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American Jews created historic summer camps. Or did summer camps create American Jews?
(JTA) — Among Sandra Fox’s most memorable finds during her years mining American archives for materials about Jewish summer camps was a series of letters about the hours before lights-out.
The letters were by counselors who were documenting an unusual window in the day when they stopped supervising campers, leaving the teens instead to their own devices, which sometimes included romance and sexual exploration.
“It was each division talking about how they dealt with that free time before bed in ‘age-appropriate ways,’” Fox recalled about the letters written by counselors at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, the original iteration of the Conservative movement’s network of summer camps.
“I’ve spoken to Christian people who work at Christian camps and have researched Christian camps. There is no free time before bed,” Fox told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “That’s not a thing if you don’t want kids to hook up. So it was just amazing to find these documents of Camp Ramah leaders really having the conversation explicitly. Most of the romance and sexuality stuff is implicit in the archives.”
The letters are quoted extensively in Fox’s new book, “The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America.” Fox, who earned a PhD in history from New York University in 2018 and now teaches and directs the Archive of the American Jewish Left there, tells the story of American Judaism’s most immersive laboratory for constructing identity and contesting values.
Next week, Fox is launching the book with an event at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn. (Tickets for the Feb. 23 event are available here.) Attendees will be able to tour adult versions of some of the most durable elements of Jewish summer camps, from Israeli dance to Yiddish and Hebrew instruction to Color Wars to Tisha B’Av, the mournful holiday that always falls over the summer.
“I never considered doing a normal book party,” Fox said. “It was always really obvious to me that a book about experiential Jewish education and role play should be celebrated and launched out into the world through experiential education and role play.”
Sandra Fox’s 2023 book “The Jews of Summer,” looks at the history of American Jewish summer camps. (Courtesy of Fox)
We spoke to Fox about her party plans, how Jewish summer camps have changed over time and how they’ve stayed the same, and the cultural history of that before-bed free time.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. We’ll be continuing the conversation in a virtual chat through the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Feb. 27 at 1 p.m.; register here.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Given how much Jews like to talk about camp, were you surprised that this book hadn’t already been written?
Sandra Fox: There’s been a lot of fruitful research on the history of various camps, but it’s usually been focused on one camping movement or one camp type. So there are articles about Zionist camps. There are certainly articles out there about the Ramah camps. A lot of camps have produced books — either their alumni associations or a scholar who went to let’s say, Reform movement camps have created essay collections about those camps. And there are also books about Habonim and other Zionist youth movements.
I don’t really know why this is the first stab at this kind of cross-comparison. It might be that people didn’t think there would be so much to compare. I think the overwhelming feeling I get from readers so far, people who preordered and gotten their books early, is that they’re very surprised to hear how similar these camps are. So perhaps it’s that scholars weren’t thinking about Jewish summer camps that came from such diverse standpoints as having something enough in common to write about them all at once.
Also distance from the time period really helps. You can write a book about — and people do write a book about — the ’60s and ’70s and have been for decades, but there’s a certain amount of distance from the period that has allowed me to do this, I think, and maybe it also helps that I’m generationally removed. A lot of the scholars who’ve worked on camps in the postwar period went to camps in the postwar period. It makes a lot of sense that it would be harder to write this sort of sweeping thing perhaps. The fact that I’m a millennial meant that I could write about the postwar period — and also write kind of an epilogue-style chapter that catches us up to the present.
What’s clear is that there’s something amazing about studying summer camp, a completely immersive 24/7 experience that parents send children away for. There’s no better setting for thinking about how adults project their anxieties and desires about the future onto children. There’s also no place better to think about power dynamics and age and generational tension.
I was definitely struck by the “sameyness” of Jewish camps in your accounting. What do you think we can learn from that, either about camps or about us as Jews?
I do want to say that while there’s a lot of sameyness, whenever you do a comparative study, there’s a risk of kind of collapsing all these things and making them seem too similar. What I’m trying to convey is that the camp leaders from a variety of movements took the basic structure of the summer camp as we know it — its daily schedule, its environment, its activities — and it did look similar from camp to camp, at least on that surface level.
