Until recently, the political strategy of the American Jewish establishment could be summed up in two ways: Elect pro-Israel lawmakers to Congress and, at a much smaller scale, educate state and local officials about Jewish values and causes.

But a new model of Jewish political engagement is emerging to counter growing populist angst and surging antisemitism across the political spectrum: local efforts focused on school boards and city councils and statehouses. 

These Jewish activists are not shying away from the messy reality of politics: They aren’t here to make friends with everyone, acknowledging that not everyone is an ally. Their goal is to offer support — through door-knocking, organizing and their checkbooks — to candidates who have stood by the Jewish community in the post-Oct. 7 political firestorm, and to try to unseat those who have not. 

If you want to make a difference in the actual day-to-day lives of Jewish Americans, these activists argue, the place to do so is not Congress. It’s Sacramento, or Harrisburg, or the local Democratic Party committee meeting up the street. 

“All of these groups are starting to pop up because we realize that the infrastructure that the community has had in the past isn’t enough and isn’t working,” said Stefanie Clarke, a political strategist in Colorado who co-founded the Colorado Jewish Action Alliance. 

Like nearly all of the groups now operating in local politics, COJAA was born after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, when municipal governments in the U.S. became the newest front in Israeli-Palestinian culture wars. Anti-Israel rhetoric that often veered into outright antisemitism could suddenly be heard regularly in city halls and state legislatures. People who were elected to office because of their views on bike lanes or the environment were suddenly being pressured to weigh in on a contentious issue that originated thousands of miles away.

By law, tax-exempt nonprofits cannot engage in the political system. But a growing consensus is emerging that the apolitical approach necessarily adopted by the Jewish philanthropic world is not enough to address the intense partisanship of the moment, where incendiary antisemitic rhetoric has seeped into all levels of the political system. 

In places including Atlanta, Denver and Pittsburgh, first-time Jewish activists such as Clarke are responding with grassroots initiatives like COJAA. Elsewhere, existing Jewish communal institutions are incubating new political organizations that they are spinning off as independent entities — for example, in San Francisco, where the local Jewish Community Relations Council created an affiliated advocacy organization called Bay Area Jewish Action (BAJA).

“We are seeing an increasingly unhinged and violent-prone mob challenging elected officials for standing with the Jewish community, and so there is a risk in standing with us, however unacceptable that reality is,” said Tyler Gregory, the CEO of JCRC and executive director of BAJA. “We need to be able to do more than just verbally say thank you in a situation like that.”

What that looks like in practice differs from place to place. BAJA created a political network where members commit to donating a certain amount throughout the election cycle, and have opportunities to meet candidates in BAJA-organized forums.

Other efforts are bipartisan. COJAA endorsed 13 candidates in Colorado’s primaries this year, a mix of Democrats and Republicans. (The primary results were themselves mixed; seven of COJAA’s preferred candidates won.) Georgia Solidarity Network, based in Atlanta, sees its mission as educating lawmakers about the state’s Jewish community.

“Part of our theory of change is that you cannot meet the moment by just showing up in an election cycle and trying to get messaging out there,” Beacon Coalition founder Jeremy Kazzaz explained. “It requires people on the ground, and it requires conversations going all the time.” 

“Our legislators are incredible. But our legislators are blueberry farmers and used car sales lot owners and small-time lawyers in tiny towns who have no familiarity at all with the Jewish community,” Georgia Solidarity Network co-founder Alli Medof told Jewish Insider. “We really recognized that there was a need for us as a community to have a strong voice and presence in the legislature and to represent the concerns of Jewish Georgians.”

In Pittsburgh, a group called the Beacon Coalition spent the past year recruiting moderate Democrats to run for local volunteer positions in official Democratic groups throughout Allegheny County. Forty aligned Democrats won their races for small neighborhood seats that play an outsized role in party endorsements.

“Part of our theory of change is that you cannot meet the moment by just showing up in an election cycle and trying to get messaging out there,” Beacon Coalition founder Jeremy Kazzaz explained. “It requires people on the ground, and it requires conversations going all the time.” 

Each of these groups is independent, created and operated — and funded (for the most part) — locally. But they see an opportunity to connect with and learn from each other. 

Schusterman Family Philanthropies, the philanthropic behemoth that supports liberal causes and pro-Israel groups, convened a gathering earlier this year that brought together dozens of activists in the burgeoning local Jewish political ecosystem. 

“I’m deeply concerned about the rise in extremism that’s playing out in local politics,” the foundation’s senior director for U.S. Jewish grantmaking, David Rittberg, told JI. “I do think that Jewish community leaders as well as everyday Americans are waking up to the challenges that these dynamics are creating in a local political context.” 

