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A scholar sees a common root for antisemitism and racism: ‘Christian supremacy’
(JTA) — Magda Teter’s new book, “Christian Supremacy,” begins in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 11, 2017. Hundreds of white nationalist neo-Nazis who ostensibly gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a local park broke into a chant: “Jews will not replace us.”
Other writers and scholars would note how antisemitism shaped white nationalism. But Teter, professor of history and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, saw something else: how centuries of Christian thought and practice fed the twin evils of antisemitism and racism.
“The ideology espoused by white supremacists in the US and in Europe is rooted in Christian ideas of social and religious hierarchy,” she writes. “These ideas developed, gradually, first in the Mediterranean and Europe in respect to Jews and then in respect to people of color in European colonies and in the US, before returning transformed back to Europe.”
In the book, subtitled “Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism,” she traces this idea from the writings of the early church fathers like Paul the Apostle, though centuries of Catholic and Protestant debates over the status of Jews in Europe, to the hardening of racist attitudes with the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Antisemitic laws and theology, she argues, developed within Christianity a “mental habit” of exclusion and dominance that would eventually be applied to people of color up to and including modern times.
Teter is careful to acknowledge the different forms antisemitism and racism have taken, distinguishing between the Jews’ experience of social and legal exclusion and near annihilation, and the enslavement, displacement and ongoing persecution of Black people. And yet, she writes, “that story began with Christianity’s theological relation with Jews and Judaism.”
Teter is previously the author of “Blood Libel: On The Trail of an Antisemitic Myth,” winner of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award. At Fordham, the Catholic university in the Bronx, she is helping assemble what may be the largest repository of artifacts and literature dedicated to the Jewish history of the borough.
We spoke Thursday about how groups like the Proud Boys embrace centuries-old notions of Christian superiority, how “whiteness” became a thing and how she, as a non-Jew raised in Poland, became a Jewish studies scholar.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Your book was conceived and written during the COVID lockdown. Where did the idea for the book come from?
It’s an accidental project. I’ve been teaching the history of antisemitism for years, and I live in Harlem so questions of race and racism are very stark in my daily life. And since I grew up in Poland, and American history was not something we were taught or studied, I’ve never been satisfied with the various explanations for the strength of antisemitism and history of racism. And as I mentioned in my prologue, I watched the Raoul Peck documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” which has a clip with James Baldwin saying that white people have to figure out why they invented the idea of the N-word and must “embrace this stranger that they have maligned so long.” You could also say that the European Christians created the idea of “the Jew” and that sort of caricature had absolutely nothing to do with flesh and blood Jews. I kept noticing these parallels, as an outsider, reading American and African-American history.
I was also thinking about this idea of servitude that was attached to Jews in Christian theology, and then in law.
You write in your book that “Over time, white European Christians branded both Jews and people of color with ‘badges of servitude’ and inferiority.” What do you mean by servitude in this context?
In Christian theology, from the earliest Christian texts, the idea of servitude and slavery is attached to the concept of Jews and Judaism. Paul does it in his Epistles. He uses this quote from the book of Genesis that “the elder shall serve the younger,” which becomes really embedded in Christian theology. It is the Jews, the elder people, who should serve the Christians, the younger people. Later on in medieval theology and canon law, Jews are in a servile position, consigned for their sin of rejecting Jesus to perpetual servitude. So even though Jews were free people and could live mostly where they wanted to live, marry whoever they wanted to marry — nobody was sold and some even had slaves — that idea of Jews as confined to perpetual servitude to Christians created a habit of thinking of Jews as having an inferior social status.
That language became secularized in modern times, and we see the development of the [antisemitic] trope of Jewish power: that they are in places where they shouldn’t be. I worked on fleshing out the parallels between the idea and then legal status of Jewish servitude and the conceptual perception of Black people in servile and inferior positions.
Magda Teter’s new book explores how “white European Christians branded both Jews and people of color with ‘badges of servitude’ and inferiority.” (Chuck Fishman)
What other kinds of parallels did you find between racism and antisemitism?
