Todd Krysiak
Laurie Zimmerman
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman talks about acontroversial photo involving studentsposing in a Nazi salute on November 19,2018, at Baraboo High School in Wisconsin.
“I have a message for the rabbi,” sputtered the voice as I picked up the phone.
“I am the rabbi,” I responded.
Surprised to be speaking directly to me, the caller continued: “I want to tell you what I think about what you said about those boys in Baraboo.”
He was referring to the talk I gave at Baraboo High School in south-central Wisconsin on November 19, after a photograph circulated on social media of a large group of boys posing in a Nazi salute. I had been invited to speak at a community gathering. My congregants were the school’s only two Jewish students.
“They weren’t doing a Nazi salute,” the caller argued defensively.
“Actually, some of them were.” I explained that several boys had already come forward to apologize.
“Well, they didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Maybe, but real harm was still done.”
“They were having fun. Can’t you just laugh it off? It wasn’t like they were wearing brown uniforms.”
It’s true, they weren’t wearing brown uniforms. But my, how our standards have fallen, I thought.
The next day, an old friend sent me a link to an op-ed, “Europe’s Jew Hatred, and Ours,” by Bari Weiss, a conservative New York Times writer.
Weiss begins by addressing European anti-Semitism and then pivots to the United States. While she briefly acknowledges that the biggest threat to American Jews comes from the far right, she spends far more time highlighting Muslim attacks on Jews and deplores the “hatred from the left, which comes cloaked in the language of progressive values.” Weiss concludes by vaguely insinuating that this is what will lead to another Holocaust.
While some Muslims, like others, hold anti-Semitic views, and conspiracy theorists have historically found a political home on the left, I believe that white supremacy poses a far greater threat to American Jews. At a time when President Donald Trump is condoning anti-Semitism and imparting legitimacy to white nationalists, we should focus our efforts to fight anti-Semitism on those who have the potential to cause us the greatest harm.
Understanding anti-Semitism can be difficult because false accusations of anti-Semitism abound. An extensive pro-Netanyahu campaign designed to undermine the Palestinian fight for freedom frequently targets American activists with charges of anti-Semitism. Not only does this stifle free speech but it distracts us from the white nationalists who are driving anti-Semitic discourse and committing anti-Semitic acts.
Just before the 2016 presidential election, I was invited to speak to mental health providers at the University of Wisconsin as part of their diversity training. A spate of anti-Semitic memes, tweets, and videos had materialized during the campaign. White supremacists had gone on the offensive, peddling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and attacking Jewish journalists on social media.
This display of anti-Semitism, charging that Jews control the media and the banking industry, wasn’t new, but it seemed to be emerging from the fringes, bolstered by the Trump campaign. They asked that I help them understand anti-Semitism so that they could better counsel the Jewish students who sought their services.
Never before in my twenty years as a rabbinical student or a rabbi had I been asked to speak or write about anti-Semitism, nor had I been eager to do so. Along with many of my rabbinical school classmates, I was inspired by the work of the famous Jewish historian Salo Wittmayer Baron, who decried the “lachrymose conception of Jewish history” and critiqued the widespread assumption that Jews experienced persecution in all times and in all places.
We were providing a needed corrective to the older generation’s insistence that anti-Semitism lurked under every rock. Discussing the prevalence of anti-Semitism was the purview of the Jewish right. Growing up in a white, privileged Jewish family in a Midwestern suburb in the 1970s and 80s, I experienced an occasional anti-Semitic joke or a nasty comment that my refusal to accept Christ meant I was going to hell. But it was minimal compared to the institutionalized antiblack racism that I witnessed as a child.
I had only experienced the feeling of being different, the invisibility of my religious and cultural practices at school and at work, and the persistent and difficult question of how much to assimilate. While I often wished that my teachers, co-workers, and supervisors would be more cognizant of diversity, rarely did I feel that they were anti-Semitic.
Anti-Semitism has always existed in the United States, but as historian Steven Bayme explains, since World War II American Jews have seen “the gradual receding of anti-Semitism to the margins of American society.” Unlike our African American neighbors, white Jews did not experience persistent discrimination in housing and employment, unrelenting bias in the criminal justice system, or fear police violence.
In the last two years, anti-Semitic incidents and new anti-Semitic norms—bomb threats, vandalism of Jewish synagogues and cemeteries, and the burgeoning of conspiracy theories and Nazi imagery on social media—have become less rare. Add to this the chilling specter of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville chanting “blood and soil!,” the popular nativist slogan of Nazi Germany, as well as the deadly Pittsburgh synagogue shooting which claimed the lives of eleven Jews as they prayed on Shabbat morning.
While anti-Semitism is still not embedded in law or policy in this country, American Jews feel a heightened anxiety at its presence and are wary of the danger it poses.
To understand anti-Semitism in contemporary America, we must grasp the severity of Christian anti-Semitism, which began with the early Church’s harsh accusations that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. The exile of Jews from Palestine, the leaders charged, was their punishment for failing to accept Christianity.