Schusterman’s involvement in this space is an indication that Jewish philanthropists are taking problems at the local level seriously. Rittberg declined to comment on whether Schusterman has given grants to any of the groups, but said the foundation sees its role as being “a connector.” 

Many emerging local activists have looked to a group called New York Solidarity Network for advice. NYSN was formed in 2022 after New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter began pressuring local candidates to pledge not to travel to Israel, a request that at the time was seen as radical but has since become the norm in many Democratic primaries in liberal urban areas. 

Sara Forman, the group’s founding executive director, advises them that money is not enough — a pointed message at a moment when, at the national level, AIPAC’s super PAC just spent tens of millions of dollars backing Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) in a failed Michigan Senate primary bid, and further damaged its image with Democrats in the process. 

“DSA has been incredibly successful at organizing community and at making people feel like they are part of something,” said Sara Forman, founding executive director of NYSN. “I think in the Jewish community, having local organizations mimic some of the same practices of DSA is a good thing. Make people feel included. Make people feel like their voice counts.”

“You can’t build something inorganically. There has to be a reason for people to want to come out and attend events, and want to knock on doors and make phone calls and organize their synagogues,” said Forman, who stepped down from NYSN in January. “Check-writing isn’t what’s going to make the difference here.”

The goal, instead, is building up American Jews’ appetite for grassroots political organizing in support of Jewish causes and candidates who support them. That’s a different position than the one taken by AIPAC in recent years, which has invested at the federal level in high-dollar political fundraising. But when groups such as DSA are able to recruit eager volunteers to campaign for far-left officials and show up to public meetings to voice support for anti-Israel measures, Jewish activists increasingly see a need to fight fire with fire. 

“DSA has been incredibly successful at organizing community and at making people feel like they are part of something,” said Forman. “I think in the Jewish community, having local organizations mimic some of the same practices of DSA is a good thing. Make people feel included. Make people feel like their voice counts.”

The success of a DSA-aligned faction in several major Democratic primaries this year has led many of these Jewish activists to now see their fight for communal safety as part of a larger battle within the party, about whether it will move left or to the center ahead of the 2028 presidential election. 

“I think the overlap between folks who are concerned about fighting illiberalism, extremism, antisemitism and virulent anti-Zionism deeply intersects with those of us who want to strengthen moderate factions on both sides of the aisle, in particular for us on the Democratic side,” Third Way President Jon Cowan told JI. “A lot of folks are coming to realize that those fights deeply overlap.”

“We know that the next phase for us is focusing more on the creeping threat of DSA,” Medof, from Georgia, said. “The way we think about this work is that the sorts of things that we’re fighting for are not just about what’s good for Jewish Georgians. They’re good for Georgia overall.”

Last week, The New York Times outlined a new effort by the centrist Democratic group Third Way to push back against the growing appeal of DSA-aligned groups and policies within the party. Third Way President Jon Cowan told JI that the organization is, for the first time in its history, working with groups at the local level. Third Way gave a grant to the Beacon Coalition this year to support its work and help the organization expand to Cleveland. 

“I think the overlap between folks who are concerned about fighting illiberalism, extremism, antisemitism and virulent anti-Zionism deeply intersects with those of us who want to strengthen moderate factions on both sides of the aisle, in particular for us on the Democratic side,” Cowan said. “A lot of folks are coming to realize that those fights deeply overlap.”

Building support for Israel is not what most of these groups see as their focus. They want efforts targeting Israel — like Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns — to fail, and for local governments to otherwise stay mum on one of the most intractable foreign policy issues in the world.

“We are about Jewish safety, security and engagement in civil life. We really don’t talk about Israel other than how the rhetoric around it endangers our community,” said Mindy Miller, a co-founder of the Colorado group. 

Not that that has stopped opponents from trying to tar the groups as, essentially, mini-AIPACs. 

“We’ve seen a trend with a very similar pattern of behavior targeting groups like Beacon, where there are Jewish Americans who are showing up in spaces as Jewish Americans and saying our community is important,” said Pittsburgh-based Kazzaz. “It’s a lot of boogeyman-ing, just name calling, ‘You’re a secret Republican.’”

Mostly, though, the new Jewish activists are finding curiosity, not animosity. People who are eyeing local positions are generally not running with Israel or Palestine as their top issue. But that doesn’t mean they don’t understand how thorny the discourse can be. 

“One of the things we say is we will never cancel you. There are no stupid questions,” said Miller, from Colorado. 

She wants to be a guide to help local politicians learn about the issues. And with financial and manpower resources that can help candidates in their campaigns, Miller hopes the Jewish community will now have a shot of being the first to reach those politicians.