In the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks and the war against Hamas in Gaza, as some organizations, institutions and movements have become increasingly anti-Zionist and alienating for Jews, two distinct approaches have emerged in response: one called out their leaders and, in some cases, cut all ties with them; the other engaged with them, encouraging them to see the error of their ways.

That latter strategy scored a victory this month, getting the National Education Association — the country’s largest labor union — to adopt rules ahead of its convention last week to prevent a repeat of last year’s event, in which members voted to cut all ties with the Anti-Defamation League, preventing the union from using the group’s resources on antisemitism and Holocaust education. (That resolution was ultimately not adopted by the union, after its executive committee rejected it.)

In addition to preventing measures that would alienate Jewish members, at this year’s convention, members also passed resolutions that were “good for the Jews,” including one that recognized Jews as a protected ethnic minority, according to Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which worked closely with NEA and its Jewish caucus over the past year and spearheaded the effort to change the rules and pass the new resolutions.

“We need to offer solutions that incentivize and help leaders do the right thing,” Spitalnick told eJewishPhilanthropy this week. 

“Beating union and other leaders over the head just hasn’t worked,” she said. “Not only has it not worked, it’s just made it harder.”

This weekend, Spitalnick, along with other colleagues from JCPA, will also attend the annual convention of the American Federation of Teachers — the country’s second-largest teachers union — where she will participate in a “fireside chat” about antisemitism with AFT’s president, Randi Weingarten, with whom JCPA has also worked closely on antisemitism-related issues. This included launching a resource hub on antisemitism for AFT earlier this year with the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History.

Due to differences in how AFT’s convention operates, there likely will not be anti-Israel or antisemitic resolutions passed, though Spitialnick said her organization will be monitoring the situation closely. “There are no major concerns at this point. But never say never, because you never know,” she said. 

And yet, alongside these discrete victories for the “engagement approach” with K-12 educators, two fundamental questions still remain: One, do these higher-level developments at teachers unions actually trickle down and improve the experiences of the teachers and the students? And two, are there organizations that simply are too far gone, where engagement serves as a “fig leaf,” offering an imprimatur of progress that masks deep-seated, unresolved issues?

To Spitalnick, NEA’s rules changes were only ever “just an initial step forward, not the endgame in any way, shape or form,” she said. “I explicitly said that they were not a silver bullet.”

Since last year’s conference, JCPA has collaborated with NEA on antisemitism issues, including holding a joint webinar in January for Holocaust Remembrance Day with NEA President Becky Pringle. 

Spitalnick stressed that the “engagement approach” does not preclude criticizing the organization in question, noting that during that webinar, she “did call out the bad things that happened last year” at the NEA convention, namely the “intimidation and harassment that [Jewish teachers] felt.”

Spitalnick added that NEA is particularly sensitive to criticism today in light of congressional Republican calls to revoke its national charter. “That doesn’t mean we don’t call it out when [antisemitism] happens, but it needs to be done in a way that shows people you want to actually help them do better, as opposed to leveraging it as a broader political agenda,” she said.

On the second point, Spitalnick acknowledged that there can be institutions or individuals that are irredeemable, but she said she believed that wasn’t the case here. 

“There are organizations who are willing to engage constructively,” she said. “And then there are those who never will.”

For Spitalnick, the daughter of two public school teachers, the teachers’ unions were both willing to engage and represent institutions that are too important to abandon. 

“Do we believe as a community that democratic infrastructure and institutions, which include unions, are important or not?” she said. 

“This has been the broader question that the Jewish community has been grappling with over the last few years as real concerns of antisemitism are used to undermine democratic institutions. So whether it’s academic freedom or research funding or due process and civil liberties or unions, we need to ask the question,” she said. “Do we want to push them and improve them to do better on antisemitism — and on a variety of issues — or do we throw the baby out with the bathwater?”

Spitalnick also warned that if major Jewish groups do not engage with these organizations, fringe ones — whose views on Judaism, antisemitism and Israel lie far outside the mainstream — will do so instead. 

Spitalnick also acknowledged that the “engagement approach” is not a panacea. JCPA also worked with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a leader in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, with Spitalnick taking part in a webinar hosted by Ocasio-Cortez in June 2024. The following day, Ocasio-Cortez denounced a pro-Hamas rally outside an exhibition memorializing the massacre at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the protest antisemitic. Yet the congresswoman has also since endorsed candidates and voted in favor of pieces of legislation that were widely opposed by mainstream Jewish leaders. 

“The goal is not to get someone to agree with you 100% of the time,” Spitalnick said. “It’s to move the needle in the right direction.”