If you look at the daily schedules in comparison, they might have a lot of the same features but they’ll be called slightly different things depending on if the camp leans more heavily towards Hebrew, or Yiddish, or English. But the content within those schedules would be rather different. It’s more that the skeletal structure of camp life has a lot of similarities across the board and then the details within each section of the day or the month had a lot of differences.
But I think what it says is that in the postwar period, the anxieties that Jewish leaders had about the future of Judaism are really, really similar and the solution that they found within the summer camp, they were pretty unanimous about. They just then took the model and inserted within it their particular nationalistic, linguistic or religious perspectives. So I think more so than saying anything about American Jewry, it shows kind of how flexible camping is. And that’s not just the Jewish story. Lots of different Americans have embraced summer camping in different ways.
So many people who have gone to camp have a fixed memory of what camp is like, where it’s caught in time, but you argue that camps have actually undergone lots of change. What are the most striking changes you documented, perhaps ones that might have been hard for even insiders to discern as they happened?
First of all, the Israel-centeredness of American Jewish education as we know it today didn’t happen overnight in 1948, for instance. It was a slower process, beyond the Zionist movements where that was already going on, for decades before 1948. Ramah and the Reform camps for instance took their time towards getting to the heavily Zionist-imbued curricula that we know.
There was considerable confusion and ambivalence at first about what to do with Israel: whether to raise an Israeli flag, not because they were anti-Zionist, but because American Jews had been thinking about proving their loyalty to America for many generations. There were some sources that would talk about — what kind of right do American Jews have to raise the Israeli flag when they’re not Israeli? So that kind of Israel-centeredness that is really a feature of camp life today was a slower process than we might think.
It fit camp life really well because broader American camps used Native American symbols, in some ways that are problematic today, to create what we know of as an iconography of camp life. So for Jews, Israel and its iconography, or Palestine and iconography before ’48, provided an alternative set of options that were read as Jewish, but it still took some time to get to where we are now in terms of the Israel focus.
One of the reasons I place emphasis on the Yiddish summer camps is to show that in the early 20th century and the mid-20th century there was more ideological diversity in the Jewish camping sphere, including various forms of Yiddishist groups and socialist groups and communist groups that operated summer camps. Most of them have closed, and their decline is obviously a change that tells a story of how American Jewry changed over the course of the postwar period. Their legacy is important, too: I have made the argument that these camps in a lot of ways modeled the idea of Yiddish as having a future in America.
What about hookup culture? Contemporary discourse about Jewish camps have focused on sex and sexuality there. What did you observe about this in the archives?
I think people think of the hookup culture of Jewish camps today and certainly in my time in the ’90s and 2000s as a permanent feature, and in some ways I found through my research and oral history interviews that that was the case, but it was really interesting to zoom out a little bit and think about how Jewish summer camps changed in terms of sexual romantic culture, in relationship to how America changed with the sexual revolution and the youth culture.
It’s not it’s not useful to think about Jewish hookup culture in a vacuum. It’s happening within America more broadly. And so of course, it’s changed dramatically over time. And one of the things I learned that was so fascinating is that Jewish summer camps were actually their leaders were less concerned in a lot of ways about sexuality at camp in the ’40s and ’50s, than they were in the late ’60s and ’70s. Because earlier premarital sex was pretty rare, at least in the teenage years, so they were not that concerned about what happened after lights out because they kind of assumed whatever was going on was fairly innocent.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, that’s when camps have to actually think about how to balance allowance and control. They want to allow campers to have these relationships, to have their first sexual experiences, and part of that is related to rising rates of intermarriage and wanting to encourage love between Jews, but they also want to control it because there’s a broader societal moment in which the sexuality of teenagers is problematized and their and their sexual culture is more public.
There’s been a real wave of sustained criticism by former campers about the cultures that they experienced, arguing that the camps created an inappropriately sexualized and unsafe space. There’s been a lot of reaction to that and the broader #MeToo moment. I’m curious about what you can speculate about a future where that space is cleaned up, based on your historical research — what is gained and what, potentially, could be lost?
