Journalist J.J. Goldberg has seen the modern Jewish world from a variety of vantage points: as a Jewish Studies major — with an Islamic Studies minor — at McGill University in Montreal, as a worker on kibbutzim in Israel and as a reporter and editor at Jewish publications in Los Angeles and New York. 

Perhaps that breadth of experience is why concerns about rising anti-Semitism around the world and the future of U.S.-Israel relations, don’t appear to stir panic in the 69-year-old editor-at-large of the Forward. 

“To be honest, we’ve come through 3,000 years of history — Holocaust, the rise of pogroms — I don’t believe God got us this far in order to abandon us now,” he said. 

Even if he is optimistic about the big picture, his more immediate surroundings were altered in January with an announcement from the publisher of the Forward that it was discontinuing its print edition after 120 years and laying off 40 percent of its staff, including Editor-in-Chief Jane Eisner because of declining revenue. (Goldberg occupied the position for seven years before her.) 

Despite that turbulence, Goldberg sounded calm during an interview with the Jewish Light about a range of topics, including Jewish journalism, Israel and anti-Semitism. He will also speak at an event, Prospects for Healing within the American Jewish Community Around Issues Related to Israel, at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 5 at Congregation Shaare Emeth. 

Goldberg said he was largely unaffected by the changes at the Forward because he is quasi-retired and edits and writes columns from his home in New York. 

“It’s not terribly disruptive except for the upset to my friends; I get it all sort of secondhand and over the phone. Having said that, it is something that had to happen — not necessarily in the way that it happened and the pain that it caused, but we were simply spending down our endowment and spending way more than we were making,” he said. “We had to take steps to cut down — the biggest thing is the printing and mailing. By going all digital, we save millions of dollars a year.”

Still, that does not mean Goldberg thinks that discontinuing the print edition and focusing on digital is a cure-all for Jewish publications. The viability of such newspapers and magazines “depends on what the future holds for American Jews,” he said.  

“We are now in a stage where I think a slight majority of our people under age 18 have only one Jewish parent, so it changes the definition of what it means to be Jewish,” he continued. “We are becoming a community that doesn’t feel other — that doesn’t feel apart from. … So when we’re reporting to them, how urgent is it to them to know what’s going on in this tribe that they have an ambivalent relationship to? 

“The other thing is, we are polarizing into a group that is very involved and quite conservative and defensive, and a much larger group that is less involved and more skeptical. The larger group, will it support a journalism that is more skeptical? Or will (Jewish publications) have to speak more and more to a community that doesn’t really want to ask questions about itself?”  

Much of the talk in the last month among American supporters of Israel has focused on what the election of first term U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar means for the Democratic Party. Both representatives have expressed support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and been accused of anti-Semitism. Asked how the American Jewish community should react to occurrences such as Omar’s tweet stating that lawmakers were supportive of Israel because of “Benjamins” from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobby, Goldberg said “a little more calmly.” 

“There are two women in the new Congress who don’t like Israel. Two,” he said. “You’re talking about people from an entirely different culture than the suburbs where the synagogues are. Now the fact that there are two people in Congress who really don’t like Israel means that something has changed, but it’s not the end of the world yet. You don’t want to infuriate all of their allies and make more enemies by overreacting.” 

Israel is also preparing for an election on April 9. Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane, a right-wing extremist who has served time in U.S. and Israeli prisons, to run for the Knesset. A litany of Jewish groups criticized the move.  The American Jewish Committee, a pro-Israel group, described the views of Kahane’s party as “reprehensible.” 

Here again, Goldberg reacted cautiously. Netanyahu’s move “is cynical,” he said. “It’s a clever way to increase the block of seats available to him to form a right-wing government after the election. It’s of a piece with him going to Hungary and Poland and forming an alliance with these super-nationalistic parties that have roots in anti-Semitism from World War II. It’s looking at short-term advantage, and that’s what he does, and that’s why he’s been in power for so long.  

“I have relatives who are settlers in the West Bank who don’t understand why we get so upset about Kahane. Having been in situations where I got to play touch football with Kahane and hang out with some of his followers and found out that we had things in common, I’m a little skeptical of the moral righteousness on both sides. I have found that people who share the Kahane point of view are not always fanatically racist…. I never like to write off anybody — unless you’re talking about Nazis who put people in ovens.”

Missouri state lawmakers have again proposed legislation aimed at combatting the BDS movement. The law would require certain businesses (based on the number of employees and the value of the company) that receive a state contract to certify that they will not engage in a boycott of Israel. Proponents of the legislation have said they are not aware of a business in Missouri that has supported a boycott of Israel and tried to do business with the state. Lawmakers have proposed — and in some cases passed — similar legislation in other states and at the federal level.

“The boycotters are trying to pressure Israel by economic means. The legislators are trying to prevent it; it’s people trying to get their way, and as long as nobody is getting killed, I celebrate the diversity of opinions,” he said.

But Goldberg also emphasized the importance of considering that Israeli law treats West Bank settlements, which are governed by the Ministry of Defense, differently than the rest of Israel. 

As such, “boycotting settlement products is a political protest against the policy of continuing to build settlements, which a majority of Israelis in the polls are against,” he said. “To say that you cannot use that method of protest against a particular Israeli policy in a particular territory neighboring the state of Israel I think is muzzling an Israeli political debate.”