In the Christian theology, Black people, like Jews, will be seen as cursed by God. Jews were [portrayed as] lazy because they didn’t work physically — they made money and exploited Christians. Black people were [portrayed as] lazy because they were trying to avoid physical labor at the expense of white men. Both people were seen as carnal, both as sexually dangerous, and so on.
I was struck by the fact that the racist turn of Christian supremacy — justifying the enslavement of Black people on theological grounds — is a fairly late development, taking hold in the early modern period when Europeans established slaveholding empires.
That’s right. In the summer of 2020, the summer of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, we were all thinking about these issues of race and racism and America. And as I was in the middle of writing the article that became the book, I felt that there was a deeper history that needed to be told, and that slavery is not bound by color until the enslavement of Black Africans by Europeans during the colonial expansion of Europe.
After the French Revolution, when Jews were offered “emancipation” in much of Europe, there were deep debates about whether they could be citizens and be entitled to the same rights and protections as Christian citizens of France and England and other countries. How was that debate informed by Christianity?
In pre-modern Europe, there was obviously both a religious and legal framework under which Jews existed. They had their place in a social hierarchy. After the French Revolution, people are creating a new political reality. The idea of equality obviously challenged the social hierarchies that existed, including the idea that Christians were the superior religion. And that begins to play a role on two levels. One is the level of, well, “how can you be equal and be our judges and make decisions about us?” It’s fear of power — political power and political equality. That challenges the habit of thinking that sees Jews as inferior, in servitude and otherwise insolent and arrogant.
The other level comes from Enlightenment scholars who begin to place Jews in the Middle East and in the Holy Land, in Palestine. Jews are no longer seen as European. They are seen as “Oriental,” and they are compared to the non-European religions and practices that these Enlightenment scholars have been studying. Their differences are now also racialized. “They are not like us, they can’t assimilate. They can never be Frenchmen, they can never be Germans.”
And I guess it’s a short step from that to regarding people with dark skin as inferior and subordinate.
That’s right. Enlightenment scholars are also trying to to understand why it is justified to enslave Black Africans and they do it through “scientific” and other means. They classify Africans as inferior intellectually and they create this idea of race.
I began to think about these European politicians and intellectuals in terms of creating their identities, and what I ended up arguing is what we saw in Charlottesville, what we’re seeing in Europe. It’s not necessarily just about hate, but it’s about exclusion and rejection of Jews and people of color from equality, from citizenship.
And the common thread here is that whiteness and Christianity become inseparable. You write that “freedom and liberty now came to be linked not only to Christianity, but to whiteness, and servitude and enslavement to blackness.”
That’s right. White Christian “liberty” becomes embedded and embodied in law.
Did you see any pitfalls in drawing parallels between the Black and Jewish experiences? I am thinking of those in either community who might say, “How dare you compare our suffering to theirs!”
Yes, I was tempered. I think what some call “comparative victimhood” has paralyzed conversations about this subject, and I kept it in my mind all the time. What I hope comes through is that there’s incredible value in a comparative approach. Coming from Jewish studies as my primary field, the comparison with the Black experience gave me clarity on the nature of antisemitism as well as on the nature of the Jewish experience, and vice versa: The Jewish experience can also give clarity to some of the aspects of anti-Black racism.
What’s an example?
So, for instance, questions like, “Are Jews white? Are they not white? When did they become white?” That’s a whole genre of scholarship. And when you look at it through the lens of law and ideology, you begin to see that from a legal perspective, Jews were considered white in the United States because they could immigrate and they could be naturalized according to law. They did not have to go to court to become American. Their rights to vote were not challenged. There was discrimination, they couldn’t stay in hotels and in some places they couldn’t find employment, but by law, they were considered citizens. The debate about the whiteness of Jews is creating a fog of misunderstanding.
Black Americans were targeted by specific legal statutes from the very beginning in the Constitution and then in naturalization law and so on. And then there was the backlash even after the Civil War to the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments [aimed at establishing political equality for Americans of all races].
