O pinion
Pennsylvania Needs Driver’s Licenses for All
BY RABBI ALAN ISER
BEFORE 2002, you did not
need a Social Security number
to apply for a driver’s license
in Pennsylvania. Instead, to
prove your identity, you could
provide a federally issued tax
identification number along
with other documents.

This meant that undocu-
mented immigrants were able
to take and pass the driving
exam in order to apply for a
driver’s license.

In 2009, the Pennsylvania
Department of Transportation
canceled the driver’s licenses
of tens of thousands of undoc-
umented Pennsylvanians
who had legally obtained
their licenses using pre-2002
criteria. As anyone who
lives beyond easy access
to public transportation
knows, driving is a necessity
for much of day-to-day life:
taking children to school,
shopping for groceries, going
to work or getting to medical
appointments. In addition to making these
everyday activities of life much
more difficult, not having valid
identification creates fear and
stress within immigrant commu-
nities, including those where
various family members have a
different immigration status.

Having valid identification
means that if an undocumented
immigrant is pulled over during
a traffic stop, they will not
automatically be put into jail
and be thrust into the quagmire
of deportation hearings. Having
state-issued identification is
also vital for many other family
functions. People might need
an ID to get their prescriptions,
or to enter a medical facility or
to prove they can pick up their
children from school.

There is a remedy for this
situation being proposed in
the Pennsylvania legislature,
HB-279. This bill would provide
driver’s licenses for all. Opening
up driver’s licenses for undocu-
mented immigrants is not only
good for them, but for all of us,
for our safety and our economy.

If implemented, it could expand
the number of those who know
the rules of the road, have car
insurance, buy cars and gas
for their cars, and have greater
accessibility to more jobs.

Undocumented immigrants
are a vital part of our economy.

In Philadelphia alone, approx-
imately 50,000 undocumented
workers pay more than $128
million in taxes annually.

As Jews, we have additional
reasons based on our historical
experiences and our religious
tradition to be concerned about
the welfare of immigrants.

The Torah commands us to
befriend and protect the
stranger, no less than 36 times.

The Torah gives two reasons
for this commandment. The
first calls on our experiences
and our compassion: “You
shall not oppress the stranger,
having yourself been strangers
in the land of Egypt” (Exodus
23:9). The second reason
the Torah gives is we were
mistreated while strangers, so
do not do to others what was
done to you.

To reinforce this, the Torah
reminds us that God hears
the cry of the oppressed. Not
just our sojourn in Egypt, but
thousands of years of wander-
ings and being outsiders should
sensitize us to the experience
of immigrants.

We just celebrated Sukkot,
where each night we invite
ushpizin (guests) in the symbolic
form of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Joseph, Moses, Aaron and
David, to enter our sukkot.

We are supposed to donate the
amount that would feed these
supernal guests to the needy. Let
us transform our sukkot into a
metaphorical sukkah to protect
all who need shelter and support.

Pennsylvania should join 15
other states, including New York
and New Jersey, that have passed
legislation providing driver’s
licenses for all. Urge your
state representative to support
HB-279. It is both the moral and
sensible thing to do. l
Rabbi Alan Iser is a member of the
board at HIAS Pennsylvania and an
adjunct professor of theology at St.

Joseph’s University and St. Charles
Borromeo Seminary.

Why I Made a Podcast About Father Coughlin
BY ANDREW LAPIN
AS A KID growing up in
suburban Detroit, I used to
pass a church right by my house
every day. It was a huge church,
standing 100 feet tall, with a
massive, limestone carving of
Jesus on the cross staring down
at a busy thoroughfare. And
when I came to learn about
this church’s origins, it terri-
fied me.

This wasn’t any church. This
was the National Shrine of the
Little Flower, seat of a parish
12 OCTOBER 7, 2021
started in 1926 by Father
Charles Coughlin — known as
the “Radio Priest” because he
hosted a wildly popular weekly
radio show that reached tens
of millions of listeners (and
donors) nationwide during the
Great Depression.

His show began as a
purely religious one, but
soon Father Coughlin would
taste the thrill of an adoring
audience and exploit their
fear and uncertainty. He
started casting his followers
as the “true” Americans while
spinning wild, antisemitic
conspiracy theories — tales
of “atheistic Jews” running
rampant across Europe and
commanding the Communists
to overthrow Christianity and
Americanism. Over the air
and in his magazine, “Social
Justice,” Coughlin would
say that something must be
done to combat this threat,
and some took him up on his
suggestion. During the course
of Coughlin’s career, he created
a political third party so his
movement could mount a run
for the White House — and,
when that didn’t work, his
followers instead plotted to
overthrow the government.

