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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 part of the Hanukkah story we ignore — and why it matters to converts like me
Converts to Judaism are often treated as rare exceptions — surprised looks, intrusive questions, comments like “who’s the lucky girl.” Yet conversion is no anomaly. It is now more common than at any point in the last 2,000 years. You see it in synagogue pews. You see it in rabbinical leadership.
As Hanukkah approaches, with its call to make Jewish identity visible, I keep returning to what happens when people choose Judaism — and to the parts of our tradition that do not fit the story we usually tell.
We often repeat that Judaism doesn’t seek converts. But clearly, people are seeking Judaism. Hanukkah forces us to ask what kind of Judaism they are finding by looking at the holiday’s own complicated history with power and conversion.
We usually tell Hanukkah as a straightforward story of good and evil: a small band of Jews defends their faith against an empire, and a miracle in the Temple affirms that steadfastness can overcome adversity. The holiday’s defining commandment, pirsum ha-nes — publicly proclaiming the miracle — seems equally simple. We put the menorah in the window for all to see. Judaism doesn’t hide.
But if you look more closely at the history behind that beloved story, Hanukkah is also about force, conversion and the question of what kind of Judaism we choose to embody when we’re no longer powerless.
John Hyrcanus, a later Hasmonean ruler and direct descendant of the Maccabees, is rarely mentioned in Hanukkah celebrations. Yet his legacy haunts the holiday. A generation after the revolt, Hyrcanus used the political power of the Hasmonean kingdom to forcibly convert the neighboring Idumeans to Judaism. A movement that began as resistance to assimilation ended in the coerced assimilation of others. The people whose story we tell as a fight for religious freedom became, in time, the ones taking that freedom away.
It’s an uncomfortable truth, especially for those of us who, like me, chose Judaism. I didn’t convert to marry in or reclaim distant ancestry. I converted because I saw in Judaism a faith worth choosing: a tradition grounded in human dignity and a God who seeks relationship. For years I was told Judaism was always a non-proselytizing, purely voluntary faith, the opposite of traditions that sought converts — including Jews — through coercion.
But our own texts complicate that narrative. Near the end of the Book of Esther, in a verse most Purim spiels rush past, we read: “And many of the people of the land professed to be Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them.” That is not a story of seekers drawn by theology, but of people compelled to join the Jews out of fear.
When Judaism welcomed seekers
Those coercive moments sit alongside a very different strand of Jewish history — one in which Judaism didn’t force, but attracted. In the late Hellenistic and early Roman era, Christian and Jewish sources describe synagogues filled not only with those born Jewish but with converts and “God-fearers,” people drawn to Jewish ethics, study and monotheism. As a convert drawn to Judaism by faith alone, I came to see myself not as an anomaly, but as part of that long line.
Centuries later, a similar universalist voice resurfaced in 19th-century America, especially in the early Reform movement. Rabbis such as Isaac Mayer Wise preached Judaism’s mission not as an inward inheritance but as a message about human dignity meant for the world.
In 1870, laying the cornerstone of Columbus, Ohio’s first synagogue, Wise told a largely non-Jewish crowd that Judaism’s purpose was to remind humanity that “God hath made man upright,” A direct rejection of the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. Synagogues etched Isaiah’s verse — “For My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples” — onto their facades and welcomed neighbors of every faith inside. Converts were welcomed as a natural extension of that conviction.
That confidence, too, was battered by history. Mass immigration of Eastern European Jews, the Holocaust, and the urgent work of supporting refugees and the new State of Israel all pushed the universalist voice to the background. Yet, more people are converting to Judaism than at any point since Roman times.
Meanwhile, religious identity in North America has become unusually fluid. Many people describe themselves as spiritually seeking but institutionally unaffiliated, brushing against Jewish life through family, friendships or personal study.
And yet, the gatekeeping persists. Converts are asked to defend their legitimacy. Jews-by-choice face skepticism in Israeli bureaucracy and suspicion in American Jewish spaces. I’ve been told I “don’t look Jewish,” and once, at a community film screening, another attendee — a fellow Jew — grabbed my name tag and publicly questioned whether I was really Jewish.
Those moments aren’t just rude; they reveal a deeper anxiety about boundaries: the fear that if Judaism is too open, it will lose itself. It’s a fortress mentality, one that sees every door as a potential breach.
What Judaism we reveal now
Hanukkah offers another possibility. The holiday asks us to present Judaism so that others can see it. It remembers a moment when Jews refused to disappear, and it also reminds us that Jews have sometimes used political power in ways that betrayed our deepest values. To take Hanukkah seriously in our time is to recognize that Jewish history, like the histories of all faiths, holds moments of both coercion and holiness — and that we have a choice about which lineage to lean into now, when seekers are again at the door.