Statues at the Strasbourg Cathedral depict Ecclesia and Synagoga, representing the triumph of the church, at left, and the servitude of Judaism, which is represented by a blindfolded figure, drooping and carrying a broken lance. (Edelseider/Wikimedia Commons)
How much do modern-day white supremacists, like the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys, see themselves as Christian? Or is this a kind of white supremacy that doesn’t name itself Christian but doesn’t even realize how many of its ideas are based in theology?
I think they might not be conscious of this legacy, but neo-Nazis take from the legacy of the Nazis who themselves were not thinking of themselves as Christian necessarily. But what I argue in the book is that white Christian supremacy becomes white supremacy. It never discards the Christian sense of domination and superiority that emerges from its early relationship with Jews and Judaism.
In the United States, Black people serve as contrast figures to whiteness, in the law and in the culture. You cannot have whiteness without Blackness. For Christians, Jews serve as that contrast figure. Consciously or unconsciously, the Proud Boys are embracing that. They talk of “God-given” freedoms for white people. That is the Christian legacy.
You said that the Nazis didn’t necessarily see themselves as a Christian movement. But I must ask, even though it is not the scope of your book, was the Holocaust a culmination of white Christian supremacy? Because I think many Christian theologians would want to say that Nazism was godless, and a perversion of the true faith.
I’ll say that when exclusionary ideology is coupled with the power of the state, that’s where it can lead.
In the years since the Holocaust especially, there have been many efforts by Christian leaders to address the ideological failings of the past. You write about Nostra Aetate, the 1965 declaration by the Catholic Church absolving Jews of collective guilt in the death of Jesus and some Protestant documents of contrition. But I got the feeling you were disappointed that many denominations haven’t gone far enough in reckoning with the past.
There was a sort of a moral sense that something needs to be addressed after the Holocaust. But then it is not fully addressed. I don’t think anybody has addressed the issue of power — the roots of hate, yes, but not the dynamics of power. We’ll see where the book goes, but maybe theologians will begin to grapple with this legacy of superiority and domination, and the way hierarchical habits of thinking have been developed through theology and through religious culture.
What other impact do you hope the book may have?
White supremacy is very much in the air. We need to speak up against it, and make connections and allyships. I hope that maybe because the book deals with law and power, it may create bridges among people who care about “We the People” as a vision of people who are diverse, respectful and equal, and not the exclusionary vision offered by white and Christian supremacy.
A cross burns at a Ku Klux Klan rally on Aug. 8, 1925. (National Photo Company Collection)
I’d love to talk about your background. You’re not Jewish but you are chair of Jewish Studies at Fordham, a Catholic university. What drew you to the study of Judaism and the Jews?
I grew up in Poland with a father who from the time I was a little girl would point out to me that there had been Jews in Poland. We would drive through the countryside, and he’d say, “This used to be a Jewish town and there used to be a synagogue and there was the Jewish cemetery.” I grew up being very conscious of the past’s presence and this kind of stark absence of Jews in Poland, where in the 1970s when I grew up Jewish history was taboo.
As soon as Jewish books on Jewish subjects began to be published, including those that dealt with antisemitism, we would read it together. We would talk about it. He wouldn’t just shift the destruction and murder of Jews in Poland on to the Nazis.
There was no Jewish studies program in Poland when I was applying to universities, so I studied Hebrew in Israel, and then studied Yiddish in New York at YIVO. I came to Columbia University to get my PhD in Jewish history and my career went in the direction it did. I was a professor of history and director of the Jewish and Israel studies program at Wesleyan University. I came to Fordham eight years ago and created a program in Jewish studies.
Your previous book was about the blood libel, the historic canard that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood. This one’s about antisemitism. I don’t want to presume, but is your interest in these subjects in any way an act of contrition?
I grew up in a very secular household. I did not grow up Catholic. But I think growing up in Poland made me very, very aware of antisemitism and the history of antisemitism. I got my PhD from Columbia University in Jewish history, which did not emphasize Jewish suffering, but Jewish life, and I have studied Jewish life and teach about Jewish life — not just about Jewish suffering.
However, in the last few years, antisemitism has certainly been on the minds of many of us. I also am committed to the idea of shared history, and therefore all my scholarship, as much as it is about Jews, it is also about the church and Poland and the law. Jews are an integral part of that history and culture. And, as such, I’m committed to that, to teaching about the vibrancy of Jewish life as much as the dynamics of what made that life difficult over the centuries.
