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Biden plan to combat antisemitism demands reforms across the executive branch and beyond
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden unveiled a multifaceted and broad strategy to combat antisemitism in the United States that reaches from basketball courts to farming communities, from college campuses to police departments.
“We must say clearly and forcefully that antisemitism and all forms of hate and violence have no place in America,” Biden said in a prerecorded video. “Silence is complicity.”
The 60-page document and its list of more than 100 recommendations stretches across the government, requiring reforms in virtually every sector of the executive branch within a year. It was formulated after consultations with over a thousand experts, and covers a range of tactics, from increased security funding to a range of educational efforts.
The plan has been in the works since December, and the White House has consulted with large Jewish organizations throughout the process. The finished document embraces proposals that large Jewish organizations have long advocated, as well as initiatives that pleasantly surprised Jewish organizational leaders, most of whom praised it upon its release.
Among the proposals that Jewish leaders have called for were recommendations to streamline reporting of hate crimes across local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, which will enable the government to accurately assess the breadth of hate crimes. The proposal also recommends that Congress double the funds available to nonprofits for security measures, from $180 million to $360 million.
One proposal that, if enacted, could be particularly far-reaching — and controversial — is a call for Congress to pass “fundamental reforms” to a provision that shields social media platforms from liability for the content users post on their sites. The plan says social media companies should have a “zero tolerance policy for hate speech on their platforms.”
In addition, the plan calls for action in partnership with a range of government agencies and private entities. It says the government will work with professional sports leagues to educate fans about antisemitism and hold athletes accountable for it, following instances of antisemitic speech by figures such as NBA star Kyrie Irving or NFL player DeSean Jackson.
The government will also partner with rural museums and libraries to educate their visitors about Jewish heritage and antisemitism. And the plan includes actions to be taken by a number of cabinet departments, from the Department of Veterans Affairs to the USDA.
“It’s really producing a whole-of-government approach that stretches from what you might consider the obvious things like more [security] grants and more resources for the Justice Department and the FBI,” said Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union. “But it stretches all the way across things that the Department of Labor and the Small Business Administration can do with regard to educating about antisemitism, that the National Endowment of the Humanities and the President’s Council on Sports and Fitness can do with regard to the institutions that they deal with.”
An array of Jewish organizations from the left to the center-right echoed those sentiments in welcoming the plan with enthusiasm, marking a change from recent weeks in which they had been split over how the plan should define antisemitism. Still, a handful of right-wing groups blasted the strategy, saying that its chosen definition of antisemitism diluted the term.
Despite the relatively united front, there are elements of the strategy that may stoke broader controversy: Among a broad array of partner groups named in the plan is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose harsh criticism of Israel has led to relations with centrist Jewish organizations that are fraught at best. The call to place limits on social media platforms may also upset free speech advocates.
Biden recalled, as he often does, that he decided to run for president after President Donald Trump equivocated while condemning the neo-Nazis who organized a deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
“Repeated episodes of hate — including numerous attacks on Jewish Americans — have since followed Charlottesville, shaking our moral conscience as Americans and challenging the values for which we stand as a Nation,” Biden wrote in an introduction to the report.
The administration launched the initiative last December, after years during which Jewish groups and the FBI reported sharp spikes in antisemitic incidents. The strategy was originally planned for release at its Jewish American Heritage Month celebration last week, but was delayed, in part because of last minute internal squabbling over whether it would accept a definition of antisemitism that some on the left said chilled free speech on Israel. Some right-wing groups were deeply critical of the new strategy for not accepting that definition to the exclusion of others.
Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) praised the breadth of the plan, and said the delay seemed to produce results.
“The White House has taken this very seriously. The phrase that something is still being worked on can often be a euphemism for a lack of concern,” he said. “In this case, it seems to have resulted in an even more comprehensive and hopefully more effective result.”
Some of the initiatives in the plan focus less on directly confronting antisemitism and more on promoting tolerance of and education about Jews.The Biden Administration will seek to ensure accommodations for Jewish religious observance, the accompanying fact sheet said, and “the Department of Agriculture will work to ensure equal access to all USDA feeding programs for USDA customers with religious dietary needs, including kosher and halal dietary needs.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League CEO who was closely consulted on the strategy, said promoting inclusion was as critical as fighting antisemitism. “Is FEMA giving kosher provisions after disasters going to solve antisemitism?” he said in an interview. “No, but… it’s an acknowledgement of the plurality of communities and the need to treat Jewish people like you would any other minority community, and I think I’m very pleased to see that.”
