Listening About Israel

These are the questions CAJM asked:

  • What can CAJM bring to field-wide discourse, especially in times of crisis?

  • How can we best situate our spaces to be safe, welcoming, inclusive, and inspiring? 

  • What can CAJM do now, so that we and our member institutions are better prepared for difficult conversations in the future? 

  • How can CAJM best support Jewish museums as they navigate increasingly complex conversations about Israel?

Below are resources that came up during the conversation:

  • Sharing the Well: A Resource Guide for Jewish-Muslim Engagement  

    • A free JTS resource created with Hartford Seminary and the Islamic Society of North America. Includes a dialogue guide, discussion questions, essays from Jewish and Muslim leaders, case studies, and a glossary. Particularly useful for building conversations around shared responsibility and interreligious relationship-building.

  • Project Shema  

      • Training and resources centered on Jewish inclusion, contemporary antisemitism, pluralism, and navigating Israel/Palestine discourse. Especially relevant to the question “How do Jews fit into DEI conversations?” and to helping institutions understand Jewish experiences without treating Jewish identity or opinion as monolithic. 

  • Facing History: Antisemitism Resources  

    • Extensive facilitation and educational resources for connecting difficult histories to contemporary choices. Particularly useful for moving conversations beyond Israel/Palestine alone and situating antisemitism alongside racism, religious persecution, white supremacy, and other histories of exclusion.

  • Nonprofit Learning Lab 

    • Practical nonprofit training in facilitation, leadership, governance, and organizational culture. Its trauma-informed facilitation resources are especially useful for planning conversations where participants may disclose personal experiences or where conflict and strong emotions are expected.

  • “Let’s Talk About That: Dialogue and Change in Collections Care” 

    • A Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts resource highlighted in CAJM/IMLS’s Museums Respond field guide. Useful for thinking specifically about dialogue as part of collections stewardship and institutional change. 

  • Museums Respond: Strategies for Countering Antisemitism & Hate - Field Guide

    • Developed by CAJM and IMLS specifically for museums. Offers practices and resources for confronting antisemitism, addressing hate, building understanding across communities, and convening difficult conversations. 

  • The Beinart Notebook - Peter Beinart 

    • Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, writes from a perspective emphasizing Palestinian equality and freedom alongside Jewish safety. His newsletter also regularly recommends other reading. Best used as one perspective within a deliberately pluralistic reading list, rather than as a neutral primer. 

  • Holding Humanity: Israelis and Palestinians for Peace - Skirball Cultural Center  

    • A useful model for foregrounding Israelis and Palestinians engaged in dialogue and peacebuilding. Particularly relevant to museums asking how cultural institutions can create space for encounter without demanding ideological uniformity.

  • Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam - Mikey Greenblatt episode  

    • Unpacked's Wondering Jews combines Jewish conversation, disagreement, humor, and contemporary issues. The Mikey Greenblatt episode considers online antisemitism and the difference between hostile social-media environments and encounters with actual people - an accessible starting point for discussing how digital discourse shapes perceptions of Jewish life.

  • BESA Project - Norman Gershman  

    • Gershman's photographs document Albanian Muslims who sheltered Jews during the Holocaust, often at enormous personal risk. A strong resource for Jewish-Muslim history that complicates narratives built solely around conflict and asks a larger question: What are our responsibilities to one another? 

More questions that came up:

  • What is political? Is talking about Israel inherently political? Is not talking about Israel political?

  • How can Jewish museums make room for Zionist, non-Zionist, anti-Zionist, and uncertain Jews without assuming any one label tells us everything about a person?

  • How do we resist treating Jews - or Israelis or Palestinians - as monoliths?

  • How can we practice “both/and” rather than “either/or” without pretending every question has two equal or opposite positions?

  • How should museums respond when donors or funders demand ideological alignment?

  • How do the dynamics change among staff, boards, funders, visitors, and community partners?

  • What belongs in an internal staff conversation versus a public-facing museum conversation?

  • How can museums receive criticism without allowing every piece of feedback to determine institutional policy?

  • How do we build enough confidence to follow difficult questions with curiosity rather than defensiveness?

  • How can Jewish museums connect Jewish experiences of antisemitism and religious persecution to other communities' historical struggles without flattening their differences?

  • If Israel has become a perceived litmus test for American Jews, what is the role of a Jewish museum in that equation?

  • What are our collective responsibilities to one another when members of our own communities fundamentally disagree?

CAJM Communications