Without being involved in camping today — and I want to really make that disclaimer because I know a lot of change is happening and lot of organizations are involved to talk about this issue better, to train camps and camp leaders and their counselors to not create a pressured environment for camper — I think what the history shows is that this hookup culture did not come about out of nowhere. It was partly related to the broader changes in America and the sexual revolution.
But it was also partly created because camps really needed to have campers’ buy-in, in order to be “successful.” A huge argument of my book is that we think about the power of camps as if camp directors have campers as, like, puppets on strings, and that what they do is what happens in camp life. But actually, campers have changed the everyday texture of life at camp over the course of the decades in so many different ways by resisting various ideas or just not being interested.
So hookup culture is also part of making campers feel like they have freedom at camp and that’s essential. That’s not a side project — that is essential to their ability to get campers to come back. It’s a financial need, and it’s an ideological need. If you make campers feel like they have freedom, then they will feel like they freely took on the ideologies your camp is promoting in a really natural way.
The last part of it is rising rates of intermarriage. As rates of intermarriage rose in the second half of the 20th century, there’s no doubt in my mind from doing the research that the preexisting culture around sexuality at camp and romance at camp got turbo-boosted [to facilitate relationships that could potentially lead to marriage between two Jews]. At that point, the allowance and control that camp leaders were trying to create for many decades leans maybe more heavily towards allowance.
There are positives to camp environments being a place where campers can explore their sexualities. There’s definitely a lot of conversation about the negative effects and those are all very, very real. I know people who went through horrible things at a camp and I also know people who experienced it as a very sex-positive atmosphere. I know people in my age range who were able to discover that they were gay or lesbian at camp in safety in comparison to home, so it’s not black and white at all. I hope that my chapter on romance and sexuality can maybe add some historical nuance to the conversation and give people a sense of how this actually happened. Because it happened for a whole bunch of reasons.
I think there’s a consensus view that camp is one of the most “successful” things the Jews do. But it’s hard to see where lessons from camp or camp culture are being imported to the rest of Jewish life. I’m curious what you see as kind of the lessons that Jewish institutions or Jewish communities have taken from camp — or have they not done that?
Every single public engagement I do about my work has boiled down to the question of, well, does it work? Does camp work? Is it successful? And that’s been a question that a lot of social scientists have been interested in. I don’t want to oversimplify that research, but a lot of the ways that they’ve measured success have been things that are not necessarily a given to all Jews as obviously the right way to be a Jew. So, for instance, in the ’90s and early 2000s, at the very least, a lot of research was about how, you know, “XYZ” camp and youth movement were successfully curbing intermarriage. A lot of them also asked campers and former campers how they feel about Israel, and it’s always if they are supportive of Israel in very normative ways, right, giving money visiting, supporting Israel or lobbying for its behalf — then camps have been successful.
I’m not interested in whether camps were successful by those metrics. I’m interested in how we got to the idea that camp should be successful in those ways in the first place. How did we get to those kinds of normative assumptions of like, this is a good Jew; a good Jew marries a Jew; a good Jew supports Israel, no matter what. So what I wanted to do is zoom out from that question of success and show how camp actually functions.
And then the question of “does it work” is really up to the reader. To people who believe that curbing intermarriage is the most important thing, then camps have been somewhat successful in the sense that people who go to these heavily educational camps are less likely to marry out of the faith.
But I am more interested in what actually happened at camp. And in terms of their legacies, I wanted to show how they changed various aspects of American Jewish life, and religion and politics. So I was really able to find how camping was essential in making kind of an Israel-centered Jewish education the norm. I was also able to draw a line between these Yiddish camps over the ’60s and ’70s that closed in the ’80s and contemporary Yiddish. The question of success is a real tricky and political one in a way that a lot of people have not talked about.
And is camp also fun? Because you’re creating a camp experience for your book launch next week.
Camp is fun — for a lot of people. Camp was not fun for everyone. And so I do want to play with that ambivalence at the party, and acknowledge that and also acknowledge that some people loved camp when they were younger and have mixed feelings about it now.
The party is not really a celebration of Jewish summer camp. People will be drinking and having fun and dancing — but I want them to be thinking while also about what is going on and why. How is Tisha B’Av [the fast day that commemorates the destruction of the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem that falls at the height of summer] commemorated at camp, for example?
