director, was informed that an event with Mr. DeSantis could not be held at the museum, which describes itself as “a living memorial to the Holocaust” because the “Don’t Say Gay” law is inconsistent with the values of inclusivity, Mr Cohen told The Times.
The museum did not allow political speakers or events at its museum, Cohen said, he was told, despite recent events involving Democratic politicians such as New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“The museum has suggested that Tikvah wanted to organize a partisan political event,” said Mr. Cohen. “Our event does not support candidates and does not serve any political party. It’s all about ideas, just like every previous conference we’ve had at the museum.”
The museum’s director, Jack Kliger, declined several requests to be interviewed for this article, but the museum has detailed its actions in a series of public statements expressing concerns about the political nature of the event and the level of security in place. the governor could take. need. A spokesperson for the Museum of Jewish Heritage emphasized that the museum had nothing to do with the event, other than the lease of its space to the Tikvah Fund.
Politics has become increasingly challenging for Jewish institutions in recent years as Americans become divided over issues such as LGBTQ policies and the results of the 2020 presidential election. New York City is no exception. Neighborhoods with a large population of Reform Jews voted resolutely for President Biden in the 2020 election, while those with many ultra-Orthodox Jews overwhelmingly voted for Donald J. Trump.
This has put institutions such as the Museum of Jewish Heritage in a very difficult position.
“Because American domestic politics has become more and more savagely polarized, and more and more people see conservatives not just as different, but fundamentally anti-democratic or illiberal or authoritarian or racist, it’s very, very hard to keep this big tent together. said Peter Beinart. , a writer and editor-in-chief for Jewish Currents, a forward-thinking magazine, which also writes for DailyExpertNews.
“Any institution today built on the need to serve both conservatives and progressives, whether it be the NFL or a Jewish museum or something else, is finding that work increasingly difficult to do,” Mr. Beinart said.
The Tikvah Fund first filed its complaints against the museum in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal written by Mr. Cohen and Elliott Abrams, a national security official in several Republican presidential administrations and a special representative in the Trump administration.
In it, they accused the museum of engaging in the cancellation culture and speculated that the leaders may have feared protests because “a lot of people hate Mr. DeSantis.”
“In the name of inclusivity, a Jewish museum has sent us a clear message: some people should be excluded,” they wrote. “In the name of fighting hate, the museum decided that the millions of Floridians who support Governor DeSantis — many of them Jews — are so hateful that they don’t even deserve a voice in the big American conversation. A museum of tolerance has become intolerant.”
After the op-ed was published, the museum issued a public statement, saying the article “contains many factual errors” and describing the decision as “simply a contractual and logistical decision”.
It invited Mr. DeSantis to “visit” the museum as a tourist and accused Tikva of “trying to create a fight where there is none”.
“No one was suspended or canceled,” the statement said. “The fact is that a contract with the Tikvah Fund was never signed for this rental event at the museum, and no deposit was ever made.”
The museum had never signed the contract, but negotiations were underway between the two parties, according to the Tikvah Fund, which said there had been a series of emails discussing the event and the museum’s $23,000 rent before it was announced. announced that Mr. DeSantis would be joining the lineup.
In a letter to The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Kliger Tikvah of “political bullying” and duplicity, saying it signed the contract to accuse the museum of canceling it.
He writes that the situation was partly caused by the fund’s failure to provide the museum with timely details about the conference, which appeared to be political in nature and in violation of the museum statute.
“When we refused to host the event, Tikvah resorted to threats and said we had created an enemy,” Mr Kliger wrote. “Tikvah knew this was not about forbidding anyone to speak, but decided to make the false claim anyway.”
In a subsequent statement to The Times, Mr Kliger emphasized another reason. “Late in discussions” with Tikvah, the museum realized the event “justified significant additional security,” he wrote. “The intensity of those security requirements clearly implied a potential level of activity around the conference that was not standard practice for the museum.”
Mr. Kliger emphasized this point in his letter to The Wall Street Journal. “This was not about banning or canceling Governor DeSantis,” he wrote. “The museum must take the safety of visitors and staff into account.”
Governor DeSantis declined to comment, although a statement from his office chided the museum for what it described as the politicization of a sacred space. “A Holocaust memorial should never be politicized,” it said, adding that the governor was determined to keep Florida “a safe and welcoming home for the Jewish people.”
The Tikvah Fund will still host the 2022 Jewish Leadership Conference. In June, at Manhattan’s Pier 60, a number of prominent speakers will appear alongside Governor DeSantis, including Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State under President Trump, and John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine.
Topics include “How to Fight Back Against Wokeness: A Jewish View” – a conversation between Mr. Podhoretz and Bari Weiss, a former Times opinion writer – and “On Jewish Exceptionalism”.