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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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‘Mr. Jambo’ is the sendup of Paul Simon that we need now
Paul Simon may be having his quiet celebration, but a viral music video refuses to let the musical icon go quietly for his classic, but often questionable, forays into Africa.
Jewish comedian and musician Kyle Gordon’s song “Mr. Jambo” is both tribute and critical sendup of 1986’s Graceland, Simon’s seminal ethnomusicology experiment, for which he controversially broke a cultural boycott of Apartheid South Africa.
While the music video starts with a spinning globe a la Toto’s “Africa,” the jaunty rhythm and Gordon’s appearance in a Mets cap leaves no doubt the artist he had in mind when he self-financed a trip to South Africa and Eswatini.
Gordon’s character is a wide-eyed and willing fetishizer of Africana, bothering a beleaguered man he calls “Mr. Jambo” (likely a misunderstanding — Jambo means “hello” in Swahili). Jambo responds to Gordon’s requests for enlightenment and wisdom in Zulu, and our protagonist admits “I couldn’t speak his language, I couldn’t even understand a word. But I knew the meaning was what I decided I had heard.”
The meaning leads us to the chorus, a litany of cliches about nature, love and “ancient scrolls,” which, admittedly, does sound a lot like Toto. (Jambo’s true words, visible if you watch with subtitles, translate as “I don’t speak English. Do you have a translator? Stop yelling at me.”)
Gordon’s satire, a collaboration with local African musicians, nails Simon’s sound while simultaneously poking fun at the use of decidedly non-African brass instruments as played by men in traditional garb.
Now Graceland is an iconic record and the work of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, whom the album elevated to international attention, is sublime. But there is undoubtedly a bit of weird anthropological tourism behind the endeavor. (Norman Mailer would have notes.)
I had the opportunity to see Simon live at Tanglewood last month, where he performed to a crowd composed in no small part of his demographic contemporaries. He played some songs from Graceland (following his soporific “Psalms”). When he broke into “Under African Skies,” the opening line of which is “Joseph’s face was as black as night/The pale yellow moon shone in his eyes,” it took a lot to suppress the cringe.
Gordon’s riff could, in fact, be a sort of antidote, acknowledging that yeah, the music is good, but also kinda messed up right?
As the “Planet of the Bass” star told Vulture, the Africans weren’t only in on Gordon’s joke, they were laughing at him.
That is both a miracle and a wonder.
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For this fashion-forward rabbi, shoes and scripture are intertwined
The rabbinate doesn’t have one look, and Reform Rabbi Arielle Stein’s version is chic, creative and fashion-forward. Stein, who serves as assistant rabbi at Rodeph Sholom, a congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, has been using her Instagram to demonstrate the diversity of what being a rabbi can look like.
“We’re in a moment where so many people that wouldn’t have necessarily seen themselves on the Bima are in Jewish leadership,” she said.
Stein grew up in the Conservative movement as part of a very “intensely culturally Jewish family” with a lot of variation in practice and denomination. The rabbinate was a family tradition, filled with many Jewish academics; from a young age, Stein understood being a rabbi as “a job that exists that you can do.”
She studied Studio Art at NYU Steinhardt, exploring primarily drawing and sculpture. Initially, Stein had aspirations of working as a visual artist, and later worked as an artist’s assistant and in galleries, but upon graduating college, she realized the art world was “not going to be the best fit.” While trying out various jobs for the next few years, the idea of being a rabbi began to speak to her.
Stein sought out different kinds of religious egalitarian spaces to determine what kind of rabbi she wanted to be. She spent a year at the Hadar Institute, an egalitarian yeshiva where she intensively studied Talmud and other Jewish texts. Though she discovered she had a deep passion for learning, she also realized that a traditionally Halachic lifestyle wasn’t for her — “I’m not great with rules,” Stein told me. Ultimately, she was drawn to the interpretive nature of the Reform tradition and attended Hebrew Union College, interning at various congregations throughout her schooling.
Stein’s interest in art didn’t disappear with her new career; in fact, she sees it as deeply Jewish, and describes Judaism as “intensely spiritually creative.” For Stein, the process of creation allows her to enter into a different spiritual space, one where “the world of spirit or God feels the most accessible.” Across her Instagram, there are illustrations of pomegranates, long-haired women surrounded by Hamentashen, and other pieces both sensual and captivating.
