I first noticed something was off on the first day of class. I had given my students in my “Sociology of American Jewish life” course at Tulane University blank index cards, asking them to write five words they associate with American Jews. The word antisemitism didn’t appear once, and neither did Israel.

Last week, it happened again. When I asked students to choose topics from the 2020 Pew report on American Jews for small group discussions, no one chose antisemitism or Israel.

What was going on? Antisemitism dominates conversations among lay leaders, philanthropists and academics. Universities are launching new antisemitism studies centers. Yet here were 20 Jewish studies students avoiding the subject. The Hillel director confirmed he’d seen the same pattern: low attendance at events on these topics.

So I turned to my students — almost all Jewish themselves — and asked them to write anonymous reflections on this pattern. I wanted them to help me understand what felt like a significant shift from previous years, when these topics dominated classroom discussions.

Here is what I learned:

My students are exhausted. Not physically tired, but soul-weary from the constant barrage of antisemitism they encounter online. “Seeing constant antisemitism and antizionism has just made me so tired of it that it’s easier to ignore,” one wrote. “When I’m in Jewish spaces, I prefer to focus on the positive things … because it feels like antisemitism is a battle we’re already losing.”

They see antisemitism everywhere on social media — on Instagram, TikTok, even in comment sections barely related to Jewish topics. It’s become so normalized that one student admitted they “don’t even get surprised anymore when I see crazy antisemitism.” Another described it as being talked about “on the news so much as well as talked about in everyday life” that bringing it down further in class feels redundant.

But perhaps most revealing was this: They want their Jewish studies classroom to be different. “When I am in class, I enjoy learning about new topics and not about topics that I already talk about and experience every single day,” one student explained. Another put it more bluntly: “I don’t want the thing I bring up when talking about Judaism to be antisemitism in a class setting, where it is something we deal with all the time outside of it.”

The Israel conversation has become even more fraught. Students described being paralyzed by the fear of “saying the wrong thing by accident.” The topic has become so contentious that it’s “a very sensitive time period because of October 7th,” making people hesitant to speak up even in Jewish spaces. One student noted that discussing Israel has become “a dividing point even within the Jewish community,” creating rifts with family members and friends.

The pressure to be perfectly informed weighs heavily on them. ‘I don’t feel as educated on that, and in most contexts, I don’t want to bring it up because I don’t want to say the wrong thing by accident,’ one student confessed. They feel caught between the expectation to have authoritative opinions as Jews and their honest uncertainty about complex issues. Another described finding it ‘hard to delve into’ topics when unsure if they’re conveying accurate information. This burden of representation — the unspoken expectation that every Jewish student must be an articulate defender of their people — has become another silencing force.

I don’t take this silence as apathy, but rather about self-preservation. My students are keenly aware that even among close friends, there might be hidden antisemitism. They’ve learned to perform constant risk assessments about when and where it’s safe to express their views. As one observed, people are either intensely engaged with these topics or “have little to no interest talking about it … and don’t feel comfortable sharing their opinions.”

What struck me most was their desire to reclaim Jewish identity from being primarily defined by hatred against Jews. These young Jews want to explore their heritage, culture, and traditions without every conversation circling back to those who despise them. They’re not in denial — they know antisemitism exists. They’re just tired of it taking up so much space in their Jewish lives.

This generational shift matters. While Jewish institutions pour resources into combating antisemitism and defending Israel — crucial work, to be clear — our young people are signaling they need something more. They need spaces where being Jewish isn’t synonymous with being embattled. They need opportunities to engage with Jewish life, learning, and culture on its own terms.

My classroom revelation taught me this: If we want to engage the next generation, we need to balance necessary vigilance with joyful exploration of what makes Jewish life meaningful. Our students aren’t abandoning the fight — they’re asking for the chance to remember what we’re fighting for.

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At the 2014 Climate March in New York City, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, who passed away Monday at the venerable age of 92, rode atop a makeshift Noah’s Ark. The float was constructed by Auburn Seminary and a coalition of faith organizations to highlight the deep connections between religious values and environmentalism.  I was honored to be on that ark alongside him, and, looking out on the throngs of marchers, I snapped a photo and showed it to him. “The Rebbe and his legacy,” I said.

“What legacy?!” Reb Arthur responded, then a spry 80 years of age. “I’m still right here!”

This was Rabbi Arthur Waskow: prophetic, wise, cranky, witty, insightful, and decades ahead of his time. Like his contemporaries who have also recently left us — Rabbi Michael Lerner, for example — Reb Arthur (as his students called him) transformed how Jews understand themselves and their religion’s relationship to political engagement.

To an inner circle of Jewish social justice activists and Jewish Renewalniks, Rabbi Waskow was indeed one of our rebbes.  Together with his wife Phyllis Berman, he co-created a form of Jewish spirituality and consciousness that wove together progressive, even radical, political engagement with ritual and liturgical innovation. Paraphrasing what was once said about the Velvet Underground, there weren’t a lot of people in this inner circle, but all of them went on to become spiritual leaders and activists too.

