Today, Explained - Was that antisemitic?

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Since October 7 there has been a lot of debate over what is and isn’t antisemitic. Rabbi Jill Jacobs and Harvard law professor Noah Feldman explain why the definition is so important. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Was that anti-Semitic? This weekend, when a little group of protesters at the White House chanted, Kill another Zionist now. Kill another Zionist now. Kill another Zionist now. Was that anti-Semitic? Or the spreadsheet that circulated in May? I'm one of 24 authors on a public spreadsheet called,

Is your favorite author a Zionist? Was that anti-Semitic? The events on college campuses. While students walk to class, they're met with masked individuals screaming at them, quote, go die, you're Hitler's children and Nazis. That led to congressional hearings on anti-Semitism. Was it really anti-Semitism? The FBI says anti-Semitism has, quote, risen to a whole other level since October 7th.

And some of you are thinking, yes, you've seen it. While some of you will say the opposite. You may even believe anti-Semitism is being weaponized. Coming up on Today Explained, some smart people on how to see anti-Semitism. Bet MGM authorized gaming partner of the NBA has your back all season long from tip off to the final buzzer. You're always taken care of with a sports book born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with bet MGM and no matter your team, your favorite player or your style,

there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. This is Today Explained. I'm Rabbi Jill Jacobs. I'm the CEO of TRUA, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. What is TRUA? TRUA is an organization of rabbis and cantors who work for human rights, both in the United States and Canada, and also in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. We have close to 2,400 rabbis and cantors.

Our rabbis come from every denomination and also every type of rabbinate. So not only synagogues, but also schools and camps and hospital chaplains and institutions and every other place that rabbis work. And what has your work looked like since October 7th? So a lot of our work has focused on both supporting the rabbis and cantors who are supporting their own communities and helping them to be able to speak to their communities, to hold them pastorally, and also bringing a moral voice that says that it's not only possible, but actually necessary to speak to the humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians. Unfortunately, in this time, in this country, there's a really polarized sense that you have to either be pro-Israel or pro-Palestine. And we're bringing a moral voice that can call for both an end to the war and a return of the

hostages. And actually those are the same things, not different things. Have you encountered anti-Semitic language or violence yourself since October 7th in a way that makes you think, this would not have happened before the war? This really is different. So I personally, thank God, have not been a victim of anti-Semitic violence. In person, This really is different. who are effectively saying that Jews deserve to be killed, should go back to Europe. Most Jews in Israel did not come from Europe or pushing forward anti-Semitic stereotypes. So I've seen that a lot. And I've also seen that among the rabbis, the 2,400 rabbis who are members of Truah, we hear pretty much every week a story about a synagogue being violently

attacked. The shots were fired outside Temple Israel in Albany, where two dozen preschoolers inside were immediately placed on lockdown. Police tonight are quoting the shooter as having said, free Palestine. About bomb threats, about firebombing, vandalism, a protest that shows up on Shabbat morning during services or right when people are coming out of services. Police say some form of accelerant was used to start the fire here at a time when congregants were exiting the synagogue.

Someone driving by alerted them that there was a fire that has left them shaken. So we hear about that on a really regular basis, which was not true before October 7th. Now, anti-Semitism has been rising. We saw a rise in anti-Semitism also during the Trump administration. Torches in hand, chants echoing across the historic campus. You will not replace us! There was more coming from the white Christian nationalist community, and that also has not gone away.

We saw, of course, the horrific shootings and murders in Pittsburgh, in Poway, and then we also have seen anti-Semitic violence that doesn't necessarily fit into a strict left-right paradigm. Like, for example, the shootings in Jersey City at a kosher supermarket or the hostage-taking situation in Texas, where you have people who are walking around with a lot of anti-Semitic stereotypes that unfortunately propel them to carry out an anti-Semitic violent incident. How do you define anti-Semitism? Do you have a like a couple sentences that you keep it top of mind? Well, the short definition is that anti-Semitism is hatred or prejudice against Jews as Jews. And it started more than 2,000 years ago, really with the advent of Christianity and