In the months since Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, convened a roundtable to launch the initiative, the Biden administration has pivoted from focusing on the threat of antisemitism from the far-right to also highlighting its manifestation in other spheres — including amid anti-Israel activism on campuses and the targeting of visibly religious Jews in the northeast. Those factors were evident in the strategy.
“Some traditionally observant Jews, especially traditional Orthodox Jews, are victimized while walking down the street,” the strategy said in its introduction. “Jewish students and educators are targeted for derision and exclusion on college campuses, often because of their real or perceived views about the State of Israel.”
The proposal that may provoke controversy beyond American Jewry is the Biden Administration’s calls to reform the tech sector, which echo bipartisan recommendations to change Section 230, a provision of U.S. law that grants platforms immunity from being liable for the content users post. Free speech advocates and the companies themselves say that if the government were to police online speech, it would veer into censorship.
“Tech companies have a critical role to play and for that reason the strategy contains 10 separate calls to tech companies to establish a zero tolerance policy for hate speech on their platforms, to ensure that their algorithms do not pass along hate speech and extreme content to users and to listen more closely to Jewish groups to better understand how antisemitism manifests itself on their platforms,” Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s top Homeland Security adviser, said during a 30-minute briefing on the strategy on Thursday. “The president has also called on Congress to remove the special immunity for online platforms and to impose stronger transparency requirements in order to ensure that tech companies are removing content that violates their terms of service.”
Neo-Nazis and white supremacists encircle counterprotesters at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 11, 2017. (Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In the weeks before the rollout, a debate raged online and behind the scenes amid Jewish organizations and activists about how the plan would define antisemitism. Centrist and right-wing groups pushed for the plan to embrace the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition. Among its examples of anti-Jewish bigotry are those focusing on when Israel criticism is antisemitic, including when “double standards” applied to Israel are antisemitic.
Advocates on the left say those clauses turn legitimate criticism of Israel into hate speech; instead, they pushed to include references to the Nexus Document, a definition authored by academics that recognizes IHRA but seeks to complement it by further elucidating how anti-Israel expression may be antisemitic in some instances, and not in others. Others sought to include the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which rejects IHRA’s Israel-related examples.
In the end, the strategy said the U.S. government recognizes the IHRA definition as the “most prominent” and “appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts.”
A number of the centrist groups pressed for exclusive reference to IHRA, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Those groups praised the strategy and focused only on its embrace of IHRA. So did the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael Herzog.
“I would like to congratulate the Biden administration for publishing the first ever national strategy to combat antisemitism,” Herzog wrote on Twitter. “Thank you, @POTUS, for prioritizing the need to confront antisemitism in all its forms. We welcome the re-embracing of @TheIHRA definition which is the gold standard definition of antisemitism.”
Some center-right groups like B’nai Brith International, StandWithUs and the World Jewish Congress, praised the strategy while expressing regret at the inclusion of Nexus. Right-wing groups, such as the Republican Jewish Coalition and Christians United for Israel condemned the rollout.
RJC said Biden “blew it” by not exclusively using the IHRA definition. The Brandeis Center, which defends pro-Israel groups and students on campus, said the “substance doesn’t measure up.”
Groups on the left, however, broadly praised the strategy. “We call on our Jewish communities to seize this historic moment and build on this new strategy to ensure that the fight for Jewish safety is a fight for a better and safer America for all,” said a statement from six left-leaning groups spearheaded by Jews For Racial & Economic Justice.
Greenblatt said it was predictable that groups on the left would take the win and that groups on the right would grumble — but that it was also beside the point. IHRA, he said, was now U.S. policy.
“This document elevates and advances IHRA as the way that U.S. policy will be formulated going forward and across all of the agencies,” Greenblatt said. “That is a win.”