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The post A scholar sees a common root for antisemitism and racism: ‘Christian supremacy’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The Art of the Heart: A Message From Israel for Valentine’s Day
As Valentine’s Day, celebrated on Feb. 14, approaches, preparations are seen underway in the markets in ghodbander road, Thane, on Feb. 12, 2026, in Mumbai, India. Photo: Praful Gangurde/Hindustan Times/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
In the weeks before Valentine’s Day, hearts appear on everything: cards, shop windows, menus, and messages. It’s sweet and familiar. We use the heart as a symbol for love because it’s the body’s center for the emotion of love.
The heart is not just a Valentine’s Day symbol, however. It’s an organ that works without stopping, and it responds, quietly and powerfully, to the way we live — how and what we eat, how much stress we carry, how well we sleep, how often we move, and whether we feel connected or alone.
I came to Israel from Los Angeles in 1983 with a mission that has guided me ever since: “Healing Ourselves; Healing the Planet.” A few years later I founded what became Reidman College, beginning with a small school for holistic massage. Back then, my belief was simple: When you touch someone, you touch their soul. Done with care and respect, touch can ease pain in the body, and it can also soften something deeper: the constant bracing that so many people carry without even noticing.
What I’ve seen through the clinical training our students provide across Israel is that people don’t arrive with only a physical complaint. They arrive with a full life behind the symptom. The body is not separate from the person. The heart is not separate from the story.
That is why Valentine’s Day can be more than a commercial holiday. It can be a useful mirror. Not because everyone needs romance, but because everyone needs and wants love in the wider sense: connection, belonging, steadiness, and the feeling that I am not carrying everything alone.
Heartbreak is not just the aching heart in a Country Western song. The emotions of prolonged stress, grief, anxiety, and loneliness often show up physically in the heart. A tight chest. Shallow breathing. Poor sleep. A nervous system that never truly calms down.
When stress becomes chronic, the body behaves as if danger is always close. That affects how we breathe, how we digest, how we rest, and how we make decisions. We reach for quick comfort because the system is asking for relief. Over time, those patterns shape the habits that can protect or damage heart health: movement, sleep, food choices, emotional regulation, and the ability to recover after difficult days.
In integrative medicine, we know that changing only one habit doesn’t solve everything. We also don’t separate a person into compartments — heart here, mind there, life somewhere else. At Reidman, we teach that real care is both responsible and grounded, and that integrative approaches work best; that is, conventional medicine alongside Natural Medicine, and not instead of it. If someone has symptoms that worry them, whether that be chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness, unusual fatigue, or unusual palpitations, they should get checked. Only with a clear diagnosis can one then begin to take the right path toward better health.
For many people, the most meaningful change for better heart health begins with a question: What does my heart need from my daily life right now?
Usually, the answer is not dramatic. It starts with the nervous system. Many adults live in a state of constant tension — shoulders lifted, jaw tight, breath held, like we are bracing for impact. You don’t have to change your whole life to change that message. Even a small daily practice of slowing the breath, especially lengthening the exhale, can help the body come down from alert mode. I’ve seen again and again in our teaching clinics: When the breath settles, the person settles. And when the person settles, the heart doesn’t have to work as hard just to keep them emotionally afloat.
Then there is movement. A short walk most days is one of the simplest ways to support circulation, mood, and sleep. It also gives stress a place to go. So many people are trying to “think” their way out of tension. But the body often needs a physical release. A 10-minute walk after a meal, a few minutes in fresh air, small things, repeated, can shift the baseline.
Sleep matters more than people like to admit. When sleep is poor, everything becomes louder: worry, cravings, irritability, sensitivity. A tired nervous system is fragile. A rested one is resilient. The heart is part of that story. If Valentine’s Day is a time for gifts, then let this message be a gift to you: Protect your evenings from constant stimulation. Create a softer landing. Less screen. Lower light. A warm shower. A few quiet minutes before bed because your body repairs itself at night and your heart benefits when you respect that repair.
