By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg (center) with Israeli Consul General Anat Sultan-Dadon (third from left) and members of NAJL and Jewish Federations of North America.
The National Association of Jewish Legislators, which comprises more than 240 Jewish state legislators in close to 40 states, met in Louisville earlier this month. It marked a particularly auspicious time for NAJL, which – after operating independently since its founding in 1977 — will become an integral component within Jewish Federations of North America.
“I’m honored and humbled to be in the room with all of you,” Sara Klein Wagner, President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Louisville and the Trager Family JCC, told attendees during a welcome breakfast on Aug. 6. “We share roots, and we share traditions.”
Wagner lauded NAJL members “for getting up every day as Jews, but more importantly as citizens in our United States and saying, ‘This is what I want to do with my time.’”
“We live by our Jewish values,” she emphasized, exemplified by “action, respect, and of course hope for a better future. So, thank you for the work you’re doing in your state capitals and in your communities.”
Matt Golden, the Federation’s General Counsel and Chief Strategy and Impact Officer spoke in his capacity as outgoing director of the Jewish Community Relations Council. “Kentucky has a complicated relationship with its Jews,” he said.
“Not too many people know this, but the Jews were expelled from Kentucky during the Civil War.,” Golden said. “We were not allowed to be part of the hospital system. We were excluded from workout facilities. So, we started our own Jewish facilities, our own Jewish hospital.”
Fast forward to the here and now, when there is a thriving local Federation serving 14,000 Jews, with an extraordinary Jewish Heritage Fund and even a Jewish Mayor (and Jerry Abramson before him). “We’ve elected Jewish congresspeople,” Golden said. “We have state Jewish elected officials. We have an antisemitism task force – one of the first places in the country to do that.”
Louisville’s current Jewish Mayor, Craig Greenberg, spoke about moving to Louisville in 1984 when his father was hired as a Jewish Hospital administrator. “And ironically, at the time we moved here there were no Jewish people in the senior leadership team of Jewish Hospital.”
“Thank you for your public service,” Greenberg said. “Thank you for choosing Louisville, and I look forward to continue working with each and every one of you to end antisemitism in our cities, in our states, and across the country.”
Anat Sultan-Dadon, Israel’s Cousul General for the Southeastern U.S., spoke of what she believes are misguided calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. “If only those voices were calling on Hamas to cease their fire, to lay down their weapons and to release the hostages, this would have been long over.” While the rest of the world counts the war’s length in months, the hostages “are counting in seconds.”
“We continue to fight those who proudly state they seek to destroy us, and not only in Gaza,” she said, “whose goal is not only the destruction of Israel. It is the destruction of the values we all share.”
When one listener said that she was trying to reconcile supporting Israel with her intense disapproval of the current Netanyahu-led government, Sultan-Dadon responded that such support superseded any political considerations.
“The need to fight Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran is not about a specific government or a specific coalition in Israel,” she said. And sometimes there truly are certain absolutes: “There is no daylight in ensuring our survival.”
Moreover, Sultan-Dadon said, “we are seeing antisemitism all around the world being legitimized, including here in the United States. This is a crucial point in time in which we all need to educate ourselves to better use our voices to share the truth, and to clarify what others seek to distort.
“It is not good enough to say the words ‘never again’ when what we are witnessing around the world is ‘once again.’ When Jewish children are being bullied, harassed, and attacked in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and universities, this is not about this or that. policy in Israel.”
Strong words. But even under reality’s harsh glare, on this morning the mood was decidedly upbeat and optimistic. The JFNA/NAJL merger is a prime indicator of legislators’ eagerness, wherever they serve, to advocate and collaborate. The imperative may never have been more pressing, but these legislators appear undaunted.
Ultimately, “the fact that dozens of Jewish state legislators from around the country chose to meet in Louisville — and chose our Jewish Federation as the sponsor of the event,” Wagner said, “is a testament to the important, ongoing work we are doing here.”