especially with the Roman Empire converting to Christianity and Christianity having power behind it. The question that Christians had to answer is, if Christianity has superseded Judaism, then why are Jews still around? And through the centuries, a lot of stereotypes, prejudices, myths about Jews were created, many out of that religious context. There were, in many cases, restrictions on Jewish political, social, economic rights, like whether Jews could own land, whether they could freely practice religion in public, in private, whether they could be part of certain professions, whether they could vote, etc. And of course, in the worst cases, there were expulsions, forced conversions, and of course, murders. Not only in the Holocaust, but of course, that is the genocide in our historical memory,

also during the Crusades, mass murders of Jews, and at other times during history. The word anti-Semitism, though, came out of the mid-19th century in Germany, when Western Europe was starting to emancipate their Jews. So Jews were starting to get more social and political rights, including in the new German constitution. This meant that the Jews were becoming more and more part of their environment. And having had a population of capable, active, dynamic people, you see the entry into society in a very quick manner. So the term anti-Semitism came out of that period. It was popularized by Wilhelm Marr, who was a popular pamphleteer in Germany. It was an attempt to create a scientific reason

for hating Jews. So the people who created it thought they were being extremely scientific and modern. And they said, well, look, Hebrew is a Semitic language. The Jews are Semites. They're not from here. They're from the Middle East. And so they're a foreign race that's among us.

And actually, now it's even scarier because we can't always tell who they are now that they're integrated more and allowed into places they didn't used to be allowed into. So now they are a terrifying, nefarious presence among us, even more terrifying now that we don't know who's Jewish. And so the word antisemitism came out of that context, but has become the popular word to describe hatred of Jews. I also want to say that one of the tropes that we hear a lot is, well, Arabic is also a Semitic language, and so therefore anti-Semitism is hatred of Arabs, and then people go on from there. And the word anti-Semitism only means hatred of Jews. That's what it's meant historically. That's what it continues to mean. It doesn't mean that there's not Islamophobia. Of course there is, or anti-Arab prejudice,

anti-Palestinian prejudice. Those all exist. They have separate words, but anti-Semitism always means the hatred of Jews. Do you have a way for yourself of deciding what speech, what actions, what's being said online and in real life is anti-Semitism? And what is legitimate criticism of what Israel is doing in Gaza? I think this is where people of good faith really want an answer and maybe where people acting in bad faith are kind of more easily called out if we figure out a way to answer to say something about Israel that you're not sure if it crosses a line, substitute the name of whatever other country you're most angry about in this moment and see if it's adhering or failing to adhere to international law is absolutely not anti-Semitism. Boycotting Israel or its territories, it's a basic First Amendment right that one can boycott a business or a country or a state. That is not automatically anti-Semitism. Choosing to engage in activism only in Israel-Palestine. There's lots of reasons that many people are very upset about what's happening in Gaza right now. It's not necessarily anti-Semitism

to only do activism about Israel-Palestine and not about, say, China or Russia or other countries that are violating human rights in horrific ways. So when criticism of Israel does cross the line from criticizing a country, so again, Israel as a country into anti-Semitism, is when you see people using anti-Jewish tropes to describe Israel or Israelis, when you see, let's say, caricatures of Israeli leaders with like big noses or other kind of stereotypical Jewish features, when you see the conspiracies that suggest that Israel has outsized power, that dates back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was an early 20th century anti-Semitic forgery that purported to be a record of a meeting of Jewish elders

conspiring to control the world. And so using the word Zionist as code for Jew, for Israelis, or Zionist entity rather than Israel. We hear chants, for example, saying, we don't want Zionists here. Now, Zionist is a very complicated word that means a lot of things to a lot of people, but the vast majority of Jews in this country have at least some emotional connection to the state of Israel, want the state of Israel to continue to be a Jewish state, a place of refuge, and that has the impact of saying essentially that the vast majority of Jews aren't welcome in certain spaces.