Or what songs are we singing and what do they mean? I think a lot of people when they’re little kids, they learn songs in these Jewish summer camps that they can’t understand and later they maybe learn Hebrew and go, whoa, we were singing what?! My example from Zionist summer camp is singing “Ein Li Eretz Acheret,” or “I Have No Other Country.” We were in America and we obviously have another country! I don’t think anyone in my youth movement actually believes the words “Ein Li Eretz Acheret” because we live in America and people tend to kind of like living in America and most of them do not move to Israel.
So at the party we’ll be working through the fun of it, and at the same time the confusion of it and the ambivalence of it. I want it to be fun, and I also want it to be something that causes people to think.
—
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‘Don’t give up on us now’: Israel peace summit convenes thousands to aim for elusive progress
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — On Thursday’s bright, sun-drenched morning during a rare pause in the multi-front war Israel has been locked into for nearly three years, in between the protests, funerals and steady drumbeat of violence and trauma, something decidedly more hopeful was taking place.
In one of the city’s largest conference centers, thousands gathered for the third annual People’s Peace Summit under the banner “It must be. It can be. It will be.” The event was organized by the It’s Time coalition, a partnership of more than 80 grassroots peacebuilding and shared society organizations.
Young activists in T-shirts representing their various causes stood alongside older attendees, some in kippot, others in hijabs. Diplomats in business attire moved through the crowd, as did the handful of Israeli politicians still publicly associated with the peace camp – familiar faces in a political landscape where their ranks have thinned considerably. Outside the main arena, Hebrew mingled with Arabic and English as participants strolled through art installations and an organizational fair showcasing the work of It’s Time’s partners.
While previous events took place at the height of war — while hostages remained in captivity and Gaza endured devastating destruction — this year’s summit unfolded during a fragile lull in fighting, the tenuous ceasefires with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps allowing, however briefly, for conversations to move beyond issues of immediate survival. Speakers tackled settler violence in the West Bank, looming elections, the immense challenge of rebuilding Gaza and the broader question of how to move Israel and Palestine beyond its default state of perpetual conflict. Inside the packed sessions, the tone was equal parts practical, sober and hopeful.
After a quick coffee break, the thousands of participants came together for an evening of stirring speeches and raucous musical performances. When Israeli pop icon Dana International took the stage with a familiar anthem of peace, the crowd rose to its feet, wrapping their arms around one another and belting out the words.
Despite the joyous atmosphere, the event — and the coalition behind it — is not immune from criticism. Some critiques appear to have been internalized: this year’s programming leaned more heavily into policy, strategy and the hard realities of war than previous gatherings. Other issues remain unresolved. Palestinian participation, while present, was still markedly limited, which organizers attribute largely to government-imposed restrictions on movement rather than a lack of interest. Still, the question of whether a civil society movement like this can translate hope and optimism into concrete political change remains to be seen.
That tension between aspiration and reality extends well beyond Israel. In the United States, support for Israel, particularly among younger American Jews, is waning. A 2024 Pew survey found that fewer than half of American Jews under 30 say they feel “very attached” to Israel, while a JFNA poll released in February 2026, found that just 37% of all American Jews identify as Zionists. Both numbers represent a sharp decline from older generations.
For Shira Ben Sasson, Israel director of the New Israel Fund, it is precisely the peace camp which could hold the answer to this growing disillusionment. If the state itself no longer reflects the values that once anchored many American Jews’ connection to Israel, she suggests, perhaps their more natural partner is the small but determined coalition of Israelis working to change it.
“I appreciate how difficult it is to be a Jew who cares about Israel right now,” she told the Forward as the conference, which New Israel Fund helped support and coordinate, got underway. “People are struggling with what they are seeing — the way Israel is conducting itself. Its policies. They are watching the value set that once connected them so strongly to the Jewish state disappear.”
Her response is one of both reassurance and redirection.
“Thank you for continuing to care,” she said. “But remember — the Israeli government is not your partner. We are. Pro-democracy civil society is your partner. Those of us who are fighting for equality here, for the rights of non-Israeli Jews and the rights of non-Jewish Israelis are your partners. This is where those shared values still live.”
