Why the ‘Libs of TikTok’ founder’s Jewish identity was fair game – Jewish Telegraphic Agency

(JTA) — In the fall of 1965, a New York Times reporter met Daniel Burros, one of the main organizers of the Ku Klux Klan in upstate New York, at a luncheon in Queens. The reporter, McCandlish Phillips, had a difficult topic to broach with his racist and deeply anti-Semitic interviewee: he discovered that Burros’s parents were married by a rabbi, and that Burros himself appeared to have been raised and bar mitzvahed an Orthodox Jew. he lives in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens.

“Are you going to print that?” Donkey asked. When Phillips said that he would do it, Burros threatened to kill him.

Burros did not follow through on that threat, but the story ends in violence: After reading the article that was published on October 31, “State Klan leader hides secret of Jewish origin”, Burros shot himself and killed himself.

The story of the Orthodox Jew turned Klansman who hated himself is often mentioned in journalism classes as a case study to reveal what a subject would prefer to keep hidden. Burros had presented himself as a public figure, and his biography, and his secret, were considered fair game. Neither of the Times’ top editors at the time, AM Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb, who co-wrote a book on Donkeys, expressed any qualms.

“He was who he was, he did what he did, and I would no longer feel guilty saying that a certain person robbed a bank.” Rosenthal once told an interviewer. “Was I happy that he killed himself? Of course, no. I didn’t feel we had done anything more than appropriate. It was he who was misappropriating his life, both in what he was doing and in how he chose to end it. There were other ways he could have ended it, he could have quit!

I thought about the Burros case last week, after The Washington Post published an article about the far-right Twitter account “Libs of TikTok” in which reporter Taylor Lorenz named the woman who had been running the account anonymously. Among other things, she pointed out that the woman, Chaya Raichik, is an Orthodox Jew. Lorenz got the information from one of Raichik’s earlier Twitter bios, she mentioned it once and moved on.

Critics of the article, mostly from the right, accused Lorenz of harassing and “doxing” Raichik, that is, revealing personal information about someone who seemed to prefer anonymity online. Lorenz’s defenders, mostly from the left, said the reporter was just doing journalismand pointed out that Raichik herself was in the business of posting videos of obscure LGBTQ activists and gay teachers, who were later ridiculed and harassed in the right-wing ecosphere.

Lorenz’s editor defended his reporting methods, saying they “fully conform to the professional standards of the Washington Post.” Raichik, the statement added, “in his management of the Libs of TikTok Twitter account and in media interviews, he has had a significant impact on public discourse and his identity has become public knowledge on social media.” .

The Post’s statement itself befits the way most mainstream journalists would have handled the story: With its more than 700,000 followers and demonstrable impact on right-wing media outlets and even pending Republican legislation, the identity and Raichik’s background was ready to be revealed.

However, Jewish Twitter had a problem with Lorenz, with many asking how Raichik’s Orthodox background was relevant to the story.

“Why was it crucial for @TaylorLorenz mention that the creator of ‘Libs of TikTok’ was an Orthodox Jew? the group Stop Antisemitism tweeted. “Violent anti-Semitic attacks, especially in New York, are skyrocketing. This does nothing but give an already prejudiced lunatic more ammunition to attack the Jews!”

The Coalition for Jewish Values, an organization of right-wing Orthodox rabbis, said “identifying the Twitter user as an Orthodox Jewish woman put her at increased risk of physical harm.”

But if identifying someone as Jewish subjects them to anti-Semitism, that seems to be a bigger and more insurmountable problem than any journalist can address or avoid. assume, no evidence, that anti-Semitism has become so pervasive that living and publicly identifying as a Jew has become an existential risk. And it clashes with an ethos of Jewish pride and self-confidence that educators are trying to instill in Jewish schools and camps, and certainly in the synagogues to which many of the Washington Post’s critics belong.

Jews are visible and assertive in public life and in just about every occupation you can think of. Jews are overrepresented in activist spaces where the arguments are passionate and sometimes unhinged. They don’t live like pigs. It’s not clear why Raishik deserves special treatment, especially when he has willingly placed himself in the hot seat of our national argument.

Of course, I work for a Jewish media company whose job it is to report on Jewish achievements, scandals, and curiosities. No wonder I always find the fact that someone has a Jewish background interesting and relevant. And I can understand why Lorenz thought the same thing, too: religious belief is a major driver of politics these days, no more so than on the right, where faith and politics align when it comes to abortion activism. , LGBTQ issues and pandemic restrictions. As the New York Times noted in a recent article on the religious fervor within the pro-Trump right“[M]any believer is importing his worship of God, with all its intensity, emotion, and ambition, into his political life.”

The Times was talking about charismatic Christianity, but other observers have noted how Orthodox Jews, unlike the largely liberal non-Orthodox Jewish majority, have increasingly embraced the Republican Party and Donald Trump in recent years. This is great news for groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition, and community leaders in Brooklyn and other Orthodox enclaves have not been shy about his swing to the right.

The same trend also alarms some inside and outside of Orthodoxy. “The fact that Chaya Raichik is an Orthodox Jewish woman is 100% relevant to the Libs Of Tiktok story.” saying a writer who tweets like @EvelKneidel. “The rapid radicalization of Orthodox communities in recent years is dark and twisted.”

Welcome or obscure, the Orthodox connection between faith and right-wing politics is a topic worth exploring. And this is exactly how my colleagues at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency treated the report that “Libs of TikTok” was run by an activist who identified as Orthodox. In a thoughtful article, Ron Kampeas reported on politics in the Orthodox community., and discussed whether Raichik is representative or an outlier. Putting Raichik’s religious background in that context gave me, and hopefully readers of the article, a window into how to understand the current political moment and the roles played by all kinds of Jews.

The fact that a right-wing Twitter activist is Jewish is not as juicy as the contradictory story of the Jewish Klansman. Still, I see why Lorenz included the fact. And he just wishes, instead of the brief mention, that she had offered a fuller exploration of her relevance to the story at hand.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.