I wanted to piggyback off of Zachary Greenberg’s letter on the benefits of crafting a good chant (“Pivotal Need for Better Pro-Israel Chants,” May 9, 2024). There are many other benefits of having good chants, or even just having chants at all. If you are at any of these big protests, you will for sure notice that the Palestinian protesters, when all shouting the same chant at the same time, create a very big and intimidating presence. At the protest months ago outside the Town Council meeting, despite there being fewer Palestinian protesters, they were much, much louder, because they all shouted numerous chants in unison. Even at the Bnai Yeshurun protest where we far outnumbered the other side, during the time that the Jewish music wasn’t playing, there were times we were drowned out, at least at the front of the protest. The only time we come close is when shouting Bring Them Home, but one chant can only last so long. These chants may seem very cheesy on paper, and I think we all think we’re a little too cool to use any, but they yield incredible results and we aren’t utilizing them enough.
The other benefit of having chants is that without them, people will shout whatever they can think of, and that doesn’t yield great results. I have to say that while in the front of the Bnai Yeshurun protest, there were certain things shouted on our side that did not reflect well on our community. It is irrelevant that the other side shouts horrible things; for our own sake, holding ourselves to a certain level of conduct is beneficial. Shouting insults to Neturei Karta children while they sing a niggun does not make us look good, and there’s no reason our community should ever look bad next to the Neturei Karta. When you have uniform chants that everybody shouts, you avoid this because people already have something to shout and don’t need to, in a spot of poor judgment, express their anger in an unproductive manner. It would transform our rallies and protests from a bunch of individuals screaming (in justified anger) into a united force that is infinitely stronger and more confident than those who oppose us.
