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‘An epidemic of hate’: Biden administration officials meet with Jewish leaders to tackle rising antisemitism
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Top Biden administration officials launched a roundtable on antisemitism on Wednesday by describing a “rising tide of antisemitism” and likening the atmosphere in the United States to that of Europe, where Jewish worship is held under lock and key.
“Right now, there is an epidemic of hate facing our country,” said Douglas Emhoff, the Jewish second gentleman, who convened and chaired the 90-minute session.
Jewish officials represented at the meeting were impressed by how comprehensive the meeting was, saying it went beyond the white supremacist threat that the Biden administration has focused on in the past to other sources, among them attackers who target the visibly Orthodox and Jewish students on campuses.
The meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, comes on the heels of weeks of antisemitic invective spewed by rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, and the dinner attended last month by West, Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and former President Donald Trump at Trump’s Florida residence. The discussion also follows alarming spikes in antisemitic invective on Twitter and other platforms.
“In my experience, there’s nothing more vicious than what we’re seeing today,” said Susan Rice, President Joe Biden’s top domestic policy adviser, who described growing up in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Washington, D.C.
Ten years ago, Rice said, when she was defending Israel against its many enemies as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she did not imagine a threat to Jews domestically. Now she says she hears antisemitic expressions coming from elected officials, public figures and entertainers, calling it an “incredible rising tide.”
Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department envoy to monitor antisemitism, said she no longer has the luxury of her predecessors, who traveled abroad to assess antisemitism in foreign countries. Now, she said, she had to treat the problem as a domestic and a foreign one.
“I can’t go to these countries and say ‘You have a problem,’” she said. “Now I have to say ‘We have a serious problem.’”
After multiple attacks on synagogues stateside in recent years, she said, Jewish places of worship were becoming more visibly fortified than they were for years when security, if it existed, was unobtrusive and synagogues were welcoming.
“For decades, when we traveled in Europe, we used to identify synagogues by gendarmes,” she said. “Now we see police cars, now we lock the doors in the United States.”
The Kanye West episodes evidently helped spur the convening of the meeting. George Selim, the Anti-Defamation League senior vice president who was present, said the meeting came together within a week, unlike similar events which can take months to organize.
“The urgency was clear, the meeting needed to be convened, it needed to be in person,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview.
Representatives of the dozen or so groups that attended were impressed by the level of attention: in addition to Emhoff, Rice and Lipstadt, there were officials from the National Security Council, the Officer of Public Engagement, and the Office of Faith-based Partnerships.
The representatives were impressed by how personal Emhoff, who is married to Vice President Kamala Harris, made the battle. He described how moved he has been by American Jews who are proud of him — the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president. “I’m in pain right now, our community is in pain,” he said.
Emhoff’s unabashed identification with the Jewish community helped elevate the issue of combating antisemitism, said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad).
“He and I might see Jewish ritual and practice a little differently. But one thing Jewish people will remember forever in our history is that when the time came for him to make his decision, he decided to identify unequivocally as a Jew,” Shemtov said.
Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, the group that underwrote successful lawsuits against the neo-Nazis who organized the deadly 2017 march in Charlottesville, Virginia, said the officials closely listened to every presentation. (The media was present for opening remarks by government officials, and was ushered out so the representatives of Jewish groups could speak freely.)
“We were watching them take copious notes, they were genuinely listening,” she told JTA.
The range of invitees and the topics addressed also extended beyond the threat posed to Jews from the extreme right, an area that has until now been the Biden administration’s focus, through a summit on extremism in September and a speech Biden gave in Philadelphia last summer.
Speakers addressed antisemitic attacks on the visibly Orthodox which, particularly in the New York area, are most often not carried out by white supremacists. And there were officials from at least three groups that represent the visibly Orthodox: The Orthodox Union, which is Modern Orthodox, along with Agudath Israel of America and American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), which are haredi Orthodox.
Speakers also were sensitive to the plight of Jewish students on college campuses, who often face hostility from peers whose sharp criticism of Israel can sometimes manifest as antisemitism.
“On college campuses, the supposed bastions of liberal ideas and ideals, many students believe it better to camouflage their Jewish identity,” Lipstadt said. One of the speakers was Julia Jassey, a senior at the University of Chicago who is the CEO of Jewish on Campus, a student group that tracks antisemitism on campuses.