If that message feels unfamiliar to those in the diaspora, Ben Sasson suggests the reason ultimately comes down to lack of exposure.
“We, the Israeli peace camp, need to be in many more places than we are right now,” she said. “We must get the word out that while we might not be the majority here, we are not only growing in number, we are expanding our diversity as well.”
She pointed to the rising number of Orthodox Jews, like herself, who have joined the movement as one example.
Ben Sasson also emphasized that, as with any strong partnership, the relationship must move in both directions. Israeli peace activists, she said, must make themselves more visible to American Jews. But American Jews also need to be willing to open their eyes.
“The mainstream Jewish community has to challenge itself,” she said. “They have to be able to voice their concern for Israeli democracy, for the violence in the occupied territories. And they have to be willing to engage in an honest discussion about peace.”
She is less worried about reaching individuals whose support for Israel may be wavering — many of whom, she believes, will connect with the movement’s vision — than she is about the institutions that have long shaped American Jewish engagement with Israel. Those institutions, she said, have been slow to open themselves to this kind of messaging.
“I think there’s fear,” Ben Sasson explained. “The word ‘peace’ has come to sound political. And once something is labeled political, these legacy institutions don’t want to touch it.”
But that avoidance, she warned, comes at a cost.
“They cannot afford to just stick with the same old stale perception of Israel,” she argued. “If you aren’t willing to talk about the real-life issues that Israelis are facing, you simply won’t be relevant anymore — particularly for the young people in your community.”
“Do not be afraid of controversy,” she added. “Do not be afraid to invite an Arab and a Jew to your event, where there may be disagreement. That’s okay. Struggling and wrestling is a core part of our identity.”
While Ben Sasson contends there is a critical mass of people who are hungry for an alternative way to relate to Israel, the question of feasibility remains; the same question that follows the peace movement inside Israel: Does its growing visibility reflect real political momentum, or is it simply too late to reverse course?
To those who are ready to walk away altogether, Ben Sasson points out that Israel stands to lose not only their support, but also the values and organizing traditions American Jews have long brought to the relationship.
“You’ve helped us achieve so many things in Israel for decades,” she said. “You helped us get a state. And now we need a different kind of support. The Jewish values that you offer — the concept of tikkun olam, which is not at the heart of Israeli Judaism but is at the heart of American Judaism — this is the support you can offer us right now.”
Her final plea was simple.
“Do not give up on Israel,” Ben Sasson said. “There have been so many times when things felt insurmountable and you did not give up on us. Don’t give up on us now.”
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A GOP lawmaker tried to put a Holocaust denier on New Hampshire’s Holocaust education board
(JTA) — A Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire partnered with a notorious German Holocaust denier in an effort to insert Holocaust denial into the state’s public education guidelines.
Rep. Matt Sabourin dit Choinière successfully pushed the New Hampshire Commission on Holocaust and Genocide Education to hear testimony from Germar Rudolf, a German chemist who has previously been deported from the United States and served prison time in his home country for propagating Holocaust denial.
Two other Holocaust deniers also testified before the state House as a result of Sabourin dit Choinière’s efforts, including a man who grew up Jewish who has led protests outside a Michigan synagogue weekly for more than two decades.
Sabourin dit Choinière’s antics were first reported Wednesday by NPR. But the push actually took place in public view, during a livestreamed meeting of the state House’s Executive Departments and Administration Committee in January.
During the meeting, Sabourin dit Choinière testified that he had visited Dachau and seen a gas chamber, then learned that no one was ever gassed at Dachau. (The Dachau historic site says the chamber’s lack of use “remains unexplained.” More than 40,000 people died at Dachau.)
“This was the first doubt in my mind that over time led towards a revisionist thinking about the Holocaust,” Sabourin dit Choinière said before explaining that he was relieved to have discovered the “Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust,” a group that produced a 54-volume set of books that he offered to the committee.
“Holocaust historical revision revisionism as a science does not deny that Jews were persecuted or deprived of their civil rights or deported or herded into ghettos. It does not deny that many were killed, but it does seek to learn why, how and when they died. And it seeks to separate the truth from the fiction,” he said.
