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Sarah Hurwitz, former Obama speechwriter, creates firestorm with remarks about Holocaust education
(JTA) — In the safe confines of a gathering of Jewish fundraising and communal professionals, Sarah Hurwitz’s remarks about antisemitism and Holocaust education earned polite applause. By the time they made it to social media, they’d become kindling in a rhetorical firestorm over the Gaza war — and the uses and abuses of Jewish memory.
Hurwitz — a former speechwriter for both Barack and Michelle Obama who has written two books about her embrace of her Jewish identity as an adult — was one of three panelists Nov. 16 at the opening plenary of the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington. They were asked to address antisemitism and Jewish identity at a “crossroads.”
Speaking from notes, she began her remarks with the fairly uncontroversial observation that “young people” are exposed to a media diet that amplifies the fringe, including antisemitic influencers like Nick Fuentes. She also made the somewhat more contentious point that images of “carnage” in Gaza are making it hard for defenders of Israel like her to debate “facts and arguments” with younger Jews.
But then she veered into talking about Holocaust education, suggesting that the Jewish “bet” on promoting Holocaust education had backfired, at least as a vaccine against antisemitism.
“Holocaust education is absolutely essential,” she said. “But I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews, and they think, ‘Oh, antisemitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people.’ So when on Tiktok, all day long, they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, ‘Oh, I know the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big, powerful people hurting the weak people.’”
Hurwitz’s framing could be seen as descriptive, explaining how the emotional structure of Holocaust education — emphasizing victimhood, power imbalance and trauma — leads some students to align emotionally with Palestinians rather than with Jews. She went on to suggest that moral lessons from the Shoah are often taught in a way that’s too binary — oppressed vs. oppressor, powerless vs. powerful — without helping students understand how antisemitism functions in complex ways, even when Jews have sovereignty and power.
But beyond the GA audience, the backlash was fast and fierce. Instagram and Reddit filled up with posts accusing her of saying, as one post put it, “that it was a mistake to teach Americans that genocide is bad.”
Jenin Younes, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, accused Hurwitz of using Holocaust trauma to silence criticism of Israel’s military operations.
“Holocaust education is not failing,” she said. “It’s succeeding — because it is teaching young people to recognize oppression and call it out, even when it doesn’t serve political agendas.”
Progressive Jews also objected. “She’s not disagreeing with the moral lesson that we should stand against the powerful harming the vulnerable,” wrote Rabbi Sandra Lawson on Substack. “She’s upset that people are applying it universally. The lesson was supposed to stay contained, meant only for certain victims.”
The point of Holocaust education, wrote journalist Spencer Ackerman, is “[n]ot to exceptionalize Jewish suffering, but to activate solidarity. To recognize that there is a continuum of atrocity perpetrated by dominant classes against subjugated ones.”
Hurwitz’s remarks about a central pillar of Jewish advocacy may have been tailor-made for the JFNA crowd, made up of mainstream Jewish professionals uneasy about whether current tools — Holocaust education, Israel trips, anti-antisemitism training by pro-Irael groups — can stack up against the anti-Israel messages young people encounter. JFNA has joined several initiatives aimed at presenting a more “nuanced” view of the war in Gaza, with the goal of countering misleading or anti-Israel narratives in the mainstream and social media.
But Hurwitz also entered a decades-old — and, since Oct. 7, increasingly fraught — debate over the goals of Holocaust education. Does “never again” mean a universal call to protect human rights and prevent genocide, or is it a narrower call to make sure Jews are never again vulnerable to mass murder? And if the latter, does that somehow inoculate Israel from accusations that it can, in the interest of self-defense, oppress a weaker people?
That debate was at the heart of a dust-up in September, when Los Angeles’ Holocaust museum deleted an Instagram post that proclaimed, “‘Never again’ can’t only mean never again for Jews.” The graphic showed six interlocked arms of different colors, one with an Auschwitz tattoo. Another slide declared: “Jews must not let the trauma of our past silence our conscience.”
The museum explained that it deleted the post because it was “easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East.” Indeed, appreciative supporters of Palestine and angry supporters of Israel read the original post as a statement about the death toll and hunger crisis in Gaza.
