Nearly eight years ago, more than 470,000 American progressives — including many Jewish ones — marched through Washington to protest the first inauguration of President Donald Trump. 

“If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention,” signs read. “It is our choices that show who we truly are,” said another.

The Women’s March — one of the largest protests in American history — was initially seen as a galvanizing moment for the progressive movement, but it quickly became anything but. Soon after the march, Vanessa Wruble, one of the movement’s co-founders, was pushed out of her leadership position, which she said was because she was Jewish. More allegations of antisemitism against leaders of the movement soon emerged.

This tension within the progressive movement over antisemitism has only intensified since then. Since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, many progressive leaders and organizations involved in reproductive rights, racial justice, climate change and other progressive causes have accused Israel of apartheid and genocide and expect their partners to denounce Zionism — a belief held by the vast majority of Jews — while ignoring antisemitism and downplaying or justifying the Oct. 7 massacres and other attacks by terror groups against Israelis. 

As Trump’s second inauguration approaches, Jewish progressive nonprofits are looking to bolster their efforts through partnerships with non-Jewish peers in the field, but some are finding that some previous allies are no longer as welcoming. For some funders of these organizations, Jewish progressive organizations offer an alternative to the non-Jewish groups that have increasingly adopted anti-Israel and antisemitic stances.

Last year, Allison Tombros Korman resigned from the DC Abortion Fund, where she was the only Jewish employee, feeling as if the organization was adopting anti-Israel and antisemitic positions and that her concerns about this were being ignored. Six months later, she launched the Red Tent Fund as a way for people to support abortion care without having to pass an Israel litmus test.  

Almost immediately, Korman received criticism that she was splitting the movement.

“What I find frustrating about that critique is it makes it sound as though the Red Tent Fund and I have created this division within the abortion funding landscape, and there is no recognition or accountability on the part of other abortion funds, former colleagues, who have made decisions and said things that have very clearly pushed Jewish people out of this space,” Korman told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

According to a 2014 Pew study, 80% of American Jews believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. In its first six months, the Red Tent provided over $75,000 in abortion care. Next year, it is on track to fund $500,000 in abortion procedures, Korman said.

“If the Red Tent Fund didn’t exist, how many of these donors would have just stopped funding abortion altogether?” Korman said. “I’m keeping those dollars for abortion seekers in the movement, funding abortion, and, frankly, bringing new abortion dollars to the table.”

Currently, the Red Tent Fund partners with the National Council of Jewish Women, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and several synagogues, but many non-Jewish organizations refuse to work with the fund. Still, as Korman looks to the next presidency and the prospects of more limited reproductive rights, she said that she is willing to work alongside those who she feels are antisemitic.

“There’s a difference between partnering and working towards a common goal,” Korman said. “I’m not looking to necessarily create formal partnerships with organizations whose values do not align with our values, but I want to always put abortion seekers first.”

When clinics need funding for an abortion, they reach out to numerous organizations who band together funds in what is called a “solidarity pledge.” Korman said the Red Tent Fund would partner with anyone for a pledge, including the DC Abortion Fund, but, to date, her organization hasn’t been asked to take part in such a pledge. Korman believes this has more to do with its nascent status, rather than antisemitism or issues with her. “I imagine that those requests will come with time,” she said.

The National Council of Jewish Women is used to working with other organizations that may share its goal of gender equity while also holding views that are anathema to it, Jody Rabhan, the group’s chief policy officer, told eJP. 

“We often sit around the table with folks in which we don’t agree on every issue, but we agree on that particular issue in that particular moment on that particular day,” Rabhan said.

Like many American Jewish organizations, its work in Israel has only increased over the past year post Oct. 7, and it hasn’t impacted their relationships with other organizations, she said. 

Instead, if an organization makes a statement that it feels is antisemitic or otherwise inappropriate, the nonprofit is ready to have tough conversations. “We have stayed in the coalitions,” she said. “We have stayed in the conversations, and we’ve done the hard work to talk about when things are uncomfortable or when another organization or coalition may have done something that has hurt or pained us.”

Soon after the Red Tent Fund was launched, Sheila Katz, CEO of the NCJW, told Jewish Insider, that in 2022, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, instead of focusing all of the organization’s attention on reproductive rights, she instead had to spend “close to 70% of my time navigating antisemitism and anti-Zionism in coalition spaces in the progressive community” — and that was before the eruption of antisemitism post-Oct. 7, 2023.