This toxic and violent form of anti-Semitism became especially strong during the Middle Ages, when Christians massacred entire Jewish communities in the Crusades, forced hundreds of thousands of Jews to convert, and caused them to flee to Muslim lands. The myth of the Blood Libel accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes, and widespread riots against the Jews followed as a result of these accusations. Expulsions also marked this period of Jewish history, as Jews were banished from country after country throughout Europe.
In the United States, Christian anti-Semitism is the cornerstone of certain pro-Israel organizations, which are supported by politicians like Vice President Mike Pence. The largest and most powerful, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), portrays itself as working in partnership with Jews to strengthen the State of Israel. Yet this group and other Christian Zionist organizations draw their inspiration from the very anti-Semitic ideologies that have historically persecuted Jews. Convinced that Jews moving to Israel is a prerequisite for Christ’s Second Coming, they argue that at the end of time Jews will be given the choice to convert to Christianity or be destroyed and sent to hell.
The Trump Administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem was driven by conservative and evangelical Christians, many of whom espouse Christian Zionism. Because their theology dictates that God’s eternal promise to the Jews requires an expanded “greater Israel,” they lobbied the administration to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Both Pastor John Hagee, founder of CUFI, and Robert Jeffress, who has stated, “You can’t be saved by being a Jew,” spoke at the ceremony marking the embassy opening. When mainstream American Jewish organizations align themselves with such thinking to garner support for U.S. policies that promote Israeli interests, they condone a fundamentally anti-Semitic ideology.
Another significant form of anti-Semitism in the United States is racial anti-Semitism, which found its theoretical underpinnings in nineteenth-century pseudoscientific theories of race. European anti-Semites drew heavily from these theories, casting Jews as innately different and unassimilable and accusing them of polluting pure Aryan blood by intermarriage. They charged that Jews were planning global domination, betrayed the governments of the countries in which they lived, provoked the rise of both communism and capitalism, and controlled the media.
The Nazi Holocaust was the culmination of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. In 1938, the Nazis destroyed 267 synagogues, destroyed more than seven thousand Jewish-owned stores, and rounded up thirty thousand Jewish men in one night, known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. In the midst of World War II, genocide of the Jews became the key focus of Nazi anti-Semitism. By 1945, the Nazis had killed six million Jews, including one million Jewish children—decimating two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had been living in Europe.
In the aftermath of World War II, anti-Semitism became unacceptable and shameful in mainstream American culture. In the 1960s, the Catholic Church rescinded its historic charge that the Jews killed Christ.
The white nationalist movement that emerged in the 1960s revived racial anti-Semitism, which became the fuel for postwar white supremacy. It sought to build a whites-only nation that would subjugate black people and drive out immigrants. Its proponents alleged that Jews were manipulating political and social institutions and controlling the media, banking industry, and government.
While Christian and racial anti-Semitism are the two strongest forces of anti-Semitism in the United States and are bolstered by the Trump Administration, most mainstream Jewish communal institutions continue to focus on what is called the “new anti-Semitism.”
This term describes a particular form of anti-Semitism, which is expressed as opposition to Zionism or the State of Israel. Proponents of this term charge that supporters of anti-Zionism or the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or even critics of Israel more broadly, are guilty of anti-Semitism because attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Jews.
While some anti-Zionists may be anti-Semitic, insisting that anti-Semitism is largely driven by critics of Israel fuels the anti-Semitic notion that Israel and the Jews are synonymous. It equates the actions of the Israeli government with all Jews and assumes that Jews, comprising a politically, ethnically, and geographically diverse people, all subscribe to the same beliefs about Israel.
There is nothing more important than creating strong relationships across our differences and becoming allies for each other in these dark times.
Legislation known as the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which purports to fight the “new anti-Semitism” on college campuses, has been proposed in Congress. Instead of addressing the anti-Semitism of the Christian right or the white nationalist movement, it targets students who protest against Israel, diverting attention from efforts to address white supremacy. It also defines anti-Semitism so broadly that any criticism of Israel could be deemed anti-Semitic.
As anti-Semitism grows more powerful in the United States, American Jews will need to make difficult choices. Some members of our community will continue to form alliances with the Christian right, white nationalists like Steve Bannon, and the Trump Administration. Powerful as these conservative forces may be, I do not believe that aligning ourselves with them makes us safer. On the contrary, these alliances legitimize the very anti-Semitic beliefs that pose the greatest danger to us.
I have chosen a different path forward, one that fosters solidarity with communities that are also targeted by white nationalism, along with white progressives who share my values of vigorous political debate and dignity and equality for all people. Creating diverse coalitions is always difficult, and learning how to talk about anti-Semitism must be a piece of this work.
Our progressive values of justice, equality, and dignity are fundamental to our work. There is nothing more important than creating strong relationships across our differences and becoming allies for each other in these dark times.
After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, I helped to organize an interfaith vigil, similar to ones happening all across the country. Surrounded by Latinos, Muslims, African Americans, and LGBTQ people, as we recited the Kaddish, the Jewish memorial prayer, I realized then, more than ever, that we need each other.