Hannah Einbinder is a sparkling young Hollywood performer currently starring on one of television’s top comedies, “Hacks.” On the show, she portrays a young comedy writer — a role for which she has deservedly received high praise.

There is nothing funny, however, about her recent real-life writings on abortion. For a woman who has proudly and courageously worn her Jewish identity on her sleeve, Einbinder’s decision to cast her lot with those who repeatedly inject antisemitism into the reproductive freedom movement is painful. Rather than advancing our shared goal of expanded access to reproductive care, Einbinder is instead subjecting Jewish women who are already being demonized to even more hatred and hostility.

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As the chief operating officer of the JCRC of Greater Washington — and previously the founding director of a Jewish grantmaking organization advancing social change for women and girls — I am deeply dismayed by Einbinder’s support for a new campaign called “Fund Abortion Not War.” This campaign charges that abortion funds, a critical network of support for women who cannot afford reproductive care, are “being targeted by Zionists in the abortion access space.” In particular, the campaign cites the case of the DC Abortion Fund (DCAF), alleging that “after publicly calling for a ceasefire, DCAF received backlash and lost significant funding in the following months.”

Such a campaign is built on a fundamentally false and flawed premise: the idea that organizations that have received Jewish dollars in the past are entitled to those dollars at all. 

American Jews are keenly aware of their philanthropic agency, carefully choosing where and how to direct their charitable giving. What’s more, they give generously, both to support their own community’s institutions and to promote justice, compassion and equity in American society broadly. Recent studies indicate that 75% of Jewish households make charitable contributions averaging over $10,000 per year, two-thirds of which go to non-religious organizations and causes. 

But no one is inherently entitled to our philanthropy or political support. We saw this when Women’s March founders Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory engaged in consistent antisemitic rhetoric that erased the narratives of Jewish supporters, and when international women’s organizations, including UN Women, remained silent in the wake of Hamas’ horrific sexual violence against women and girls on Oct. 7, 2023. In both cases, Jewish women refused to remain silent in order to “go along and get along.” Instead, they rose up to speak truth to power. 

Similarly, Jewish donors in the Washington region — largely women — did not abandon DCAF; rather, DCAF abandoned them. It was DCAF that decided to stray from its core mission of funding abortions by wading into the Israel-Hamas war, a complex, painful foreign policy issue that defies easy categorization. It was DCAF leaders who fostered such a hostile working environment with respect to that war that its only Jewish employee was forced to resign. It was DCAF that bizarrely joined a boycott of the Jewish recording star Matisyahu. If DCAF and some of its sister funds have lost donations because they engaged in antisemitism thinly masked as advocacy, they have no one to blame but themselves.

But that doesn’t mean that Jewish donors have abandoned the abortion funding movement. On the contrary, many of the same philanthropists who felt compelled to sever their relationships with DCAF and other abortion funds have continued and intensified their support for abortion access equity via the Red Tent Fund, a new abortion fund rooted in Jewish values. In only its second year of existence, the Red Tent Fund — founded and led by the erstwhile DCAF executive Allison Tombros Korman — plans to allocate approximately $500,000 toward desperately needed abortion care nationwide, including in the DMV. The Jewish community is continuing to channel their values and longstanding support for abortion care directly into tangible action.

The Fund Abortion Not War campaign also peddles the myth that Zionism and reproductive freedom are incompatible. In fact, Israel is the one country in the Middle East where abortions are safe and legal. Here in the United States, more than 80% of American Jews strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade and believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. In 2024, reproductive choice ranked as the second most important issue to American Jewish voters. In this polarized political climate, protecting reproductive freedom is one of the only issues on which most American Jews agree.

Given these realities, and the fact that more than 80% of American Jews consider Israel an important part of their Jewish identities, it is stunning that DCAF and others have chosen to demonize Israel without any consideration of their Jewish supporters. At the same time, they have deliberately ignored Hamas’ decades-long misogynistic reign of terror, under which abortions are banned in nearly all cases and harsh punishments imposed on women who undergo the procedure and doctors who provide it. 

Let me be clear: I am a Hannah Einbinder fan. I adore “Hacks.” I greatly respect Hannah’s advocacy for reproductive health and women’s rights; a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and the basic right of all humans to live with peace, safety, dignity and respect. Judaism teaches us to live our values, and she is doing exactly that. If we were to ever meet, I suspect we’d find plenty of common ground.

My only wish is that she would consider the bigger picture when she speaks out. Perhaps it would surprise her to know that hundreds of Jewish employees of reproductive justice organizations — people who are similarly committed to fighting fiercely for progressive values — feel so reviled and marginalized in their workplaces that they have created a dedicated space to support one another. Campaigns like Fund Abortion Not War add unnecessary fuel to that already raging fire.

Jews don’t simply belong in progressive spaces — throughout history, we’ve led them. We need leaders like Hannah Einbinder to help make those spaces strong, inclusive and free from hate.  

Guila Franklin Siegel is chief operating officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and a member of the national leadership council of the Red Tent Fund.