The Jewish participants said they benefited from hearing how others experienced antisemitism. Abba Cohen, Aguda’s Washington director, said he found receptive listeners when he described an increased effort by local councils to limit the building of Orthodox communities. He and Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union, also described the threat to the visibly Orthodox.
Their accounts moved others present who do not live the Orthodox lifestyle. “We all have different experiences with antisemitism and clearly for someone who’s Orthodox, it might feel different than for someone who’s not,” said Sheila Katz, the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women.
Katz said the meeting was a relief because she often has difficulty explaining to her progressive allies why antisemitism persists as a threat.
“I feel like in the last, you know, year, I’ve been saying over and over again, this is getting worse. This is getting amplified, people are emboldened,” she said. “And there are a lot, particularly in the progressive community that would say, ‘No, no, that’s not what’s happening.’”
Some practical proposals were discussed, including a letter this week from a bipartisan slate of lawmakers advocating for a cross-agency “whole of government” task force to combat antisemitism, and an expansion of federal funding that currently underwrites security upgrades for Jewish institutions to include paying for extra police patrols.
The meeting did not result in concrete decisions, but participants said they left with the impression that the federal government was ready to dive deep into finding practicable solutions.
“For me, this is not the end. This is just the beginning of this conversation,” Emhoff said.
Other groups represented included the American Jewish Committee, Hillel International, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Reform and Conservative movements, and Secure Community Network, the security consultancy for the Jewish community.
“It sends a very important message that the sort of rampant antisemitism we’re seeing is unacceptable and that the highest office in the country is doing something about it,” Spitalnick said.
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Antisemitic vitriol claims an unlikely new victim — a flamboyant and popular French DJ
The celebrated French DJ Barbara Butch, whose flamboyant performance at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris was condemned by Catholics and conservatives, is proudly lesbian and unabashedly Jewish. Last week, the latter quality sparked yet another flare up of antisemitism in France.
On the evening of July 18, about 20 minutes after Butch began a concert in the city of Grenoble, about 150 protestors who had entered the hall with the rest of the audience unfurled pro-Palestinian banners denouncing the brutal destruction of Gaza. Many of them began to fling antisemitic insults and glass bottles at Butch. Stunned by the sudden explosion of violence, Butch soon left the stage. At that point, the municipal authorities intervened. “Confronted by threats aimed at the artist Barbara Butch, and to guarantee the safety of both the audience and performers,” they declared, “the city of Grenoble has taken the decision to cancel the performance.”
This eruption of antisemitism parading as anti-Zionism was as predictable — and as predictably ignored by the local government — as are the fires now consuming swathes of western France. In the weeks leading up to the concert, a petition was launched by the local section of La France insoumise (France Unbowed), the extreme-left political party founded and led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has recently and plausibly been accused of flirting with antisemitism. The petition condemned Butch for supporting a proposed law in 2025 that penalized “new forms of antisemitism,” which potentially included expressions of anti-Zionism and even criticism of the Israeli government.
There were two problems, though, with the petition. First, there is the obvious issue of banning an artist from presenting or performing their work because one disagrees with their political statements. (Statements that do not, of course, inspire acts of racial hatred or violence.) Second, and no less obviously, Butch had almost immediately regretted and publicly retracted her initial support of the proposed law, one she realized could suppress legitimate criticism of Israel’s brazenly illegal and brutal actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
All this was for naught, though. The tract distributed in early May by the local office of Unbowed France demanded the cancellation of Butch’s concert by the city government, which had sponsored the music festival it was part of. Fair enough. Not so fair, though, was the tract’s lurid montage, which placed Butch against the background of an LGBTQ flag spattered in blood and stamped with the Star of David, accompanied by the claim that she was “complicit with the genocide” committed in Gaza.
Equally startling was the role played by Allan Brunon, a parliamentary member of Unbowed France who is also president of the party’s local chapter. Not only did he lead the protestors at the concert venue, but he also insisted that, as far as he could see, their behavior never degenerated into violence, even though videos of the ruckus confirm that bottles and other objects hit the stage, as does the eyewitness testimony of Laurence Ruffin, the mayor of Grenoble, who was also in attendance. Brunon’s faux naïve explanation for the expletives shouted at the concert was equally insulting; they were aimed, he insisted, at Butch’s “political position and not who she is.”