The question is not whether Judaism should send out missionaries. Rather, it is whether we will live as if Isaiah’s verse still says what we claim it does: that our house is meant to be a house of prayer for all peoples, including those who, in every generation, find their way to our door.
This Hanukkah, as we place our menorahs in doorways, balconies and windows, the question beneath pirsum ha-nes is sharp: What kind of Jewish confidence are we proclaiming — a brittle confidence that closes in on itself, or a steadier confidence that welcomes those moved by the stories and ethics we are illuminating?
The miracle is not only that the Jewish people have survived. It is that Judaism continues to draw people in. The doors we open — or keep shut — will determine who gets to stand in that glow with us.
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The Jewish left is misplaying its hand — by not focusing enough on Jews
A few weeks after I moved to Jerusalem this fall, I was barred from entering the Tomb of the Patriarchs on a visit to Hebron. Three soldiers stopped me almost as soon as I stepped through the entrance. “Do you support Palestine?” one asked. “Are you a Muslim?” another demanded.
I was confused — perhaps I was at the wrong door? The occupation has made separate entrances for each religion, with one for Jews and another for Muslims. Passport in hand, I told the soldiers that I am Jewish, had just moved here, and was visiting the Tomb for the first time. I gestured to the chai, Hebrew letters meaning “life,” around my neck. It did no good.
I had forgotten that I was wearing a t-shirt from the Taybeh Brewing Company. The shirt had the company’s name in Arabic, with the word “Palestine” printed beneath it. The soldiers demanded my friends and I stand against a wall as they searched our bags. Their anger only intensified as I explained that Taybeh is a beer company, whose product is enjoyed across Israeli cities.
Eventually, their superiors arrived, and told my friends and I to leave. Something as trivial as a T-shirt was seen as damning enough to negate my Judaism, as well as whatever rights come with it in this Jewish state.
I have heard many stories like this: Jews are banned from holy sites, communal activities, and institutions central to Jewish life, simply for showing care for Palestinian existence. This fall, two friends of mine, both Jewish-American, Hebrew-speaking women, were deported from Israel for participating in an olive harvest in the West Bank.
The consequences of these red lines affect Jews in the diaspora as well as in Israel. I personally know many Jews who have had their Judaism treated as illegitimate because of their criticism of Israel. An Orthodox friend of mine was bullied out of her college’s Jewish society for displaying posters that paired Jewish liturgy with images of destruction in Gaza. Another friend’s brother was barred from a synagogue after he was spotted in a video of a pro-Palestinian protest. And in some rabbinical schools, recent efforts seek to blacklist applicants who question Zionism.
Yet rarely do I hear these stories told in Jewish activist circles and used as campaign fuel. That’s a mistake. If we want to build a movement capable of affirming a different version of Jewish life in this land and throughout the diaspora, we must talk about the ways in which Israel harms Jews.
The left often prioritizes spotlighting the urgent needs of Palestinians — rightly, and with good reason. Palestinians are unequivocally oppressed. Gaza lies in ruins; Palestinians in the West Bank endure unprecedented state-backed settler violence; and the full death toll of two years of war — plus continuing Israeli strikes in Gaza — remains unknown.
But the deescalation that has accompanied the current ceasefire has opened an opportunity for the Jewish left an opportunity to reflect and redefine its strategy. What future, exactly, are they fighting for? And how can they best go about that fight?
Too often, Jewish leftist spaces shy away from these questions. What does the egalitarian, diverse and thriving Jewish future the left seeks to build look like in Israel and beyond? How does this future address the many legitimate questions Jews have about their safety and identity there?
When the left fails to answer these concerns, it invites Jews to be skeptical of the merits of its vision. If the Jewish left cannot articulate a way forward to a meaningful future for Jewish safety, belonging and spirituality in Israel, Jews will continue to seek those things from the reactionary forces who paint morbid pictures.
That’s a bad outcome for Jews, as well as for Palestinians.
Right now, Israel’s government enforces a hierarchy of Jewishness. In doing so, it prioritizes versions of Jewishness rooted in nationalism, and erodes the vast historical treasure trove of diverse Jewish expression.
This is no accident. Systems built on injustice turn those affected by them against each other. The narrow definitions of “good Jewishness” advanced by Israel’s government only serve to weaken our people. The Jewish left must present a contrast: A strong plan for Jewish life in Israel that uplifts the spiritual and cultural traditions of the Jewish people, and coexists with a peaceful, free future for Palestinians. A vision of abundance, rather than the specter of scarcity that dominates today’s politics.
