(RNS) — I did not think it was possible for me to admire Jeffrey Goldberg any more than I already did.
Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, a magazine that has included me as a reader and subscriber for many years. He started his career in journalism as the editor-in-chief of the Daily Pennsylvanian at the University of Pennsylvania (where he also worked in the kitchen at Hillel). He moved to Israel; served in the IDF; served as a prison guard, where a friendship with Rafiq Hijazi, a PLO leader from Gaza, resulted in Goldberg’s book “Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror.” He worked as a columnist at The Washington Post, and at The Jerusalem Post, and then ultimately became the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
Last week, Jeffrey Goldberg found himself with an unlikely invitation to a group chat on Signal with, among others, Pete Hegseth, JD Vance and Michael Waltz. On the chat, these high-profile political leaders were discussing plans for an attack on the Houthis in Yemen. This amounted to the biggest security breach in recent history.
Jeffrey Goldberg basically took on the entire Trump administration, which went into instant vilification mode. Here is Bill Kristol:
The White House and Hegseth forced Goldberg’s hand. On Monday and Tuesday, they accused him of lying about the contents of the chat — and, crucially, insisted that nothing in the chat had been classified. In other words, they both created a major additional incentive for Goldberg to release the full transcripts and removed the scruple that had convinced him to hold them back in the first place.
Jeffrey Goldberg released the transcripts of the chat. Here are his words:
As a general rule, we do not publish information about military operations if that information could possibly jeopardize the lives of U.S. personnel. That is why we chose to characterize the nature of the information being shared, not specific details about the attacks …
The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump — combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts — have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions.
Andy Warhol predicted that everyone would get 15 minutes of fame. Jeffrey Goldberg has had more than 15 minutes of being a warrior for truth.
Here is author and editor Elissa Wald on Substack (shout out to Erika Dreifus for telling me and others about this):
I’m proud of his [Goldberg’s] calm and level demeanor after our government unleashed contemptible attacks on his character to deflect from their own buffoonery. I’m proud that he released some more of the Signal chat today, with the implicit threat of releasing the rest still hanging in the air above the whole clusterf–k.
I’m proud of his integrity. I’m proud of his fearlessness. I’m proud of what he said to a reporter who very reasonably asked him if he was afraid of violent retaliation by our dictator’s regime:
It’s not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today — we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries — there’s too much preemptive obeying for my taste.
Jeffrey Goldberg has not only been one of my journalistic heroes. He has also been one of my Jewish heroes in the world of letters — along with Yossi Klein Halevi, Leon Wieseltier, Martin Peretz, the late Nat Hentoff, the recently departed Max Frankel of The New York Times — the people who not only made me want to write (thank you, Nat, for that early inspiration), but who made me want to write as a Jew.
Let’s go back to the title of Elissa’s column — “Jews Without Trembling Knees.”
Here she is again:
I’m also afraid for Jeffrey Goldberg. Pete Hegseth is a white Christian nationalist. I can only imagine the froth he’s working himself into over this Jew who’s exposing him. You could hear the viciousness dripping from his voice as he deflected to attacking Goldberg in response to reporters’ first questions about this debacle.
Not that you asked me, but yes, Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Waltz — they should have all been fired, immediately.
But, back to Jews without trembling knees.
Where had I last seen one of those?
It was on Purim, when we read the story of Esther. It was in how Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman, even though that act was signing his death warrant. It was in how Esther chose to approach the king with her request that he intervene to save her people. “Then I shall go to the king, though it is contrary to the law; and if I am to perish, I shall perish!” (Esther 4:16). A Jew without trembling knees.
Stay tuned (and start cooking) for Passover, with its reminder that even though God was the ultimate instrument of redemption, it still took Moses to approach Pharaoh and to announce that divine demand for liberation. A Jew without trembling knees.
So, my own trading card collection — Jews Without Trembling Knees — the modern version:
- Natan Sharansky, the former Russian refusenik and Israeli statesman.
- Amanda Berman, head of Zioness, who is sending forth the message that you can be simultaneously proudly progressive and proudly Zionist.
- Erika Dreifus, who is pushing back against the raw Jew-hatred in the contemporary publishing world.
- Professor Deborah Lipstadt, who has represented the United States in the battle against antisemitism, but who defended Jewish history against David Irving, a notorious Holocaust denier.
- Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld, of blessed memory, who marched for civil rights and had his head bashed in by a Southern racist in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1964.
Those are just a few that are top of mind. Maybe you have some of your own.
This is what I know. Such courage is in short supply in America today, and we will need much more of it if we are to endure as a society.
And welcome, Jeffrey Goldberg, to my pack of Jewish hero trading cards.
Or, as we might say in synagogue: Yasher koach. All the more power to you.