Ben Ratskoff, an assistant professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles, wrote that the museum’s retraction “reflects a deeper turn away from the universalist approach that has been at the heart of institutional Holocaust memory culture since the 1990s.” Elie Wiesel, he noted, framed the Holocaust as “a Jewish tragedy with universal implications and applications.” In 2000, the Stockholm Declaration, which founded the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, also declared that “the Holocaust will always hold universal meaning.”
“Teaching about the Holocaust,” the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum explains on its web site, “can inspire students to think critically about the past and their own roles and responsibilities today.”
Israeli historian Amos Goldberg noted in July that Holocaust memory in the West deals with a deep tension between two sentiments. In the first, “human rights-oriented” version, “the world pledged itself to human rights, to curbing nationalism, and to strengthening democracy as a lesson from the Holocaust.” The second sentiment, he writes, “was empathy toward the Jews as the primary victims of Nazism, and their perception as Europe’s ultimate ‘Other.’”
With Israel facing accusations of genocide in Gaza — including from Israeli scholars like Goldberg, the International Association of Genocide Scholars and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — these divergent lessons of the Holocaust have been fiercely debated, and sometimes weaponized.
After the massacre of Oct. 7, supporters of Israel invoked the Holocaust to express their feelings of vulnerability. “The murderers of Hamas are guided by the exact same goal” as the Nazis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared at Israel’s official Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration in 2024. Many pointed out that Oct. 7 was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, implying a parallel of effect if not scope.
Palestinians and their supporters also invoked the Holocaust, a comparison that intensified as the war ground on and accusations of “genocide” made the comparison at least implicit.
Jewish groups not only denied the accusation of genocide, but rejected the comparison, whether made by Hamas or the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine.
“These comparisons are not simply misguided or exaggerated; they have a double-edged effect,” wrote Simone Roadan-Benzaquen, managing director of the American Jewish Committee’s Europe office, in January. “On one hand, they trivialize the Nazi atrocities by equating them with a contemporary conflict, tragic as it may be, that differs fundamentally in purpose and scope. On the other, they invert historical roles, casting Jews — victims of an unparalleled genocide — as today’s oppressors….
“The result is an assault on memory itself.”
Hurwitz served as chief speechwriter for Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign, later as senior speechwriter to Barack Obama, and, from 2010 to 2017, as head speechwriter for Michelle Obama. After leaving government, Hurwitz wrote about her personal journey from “lapsed” or “cultural” Jew to one more deeply engaged with its core texts, rituals and history. Her two books on that journey have made her a popular draw on the Jewish lecture and podcast circuit.
It’s by no means clear if Hurwitz intended to say, as critics charge, that Holocaust education was a mistake because it fostered sympathy for the Palestinians. She did not respond to a request for an interview.
But in her latest book, “As a Jew,” published in September, she does argue that Holocaust education fails if it doesn’t explore the full historical scope of antisemitism, or, taking inspiration from the writer Dara Horn, if it doesn’t show how Jews lived in addition to how they died.
“If the main thing you know about antisemitism is the Holocaust, it’s easy to get the impression that antisemitism originated sometime in the twentieth century, and the Holocaust was a one-off — that out of nowhere, after just a few decades of hating Jews, the civilized world lost its mind and started killing them,” she writes.
Her book also includes a spirited defense of Israel, which puts her in the crosshairs of anti-Zionists and other harsh critics of Israel. At the GA, Hurwitz may have been describing the limitations of Holocaust education in teaching about antisemitism, but she waded directly into a fight about applying the lessons of the past to the crises of today.
The post Sarah Hurwitz, former Obama speechwriter, creates firestorm with remarks about Holocaust education appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel, Argentina Strengthen Ties as Milei Plans to Open Embassy in Jerusalem, Saar Leads Diplomatic Mission
Argentine President Javier Milei meets with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar in Buenos Aires during Saar’s diplomatic and economic visit to strengthen ties between the two countries. Photo: Screenshot
Israel expects Argentine President Javier Milei to open his country’s embassy in Jerusalem next year, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday, as the two allies continue to strengthen their bilateral ties.
