What We Talk About When We Talk About Ossoff:On Jon Ossoff and the Politics of Southern Jewry

By Maia Siegel, 18 years old

In his first weeks in office, Senator Jon Ossoff has been busy. He has introduced legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 and pushed for new legislation to get COVID relief for smaller cities in the peach state. He has fought to support the rights of undocumented citizens, pressed for more funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, worked to direct federal stimulus money to the families who need it most, and advocated for cancelling federal student loan debt. 

It's a thrilling show of purpose and confidence from a man who was elected to the Senate and announced his victory on the same day -- in the same hours -- the Capital was being ransacked, democracy turned upside-down. Ossoff was sworn in while holding his grandparents’ arrival records from Ellis Island. Just weeks after this, another elected Senator, Marjorie Taylor Greene, claimed Jewish space lasers caused wildfires. We cannot control the spaces we enter, the people who knock them over before we enter the door; let’s talk about Ossoff’s journey to that door. 

At just 33 years old, Ossoff is a young Jewish southerner, and as a young, Jewish political junkie in the South, it felt affirming to see him run. And win, at that. Talking about politics was hard at my temple in North Carolina. I was always surprised that there were members of my community who could excuse white supremacists spray-painting our doors, as long as Israel was given words of support. This is to say, they voted for Trump, even when others who checked that box on their ballots were in the news for chucking rocks through temple windows. Even when bomb threats were called in to my Sunday School, or when police circled our temple during the High Holy Days. There was, at temple, a palpable need to feel accepted by the South, even while the South was rejecting us. 

Our temple youth group was named after a Confederate senator and secretary of state, Judah P. Benjamin. Congregants were confused why a Jew in a position of power, any position, could be anything less than something to be proud of. The name was changed, thankfully, after my family’s protests, but the sentiment still held. The need to be accepted by the South, to

become safely homogenous, meant absolving its racism, meant claiming whiteness, meant pretending that the men storming the Capitol with Confederate flags in Neo-Nazi shirts weren’t directing their hate at us, no. 

Ossoff brings me hope in that he is a model of a new sort of Southern Jew: liberal, young, focused on outreach to other minority communities. This outreach was important: young voters and Black voters were instrumental in getting Ossoff his victory. Black youth voters favored Ossoff by 88%, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. Ossoff has them to thank. 

Ossoff is the only Jewish senator from the South to join the current Senate, the first Jewish Senator from Georgia, and the first Jewish Senator from the Deep South since the 1880s. Often, it feels like we don’t exist in the lower half of the country. Or, at least, that’s how it’s presented to us, when you talk to southerners, yes, but also Jews in the North. To see a young, Jewish Democrat representing the South shows that can change. Change, however, does not come without growing pains. 

Ossoff had to stand up to bigotry from his Republican opponent, Perdue, when his nose was edited to be bigger in an attack ad on Facebook that drew on antisemitic tropes. Ossoff tweeted that “sitting U.S. Senator David Perdue’s digital attack ad distorted my face to enlarge and extend my nose. I’m Jewish. This is the oldest, most obvious, least original antisemitic trope in history...” Kelly Loeffler, who was up against the Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock for Georgia’s other Senate seat, posed with a known white supremacist in a photo. Ossoff, in a speech, said Loeffler was “campaigning with a Klansman.” Ossoff and Warnock’s side-by-side wins were talked about as an image of Jewish and Black allyship, with both referencing each other’s upbringings, and Warnock even calling Ossoff his “brother from another mother.”

I was struck by how Ossoff was not only open about his Jewish identity, but used it as a tool for outreach to other minority groups, as well. Compare that to Bernie Sanders, who, at the start of his presidential runs, rarely talked about his Jewish heritage, even when he made history as the first Jewish American to win a presidential primary in 2016. This felt like a self-protective choice, especially representing a state like Vermont, which houses only a thousand Jews. Focusing on his Jewishness could detract from his plans, could invite antisemitic attacks. It was easier to stay quiet. Ossoff, however, feels like a new page in Jewish American politics, one rooted in how our different backgrounds can connect us. 

Being a Jewish southerner interested in politics means contesting with your religious community, but also your neighbors and classmates, who often may not understand fears based in your religious identity. Ossoff’s voice feels powerful to me because I remember having to modulate my own tone to tell my classmates that the Charlottesville protests, in which men waving Confederate flags chanted Jews will not replace us, were a direct result of a man they supported proudly, whose red Make America Great Again hats they’d hang on hooks by their beds. I do not remember their reactions. I remember my cheeks were hot. 

One of the most striking moments of Ossoff’s run was when Perdue refused to debate him, and so Ossoff decided to debate himself, with an empty podium standing in for the vacant senator. There is really no better visual message for Ossoff’s race, no better show of Perdue’s refusal to participate in democratic proceedings. For almost thirty minutes, Ossoff underwent what seemed like a self-interrogation, without the presence of another candidate. It was a stunt, sure, if you’re cynical, but it was striking, seeing him stand there alone, determined to answer every question, ranging from COVID relief to reports of Perdue’s insider trading. If we could all debate ourselves the way Ossoff did, I thought, maybe we could start to reckon with this big,

bleeding mess before us. Maybe we could speak and hit something raw. Ossoff is a young Jewish senator opening a door that, most recently, was thrown open by men in Nazi t-shirts. And still, his voice isn’t quavering.