Stein says she is drawn to the concept of Hiddur Mitzvah, or the ‘beautification of the commandment.’ She loves Jewish material culture, she told me, and “helping people find the Jewish objects that help facilitate their Jewish life.” In one video, Stein talks through the preparation of a mezuzah.
“I hope to one day work on a project where we are making real Judaic objects in a serious, fine art way,” she said.
Stein also finds a creative outlet through fashion. Her shoe collection has been the subject of several videos and inspired an article in Vogue last November. Her selections are eclectic, yet tasteful and religiously meaningful: a shoe for a Bris with an egg-like heel to symbolize the circle of life, Tory Burch shoes clad with a toe ring for weddings. She sees fashion as a conversation starter, one that humanizes her.
“It also helps people feel like they can have these interests and still be Jewish,” she told me.
As a rabbi today, Stein believes it’s important “to integrate all the parts of yourself,” and for her, fashion is “an important piece that can have spiritual significance and creativity.” With the help of her friend, Rabbi Rafi Ellenson, Stein has established a “Rabbinic Fit Check” Instagram account, which showcases the diverse style of rabbis across the country.
Stein stumbled upon content creation when she met a woman who previously worked for TikTok, who suggested that Stein share about her career — it was a “niche that isn’t really being filled outside of the Orthodox world.” Initially, she wasn’t interested, but after the woman followed up a few times, she decided to try it out.
Stein’s videos showcase her “freaky” shoe collection, but also delve into lessons on scripture and Jewish things she finds incredibly boring or chic (boring: a fixed idea on how rabbis should dress; chic: intentionality about eating). Recently, she’s been working on a “Two Minutes of Torah” series with the Reform Judaism Instagram. Stein describes her account as a “vehicle” that allows people to “stumble upon Jewish knowledge and Jewish content and Jewish culture in a way that you don’t necessarily need to be looking for it.”
Stein told me that her content has been especially helpful for Jews interested in progressive Judaism, who might not have a welcoming synagogue accessible to them. “It’s a way for people to find community and learn,” she said. According to Stein, many viewers have “followed the rabbit hole” and ended up attending services at her congregation or contacting Stein to officiate life cycle events.
Her content has also been met with confusion from some non-Jews and those of other denominations. Though most people ask questions with “positive curiosity,” some viewers have responded negatively to Stein being a female rabbi and not dressing particularly tsnius, or modest. Stein believes this is because “they had actually never encountered a rabbi that was different from their childhood rabbi or the images they had been taught.” In response, she likes to draw on the example of Osnat Barzani, a woman from 16th century Kurdistan who is often said to be the first female rabbi.
“She’s an amazing character for people to learn about, to say, yes this has not been the norm for most of our history, but it is actually not solely a 20th, 21st century phenomenon,” Stein said.
For Stein, teaching has become a deeply meaningful activity, whether that be adult Jewish education or guest classes at universities. She recalls a memorable moment at a class she taught at Colby College on the Song of Songs. The course was open to Jewish students and non-Jews alike, and explored the text through visual art.
What makes the college classes especially worthwhile for Stein is the ability to shape the next generation of rabbinical leaders. The rabbinate isn’t a career that often comes to mind, and Stein told me that she loved “being able to suggest it to students.” She believes that, through her content and practice, a new generation might see themselves reflected in the rabbinical field — realizing not only that it’s “a job, but it’s maybe a job that I could do.”
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French Jewish DJ Barbara Butch is defiant after concert disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters
(JTA) — The popular French Jewish DJ Barbara Butch is striking a defiant tone after pro-Palestinian activists disrupted her concert in Grenoble, France, vowing not to be cowed from performing.
Butch has also drawn support from Jewish activists who demonstrated outside the office of the far-left party whose top Grenoble official called for her performance to be canceled and has since doubled down, drawing support from anti-Zionist French Jews in the process.
Butch, who came to prominence after appearing at the opening ceremony of the 2024 summer Olympics in Paris, had to be escorted off the stage at the Cabaret Frappé festival on Saturday, barely 20 minutes into her set.