“This is vitally important knowledge for the Holocaust and Genocide Education Commission’s curriculum development,” he continued. “If we are going to have Holocaust and Genocide Education taught in New Hampshire public schools, which I think it should be, it needs to be accurate and reliable.”
The Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust is run by Rudolf, whose publications have claimed that Zyklon B was never used in the Auschwitz gas chambers, defended notorious Holocaust denier David Irving and cast doubt on photographic evidence of concentration camps.
Few people attended the public meeting, which mostly focused on the state retirement system. Among those in attendance were three men who testified: Rudolf and two members of his group.
“I have under my belt 35 years of research, organizing research, conducting and publishing research, of forensic and archival nature on the Holocaust question,” Rudolf said during his testimony.
The other two men both came in from Michigan: Henry Herskovitz, an Ann Arbor man who for decades has led weekly protests outside a synagogue’s Shabbat services that have incorporated Holocaust denial; and David Skrbina, a former professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn who has published numerous Holocaust-denial books under a pseudonym.
“As a historical event of great importance, we must examine all sides of this topic with an open mind,” Skrbina told the committee. “Exaggerations, lies, gross errors, and physical impossibilities must be identified and rooted out if we are to learn from this event and to do justice to its many victims.”
During the meeting, the testimony elicited little pushback. One state lawmaker indicated sympathy to the Holocaust deniers’ testimony.
“I’ve been there. I’ve seen all of that. I’ve felt it when I walked around. And I think it’s a travesty that we’re trying to hide the truth about what’s happened in the past, and I want to thank you all for bringing this to the committee today, and I think all students everywhere should know what happened,” GOP state Rep. Susan DeRoy told the panel following Rudolf and Herskovitz’s testimony. “So my question would be, why do they want to cover this up?” (The chair shot down the line of questioning, saying, “It’s not an appropriate question.” DeRoy did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)
Sabourin dit Choinière also introduced an amendment that would have added a member of Rudolf’s extremist group to the commission, which oversees Holocaust education that is required in New Hampshire schools and is preparing to update curriculum materials.
The amendment failed. But the fact that it was made and entertained at all was deeply concerning to New Hampshire state representative Loren Selig, a Jewish Democrat and Holocaust commission member.
“Shocked would be an understatement,” Selig told NPR about the moment her colleague introduced it. “I could barely speak.”
Another member of the commission, Rabbi Jon Spira-Savett, told JTA that the incident was “horrifying.”
“Any time anything like this gets a public airing, that’s not good,” Spira-Savett, who leads Temple Beth Abraham in Nashua, said of the legislator’s flirtation with Holocaust denial. “The idea that somehow Holocaust education ought to include hearing the perspective of deniers — we are so, so far beyond that, and it’s terrifying we might actually have to make the case for that here in our state or anywhere.”
The commission was formed with a 2020 state law to set guidelines for the state on teaching the Holocaust, and includes lawmakers from both parties. Sabourin dit Choinière does not serve on it. Though commissioners are dedicated to the task, Spira-Savett said, “it isn’t a state where there’s a tremendous amount of resources to enforce the teaching.”
Unrelated to his Holocaust denial, Rudolf also has a criminal record, having been convicted in Pennsylvania, where he lives, of indecent exposure after being arrested for public nudity at a playground.
Sabourin dit Choinière’s antics come as the Republican Party grapples with internal tensions over antisemitism, as party leaders have grown divided by figures such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes who have minimized the Holocaust or amplified deniers. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz lamented the rise of antisemitism in the party to the Republican Jewish Coalition conference earlier this year, while Vice President JD Vance has said he does not want to draw lines that would exclude such voices from the party.
A Republican candidate for state office rejected Sabourin dit Choinière’s endorsement of him following NPR’s reporting. The conservative group Americans For Prosperity, which has endorsed Sabourin dit Choinière in the past, condemned antisemitism in a statement to NPR.