But Reb Arthur’s legacy extends far beyond his fans to hundreds of thousands of Jews who don’t even know they’ve been influenced by him.

In 1969, Waskow created the “Freedom Seder,” a new version of the Passover Haggadah that, in his words, “connected the Jewish exodus from Egypt with the struggle for Civil Rights in America and Social Justice around the world.” This may seem banal today, but in 1969, it was unheard-of.  While there were plenty of radicals, hippies and artists who were Jewish (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, the list goes on and on), few embraced Judaism as such, as a religious and communal tradition with something worthwhile to teach. Meanwhile, while we’ve all seen that photo of Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in fact large segments of the Jewish community were antagonistic to antiwar activism, civil rights activism, and the array of left-wing political causes that animated that period known as the Sixties.

Rabbi Waskow brought these threads together. Well before doing so became a buzzword, Waskow made Judaism newly relevant to a generation of young American Jews.  He created new rituals on old foundations, and breathed new life into old words.  Just consider his book titles: The Bush is Burning! Radical Judaism faces the pharaohs of the modern superstate; Godwrestling; or one of his newest, Handbook for Heretics and Prophets: A New Torah for a New World. (Those are only three of twelve, I hasten to add.)

This work continued for decades, through the Shalom Center, which Waskow founded, and later in ALEPH: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal, which, for a while anyway, brought together Waskow’s political radicalism with the emergent spirituality of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and others.

Truthfully, though, there was always a tension — often productive, sometimes less so — between these two directions. (Waskow may have coined the phrase ‘Jewish Renewal’ in a 1979, but there are different versions of that story.)  Reb Arthur had little interest in meditation and mysticism; his was, in the words of another book title, a down-to-earth Judaism.  He loved Jewish ritual, wrote a book about Jewish holidays, and, with Berman, proposed to transform Jewish languages of prayer and of God.  Yet he had little patience when contemplative practice turned too inward, or turned away from the problems of justice toward mystical or theological speculation.

Conversely, Waskow’s radicalism often chafed against the sensibilities of many Jews. He was a left-wing activist long before he was a Jewish spiritual leader, and was outspoken from beginning to end.  The Freedom Seder cited not only Gandhi and King, but Nat Turner and Eldridge Cleaver; it was published in the leftist Ramparts magazine; it was first hosted by the left-wing Jews for Urban Justice.  His was not a polite liberalism.

One remarkable example: In 1969, Waskow delivered a Yom Kippur sermon at Washington’s Tifereth Israel synagogue demanding that congregants confess and atone for “paying soldiers to burn Vietnamese babies alive… supporting a system of grocery stores that starve some children into apathy and death… paying and applauding policemen who gas, shoot and beat Black people…” and many other sins. The response was just what you’d expect: in the words of one account, “a burst of indignation” from attendees who said he should focus more on issues that affect Jews. Ours is not the first time in which the Jewish Establishment has disowned and demonized Jewish Leftists.

And while Waskow may have mellowed somewhat with age, he didn’t mellow that much. In later years, he was excoriated for his criticisms of Israel’s actions in Lebanon and in the Occupied Territories; his peace work with Christian and Muslim leaders; and his opposition to the ADL and defense of the so-called ‘Ground Zero Mosque.’ Waskow was not always shaking his fist at the sky; after all, yet another of his books is called Seasons of our Joy. But he lived his life as a prophet, and prophets are rarely popular in their times — just ask Jeremiah.

Still, Waskow’s legacy — now I can use the term — runs deep and wide.  He helped create Jewish environmentalism; if your synagogue is reducing its carbon footprint, in part it has Reb Arthur to thank (though he would be the first to say that such steps are pointless without collective political action). He and Berman transformed Jewish liturgy in ways that rippled out well beyond progressive communities. And broadly speaking, Reb Arthur pioneered the entire notion that social activism and Jewish spirituality — not only Jewish identity and moral teaching, but also Jewish ritual and text and myth — enrich one another.

These teachings are still prophetic today. So, as Reb Arthur would surely insist, I will give him the last words, taken from the Dayenu liturgy in the original 1969 Freedom Seder:

The struggles for freedom that remain will be more dark and difficult than any we have met so far. For we must struggle for a freedom that enfolds stern justice, stern bravery, and stern love. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God! who hast confronted us with the necessity of choice and of creating our own book of thy Law. How many and how hard are the choices and the tasks the Almighty has set before us!

For if we were to end a single genocide but not to stop the other wars that kill men and women as we sit here, it would not be sufficient;

If we were to end those bloody wars but not disarm the nations of the weapons that could destroy all mankind, it would not be sufficient;

If we were to disarm the nations but not to end the brutality with which the police attack black people in some countries, brown people in others; Moslems in some countries, Hindus in other; Baptists in some countries, atheists in others; Communists in some countries, conservatives in others, it would not be sufficient;

If we were to end outright police brutality but not prevent some people from wallowing in luxury while others starved, it would not be sufficient;

If we were to make sure that no one starved but were not to free the daring poets from their jails, it would not be sufficient;

If we were to free the poets from their jails but to train the minds of people so that they could not understand the poets, it would not be sufficient;

If we educated all men and women to understand the free creative poets but forbade them to explore their own inner ecstasies, it would not be sufficient;

If we allowed men and women to explore their inner ecstasies but would not allow them to love one another and share in the human fraternity, it would not be sufficient.