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Stabbing of Jewish man in Manhattan prompts calls for Mamdani to turn down temperature
The stabbing of two men on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on Thursday — one of whom was wearing a kippah on his way home from a Tisha B’Av service at a modern Orthodox shul — has intensified New Yorkers’ fears of being visibly Jewish in public, leaders and community members said.
“Fear has become a lived experience for far too many Jewish New Yorkers. That is not normal,” Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said at a press conference Friday near the location of the stabbing. “Today, Jewish parents are asking whether it is safe for their children to wear a kippah or a Magen David in public. Synagogues preparing for Shabbat are wondering whether they can afford additional security.”
Police said on Thursday afternoon, the suspect — identified as 51-year-old Raul Morales — stabbed an Asian man in the back with a knife before approaching a Jewish man and stabbing him in the torso with a screwdriver. Authorities said he yelled “Allahu akbar” during the attack. Both victims are expected to recover.
Morales is expected to face charges on Friday. Police are investigating the attack as a hate crime, and New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a statement Thursday that while the attacker did not have a known history of mental health issues, “the initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor.”
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the attack as “horrifying” and wrote on X that “these hateful and despicable attacks have no place in our city.”
At Friday’s press conference, City Council Speaker Julie Menin said she was having conversations with her daughter about whether it was safe to wear a Jewish star and with her sons about whether they should wear yarmulkes.
“How can this be normal?” Menin said. “We have to change what is happening in our city.”
But even as New York Attorney General Letitia James urged people not to “assign any particular outcome to this investigation,” adding she did not want to “draw any conclusions,” some leaders were quick to link the attack to a rising political temperature.
Some directly expressed their anger with Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who on Wednesday issued a video address conceding he did not have the authority to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while also calling Netanyahu a war criminal and accusing him of orchestrating a genocide. Unable to arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani encouraged New Yorkers to protest instead.
The UJA-Federation of New York and Orthodox Union said at the time that the mayor’s words put Jews in greater danger.
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, the spiritual leader of Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, wrote in an open letter addressed to Mamdani that “you promised during and after your campaign to lead this city with unity rather than fear. Instead, you continue to divide Jews into those whose politics you deem acceptable and Zionists whom you cast beyond the pale.”
Mamdani was not at the press conference, and organizers did not answer a question about whether he had been invited.
“His words have profound, real-world consequence on us,” Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, told the crowd. “Shame on him for doing this for perceived political benefit when it has real-world consequence for the Jews of New York. He must stop. He must stop.”
Rabbi Yosie Levine of the Jewish Center — where the victim had attended a Tisha B’Av service before he was stabbed — also expressed disappointment at Mamdani’s remarks.
“When I was growing up, the only time we saw security outside of my synagogue or outside of my Jewish day school was when the mayor came to speak,” Levine said. “The police were there to protect him. Today, every time the mayor speaks, we need the police to protect us.”
“No elected official is responsible for every act of hate, but every leader is responsible for helping shape the climate in which we all live,” Treyger said.
New York City Comptroller Mark Levine at Friday’s press conference cast the attack as part of a broader trend of rising attacks on Jewish New Yorkers, citing 178 acts of antisemitic hate crimes in the first six months of this year.
Menin pointed to the dozens of swastikas painted on a playground at a Brooklyn playground earlier this year and swastikas spray painted on homes and a synagogue in Queens last month. On Wednesday, a Jewish man was shoved to the ground in Brooklyn, with the attacker making antisemitic remarks, leaving the victim with back and hip injuries.
Thursday’s attacks were just the latest in a series of crimes targeting the Jewish community, they said.
Rabbi Mark Wildes of the Manhattan Jewish Experience told the Forward he was teaching his weekly class when the attacks occurred nearby.
“It literally happened on my block,” he said. “Two of my kids were out and about, and this guy was still at large before they had caught him.” Wildes, whose children are visibly Jewish, said he and his wife immediately tried to get them home. “We were saying, ‘Where are they? Get them inside.’”
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Assailant stabs two men, one visibly Jewish, on Upper West Side
(JTA) — NEW YORK – An assailant stabbed two victims, at least one of whom was visibly Jewish, in an area of the Upper West Side known for its Jewish institutions.
Police said two male victims, aged 57 and 50, were in stable condition and being treated for stab wounds to the torso.