Seeing death to Zionism as I'm walking to class feels as though the protesters on my campus want my Judaism to cease to exist. They want me to cease to exist. So when somebody says Zionist, I want to know what they mean. Do they mean a Jew? Do they mean an Israeli? Do they mean somebody holds a particular political position, which case which one? And maybe we should not use that word and just say what it is that you actually mean. Denying Jewish history. So, pretending that Jews never had a connection to the land of Israel, suggesting that today's Jews are fake Jews, that the temple never existed in Jerusalem, that there never was any Jewish history there,

denying the humanity of Israelis. So any justification for murdering Israelis, suggestions that all 7 million Israeli Jews should leave and go somewhere else, wherever that somewhere else might be. If somebody spray paints free Palestine on, let's say, a random sidewalk, that's not anti-Semitism. If they go and spray that on a synagogue, on a Holocaust museum, on some other Jewish institution, that's anti-Semitism. Because you're saying, basically, you as a Jewish institution, we're assuming that you speak for the state of Israel. We see this a lot online. Somebody will post, here's a challah that I just baked for Shabbat. Here's me lighting Hanukkah candles, and people will post free Palestine.

Well, what does that have to do with somebody celebrating Shabbat or Hanukkah? Nothing. There's another claim I'd like to get your thoughts about, and it's this. Antisemitism is a problem. It is real. It's happening. But the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is far more urgent. It's far more dire. It's far more deserving of our attention. Now, you're a rabbi and you're the head of a human rights organization that is against what is happening in Gaza. How do you balance these two things. This is a binary that just shouldn't exist. It's actually not hard to criticize Israel, to protest the war, and not be anti-Semitic. In Israel, there's protests every single day against the war, and specifically calling on the government to take a hostage deal that will end the war. They need to stop the war, release all hostages, bring them back home, stop the killing, stop the retaliation on the Palestinian people, and start negotiating, talking for, you know,

start talking with the people around us. And Israelis are really clear about that. And they're not anti-Semitic. They're criticizing their government. These are not opposed to each other. We don't have to choose. Rabbi Jill Jacobs, she's the CEO of TRUA, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.

Coming up after the break, can we legislate anti-Semitism away? We're trying. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an Aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case,

we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply.

Support for today EXPLAINED comes from Ramp. If you're a finance manager, you're probably used to having to toggle between multiple disjointed tools just to keep track of everything. And sometimes that means there's limited visibility on business spend. I don't know what any of that means, but Ramp might be able to help. Ramp is a corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your back pocket. Ramp's accounting software automatically collects receipts, categorizes your expenses in real time.

You can say goodbye to manual expense reports. You will never have to chase down a receipt again. You can customize spending limits and restrictions so your employees are empowered to purchase what your business needs. And you can have peace of mind. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained. Camp.com slash explained. Ramp.com slash explained. Cards are issued by Sutton Bank, a member of the FDIC, and terms and conditions do apply. This is Today Explained. I'm Noah Feldman, and I am a law professor and the director of the Center for Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard Law School.

I'm also the author most recently of To Be a Jew Today, A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People. How has the debate over anti-Semitism unfolded where you are at Harvard? It has been an exceptionally intense year for Jewish and Israel-related matters at Harvard, going back to October 7. And does criticism of Israel, legitimate in itself, cross over into anti-Semitism that violates university rules and that also violates rules of basic decency? The Ivy League University faced national backlash after the Harvard undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee published a statement on Saturday blaming Israel for the deadly Hamas attack that targeted civilians. The letter was co-signed by 33 other student organizations. And this has been relevant to conversations in particular about

a student encampment led by students who weren't only focusing on Israel's role in Gaza, but also more broadly on Israel's very existence. And so that issue has been front and center on my campus for most of the last academic year. Do you believe you've seen anti-Semitism on Harvard's campus since October 7th? You know, early in the academic year, when the criticism was very focused on Gaza, I myself did not feel in an active and personal way real anti-Semitism on the campus. In the spring, there were moments where there's no question in my mind that the criticism of Israel, which began as perfectly legitimate, crossed into anti-Semitism. There was a sign being held up by some students in the encampment in Harvard Yard that was a picture of the president of Harvard, Alan Garber, who happens to be Jewish, as a devil with a devil's tail and devil's horns.