The City of Grenoble filed a complaint against what it called “persons unknown” following the incident. Mayor Laurence Ruffin said authorities had evidence of violence and sabotage of electrical equipment. She rejected arguments that the protest was peaceful.
“There were actions that are unacceptable,” Ruffin said, adding that while Grenoble has consistently supported the Palestinian people, demonstrations “must be peaceful and democratic.”
According to Butch, protesters shouted insults and threw objects, including glass bottles that shattered near her DJ console. In a video statement posted to social media on Monday, she said she had been frightened and described the attack as “the next stage in a campaign” that, she said, had sought for months to exclude her from artistic and public life. She added that legal complaints had been prepared and she vowed: “I will return to the stage.”
The attack on Butch came after pro-Palestinian activists called to boycott or cancel her appearance, citing her support for legislation widely viewed as pro-Israel and her travel to Tel Aviv.
A leader of the effort was Allan Brunson, the Grenoble chair of the far-left party France Unbowed, which has a pro-Palestinian platform. (Its leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, has been accused of echoing antisemitic stereotypes and dismissing the threat of antisemitism.) After politicians from other parties called for him to be sanctioned over his calls, Brunon tweeted ahead of the concert, “What a pleasure it would be for me to be sanctioned for calling on activists supportive of the Palestinian people to organize against the arrival of B. Butch.”
After its disruption, he posted a video of pro-Palestinian activists rallying in Grenoble and said he would next take aim at the city’s formal relationship with the Israeli city of Rehovot.
The legislation, known as Yadan after the French lawmaker, Caroline Yadan, who proposed it in 2024, aimed to combat “new forms of antisemitism” by expanding terrorism-related offenses and criminalizing calls for the destruction of a state recognized by France — a provision widely understood to be aimed at calls for Israel’s destruction, although the bill did not explicitly name Israel.
Supporters argued the legislation was a necessary response to the rising antisemitism following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Critics said the bill risked restricting freedom of expression by blurring the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
The proposal divided public opinion and the bill was withdrawn in April, a month after a group of artists signed a March 2026 essay in Le Point supporting it. Butch, who has cited her participation in the French Jewish scouting movement as formative, was among the signatories.
Following the Grenoble incident, Butch and her lawyer, Audrey Msellati, co-authored an op-ed in Le Monde arguing that the protest had crossed the line from political disagreement into intimidation and violence — “the one separating protest from coercion, disagreement from intimidation, speech from violence. We were no longer responding to an artist: we were chasing her off the stage.”
They wrote that while people are free to criticize an artist or disagree with Butch’s views, “one cannot organize her disappearance,” arguing that campaigns to pressure venues into canceling performances threaten artistic freedom and democratic principles.
Yonathan Arfi, the president of CRIF, France’s communal Jewish body, said in a statement that the demonstration against Butch is part of a worrying pattern, which he attributed to France Unbowed, of intimidation of Jewish artists that he said was “turning cultural stages into political tribunals.” He called on the French government to “urgently” create a plan to combat boycotts in the arts.
The European Jewish Congress, too, expressed support for Butch, saying, “We stand in full solidarity with Barbara Butch. No one should be intimidated, threatened or targeted for being Jewish or for speaking out against antisemitism.”
The Union of French Jewish Students, along with a handful of other liberal Jewish groups, rallied near France Unbowed’s Paris headquarters on Monday in support of Butch. Brunon has drawn support, on the other hand, from anti-Zionist French Jews who say the Yadan bill represents an exploitation of antisemitism concerns to silence criticism of Israel.
The Grenoble incident is the latest in a series of controversies involving Butch, who became internationally known after performing in drag during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
She filed criminal complaints after receiving death threats and online abuse after the ceremony. Four men were later convicted in connection with the online harassment campaign against her.
The latest incident has also drawn attention from abroad, eliciting support for her from fellow artists and followers on social media.
One widely shared Instagram post by @YiddishFeminist described Butch as “a proud, loud queer Jewish woman” who had faced “antisemitism, homophobia and fatphobia.”
“No one should ever be forced to leave a stage because a hateful crowd resorts to intimidation and violence,” the poster said. “Today, we are all Barbara Butch.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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