It’s a strange experience to
see a still-thriving institution
in your community that was
founded on the back of hate
and intolerance. But Father
Coughlin was pushed off the
air in 1940 by a combination
of pressure from the Catholic
Church and new anti-sedition
broadcasting laws, and died in
1979. Most locals seemed in
agreement that his story was no
longer relevant — after all, we
didn’t stop driving Ford cars
just because Henry Ford once
published a newspaper with
the headline “The International
Jew: The World’s Problem.”
So my fascination with
the Shrine began as a mere
JEWISH EXPONENT
curiosity. But lately, it’s turned
into something else: a sense of
fear. If Father Coughlin’s story
was just a footnote, why was
I now hearing echoes of him
everywhere? Because there he was
whenever conspiracy theorists
and demagogic figures found
a new toehold in our politics
and media. There he was in
the barely regulated world
of social media, where every
extreme voice can find its
followers. There he was lurking
in the background of the
Charlottesville white-suprem-
acist march, the Tree of Life
synagogue shooting, the Jan.

6 insurrection and a multitude
of other horrific moments in
recent American history. Few,
if any, of the perpetrators
behind those events could cite
Father Coughlin by name, but
they’re following his playbook
all the same. The Radio Priest
has gone from a historical
footnote to the modern era’s
biggest progenitor — the one
whose increasingly unhinged
broadcasts predicted a society
where antisemitism, scape-
goating, xenophobia and
disdain for democratic norms
would thrive again in new
forms of media.

This is how I realized
Coughlin’s story shouldn’t
be limited to the whisper
networks of a few Jews in
Detroit. It needed to be heard
by everyone.

My new
podcast, “Radioactive: The Father
Coughlin Story,” is a deep
dive into the rise and fall of
the demagogue, the barely
regulated mass-communica-
tion medium he took advantage
of, and the antisemitic, fascist
movement he inspired right
here in America — including
the “Christian Front,” a militia
that plotted, on guidance
from Coughlin himself, to
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



O pinion
overthrow the government.

And it tells the story through
audio — the very same
medium Coughlin himself
once exploited for personal
gain — using archival tapes
of his own words and music
from his own programs, as
well as new, recently unsealed
material from the Archdiocese
of Detroit that sheds more light
on Coughlin’s tactics.

The podcast also charts my
journey of correspondence
with the Shrine itself, and my
conversations with its spiri-
tual leaders who have found
very different ways to grapple
with their founder’s legacy.

Produced with Tablet Studios,
the limited series premiered
on Oct. 5.

Though there have been
biographies of Coughlin in
the past, my hope is that this
podcast will be something
different: an attempt to reckon
with his legacy through a
modern lens. The world he
created has paved the way
for right-wing talk radio and
social media disinformation,
for the rise of suspiciously
Coughlinesque figures in the
highest corridors of power
in our country and for the
continued and ever-evolving
demonization of Jews.

I began
work on
“Radioactive” in early 2017, a
time when many people were
starting to openly debate
the potential of American
demagogues to shape our
politics and distort our society,
and I believe that every step
of his story is fraught with
implications for our collective
future. I hope my exploration
of the topic can shine some
light on where figures like
Father Coughlin come from…
and how they can be stopped. l
Andrew Lapin is JTA’s managing
editor for local news. JTA was not
involved in the production of the
“Radioactive” podcast. This piece
first appeared on JTA.

www.jewishexponent.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Sisters Clash Over Intermarriage, Manage to
Remain Family Despite the Turmoil
BY RACHEL HARTMAN
MY SISTER AND I grew up in
a small settlement surrounded
by Arab villages in the disputed
West Bank. We have ended
up, however, in very different
places. I am pursuing a Ph.D. in
social psychology, studying the
science of moral understanding
and how it can be leveraged to
bridge divides. My sister is an
activist and full-time employee
at an Israeli organization
that strictly opposes personal
relationships, especially
romantic ones, between Jews
and non-Jews.

My research focuses on
bridging divides, but I am
somewhat at a loss for how
to traverse the widening gulf
between my sister and me.