Rabbi Allen Schwartz of the neighborhood’s Congregation Ohab Tzedek told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that one of the victims was a congregant who is visibly Jewish and wears a kippah.
Schwartz, who is in Israel, said he spoke to the congregant on the phone and that he is “alert.” “He may go home before Shabbos,” Schwartz said.
One person of interest has been taken into custody, according to the New York Police Department, who announced no immediate motive for the attack.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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What sort of Yiddish do Yiddishists speak today?
Ask the question: “What sort of Yiddish do Yiddishists speak?” and a jokester might respond: “Well, these days they speak English.”
But let’s consider the Yiddishists who really do speak it in order to preserve it as a living language, because they see it as a treasured part of the Ashkenazi cultural heritage.
Their purpose is different than the Hasidim who speak the language as a way of preserving their religious lifestyle and traditional Jewish values.
Linguist Emma Breslow recently defended her dissertation about the way that Yiddishists speak the language. She interviewed 30 Yiddish speakers at the annual week-long Yiddish immersion retreat Yiddish Vokh and also met with Yiddish speakers from New York, Boston and Montreal.
When she asked people whether they considered themselves Yiddishists, most said no. Perhaps the words Yiddishism and Yiddishist sound rather old-fashioned today. Since Breslow couldn’t find a label that speakers could agree on, she uses the phrase “minority-context Yiddish community” in her study. This category, she writes, also includes former Hasidim who occasionally participate in Yiddishist gatherings.
One surprise in her dissertation is the diversity in this community’s Yiddish. An outsider might assume that all Yiddishists speak the same but that isn’t so: some adhere to Standard Yiddish — the literary standard established by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and used in most Yiddish language courses today. Others use the Polish or Ukrainian Yiddish dialect or switch dialects. Sometimes they would say gut (good) and other times — git; sometimes zogn (to say) and other times — zugn.
When Breslow asked people their opinion of Standard Yiddish she mainly received negative answers, although some acknowledged that Standard Yiddish could be useful for learning the language, since the spelling closely matches the pronunciation.
Some interviewees made unexpected comments about Standard Yiddish, as in “Nobody speaks that,” even if, being at the Yiddish Vokh, they might have earlier chatted with Standard Yiddish speakers, and even heard children speak it as a native language. Her dissertation discusses this feeling they have that Standard Yiddish lacks authenticity — maybe precisely because so few people speak it from birth.
The minority-context Yiddish community consists of several groups: a) native speakers — those who speak Yiddish well from home; b) heritage speakers — those who heard it as children, but don’t speak it well; c) students and others who studied the language as adults, and d) former Hasidim, who now live in the larger secular world. Each group speaks differently, but there are interesting points of comparison.
Among her subjects, the former Hasidim speak so-called Hasidic Yiddish — a dialect that linguists have been researching intensely in recent years. Students mostly speak a sort of Standard Yiddish, which they learned from their teachers. All of the Yiddish speakers often exhibited a certain influence or interference from English; no surprise, considering that Hasidim — the largest group of Yiddish speakers today by far — mix English words into their Yiddish too.
Breslow’s quotations include interesting examples of code-switching — when speakers go back and forth between languages. Some of the younger speakers use the word like as a discourse marker in their Yiddish just as in their English.
A second topic of Breslow’s investigation is the articulation of the Yiddish letter reysh, which is similar to the R sound. In the older dialects there were two sorts of reysh: the throat (uvular) reysh, like in French or Modern Hebrew, and the tongue-tip (apical) reysh, as in Russian or Spanish. In addition to those two pronunciations, today’s Yiddishists also use the English-style (retroflex) reysh. Interestingly, linguist Uriel Weinreich, who authored the textbook, cautioned in the preface that students should not use the American reysh.
The grammar of the Yiddishists is also worth examining. Although many have taken courses teaching the grammar of Standard Yiddish, they don’t necessarily follow the rules. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, since even authentic Yiddish speakers of previous generations spoke in dialects that differed considerably from the way Yiddish was written in books and in the press. That’s why there’s no reason to criticize Hasidim for “ruining the grammar,” as many non-Hasidic Yiddish speakers do, since Yiddish speakers have been “ruining” the proper grammar for centuries.
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