And there's a longstanding trope of depicting Jews in this way. And to me, that was clearly anti-Semitic. Since last year, the House has held hearings on anti-Semitism on campus. They brought in college presidents to testify. We did an episode about the hearing that led to Harvard's former president losing her job. Since those hearings, Congress has passed resolutions condemning anti-Semitism. Many political leaders have condemned anti-Semitism. The House even passed a bill called the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act. If the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act passes in the Senate, and if it's signed into law, what would it do?

It's pretty subtle. Under Title VI, which is part of the civil rights laws, universities cannot discriminate themselves on the basis of race or national origin or sex, but it also says that the university has an obligation to create conditions on campus where no one is blocked from full participation in the life of the university by virtue of those protected categories. So I know that's a bit of a mouthful, but that's what Title VI does. Now, what this law purports to do is it says, when the Department of Education goes to look at whether a university has successfully created an environment where students are not interfered with in their studies on the basis of race or national origin,

it says that when you're thinking, when the university or where the Department of Education is thinking about what counts as whether there was anti-Semitism on campus, it should use the definition of anti-Semitism propounded by, broadly speaking, the IHRA definition. Now, that definition is itself controversial because its initial statement is very vague. It just says, thinking about Jews in a bad way, more or less. But then it gives some examples that are much more controversial. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition including general hatred towards Jews, Holocaust denial, and denying Jews the right to self-determination, like by alleging that Israel's very existence is a racist or colonial endeavor. And so what the law might do is it might direct the Department of Education

to consider instances where people in the university have been expressing, through bullying or harassment, views of that sort as anti-Semitism and therefore as the university having failed to create an environment in which Jews and Israelis as well, because they're included too there, would be fully protected under the law. Could you explain why some Jewish organizations have spoken out against the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act? Yes, because the examples given by the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism are not considered to be anti-Semitism by some Jews, or are considered to be too broad a definition of anti-Semitism. Even the chief author of the IRA definition, Kenneth Stern, said don't codify it into law because it can be violative of free speech.

All of these provide examples of things which, in context context may show anti-Semitism. But putting it into law could say that under certain circumstances, criticism of Israel would be considered anti-Semitic, and that's a violation of free speech. And that's why the ACLU opposed it, and various certain liberal Jewish groups opposed it too. You know, these are very, very narrowly specific, hard cases that arise under these circumstances. And lots of people think, like Congress seem to think that there's a simple answer to them, but there just isn't because what we're trying to do in every instance is balance the right of free speech, which is so important, especially in a university, against people's right

not to be subject to discriminatory conduct like bullying or harassment or discrimination. Yeah, to that end, with respect to passing laws on this, I think about the fight for racial justice in America. I think about the civil rights movement, right? Those laws needed to be passed. We're a better country for those laws, but those laws didn't end racism. Now, this is a terribly big question, and maybe there is no answer, but what else needs to be done other than laws to fight anti-Semitism, or maybe even just to improve where we are right now? The short answer is that laws are really good for interfering with discriminatory conduct. It says to people, you can't do that. Laws are not very good at changing people's hearts

and minds. You have to be able to educate people by saying, look, you may not know this, but antisemitism has a long history. And there are certain words, certain attitudes, certain points of view that Jews respond to in a certain way because of that history. And you yourself, the person who's expressing the antisemitic view may not even know it's antisemitic. And that doesn't make you a bad person, but we're going to raise your consciousness. And we hope that by doing so, you'll think twice about it. My own belief is that accusations of people presented in a very harsh way very rarely change their minds if they came to this thing somewhat innocently. You make a lot more progress by saying,

hey, can I explain to you why it is that that feels super anti-Semitic to me? And that tends to be a better way to do it. So in the end, it's about conversation and education. That's what changes people's hearts and minds over time. Noah Feldman of Harvard Law. His new book is To Be a Jew Today. Today's show was produced by Avishai Artsy, edited by Amina El-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christen's daughter. You may have read my colleague Abdullah Fayyad's piece on anti-Palestinian racism

and thought, well, why didn't they talk about that too on the show? Because I only have 26 minutes, you guys. But do know that that show is in the works, and you're going to be hearing from Abdullah soon. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you