And then there is the most overlooked “heart health” factor of all: connection.
Love is not only romance. Love is the person who checks in. The friend who answers. The community that makes space for you and perhaps having a pet. It is known that people with pets to care for and receive love from live longer and happier than most others. Dogs, in particular, are renowned for giving unconditional love.
Valentine’s Day can unintentionally reflect to single people, widows and widowers, the divorced, the grieving, and the lonely that they are “outside” the story. But the heart doesn’t only respond to couple-hood. The heart responds to belonging. To the feeling that you matter to someone, and someone matters to you.
If you want a simple Valentine’s practice that is actually meaningful, it’s this: Reach out in a real way. Not a reaction emoji. Not a forwarded video. A sentence that carries warmth. “How are you, really?” “I’m thinking of you.” “Do you want to take a walk together?” It sounds small, but small acts of connection are often what keep people steady.
Judaism understands something essential here: We are not meant to live as isolated individuals. We are built for community. Even the rhythm of Shabbat — pausing, disconnecting from constant doing, returning to family and to presence, is, in its own way, a heart practice. It reminds the body that life is not only pressure. There is also rest. There is also meaning. There is also relationship.
And there is touch, appropriate, respectful touch, which is increasingly missing in modern life. We live in a world that is both touch-starved and touch-confused. But the body still needs safe contact: a hug that is asked for, not taken; a hand held; a massage given with dignity. This is one reason I began in massage all those years ago. Because when touch is done properly, it can communicate something words often can’t: “You are safe, you are seen, you are not alone, and I am here with you.”
At Reidman, we speak a lot about dignity. And that includes the way we treat ourselves. Many people live at emergency speed. The heart doesn’t respond well to constant stress. It responds to steadiness. To daily care. To a life that is livable.
So yes, enjoy Valentine’s Day. Enjoy the sweetness. Send the heart emoji, send the flowers, book that romantic dinner.
But if you want the holiday to mean something deeper, let it be a reminder that your real heart is listening to your life. This month, give it more than a symbol. Give it calmer breathing, steadier sleep, gentle movement, and real connection — because love is not only what we celebrate. Love is also what we practice. Love is the most powerful healer of all. Loving ourselves; and loving others. Perhaps the Beatles were right: “All we need is love, love. Love is all we need.”
Sally Reidman, who immigrated to Israel in 1983 from Los Angeles, is the founder of Reidman College, Israel’s largest institute for complementary and integrative medicine.
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Israel’s bobsled team is chasing more than medals in its first Olympic outing in Milan
(JTA) — No matter what happens when Israel’s bobsled team hits the ice next week at the 2026 Winter Olympics, team captain Adam “AJ” Edelman has already had a year for the history books.
The 34-year-old Brookline, Massachusetts, native is the first Orthodox Jewish athlete to compete at the Winter Olympics, and now the first Israeli to qualify for the Games in two sports. He placed 28th in skeleton at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
But for Edelman, the 12-year journey that culminated in Israel’s first-ever Olympic bobsled appearance — which he has nicknamed “Shul Runnings,” a spin on the 1993 movie about Jamaica’s bobsled team — is about more than success on the track.
“The Olympics were never a goal,” Edelman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview prior to the Games. “The Olympics were the tool, or the stepping stone, to get to the goal, which was to fundamentally redefine, or change, how our community — both the Israeli and the Jewish one — view investment into and the role of sport.”
Edelman’s journey began in 2013, when Israel attempted to recruit him to play for its national hockey team. Hockey had been Edelman’s first sport, which he played through college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was the first Shabbat-observant player in program history.
Edelman discussed the idea with the long-time alumni director of his Jewish day school, Brookline’s Maimonides School. Mike Rosenberg pointed something out to Edelman that ultimately sparked a calling.
“AJ, no one from this school has ever gotten to the level of sport beyond high school that you’ve gotten to that didn’t go to, let’s say, [Yeshiva University] or Brandeis,” Edelman recalls Rosenberg, who died last year, telling him about the two historically Jewish colleges.