“We hope to have the president in April or May to open Argentina’s embassy in Jerusalem, DC — David’s Capital,” the top Israeli diplomat said during a speech at the Israel-Argentina Business Forum in Buenos Aires.
Earlier this year, the Argentine leader announced during his visit to Israel that his country plans to open its embassy in Jerusalem in 2026.
As part of his diplomatic trip this week, Saar traveled to Paraguay and Argentina, leading a business and economic delegation that included senior government officials, company representatives, and key economic leaders to promote expanded cooperation between the countries.
“The president of Argentina [Milei] is one of the world’s boldest and most impressive leaders. It was a true honor to meet him in Buenos Aires and discuss our extraordinary bilateral relations,” the Israeli diplomat said in a social media post on X.
“The economic delegation accompanying me today is an expression of our belief in the president’s bold economic reforms and Argentina’s economy under his leadership,” he continued.
The President of Argentina @JMilei is one of the world’s boldest and most impressive leaders.
It was a true honor to meet him in Buenos Aires and discuss our extraordinary bilateral relations.
The economic delegation accompanying me today is an expression of our belief in the… pic.twitter.com/qHWJsB6Rf0— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) November 25, 2025
During his visit, Saar announced that Israel will open an Economic Attaché Office in Buenos Aires next year, emphasizing the country’s goal to “dramatically increase” investments in its partner nation.
“I thanked the president for standing consistently by Israel on the international stage,” Saar said. “Argentina, under President Milei’s leadership, is one of Israel’s best friends in the world. We’ll continue strengthening these extraordinary relations!”
He also met with Argentina’s Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, who is scheduled to visit Israel in February, and with Defense Minister Luis Petri to discuss ways to strengthen both security and economic ties between the two countries.
“We appreciate the minister’s friendship and crucial role in Argentina’s designation of Hamas and Hezbollah as terror organizations,” Saar wrote in a post on X.
“Argentina, under President Milei’s leadership, is clearly on the right path!” he added.
Had a very good working lunch with Argentina’s Minister of Defense @luispetri in Buenos Aires. We discussed ways to strengthen our security and economic ties. We appreciate the Minister’s friendship and crucial role in Argentina’s designation of Hamas and Hezbollah as terror… pic.twitter.com/fEnC7MGJt6
— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) November 26, 2025
Israel’s top diplomat was scheduled to attend memorial events honoring the victims of the 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing and the 1994 attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires — two of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the country, which claimed 29 and 85 lives, respectively.
Saar will also address the 90th anniversary celebration of the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the umbrella organization representing Jewish institutions in Argentina.
Earlier this week, Saar kicked off his diplomatic trip in Paraguay, signing a security cooperation memorandum and meeting with President Santiago Peña, whom he praised as “one of the most impressive leaders on the international stage today.”
“Paraguay is developing major defense capabilities. Israel’s defense industry has experience and capabilities that we want to share with you,” the Israeli official said during a press conference with Paraguay’s Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano.
Saar also praised Peña for moving the country’s embassy to Jerusalem, honoring his predecessor’s promise from 2018, and for formally designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as the political wings of Hamas and Hezbollah, as terrorist organizations. Paraguay had previously proscribed just the military wings of the two Iran-backed Islamist groups, both of which have been internationally designated as terrorist organizations.
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Harvard Law Professor Takes Plea Deal for Shooting Incident Near Synagogue
April 20, 2025, Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University and Harvard Square scenes with students and pedestrians. Photo: Kenneth Martin/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect.
A Harvard Law School visiting professor has accepted a plea agreement which absolves him of a slew of criminal charges he incurred for firing a pellet gun near a synagogue in Greater Boston on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, last month.
Carlos Portugal Gouvea, 43, has insisted he was “hunting rats” when his pumping two shots of non-lethal ammunition through a car window and across the property of Temple Beth Zion in the town of Brookline while worshippers attended service inside forced the synagogue into lockdown. According to multiple reports, the institution’s private security team found Gouvea behind a tree while searching the area for the source of the disturbance.
Upon being approached by the men, Gouvea voluntarily disarmed, putting his gun down, but he then reportedly used force to prevent being detained and thereafter absconded from the scene. Law enforcement officers later arrested him at home.
