Mr. Kraft, May I Have a Word with You?
Posted on 02/13/2026 @ 10:23 AM
Image: Screen Capture from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgOkCFGNeTE
By Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar, Executive Director of CAJE
There’s a story about Miami I heard that I want to share with you.
It came from someone in one of the Wexner Heritage program cohorts who described an activity that took place at one of the national gatherings.
The Wexners were given a hypothetical scenario in which the United States was being run by an antisemitic government that was beginning to actively target Jews, and each cohort was asked to huddle and discuss what they would do in response.
The other groups came back to report they would do all the things that we would expect Jews in America to do - lobby Washington, appeal to friendly non-Jews, and so forth.
Miami, in contrast, said: We’d buy guns and ammo, train our people and fight back!
Wexner Heritage Program alum Ike Fisher assures me the story is indeed true.
And the stories we tell about ourselves matter.
They share who we think we are and what we think we are capable of doing and being.
From Bereisheet through Shemot, where we are right now in our cycle of Torah parshiot, the stories of our ancestors are stories about us.
That’s why I found Robert Kraft’s Superbowl half-time ad — as well intentioned as it certainly was – sadly so disappointing, and I would add, damaging to our vision of who we Jews are and what we are capable of doing and being.
The symbolism of the nebbishy, timid Jew being bullied by the school mob and then saved by the righteous gentile, a tall and strong young man of color, who comes to his aid by slapping a blue square on his knapsack and assuring him of his empathy, is so Schindler’s List that it made me feel utter despair.
Mr. Kraft has clearly not read Dara Horn’s scathingly titled book “People Love Dead Jews” and if you haven’t read it, then buy it, read it, or read the summary article “Dead Jews and the People Who Love Them” in the Atlantic magazine.
We Jews can easily win the Victimization Olympics; we’ve been working on it for centuries, millennia even, but the end result isn’t a gold medal… it’s a lot of dead Jews, our people, our families, us.
That’s not a message I want to get behind.
And what does it teach the non-Jew who is watching, about what he or she needs to do to take action against antisemitism — why, stick a blue square on your social media platform of choice and if you see something, say something — to the Jew.
First, how about saying something to the mob?!? That would be a hard decision to undertake, but potentially effective. It might actually protect another Jew from being victimized.
Second, and I can’t believe I have to say this out loud, a blue square is not a replacement for real action. Social media is a fake world that feels real, but is not. Posting blue squares does nothing but virtue signal.
It is true that America, as a culture, feels bad for the victimized underdog, AND also, America respects those who stand up for themselves proud and strong.
I’d rather live in the latter camp, than die in the former one.
Our Jewish Miami Community Study taught us that Miami is the most Zionist community, per capita, in the entire United States.
Which means we in Miami – and all Jews around the world -- have 2 powerful historical models to draw our stories from. One is contemporary Israel, and the other, our Diaspora history.
From Israel, we learn not to wait to be rescued and not to strive to be pitied.
We and our children need to actively be proud and strong, to take actions that give us dignity and self-determination.
From our Diaspora history, we learn how to build a society that supports Jewish life in good times and bad, with thick bonds of community, with storytelling and ritual to reinforce and remember the messages, with Jewish learning and Jewish doing.
Mr. Kraft, I appreciate that you are trying to reach out to an important audience by positioning your ads during the Superbowl. I pray that it might change hearts and minds!
AND I’d like to invite you to enlarge your vision of giving.
With $15 million more every Federation in the country could hire more JCRC staff members to build ACTUAL allies in real life, rather than virtual blue square allies.
With $15 million more, every CAJE could bring so many more children into Jewish education.
With $15 million more, synagogues and Jewish summer camps and JCCs and JCS’s can build up actual Jewish life.
I wish Mr. Kraft could look around the room of a Federation or CAJE board meeting with its volunteers and community professionals - because at those, I see people who are not blue square people.
I see people who actual DO something – who give of their time and their financial resources to build and strengthen Jewish community and the Jewish future.
Our ancestors recognized, and research data backs up their understanding — strong Jewish identity is a layering process of many different experiences, one on top of another - synagogue, camp, school, trips to Israel, peer groups.
That’s what creates the Jewish community of the present and the future.
That’s what’s worked in various iterations for thousands of years.
All the rest is commentary.
Mr. Kraft, zil gmor- go and learn it*, so you invest more of your tzedakah dollars in something proud and strong that is actually proven to work!
*Referring to a statement by Hillel the Sage in the Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a