Edelman couldn’t believe that. Out of thousands of Maimonides alumni (including his older brother, Emmy award-winning comedian Alex Edelman), only Edelman — who called himself “not a very gifted athlete” — had reached that level? He had a theory as to why that might be.
“I came to the conclusion that it had to be a self-selection process,” Edelman explained. “That people were selecting out of sport as a journey before they got to that level. And why were they doing it? Because there was no priority placed on sport. It wasn’t something people in our community aspired to do or invest in.”
Edelman said the lack of investment in sports led to a lack of infrastructure and a dearth of role models for Jewish kids to look up to. He set out to change that — to “be the change.”
“The only way to do that was a certificate, so to speak, of excellence in sport, and that’s the Games,” he said. “The Games are essentially the certificate of, ‘you did something.’ So in that way, the Olympics became very, very much the tool for which I wanted to make the change.”
Edelman began training in skeleton after graduating from MIT in 2014. His initial scouting report was not promising: he was told he was “not athletic, would never make the Olympics, and would never be competitive in sliding sport.”
That did not deter him. Edelman moved to Israel in 2016, where he kept training, teaching himself the sport on YouTube when he couldn’t afford a coach. He ultimately clinched Israel’s first sliding sport Olympic appearance in 2018.
Then the pandemic hit. Edelman was pursuing an MBA at Yale University when classes were suspended. Edelman was visiting Jordana Balsam, a close friend who is an attorney in New York City, when the Olympics came up.
“He was telling me about his history with skeleton, and how he competed in the 2018 Games, and how he was actually really intrigued by bobsled,” Balsam recalled. “And in an offhand comment, I’m like, ‘Well, why don’t you pursue that, since you have this time off from Yale?’ And I guess something clicked in his brain, where he was just like, ‘Yes, I’m gonna do that.’ And the rest is history.”
Edelman began working toward bringing Israel to the Olympics in bobsled. Again, there were hurdles. He had to recruit a team from scratch. Israel’s own athletic authorities were skeptical — its Olympic committee almost didn’t accept an invitation to the 2026 Games. Funding was practically non-existent. Still, the team continued training, ultimately missing out on Olympic qualification for the 2022 Games by 0.1 second.
Then came Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent Gaza war, in which five members of the team were called into combat and multiple team sponsors backed out. Still, Edelman kept his eye trained on the 2026 Games. He used Instagram DMs to recruit a new team — most of whom play other sports and had never been in a bobsled — which also features Israel’s first Druze Olympian, Ward Farwasy.
Israel ultimately qualified in late January at an event in Lake Placid, the same location where Edelman had been told 12 years ago that he’d never make it. The team often trains there, as well as in Park City, Utah, British Columbia and elsewhere. Edelman said he is rarely in the same place for more than a few weeks at a time.
“Once he had something in his head — an idea, a concept, a goal that he has — he dives into it 200%, and it’s something that I admire greatly,” Balsam said. “I’ve never seen anyone so dedicated to their craft, to their sport, to their goal. It really is inspirational.”
But even qualifying for the Games didn’t end the obstacles. Due to Olympic security, Edelman said his team’s training time in Cortina was limited. Then the team’s apartment in the Czech Republic, where they were training prior to leaving for Italy, was robbed on Feb. 7. Edelman said thousands of dollars in personal belongings, including passports, were stolen.
Throughout the process, Edelman said the wave of support, particularly from American Jews, has been “pleasantly surprising” — especially compared to the reaction after he qualified in 2018, which he called more of a “blip.”
That support has manifested through donations and merchandise sales, with Edelman fundraising to support the team’s Olympic costs. There has also been ample news and social media coverage, inside the Jewish and Israeli communities and out. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has given the team a shoutout, too.
Edelman said the positive response has been all the validation he needed.
“There was a constant question of, at the end of the road, you’re doing this for a reason, right?” he said. “ And the only reason to do this is for the goal, the goal of making a change. Of people caring about sport. Of being the change. So if the change doesn’t come and it doesn’t make an impact, then all of it is irrelevant… I think that, from what we’ve seen in the last [several weeks], the answer is an unequivocal yes. It was 100% worth it.”