For refugee-aid agency HIAS, its partnerships with other immigration-related organizations are more important than ever as it prepares for its work to come under fire from the new administration, which has a general anti-immigration outlook. “We need as many allies, as much support as we can possibly get because our work is more important than ever, and it is under threat,” Mark Hetfield, the CEO of HIAS, told eJP. 

Currently, nearly two-thirds of HIAS’ funding comes from the U.S. government and the United Nations, while one-third comes from philanthropy. The support from the government is likely to decrease under the incoming White House, as it did during Trump’s last term. At that time, the Jewish community greatly increased its support, Hetfield said, which he hopes will happen again.

In some ways, bonding over common goals with other progressive organizations is easier than the debates HIAS has had internally about Israel and Zionism, Hetfield said. In May, the Forward reported that HIAS had earmarked $300,000 for aid in Gaza, which was frozen because of tension between staff and the board. Instead of providing the aid themselves, HIAS directs donors to other nonprofits providing aid in Gaza, such as Global Communities and Catholic Relief Services.

“There’s a huge loss of innocent life in Gaza. We try to demonstrate constant empathy for that,” Hetfield said. “HIAS can’t work in Gaza for obvious reasons, so that creates an additional strain. But we’re completely distraught over the events of Oct. 7 and their aftermath and the impact on innocent lives, both in Israel and in Gaza.”

Abby Leibman, president and CEO of Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, told eJP that there isn’t tension within Mazon or its board over working in Gaza because the decision not to was made by the board years ago. They only work within the so-called Green Line, the 1949 armistice line that separates Israel proper from the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights.

“It’s really rooted in the idea that this is Israel proper, as far as the international community [is concerned],” Leibman said. “There’s a significant amount of food insecurity within those borders.”

Mazon’s mission is to end hunger for people of all faiths and backgrounds in the U.S. and Israel, so partner organizations’ commitments to common goals on those fronts is all that matters, Leibman said.

If another organization makes a statement “that struck us as truly antisemitic, as opposed to anti-Zionist or anti-Israel, which I think is more likely… we would view that the same way we would if they took a stance about drug abuse,” Leibman said.

They have an “obligation” to reach out to their leadership to try and understand their perspective, she said, “so that we are not having a knee-jerk reaction to a particular press statement, but actually have a better understanding of what it is that they see as their purpose of the world, what they are trying to accomplish.”

Although Mazon has not yet had to have any of these tough conversations, there are organizations in the anti-hunger space that have made statements that concern them, Leibman said. “Does that mean that we are less likely to seek to do work with them in the future? Probably.”

The current moment has allowed other Jewish progressive organizations to better bond with others in the Jewish community, Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, the founder and CEO of the climate advocacy nonprofit Dayenu, told eJP.

A 2014 Public Religion Research Institute poll found climate change to be the No. 1 concern for American Jews, with 80% considering it a major problem. “That’s everyone from a boomer in the pew who barely voted for Biden to a 20-something IfNotNow activist,” Rosenn said. 

Even after everything that she went through at the DC Abortion Fund, Korman hopes the larger progressive community can unite once more and repair the harm that’s been done to push Jews out. 

“I would love to see a time and a place where the abortion funding movement can come back together and have some of the difficult conversations that we need to have,” she said, adding that none of her former colleagues have reached out to her. 

That said, Korman believes nonprofits are allowed to have any perspective they want. “If an abortion fund wants to take a larger platform, that’s certainly their choice. But I think that what we’ve seen over the last year is [that] when organizations step outside of their lane and their expertise, they may feel pushback from their supporters who say, ‘This is not why I got on board with this organization.’”

Rabhan provided the Women’s March as a positive example of a time NCJW had difficult conversations with another progressive organization and the other organization was able to grow from it. 

After the accusations of antisemitism, the Women’s March lost sponsors. So they shed some of their problematic leaders and are now looking to rebrand.

NCJW worked with the Women’s March organizers to create their original policy platform and to bring in prominent Jews of color to their steering committee.  

“Based on our relationship with the Women’s March organizers and our history, work and relationships in the Jewish community, we were able to bring the Jewish community to the Women’s March,” Rabhan said, and today “the organization has shifted. There’s different leadership, [a] different board, and we’ve been able to stay in conversation, and we’re able to continue to have the hard conversations. And ultimately, I think it makes us all stronger organizations.”