The roughly 100 people, including an eighth grade class, who fanned out across halls and offices at the state capitol in Olympia, Wash., on Jan. 29 as part of Jewish Lobby Day was the largest attendance in a decade, according to the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.
“We’re in a moment in time where the Jewish community is afraid,” Solly Kane, president and CEO of the Federation, told JNS. “We’ve seen a rise in antisemitism, and we have deep concerns that we need our elected leaders to be conscious of our community and to take meaningful actions to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish people.”
The Federation believes in free speech and civil rights, but there’s also “a right to exercise your religion without that sort of disruption,” Kane said. “Everybody should be able to go to synagogue on Shabbat without being physically blocked by protesters.”
Jews in the state, and elsewhere, face a “tax” to remain safe.
“Nationally, Jewish organizations spent $765 million in security last year. It’s a shocking number. Other faiths aren’t spending that to be able to walk into their houses of worship,” Kane told JNS. “All we’re asking for from our elected leaders is that Jews should be able to go to synagogue and should be able to exercise their religion safely.”
Max, 14, was one of the students who practiced their pitches to lawmakers in the lobby of state Senate offices, as a rabbi from their school looked on.
“I am advocating for SB 5436,” he told JNS. “It helps provide funding and makes sure that Jews can have safe ingress and egress into places of worship.”
Max’s school and summer camp have hardened their security, and he feels personally invested “as somebody whose family has experienced a couple antisemitic experiences,” he said.
His sister was called “antisemitic names and bad things” when she was in high school, he told JNS. “It has truly been heartbreaking to hear how in the supposed land of the free, this is all happening.”
Max plans to attend the local Jewish high school next year. Asked what he would say to lawmakers who don’t vote for the bill, he said, “I’d urge them to check their moral compass.”
The Federation’s Jewish Community Relations Council organized the lobbying day, which included participants from the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and Washingtonians for a Brighter Future, a pro-Jewish political action committee.
Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle students handed out kosher cookies, decorated with blue hamsas and QR codes directing eaters to Jewish advocacy information, to legislators near the sundial, a brass outdoor sculpture between the state House and Senate offices.
Lila Mowatt, public advocacy chair at the JCRC, told JNS that she planned to talk about security with lawmakers, including a hate crimes hotline that offers resources to victims as they navigate legal options and, she said, fills a gap for those who don’t think the incident is an emergency that requires calling police.
“It’s a way for the Jewish community and some of our law enforcement partners to better track what is happening,” she said.
Meetings with three state representatives had been “wonderful and supportive,” she told JNS.
Kane told JNS that the hate crimes hotline is “an important piece of this that is actually the tracking and the data component.”
“We know that antisemitic incidents are grossly underreported in this country,” he said. “If we can create more reporting avenues that document what’s happening, it paints the picture and makes it so this isn’t a debatable conversation.”
‘A dirty word’
On lobbying day, participants spoke to lawmakers about SB 5436, the hate crime hotline, continued funding for nonprofit security grants and SB 5950, which would recognize Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and three days that are important to Sikhs as non-legal state holidays.
A staff member from the office of Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, spoke to the group at a nearby synagogue, and there was an interfaith panel about the holiday bill. The participants, bundled in knit scarves and hats Federation provided to brave the rain, then entered the Capitol to hear from heads of the Jewish caucus.
The building was bustling with lobbyists and advocacy groups for causes including law enforcement, education and energy. A Native American group wearing “the future is indigenous” sweatshirts walked by.
“Part of the reason why I’m glad you’re here is because I find that most legislators have very little understanding of Jewish history and how that informs today’s politics,” Jesse Salomon, a Democratic state senator and co-chair of the Jewish Caucus, told participants over the background noise.
“It’s very clear to me that in popular culture, for example, the word ‘Zionism’ has become a dirty word,” he said. “It just means that there’s a connection in the land of Israel that’s undeniable, historical and verifiable.”
Salomon described seeing archeological discoveries in the Jewish state, including at the palace of King David. “How can you deny that?” he said. “I think we need to share some of the history that you bring to this.”
Salomon, who is facing a primary challenger from the left, told the group that he has been fighting “hard” to get Jew-hatred training in the state Senate Democratic Caucus.
“That baseline knowledge is so low,” he told the group.
His effort to add that training has been a “much harder fight than you think,” he added. “We were close, and then we had a little setback, but I think today we’ve had some negotiations,” he said. “I think that’s going to happen.”
The Jewish caucus has worried about antisemitism on the University of Washington campus and has been in touch with the public school, including a former state legislator who recently joined the school’s board of regents and whom he described as an “ally.”
“I think we had some really good meetings,” he told the group. “I showed them a video of some activity on campus where they were praising the Oct. 7 massacre and calling for another one, and I asked them, ‘If this had happened to any other group, how would you respond?’”
Roger Goodman, a Democratic state representative and co-chair of the Jewish Caucus, told attendees that “it used to be that the Jewish Caucus prioritized those legislative proposals that were consistent with Jewish values.”
“That we want a society founded in justice and compassion,” he said. “We still obviously support those goals,” but “the Jewish community itself is a target, so that means we have to legislate to protect our own people.”
“The Black Caucus, the Native American Caucus, and so forth, they tend to support legislation for their own people,” he said. “We’re now in that position, as well.”
The “vast majority” of hate incidents in the state and nationwide have targeted Jews, according to Goodman.
“We are really trying to raise awareness of the pernicious antisemitism that causes fear in our community,” he said.
He also pivoted to talking about criticism of the Trump administration and federal immigration enforcement.
“We have fear in every community right now,” he told attendees, many nodding along. “We have federal agents flouting the law. We have the dear leader of the federal regime actively undermining the law. People are getting snatched off the streets.”
Goodman told the group that it’s harder to discuss Jew-hatred in that environment. “I guess understandably so, because these other communities are also besieged as we are specifically,” he said.
The state House’s community safety and criminal justice committee, which Goodman chairs, is acting to “block and prevent the federal regime from interfering with our own business, including our law enforcement,” he told participants.
That move comes as Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announced actions blocking federal immigration enforcement in the city on Jan. 29.
Goodman told attendees that the bill protecting houses of worship “just came off the Senate floor” and is coming to his committee next.
“We’re going to get it out of the committee,” he said. “We’re going to get it off the House floor, too.”
The state must keep $600,000 in the budget for nonprofit security grants, he said, noting that there couldn’t be an ask for more given a “severe budget challenge.”
“We need that money to make sure that synagogues, mosques, any of the places of worship of targeted groups are protected,” Goodman said. “We’re still fighting for that money.”
There is a need to “educate our own colleagues—my House colleagues, my Senate colleagues—about antisemitism,” Goodman said.
“We’ve been trained in diversity, equity and inclusion over the years. I think I’ve received about 26 hours of training in diversity, equity and inclusion,” he said. “Not one mention of Judaism or Jews. So where do we fall in?”