In Israel, sports fans are proud of the historic nature of the bobsled team’s Olympic appearance, but the story has not broken through to the same extent, according to David Wiseman, who lives in Jerusalem and runs the popular “Follow Team Israel” Facebook page that tracks Israeli sports.
“The media are very football [soccer] and basketball-centric, so they get all the headlines,” Wiseman said. “Someone like Deni Avdija gets significantly more coverage. They know of him being the first Israeli to play in the [NBA] All-Star game far more so than this. They think it’s cool that [Edelman] made it, but they don’t devote any more thought to it. Independent of Israel, bobsled is a niche, niche sport.”
Still, Edelman and some of his supporters have seized on the narrative draw of Israel’s underdog bobsled story — not to mention the apartment break-in and other obstacles — to amplify an almost muscular form of pro-Israel advocacy. Edelman commonly uses the phrase “victors, not victims,” in reference to his team and to Israel’s spirit more broadly.
Jared Firestone, who is representing Israel in skeleton in Italy, said there was “no chance I’d be here without AJ’s guidance.” Edelman helped coach Firestone in skeleton after he made aliyah in 2019, and the pair co-founded the nonprofit Advancing Jewish Athletes to support other Jews in sports.
“I think it means so much to Israelis and to the Jewish community at large to see, with a little investment, how much can be accomplished,” Firestone said. “Unfortunately for me and AJ, we’ve had to dedicate so much of our time that could’ve gone to training and progressing on the ice to fundraising, but hopefully we’ll be inspiring people who could help to create that infrastructure so the next AJ and Jared could just focus on sport and being even better than we are.”
Balsam, who also serves as a director of Advancing Jewish Athletes, said it’s hard to articulate how meaningful Edelman’s achievement of making the Olympics is to him, and to her.
“AJ has been very, very passionate about trying to cultivate the idea that sports can be a career path for Jewish kids,” she said. “He wanted to make it to the Olympics. He wanted to show that this is possible. So for him to combine both of his passions and achieve his dream, I think is something that he can’t put into words, that I can’t put into words, but it’s just immense pride.”
Now comes the actual tournament. Israel will compete in the two-man races on Feb. 16 and 17 and in four-man on Feb. 21 and 22, with Edelman piloting the sleds. His Shiba Inu Lulu, the team’s mascot, is staying with Balsam in New York, where they’ll be cheering him on.
But no matter where Israel places, Edelman has one more box to check to fully accomplish his mission to change Israeli sports.
“There is one thing that I wish beyond anything, and it’s that I’m not the only one to do it,” he said. “ What I really wanted to accomplish through it was that someone else saw it and decided to do it themselves. That they saw that pathway opened by someone who was less than stellar, who was not, like, a God-gifted athlete, and went, ‘You know what? I’m pretty good at what I do. I can do that.’
“You have to leave it better than you found it, and it has to be for a purpose, and that purpose is always going to be to inspire someone to do it better than you did.”
The post Israel’s bobsled team is chasing more than medals in its first Olympic outing in Milan appeared first on The Forward.
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Debate over the Blue Square Super Bowl ad is fading. The racist responses from my fellow Jews will be felt longer.
(JTA) — Days after the Super Bowl, I am still reeling from how a moment designed to confront antisemitism — a 30-second ad from Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance — shined a light on the hate within some corners of our own community.
The ad spurred debate over its effectiveness — a worthy conversation. But what immediately struck me was how quickly and prominently anti-Black responses played a role. I realized once again that American Jews are not only experiencing hate but must confront it within our own ranks as well. As a community, we will not succeed in combating antisemitism if we allow anti-blackness to live within our movements.
The ad, called “Sticky Note,” featured a non-Jewish Black child showing kindness to a Jewish child who was the victim of antisemitic bullying.
It spurred legitimate criticism about how to best fight antisemitism. But layered throughout was casual racism cloaked in the language of Jewish advocacy — even glee in an opportunity to engage in anti-Blackness under the guise of combating antisemitism.
Online, one person dedicated time to remaking the ad with AI so the bullies were darker-skinned and then had the Jewish child attack them.
Another person wrote that the bullies in the ad needed to be recast, because “most of our enemies aren’t white.”