Leaders from across the political spectrum, from the extreme right to traditional left, have denounced the role played by Unbowed France at the concert. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally who never misses an opportunity to bash Unbowed France and bury her party’s own antisemitic origins, decried “the antisemitism, repeated appeals to violence, and totalitarian nature and project of the extreme left,” while the former prime minister and centrist politician Gabriel Attal, in a mocking allusion to an earlier claim made by Mélenchon, observed that the party’s “antisemitism is anything but residual.” As for the leadership of Unbowed France, Mélenchon has kept silent while the leader of the parliamentary group, Mathilde Panot, spoke in the conditional case, stating that “we would never support, if they occurred, either flung insults or bottles.” (my emphasis).
Wittingly or not, Attal’s remark reaches much further back than last week. Ever since the late 19th century, the extreme right in France has not had exclusive dibs on antisemitism. Édouard Drumont, the author of the virulent antisemitic 1886 bestseller La France juive and editor of the La Libre parole, the newspaper that sparked the Dreyfus Affair, thought of himself as an anti-capitalist and man of the left. It required the immense reserves of eloquence and decency of Jean Jaurès, the Socialist leader, to persuade the rank and file to rally to Dreyfus’ cause. As late as the 1950s, the French Communist Party unhesitatingly followed Moscow’s lead during the late stages of Stalin’s paranoia, featuring spectacles like the “Doctors’ Trial” of 1953, that targeted Jewish “counterrevolutionaries” intent on undermining the Soviet Union.
Of course, the French left has come a long way since then. But to paraphrase Mathilde Panot, if Unbowed France’s apparently uncowed leader, along with a large contingent of his party, are suffering from more than a dollop of residual antisemitism, the future of a democratic and liberal France is at risk.
The post Antisemitic vitriol claims an unlikely new victim — a flamboyant and popular French DJ appeared first on The Forward.
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Why I stand with Israel
I’m often asked why I take a public stand on behalf of Israel. Some have asked how I have the fortitude to do so. Others wonder about the “reputational risk.” Still others wonder about subjecting myself to the “awful” comments. To me, they’re like weather reports — a way to gauge the sentiments of those with whom I disagree.
“Just stop talking — if for no other reason than for saving yourself the embarrassment of being heard by anyone.”
“You Zionists are just mad that no one’s buying your narrative anymore”
“F— Israel”
“Hey Peter! When did you drop the second “n” in your last name? When your family eluded capture when Germany surrendered back in 1945?”
“You are so full of $hit! Mamdani condems a genocide unless you think as long a Santanyahu who happens to be a Jew should be able to kill innocent children day in and day out and get away with simply because he is a jew.”
“I have absolutely loved your music over the decades (my favourite artist) but I have difficulty in listening to it now. The meaning behind your lyrics resonates differently with me now — sorry.”
I support Israel, not because of any government, any particular policy, or anything having to do with geopolitics. I support Israel because half the world’s Jewish population lives there. This is about peoplehood — my people. I understand well how this kind of particularity is easy to criticize, how in an era where the ideology of oppressor versus oppressed has caught the imagination of many people, where thinking about one’s sense of belonging to an ancient nation is thought to be anachronistic, and where a vague notion of universalism has become the new moral imperative.
But as I’ve written many times in my column, all love and all concern begin with specificity. We only learn how to love and be concerned about others through the ways we have loved — and have been loved — by our own.
I see it this way. There are seven million Jews in Israel. They are people of many races and ethnicities, many talents, and many political affiliations. They and their supporters worldwide are now under siege. They have been fighting for their survival, surrounded by neighbors seeking their destruction since before the Jewish state came into existence in 1948— and they have continued to do so since the pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023.
Some have asked me, by way of accusation: do you now believe in genocide? Have you become a warmonger? (I assume my former fan, above, feels this way.) Do you support the murder of children? What happened to the man who wrote songs like “Been Set Free,” Impermanent Things,” and “Mission Of My Soul”? Have you suddenly become cruel, hard-hearted?