How much then are we in duty bound to struggle, work, share, give, think, plan, feel, organize, sit-in, speak out, hope, and be on behalf of Mankind!

The post Honoring Rabbi Arthur Waskow – activist, pioneer and prophet appeared first on The Forward.

A children’s museum housed on a U.S. military base cancelled a planned storytime reading celebrating the life of a pioneering 19th-century female Jewish cyclist earlier this year, after the book was flagged under a military-wide ban on “DEI” content.

The stated reason was because the book was about a woman, its author, Mary Boone, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“If they had actually read the book and found out it was about a Latvian Jewish immigrant, it would have been a double whammy,” Boone said.

The recently revealed reason for the cancellation is the latest example of how a broad crackdown on diversity initiatives throughout the U.S. military, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has pushed out Jewish representation as well.

Earlier this year the U.S. Naval Academy removed a display honoring Jewish female graduates ahead of a planned Hegseth visit. The academy also removed several books about Judaism and the Holocaust from its campus library, while leaving others including “Mein Kampf” intact. The Pentagon additionally removed content about Holocaust remembrance from its websites this spring, prompting a response from Jewish War Veterans of the USA.

The incidents all occurred this spring, immediately following Hegseth’s anti-DEI order. That was also when a military base near Tacoma, Washington, cancelled a planned reading of the children’s book “Pedal Pusher: How One Woman’s Bicycle Adventure Helped Change The World.” The picture book is a biography of Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, who in 1895 became the first woman to cycle around the world.

The talk featuring the book’s author was scheduled to be held this past March, during Women’s History Month, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, home to around 110,000 people including service members and their families. Boone, a Tacoma resident, revealed the reasons behind the cancellation in a Seattle Times op-ed on Oct. 11, in recognition of Banned Books Week.

“Four days before the event, I was told it violated the administration’s executive order restricting so-called ‘radical’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs across federal institutions,” she wrote. “Someone complained when they saw my story time being promoted. Museum higher-ups appealed to military attorneys, who ruled that the program about a pioneering cyclist was out of bounds.

“Let that sink in: the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military had effectively declared a woman on a bike too threatening for children.”

A representative for Joint Base Lewis-McChord declined to comment, citing reduced office functions owing to the ongoing government shutdown.

Boone, who is not Jewish but is married to a Jew, told JTA that she was led to believe someone on the base had complained after seeing a poster advertising the reading. She doubts that those objecting to the book had actually read it, but rather had reacted because “it was a book about a woman.”

A section of the book briefly mentions Kopchovsky’s Jewish and immigrant identity as one reason why her journey, as a mother of three circumnavigating the globe by bike in 1895, was so improbable.

“Annie was a Latvian Jewish immigrant, and this was a time when prejudice toward Jewish people was widespread,” the book reads.

Initially, Boone said, she had not planned to include the section in the book, which only runs to 700 words. “My editor called and said, ‘This is a huge part of her story you left out,’” the author recalled. She said she responded, “I’m not a Jewish writer. Can I tell this? She was like, ‘Yes, you can tell this.’” The passage made the book.

Greentrike, a nonprofit that operates the base’s museum as well as a different children’s museum in Tacoma, did not immediately return a request for comment. Another March event featuring Boone at the Children’s Museum of Tacoma, off base, went forward as scheduled.

The Seattle Times obtained an email from Greentrike outlining the military’s reasons for the book’s cancellation as part of the op-ed’s fact checking process.

In March, the museum had initially announced the events “in celebration of Women’s History Month,” saying the readings would be paired with children’s activities including bike safety lessons. A brief update announcing the military base event’s cancellation only stated that storytime “will not be taking place at this time and has been removed from the event calendar.”

Back in 1895, Kopchovsky set off on her bicycle journey from Boston as part of a wager between two men who had placed bets on whether it was possible for a woman to cycle around the world. Initially pedaling west, she reached Chicago and almost gave up before ditching her heavy women’s bicycle for a lighter and more practical men’s model, then set off back east — eventually sailing on to bike in Europe and Asia before heading back to Chicago.

During her travels, Kopchovsky went by “Annie Londonderry” — not to disguise her Jewish identity, but because she had struck a sponsorship deal with the mineral-water company Londonderry Lithia. She earned $10,000 for her ride and wrote often about it after her return, frequently embellishing her tales of derring-do.

Children on the base have still received multiple opportunities to hear about Kopchovsky. When the storytime cancellation was initially announced, Boone said, she was contacted by representatives from two public schools also housed on base. She wound up speaking at both of them, without incident.

Months later, after she went public with the initial cancellation, she was swarmed with speaking invitations and sales of her book picked up. Among the new connections she made were to distant relatives of Kopchovsky.

“It’s given me the opportunity to talk about her to a lot more people who are outraged that this book about a woman would be cancelled,” she said.

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