Prior to NPR’s report, Sabourin dit Choinière’s Holocaust commission moves attracted little public attention. A New Hampshire progressive group in January called on House Speaker Sherman Packard to strip Sabourin dit Choinière of his committee assignments, which according to the House website he has retained.
“Promoting Holocaust denial and antisemitic conspiracy theories is incompatible with public service,” a co-founder of the Kent Street Coalition wrote in an open letter published in a nonprofit news site. “Rep. Sabourin dit Choinière should be removed from his committee assignments as a matter of principle and accountability.”
Holocaust education commissions have been the sites of controversy in other states. The South Carolina equivalent last year faced internal division over its chair’s decision to muzzle a local rabbi’s speech tying the Holocaust to modern U.S. policies. Texas’s own commission recently advised on a controversial proposed statewide required reading list, and Texas’s governor also recently appointed a Christian pro-Israel activist to the commission.
Sabourin dit Choinière isn’t the only member of New Hampshire’s state house to have made antisemitic comments related to the Holocaust this year. Another Republican, state Rep. Travis Corcoran, faced disciplinary hearings this week after tweeting a “final solution” joke aimed at a Jewish Democratic colleague.
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NH lawmaker reprimanded for ‘final solution’ joke aimed at Jewish colleague
(JTA) — A Republican state legislator in New Hampshire faced a disciplinary hearing this week for having tweeted a “final solution” reference at a Jewish Democratic colleague.
Last month, GOP state Rep. Travis Corcoran wrote on social media, “We need a final solution for theater kids in politics,” in response to state Rep. Jessica Grill’s bid to form a bipartisan “karaoke caucus.”
Corcoran is now facing a possible sanction or expulsion for his comment, which invoked the Nazi “final solution” to murder all Jews. His comments came as the Republican Party has faced internal divisions over the rise of antisemitism within its ranks, with white-nationalist figures and conspiracy theorists including Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens gaining a toehold in some corners of the party.
This week Corcoran defended his comments to the legislature, saying he was joking and did not know his colleague was Jewish. He called disciplinary procedures against him a “kangaroo court.”
“A joke is now being treated as though it were an act of malice, and sarcasm is being recast as hate speech. This is absurd,” Corcoran told colleagues during his testimony. On social media, he later wrote, “Apologies are a humiliation ritual that the left forces on people to demonstrate their power over you. Say whatever you want about me, but I’m never going to cower so that cucks will like me.” He used a common slang term for “cuckold,” a husband who has been cheated on.
A self-described libertarian, prolific social media user and self-published science-fiction author, Corcoran has developed a reputation in his state for coarse, frequently offensive commentary. He has urged his followers to “all say or type” the N-word “in a public place,” has said “crime is predominantly caused by African Americans” and, prior to his 2022 election, reportedly defended the 2011 attempted assassination of then-U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords as “morally legitimate” on his blog.
Grill, the Jewish state lawmaker to whom Corcoran had directed his comment, called for Corcoran to be expelled from the state House, saying he had rejected requests to mediate the matter privately. Corcoran left the hearing before Grill spoke.
“As a Jewish lawmaker, the use of this phrase ‘final solution’ is especially disturbing,” she said during the hearing. “It’s not a poorly worded joke; it is targeted language with a specific historical meaning. And more importantly, it was delivered at a time when both antisemitism and political violence are, unfortunately, on the rise on all sides of the ideological spectrum.”
Grill continued, “An antisemitic threat does not serve the public interest or advance free speech and debate.”
Among the other voices calling for disciplinary action against Corcoran were current and former Jewish state lawmakers in New Hampshire, including Jeffrey Salloway, a former Democratic lawmaker in the state house and longtime lay leader in the Conservative movement of Judaism. Many non-Jewish commenters also gave testimony supporting Grill.
One Republican, state Rep. Matt Drew, defended Corcoran on free-speech grounds but did not say whether he believed the comment was antisemitic.
Corcoran was not the only New Hampshire Republican state lawmaker to face controversy this year over Holocaust-related comments. A colleague, state Rep. Matt Sabourin dit Choinière, invited Holocaust deniers to testify to the state’s Holocaust education committee in January while attempting to push an amendment to incorporate Holocaust denial into the state’s public education guidelines.
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