As an active member of California’s Legislative Jewish Caucus, Laura Friedman, a progressive assemblywoman who recently won a crowded Democratic primary to succeed outgoing Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), has long been involved in efforts to counter rising antisemitism across the state.

Now that she is on a glide path to represent a safely blue House seat in the Los Angeles area, Friedman, 57, vows she is ready to apply her experience to the federal level, particularly amid a pronounced uptick in antisemitic incidents sparked by Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.

“It should actually concern us all,” she said in an interview with Jewish Insider last week, cautioning against what she described as “a kind of creeping antisemitism that can blur the lines between very legitimate political criticism” of Israel and remarks “based on antisemitic memes about Jews and who we are as people.”

In her final months in the Statehouse, Friedman, who said she has faced such attacks herself while defending Israel, noted that she is now at work on, among other things, crafting legislation to reform diversity, equity and inclusion programs on college campuses, which have recently faced criticism for excluding Jewish narratives.

“These are also policies that we need to look at from a federal level,” Friedman explained, stressing the “importance” of recognizing that “antisemitism is a form of discrimination.”

As she prepares to replace Schiff, a Jewish Democrat and pro-Israel stalwart who is all but assured a seat in the Senate after his recent primary win, Friedman indicated that she is largely aligned with his positions on Middle East policy, even if her approach is guided by what she characterized as a more staunchly progressive background.

“I am very sensitive to Israel being at this moment of crisis and us being a strong ally,” said Friedman, who has family in Israel and first visited the Jewish state in 2019 on a delegation with members of the Jewish caucus. 

That sentiment, however, drew backlash during the primary, Friedman said, as she faced pressure from left-wing critics of Israel who wanted to see her condemn the war and accused her of being “pro-genocide” on social media. “I think it’s really hard for pro-Israel but progressive candidates to also have a nuanced view of this on the campaign trail,” she said, “to express the actual complexities and realities of it, where a lot of things can be true at once.”

While she believes that Israel has “a right to go to war” with a group, Hamas, that is “hell-bent” on its destruction and has put Israel in what she called “an impossible situation,” Friedman, a founding member of the California Legislative Progressive Caucus, said she would still like to see Israel “do more to protect civilians,” even as she appreciates “the efforts that Israel does make.”

But while she has encountered pushback from anti-Israel activists, Friedman, now in her eighth year in the state legislature, said that her reputation as a progressive lawmaker has enabled her to build meaningful dialogue around polarizing issues tied to the war.

For instance, Friedman cited her involvement in helping to find a consensus on the language used in a recent resolution calling for a “mutual permanent cease-fire” that was unanimously passed by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. Friedman said she had played a part in the negotiations to ensure that the wording, which urged “the release of all Israeli hostages” and “the end of Hamas’ rule in Gaza,” was acceptable to the Democratic pro-Israel community in addition to the progressive wing of the party.

“She gets the nuance of it,” said Andrew Lachman, the president of Democrats for Israel California, who helped facilitate the resolution. Friedman, he said in a recent interview with JI, “has been very helpful in making sure that the line is held on these issues when progressives try to turn them into something that is much more hostile.”

Even as she acknowledged that the resolution is unlikely to “please people who have very strong passion on one side or the other,” Friedman said it “shows there is a path forward to making people sit down together and understand where the lines are,” while pushing for “an end to the war in a way that respects Israel’s right to exist and doesn’t demonize Israel or Palestinians.”

Friedman expressed optimism that her effort stands as one example of a possible blueprint for engagement that, she suggested, could be brought to the House, where Democratic divisions over Israel have fueled growing hostilities in recent months.

“I think there is a very important role for progressive pro-Israel Jews in this space,” said Friedman, whose campaign was endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which has seen a small exodus of members in recent months amid flaring tensions over Israel. “There are models for being able to have some sort of consensus middle road on the left.”

Friedman, who is expected to handily defeat Alex Balekian, her Republican opponent, in November, was born in Brooklyn and grew up in South Florida, where her parents helped found a Reconstructionist synagogue. Her family’s Jewish lineage, she said, extends back to Warsaw and Bialystok, in Poland, on her mother’s side, and Greenock, Scotland, on her father’s side, part of a small but historic cohort of Scottish Jews who had immigrated from Eastern Europe.

Despite a strong connection to her unique heritage, Friedman said she was not raised in a Jewish area and often “felt very isolated” as a kid. “We were the only family that didn’t have Christmas trees,” she recalled. 

Friedman moved to Los Angeles in the early 1990s and worked as an executive in the entertainment industry before shifting to politics, crediting her mother’s “Jewish progressive” activism as sparking her interest in public office, even if her mother, she joked, has long hoped she would instead go to law school. Prior to rising to the Assembly in 2016, she served as a city councilor in Glendale, where she now resides with her family.

In a statement to JI, Schiff said that he looks “forward to continuing” his “partnership with Laura during the campaign and well into the future,” praising her “track record as a dedicated local leader on the City Council and in the State Assembly.”

“I am confident that her work on issues like transportation, climate action, gun safety and more will make her an outstanding member of Congress,” he said. “I’ve had the privilege of working with Laura as a local partner for years, and I’ve witnessed firsthand the thoughtful and deliberate approach she takes to the most complicated of issues.”

Even as she hopes to spur dialogue between the progressive and pro-Israel communities on Middle East policy, Friedman, who has long been engaged on such issues as homelessness and climate change, believes that she can have a “much more immediate impact” addressing local concerns surrounding the war, including rising antisemitism.

“There are things that we need to deal with around the fact that people are painting swastikas on the sides of buildings in Los Angeles during protests,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of constituents at home who are feeling unsafe, and I have a lot of constituents who are feeling very impassioned and wanting to be activists. How do we still remain as a community where we’re not at each other’s throats and where we can have a respectful dialogue? That’s what I’ve been trying to focus on.”