Since the incident, Gouvea, whose wife and children are Jewish, has maintained that antisemitism did not motivate his conduct, a contention that is believed by Temple Beth Zion and local Jewish leaders. He was charged in the Brookline District Court with one felony — vandalizing property — and three misdemeanors: disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, and illegally firing a pellet gun.
Under the plea deal, three of the charges were dismissed, according to the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office. For the remaining charge, illegally discharging a pellet gun, The Harvard Crimson reported that Gouvea must pay $386.59 in restitution to the individual whose car window he broke with a pellet. He also agreed to six months of pre-trial probation.
To this day, the professor has neither been accused of nor charged with committing a hate and maintains that he was not even aware that he had entered the grounds of a synagogue when he fired the shots which have upended his life.
“This man is married to a Jewish woman and has Jewish children, and it’s absolutely nothing to do with targeting the Jewish community,” Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi proclaimed during an Oct. 7 vigil held at Harvard earlier this year. “If it adds a measure of comfort and reassurance to our community, I thought it’s appropriate to just share that, so we can all take a sigh of relief.”
However, Harvard University placed Gouvea on administrative leave pending the outcome of criminal proceedings, a decision made amid widespread concern from prominent donors, Jewish leaders, and the federal government that the school’s attitude toward antisemitism on campus has been cavalier. Harvard is currently fighting a lawsuit which alleges that it declined to punish two students who led an anti-Israel mob which surrounded a Jewish classmate and screamed “Shame!” at him to protest Israel.
It is not clear when Gouvea will return to campus.
Harvard’s relationship with the Jewish community became a staple of American news coverage ever since some of its students cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, in which Palestinian terrorists indiscriminately murdered Israelis while sexually assaulting both women and men. Later, students stormed academic buildings chanting “globalize the intifada”; a faculty group posted an antisemitic cartoon on its social media page; and the Harvard Law School student government passed a resolution that falsely accused Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Since US President Donald Trump’s election in November 2024, Harvard has attempted to turn over a new leaf, settling lawsuits which stipulate its adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) widely used definition of antisemitism and even shuttering far-left initiatives which were adjacent to extreme anti-Zionist viewpoints.
In July, the university announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions, saying it will establish a new study abroad program, in partnership with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, for undergraduate students and a postdoctoral fellowship in which Harvard Medical School faculty will mentor and train newly credentialed Israeli scientists in biomedical research as preparation for the next stages of their careers.
Speaking to The Harvard Crimson — which has endorsed boycotting Israel — Harvard vice provost for international affairs Mark Elliot trumpeted the announcement as a positive development and, notably, as a continuation, not a beginning, of Harvard’s “engagement with institutions of higher education across Israel.” Elliot added that Harvard is planning “increased academic collaboration across the region in the coming years.”
Meanwhile, Harvard continues to see outbursts of antisemitic activity — most recently from its far-right students.
In September, a conservative student magazine, The Harvard Salient, at Harvard University published an article which echoed the words of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Written by David F.X. Army, the article chillingly echoed a January 1939 Reichstag speech in which Hitler portended mass killings of Jews as the outcome of Germany’s inexorable march toward war with France and Great Britain. Whereas Hitler said, “France to the French, England to the English, America to the Americans, and Germany to the Germans,” Army wrote, “Germany belongs to the Germans, France to the French, Britain to the British, America to the Americans.”
Army also called for the adoption of notions of “blood, soil, language, and love of one’s own” in response to concerns over large-scale migration of Muslims into Europe.
In Nazi ideology, “blood and soil,” or Blut und Boden, encapsulated the party’s belief in eugenics and racial purity; the German “Aryans’” right to expand into Eastern Europe to amass new Lebensraum, or “living space”; and the transformation of the German peasantry into an agricultural class which stood in contrasts to Jews, many of whom lived in cities.
Last month, the magazine’s board announced that the publication would temporarily halt its operations pending an investigation.
The Salient said that Army has not consumed Nazi literature and that no one who reviewed his contribution recognized its Nazi tropes. Denouncing scrutiny of the Salient as a political conspiracy on a campus in which students say promoting conservative viewpoints is a social crime, magazine editor Richard Y. Rodgers said The Harvard Crimson, the main campus newspaper, converted the “resemblance” into a “headline.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Tidbits: The first female Orthodox Jewish mayor in the U.S
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. You’ll also find the link to the article in English after each news brief.