Some exotified the Black child and leered at his natural hair, his height, his walk and his apparent “coolness.” People wrongfully claimed that the scenario was entirely unrealistic because Black people — at the individual or the organizational level — never stand against antisemitism.
Even more bizarrely, others claimed that the ad was somehow a tacit endorsement of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“There is a very casual and thoughtless ‘why the hell was a Black person shown being nice to a Jew, how dare they’ view being expressed here, and it’s not right,” tweeted Ben Badejo, who is both Black and Jewish.
“I am not asking Jews on X to like Kraft’s ad,” he added. “But I am definitely asking Jews on X to stop saying that a black person would never befriend a Jew and that it was wrong for the ad to depict this.”
Indeed, the downright racist responses from some parts of our community hurt Jews, our allies in Black communities, and the fight against antisemitism at a moment when the stakes couldn’t be higher. They highlight just how much work remains in fighting our own anti-Black racism.
None of the critics who were so furious about the inclusion of a Black child acknowledged a basic fact: There are hundreds of thousands of Jews of Color in the United States. The child in the ad — who approaches the Jewish protagonist and says he has experienced hatred too — could easily be Jewish himself, or have Jewish family members. Yes, his name is later revealed to be Bilal, but names do not always reliably map onto religious, racial or ethnic identity.
And that matters.
I know because I feel it personally. I am married to a Jew of Color, and we have two Black Jewish kids.
The claim that it is impossible, outrageous or ideologically suspect to depict Black people as allies in the fight against antisemitism does something deeply harmful: It erases the existence of Black Jews. That erasure is itself both antisemitic and racist. You cannot claim to defend the Jewish community while denying the reality of over 200,000 Black Jews in America. That number will only grow. Those numbers come from a 2020 Pew survey — my youngest wasn’t born yet.
You cannot fight antisemitism while actively and purposefully hurting Jewish kids — including my kids.
The claim also erases important alliances with members of the non-Jewish Black community.
In both my professional and personal life, I have experienced profound moments of solidarity and kindness in the fight against antisemitism from non-Jewish Black Americans. As director of Advocacy for One Mitzvah A Day, a project of Jewish Federations of North America that mobilizes communal gratitude to those who support us, I witness daily acts of courage and moral clarity from people of all backgrounds who choose to stand against antisemitism. Through our daily texts highlighting these moments of solidarity, our subscribers have sent more than 1.5 million messages of gratitude. We have thanked artists, elected officials, government leaders, and civil rights activists — many of them Black — who have spoken out loudly against antisemitism and stood with the Jewish community. To remain silent in the face of racism would be a betrayal of the kindness, solidarity, and moral leadership they have shown.
I felt compelled to post something on X on Sunday to push back against the racism I was seeing online: “You’re not making Jews safer. You’re hurting Jews. You’re not fighting antisemitism — you are hurting your community.” The backlash was swift and predictable. The rage didn’t stop at disagreement — it turned personal, aimed at me and at anyone who pointed out that being racist does nothing to combat antisemitism in American society. Within hours, I was branded an enemy of Israel, a self-hater, an apologist, and accused of being paid to tweet.
It’s important to emphasize: Debate is core to Jewish culture – it has kept us a strong, vibrant community for over 3,000 years. Debates about this 30-second spot are happening around Shabbat dinners, shul lunches and friendly coffees. All of this is fair game, healthy even. Criticize the ad. Debate Jewish professionals and how we are fighting antisemitism. It’s our job to serve the community. But hatred is not a productive form of debate. I know these spaces intimately. I’ve been a full-time Jewish professional since 2019 and have been active in Jewish advocacy long before that. As the mother of Black children and wife to a Black Jew, my commitment to normalizing Jewish life as multiracial is non-negotiable.
Still, I mostly responded with humor. When you’ve walked these lines long enough, none of it is surprising.
That, perhaps, is the saddest part of all.
How completely predictable it was.
The Super Bowl is over, and the controversy around the ad will soon fade, replaced by the next hot topic. But the effects of the racist posts are forever and leave an ugly, enduring stain that harms us all.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
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