She faces a similar dilemma
— she is becoming increas-
ingly (in)famous in Israel for
her rhetoric against intermar-
riage while her own sister is ...

marrying someone who is not
Jewish. Conflict, of one form or
another, has defined our entire
lives. Our family moved from
the United States to a settle-
ment in the West Bank when
I was 5. We used to stop by
Palestinian watermelon
stands on our way back from
Jerusalem. My brother became
friends with the Arab workers
who built our home.

At the turn of the millen-
nium, everything changed
and this sense of peaceful
coexistence was gone. Riots
broke out in Jerusalem, the
West Bank and Gaza. My father
bought bullet-proof vests for us
to wear when we had to travel
that same road to Jerusalem.

The watermelon stands were
gone. In their place, children
threw rocks at cars that drove
by. Two teenagers from our
town went for a hike and never
returned. Their bodies were
found in a cave, mutilated
beyond recognition. We
grieved, then grew angry. I was
keenly aware of the Jewish side
of the conflict: We were the
rightful occupants of the land;
they were our enemy. We were
righteous; they were evil.

team, gathering data to inform
the peace negotiations between
Israel and the Palestinian
Authority. Aspects of intel-
ligence-gathering may be
morally questionable, but it
gave me the unique opportunity
to come as close as possible to
reading another person’s mind.

We spent long hours learning
everything about the “enemy”
only to discover that they ate,
slept, fought and loved just like
we did. There was a wide gap
between my family’s beliefs
about the enemy’s thoughts
and their actual thoughts.

My experiences growing up
in the midst of an ongoing
conflict fraught with violence
and political
volatility together, she is working hard to
keep them apart. She works for
Lehava, which means “flame”
in Hebrew, but in this case is
also an acronym for the Hebrew
phrase “For the Prevention
of Assimilation in the Holy
Land.” Lehava fights to prevent
“relationships between Jewish
girls and Arabs, non-Jews,
and foreign workers.” Lehava
has been described on several
occasions as a far-right and
Jewish supremacist group,
and elected officials in Israel
have embarked on the process
of declaring it a terrorist
organization. Given my sister’s chosen
career path, telling her that
my non-Jewish partner had
Given my sister’s chosen career path, telling her that my non-Jewish
partner had proposed was ... difficult. She had previously told me (on
national television) that she would be happy if he broke up with me,
since then there would be a chance of me marrying a Jewish guy.

Needless to say, she refuses to come to the wedding.

As a child I was unschooled.

My mother was your typical
“hippie liberal all-natural
health nut” when we lived in
the United States. Over time,
however, my mother, and the
rest of my family, became less
and less liberal.

At 15, I enrolled myself
into a Jerusalem high school.

The narratives in my classes
conflicted with my political
and religious upbringing.

I began to understand there
were two sides to the story.

After high school, I worked at
a store where my closest friend
was Palestinian. We shared
lunches and gossiped about
our co-workers, and through
our interactions I realized how
prejudiced I had been.

Months later, in the
military, I led an intelligence
JEWISH EXPONENT
motivated me to work on
bringing people together.

Whether the conflict is between
Israelis and Palestinians, Black
and white people, or liberals
and conservatives, I’m looking
for ways to move beyond
dehumanization and toward
empathy and compassion.

My youngest sister, who
was born a few months before
the second intifada broke out
and has known nothing but
conflict her entire life, has
chosen a different path. Rather
than resolving to bring people
proposed was ... difficult. She
had previously told me (on
national television) that she
would be happy if he broke up
with me, since then there would
be a chance of me marrying a
Jewish guy. Needless to say, she
refuses to come to the wedding.

The only solution I have is
to try and pull her in, rather
than push her away. As painful
as it is to hear her talk about
how my actions are a threat to
the Jewish nation, I know that
See Hartman, Page 22
STATEMENT FROM THE PUBLISHER
We are a diverse community. The views expressed in the signed opinion columns and let-
ters to the editor published in the Jewish Exponent are those of the authors. They do
not necessarily reflect the views of the officers and boards of the Jewish Publishing
Group, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia or the Jewish Exponent. Send
letters to letters@jewishexponent.com or fax to 215-569-3389. Letters should be a
maximum of 200 words and may be edited for clarity and brevity. Unsigned letters will not be
published. OCTOBER 7, 2021
13