צום ערשטן מאָל אין דער אַמעריקאַנער געשיכטע האָט אַ פֿרומע ייִדישע פֿרוי דערגרייכט דעם אַמט פֿון בירגער־מײַסטער.
מישעל ווײַס, אַ רעפּובליקאַנערין וואָס האָט במשך פֿון די פֿאַרגאַנגענע 15 יאָר געדינט ווי אַ מיטגליד פֿונעם שטאָטראַט פֿון יוניווערסיטי הײַטס, אָהײַאָ — אַ פֿאָרשטאָט פֿון קליוולאַנד — האָט געוווּנען די וואַלן, נישט געקוקט אויף דעם וואָס די שטאָט איז טיף דעמאָקראַטיש־געשטימט.
דערצו האָט זי געוווּנען דעם פֿאַרמעסט מיט אַ ממשותדיקער מערהייט — מער ווי 56%. איר קאָנקורענט, דזשיי טשאָנסי האָטאָן, פֿון דער דעמאָקראַטישער פּאַרטיי, האָט באַקומען 37%. אַ דריטער קאַנדידאַט, פֿיליפּ אַטקין, וואָס געהערט נישט צו קיין פּאַרטיי, האָט באַקומען 6%.
אין יוניווערסיטי הײַטס וווינען בערך 13,000 מענטשן.
ווײַס, אַ מאַמע און אַ באָבע וואָס וווינט אין דער שטאָט שוין 29 יאָר, האָט אָנגעהויבן איר פּאָליטישע טעטיקייט ווי אַ וואָלונטיר און האָט זיך אַרויפֿגעאַרבעט צו וויצע־בירגערמײַסטערין. במשך פֿון די יאָרן איז איר שם געוואַקסן אַ דאַנק איר פֿינאַנץ־דיסציפּלין, איר שטיצע פֿאַר אָפּהיטן די סבֿיבֿה און איר פֿאָקוס אויף פֿאַרבעסערן די אינפֿראַסטרוקטור.
ווײַס האָט געזאָגט אַז איר ערשטע פּריאָריטעט וועט זײַן צו היילן די פּאָליטישע שפּאַלטונג אין דער שטאָט־רעגירונג. זי האָט קריטיקירט די פֿריִערדיקע אַדמיניסטראַציע פֿאַרן שאַפֿן אַ שפּאַנונג צווישן דעמאָקראַטן און רעפּובליקאַנער און האָט געזאָגט, אַז זי האָפֿט אויפֿצוריכטן אַ געפֿיל פֿון צוזאַמענאַרבעט, בעת זי נעמט זיך אונטער עטלעכע גרויסע אינפֿראַסטרוקטור־פּראָיעקטן.
אין אַ צײַט פֿון שטײַגנדיקן אַנטיסעמיטיזם אין די פֿאַראייניקטע שטאַטן, האָט ווײַס באַטאָנט אַז מע מוז פֿאַרבעסערן די קאָאָפּעראַציע צווישן דער פּאָליציי און דער זיכערהייט־דינסט בײַ קליוולאַנדס ייִדישער פֿעדעראַציע. זי האָט אויך געזאָגט אַז ס׳איז וויכטיק צו באַשיצן די פֿאַרשידנאַרטיקייט פֿון דער שטאָט־באַפֿעלקערונג. אין איין ראַיאָן פֿון צוויי קוואַדראַט־מײַל געפֿינען זיך נישט ווייניקער ווי 17 עטנישע גרופּעס.
ווײַס האָפֿט אַז איר דערוויילט ווערן וועט אינספּירירן אַנדערע פֿרומע ייִדישע פֿרויען צו קאַנדידירן אויף אַ פּאָליטישן אַמט. „איר קענט ווײַטער לעבן לויט אײַערע ווערטן בשעת איר דינט די רעגירונג,“ האָט זי געזאָגט.
כּדי צו לייענען דעם אַרטיקל אויף ענגליש גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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