Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Community

Introducing PROTOCOLS

We are living in a moment of uncanny crisis. Right-wing populism and reactionary fascism once again threaten to spread the malignant violence of the West — never neutralized, never contained, never eradicated. Old wars — wars of heteropatriarchy, of racial capitalism, of environmental degradation — persist and appear in new, dangerous forms. And Jews find themselves at times victims, at times accomplices, usually both.

The mainstreaming of white nationalist movements in the past two years and the successes of their chosen candidates in the United States and Europe has made it clear that the West’s Jewish Question was not answered with legal emancipation and its Jewish Problem was not solved, however morbidly, by the Nazi Holocaust. On the contrary, the weapons of anti-Judaism and antisemitism have multiplied and advanced, often centering new victims and deploying a new language. And yet, certain Jews perform key roles on the national and international stages of power. And Jewish establishment organizations maintain a politics of righteous indignation at best or painful complicity at worst.

But others, young and old, are rejecting the complacency of middle-class Jewish communities and the nightmare of Jewish imperialism. We are joining hands with our Jewish and non-Jewish brothers and sisters in queer communities, indigenous communities, undocumented communities, communities of color. We are building a world for Moshiach, a world for liberation.

PROTOCOLS hopes to support, inspire, and engage this grassroots revolution of Jews with compelling, insightful, and provocative writing and art. Irreverently and ironically taking its name from the notorious anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, this quarterly journal will carve out a space for Jews to elaborate, discuss, and imagine global liberation. While it is obvious that Jewish individuals have always participated—as activists, writers, and artists—in the modern movements for justice and liberation, they have not always done so as Jews. And the history of leftist movements often reveals antagonistic relations with Jewishness. We, however, take seriously Hannah Arendt’s warning, “If one is attacked as Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man, or whatever.”

Our first issue launches with the full moon of the Hebrew month of Shvat (Aquarius), known in the school of Hillel as the new year for fruits. According to Sefer Yetzirah, this month’s sign is the pail, for rainwater begins to fall and nourish the cold, dry earth. We offer the following writing and art to all who are thirsty. It is one step, b’ezrat Hashem, towards watering the seeds of a liberated world, free from the plagues of capitalism, colonialism, racism, and heteropatriarchy.

This first issue’s theme — chosen — has already elicited some strong reactions. The possibility of a dangerous ethnocentrism in Jewish chosenness has led many, both historically and today, to supersede this language with a more inclusive and egalitarian one. We, however, have maintained this language that so infamously constitutes the Jewish people. The apparent failure of Western universalism to live up to its ideal need not force Jews to bear the burden of correcting it.

Instead, we intend to mobilize the radical potential of particularity. We encourage engagement with the rich, challenging, and at times uncomfortable texts of the multi-millennial Jewish tradition. We are committed to the precious value of difference, of Jewish difference. And we choose to wrestle with this difference rather than displacing and replacing it with a vague and equally dangerous universalism.

Warning against the textual traditions of the Jews, Jesus’s apostle Paul righteously announced, “The letter kills.”

We certainly hope so.

Ben Ratskoff

15 Shvat 5778

Read From The First Issue Of PROTOCOLS:

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.