The questions are too absurd to warrant a response.
For me, support of Israel and the Jewish people more broadly doesn’t take special courage or insight.
If someone were attacking a close relative or friend, my reaction would be the same. It would be reflexive, instantaneous. What consequence could outweigh the idea of sitting back while your loved ones are imperiled? There are those who have argued that whatever cruelties have been meted out are “acts of resistance” and justified military actions by the oppressed against their oppressors. One wonders what logic brought Hamas and its supporters to conclude that K’fir (who was 10 months old at the time of his murder) and Ariel Bibas (who was 4 years old at the time of his murder) were oppressors deserving of death by strangulation.
Such is the strangeness of the current moment, when it feels as though much of the world has once again chosen to place a target on the backs of Jews. Justifications are conjured up and offered, just as they were during the pogroms in Europe, the forced conversions and auto-da-fés of Spain, the fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Russia, the institutionalized anti-Jewish and anti-Israel campaigns of the Soviet Union that found expression at the United Nations in 1975, and in the demonstrations that erupted immediately after Oct. 7 — before Israel had fired a shot.
Synagogues in America are more than three times as likely as other U.S. houses of worship to employ armed security guards. Jewish day schools too, like the ones my grandchildren attend, face extraordinary security costs. Today, the average Jewish institution spends more than $400,000 annually on security. That represents an average increase of roughly 125% since before Oct. 7.
Let’s pause here.
This means that after the largest massacre of Jews since the Shoah, synagogues and Jewish schools have to spend 125% percent more to protect themselves from another one. The idea should stun any normal thinking person. Though sadly, I believe it would stun very few people these days.
Most recently, in NYC, Mayor Zohran Mamdani employed the magic words that brought him more attention on social media than ever before. The last time I checked the video in which he said the following received upwards of 90 million views: “I will arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he comes to New York City.”
Not long afterward, a brutal double stabbing occurred, amid shouts of the now all-too- familiar “Allahu Akbar. One of the victims was a man wearing a kippah as he left a synagogue service. The attack happened on the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av, no more than a two-minute walk from my daughter’s apartment.
I leave it to you to decide whether this kind of rhetoric helps create a more peaceful New York City.
So I ask: How could I not speak up? How could I not use my voice in support of my people at a time like this? Isn’t it obvious? And why shouldn’t anyone who cares about Jews and Israel use their own voice?
You don’t need a huge platform. You simply need to speak out in whatever sphere you find yourself. This is the moment your parents and grandparents hoped you’d never see.
How you choose to act matters. It matters a great deal.
The post Why I stand with Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Over 12 Torah scrolls stolen from Paris suburb synagogue
(JTA) — Over a dozen Torah scrolls have been stolen from a French synagogue in an attack the local rabbi called “antisemitic.”
The burglary hit the Grand Synagogue of Levallois-Perret, a wealthy suburb of Paris, between Sunday night and Monday morning. Rabbi Chalom Lellouche said the Jewish community was “violated” by the theft.
“It is, of course, a criminal act, but it is also an antisemitic act that specifically targeted the Torah,” Lellouche said in a joint video statement on Monday with Philippe Cohen, the president of the local Jewish community association.
The des Hauts-de-Seine prefecture, which handles local state administration, said on X that the stolen scrolls represented not just a “simple theft,” but “an entire community of believers that was wounded to the depths of its soul.”
Prefect Alexandre Brugère and elected officials met with Jewish communal leaders in Levallois-Perret on Monday evening, promising to identify the thieves and secure the return of the scrolls. A police investigation is ongoing, according to Cohen.
Cohen said the burglary was the work of a “professional team” that bypassed security systems and said the synagogue’s security was being reassessed. He called the incident “a profound spiritual trauma for the entire Jewish community in France and around the world.”
“It was the Torah — and only the Torah — that was targeted,” said Cohen. “No property was damaged, and nothing else was stolen apart from Torah items of immeasurable value.”
France recorded 1,320 antisemitic incidents in 2025, accounting for 53% of anti-religious acts, according to the Ministry of the Interior. Jews make up less than 1% of the French population.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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