Of course, the alienation I and other Jews have experienced in Israel and because of Israeli policies pales in comparison to the violence, dispossession, and racism Palestinians have long faced under Israeli rule. But both emerge from the same supremacist logic. The same system that decides who is human enough to enter, pray, and live.
To challenge this system, the Jewish left must include Jewish stories of exclusion in the narrative of our politics—not to distract from Palestinian suffering, but to expand understanding of what this movement truly aims to accomplish: A good future for Jews and Palestinians, equally. After all: How can a state that punishes Jews for wearing the wrong t-shirt claim to protect us?
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A new bill would ban protests near synagogues, after the Park East protest. Is that legal?
A protest outside a prominent New York City synagogue has prompted a bill that would ban demonstrations within 25 feet of houses of worship and reproductive health care clinics. But free speech advocates say the proposed restriction raises constitutional concerns that could put the measure on shaky ground.
“This bill, especially as written, would ban an enormous amount of protests in New York and contradict pretty well established First Amendment protections for protest on sidewalks and public streets,” Carolyn Iodice, legislative and policy director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told the Forward.
If passed, the bill could tee up a legal clash over how to balance the protection of worshippers with protesters’ First Amendment rights.
State Assemblyman Micah Lasher, who introduced the bill, defended it in an interview with CNN: “There needs to be some reasonable space so that people who are trying to enter a house of worship or reproductive care facility can do so without having to run a gauntlet,” he said.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was reportedly receptive to the idea of limiting protests near houses of worship during a conversation with Rabbi Marc Schneier, the son of Park East Rabbi Arthur Schneier. Later, Mamdani told the Forward that he would consult community leaders and legal experts before determining whether he supports the legislation.
Why was the bill introduced?
Lasher said he introduced the legislation partly in response to a protest outside Park East Synagogue, where demonstrators objected to an event inside promoting immigration to Israel. Protesters chanted slogans like “death to the IDF” and “globalize the intifada.”
Mamdani condemned the demonstration and said New Yorkers should be free to enter houses of worship without intimidation. But he also said that “sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law,” referring to the promotion of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
That statement drew outrage from some Jewish leaders who view making aliyah, or immigrating to Israel, as a core Jewish value. Two weeks later, UJA-Federation of New York hosted a rally outside Park East Synagogue, where speakers condemned the protesters’ rhetoric.
Speaking to the crowd, Rabbi Arthur Schneier backed the legislation and urged attendees to call their representatives to express support.
“Legislators, keep your eyes open,” Schneier said. “This is what we want.”
What are the constitutional concerns?
In weighing constitutionality, courts consider whether a law restricts more speech than necessary to achieve the government’s interest.
In this case, if the state’s goal is simply to ensure physical access to places of worship, there are already laws in place, according to Iodice. A 1994 federal law, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, makes it illegal to use force, threats, or physical obstruction to block access to reproductive health services or houses of worship.
If the government’s goal is to ensure congregants can worship without emotional distress, the bill may be too broad, according to Alan Brownstein, a constitutional law scholar and professor emeritus at UC Davis School of Law.
“Suppose you had three people and they had a sign that said, Reconsider attending this house of worship, because the clergy oppose same sex marriage. And that’s all you had, three people with signs and they’re 20 feet away,” Brownstein said. “Is that traumatizing? Is that so disturbing to people who are going to attend a house of worship that we have to prohibit it?”
It’s also unclear what the bill means by “demonstrating,” he said. Some definitions — like two or more people engaging in expressive conduct — could apply to a wedding ceremony outside a synagogue as easily as a protest.
Legislators also cannot ban speech they dislike while allowing speech they approve. So if the bill only targets protests but permits supportive demonstrations, that creates another legal problem, Brownstein said.
The distance requirement could also be an issue. The bill requires demonstrators to stay 25 feet away from not only the building, but also its parking lot, driveway, and sidewalk, which could make the actual restriction larger, Iodice said.
In a densely packed area like Manhattan, that could eliminate a lot of protest space.
“Banning protests across wide swaths of Manhattan, as a realistic matter, that’s not going to fly constitutionally because of how much speech it restricts,” Iodice said.
There is some precedent for this kind of restriction: Laws creating protest-free buffer zones have been used in a variety of other contexts, including at funerals and abortion clinics in other states.
But it’s an open question whether those cases translate to houses of worship, Brownstein said, because healthcare clinics and cemeteries don’t participate in public discourse in the same way a synagogue or church does.
He considered a hypothetical law barring demonstrations within 25 feet of a political party’s headquarters, in what would be an obvious attempt to silence opposing views.
“Now, houses of worship aren’t political campaign headquarters,” Brownstein said. “But if anyone argued to me that religion is not a major voice in public discourse and debate in the United States, I don’t know where they’ve been.”
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