Faced with a crisis in Gaza, local Jews organize for a different approach.

Even before it was easy to be a performative activist on social media, Seth Pollack’s instinct has been to do something, not just talk about it. “You can’t just have these great dreams,” he says. He volunteered for the Peace Corps in Mali, and then in 1997 arrived at still-new CSU Monterey Bay, where he was the founding faculty director of the service learning program, bringing students into the community.

After he retired in 2022, he decided to pursue a social justice project himself. “I thought, maybe where I should be doing work is in Israel-Palestine, and working within my Jewish community,” he says.

Before the brutal Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 rocked the foundations of a chilly status quo, prompting a war of devastation that continues to this day and is still upending global alliances, Pollack made understanding modern Israel his project.

He became a member of J Street, a national lobbying organization that defines itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy” – with the premise that such goals can only be achieved with Palestinian buy-in. The Washington-based group, which formed in 2009, is sometimes described as a more liberal, expansive alternative to AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

Pollack felt like he had finally found an ideological home. “You can be pro-Israel and still be critical of the policies of the Israeli government; you don’t have to be an anti-Zionist and reject Israel’s ‘right to exist,’” he says.

In a world that was already deeply polarized even before Oct. 7 and now, nearly two years later, with tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, “J Street is able to really respectfully offer a middle ground,” Pollack says.

He and Karen Paull, both members of Congregation Beth Israel in Carmel Valley, are members of the local J Street chapter, both advocating for a humane middle ground.

Paull describes her personal journey beginning on a trip to Israel in the early 2000s, shortly after the Second Intifada, when she saw the occupation of the West Bank in person.

“I was reminded of the ways Jews were treated in Europe where they were confined to ghettos and humiliated daily,” she says. “I thought, oh my god, Jews are treating people the way they were treated themselves. That feeling was so intolerable to me that it came into my head: Not in my name. As an American Jew, I have to do something. I have a role to play.”

“Our hearts are big enough to cry for everybody.”

That role is being an active member of J Street’s Silicon Valley chapter, where Paull and Pollack interface with both congressional members who represent Monterey County (Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, and Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose). Pollack serves as synagogue liaison to Congregation Beth Israel (where recently retired rabbi Bruce Greenbaum joined the J Street rabbinical cabinet, which counts over 1,000 members).

Pollack and Paull both describe a mission that is much more about morality than religion, but J Street embraces both. In late July, J Street convened a virtual meeting just a few days before the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av, a solemn occasion that commemorates the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE.

“This is not just a political issue, this is a moral issue,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs said. “I really believe that as we’re crying today, God is up above also crying, both over the deaths of Palestinians and Israelis. Our hearts are big enough to cry for everybody. The good news is that more and more of us are crying out.”

That includes groups like the Union for Reform Judaism, which on Aug. 8 issued a statement opposing Israel’s expansion of the war against Hamas.

Pollack believes that most American Jews share his and Paull’s views that their hearts are big enough to cry for everybody, that there is a middle ground, and that groups like AIPAC – despite their influence – are not representative. “The more we are able to help our elected officials hear that from us,” Pollack says, “the more willing they are to advocate to support policies to help us to get there.”

“Getting there” is built upon old-fashioned organizing. Whether informed by divinity or humanity, the desire is the same: to find a solution that acknowledges the dignity of all.

Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com or follow her at @sarahayleyrubin.bsky.social.