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From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’: Michael Strassfeld writes a new guide to being Jewish
(JTA) — “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” That’s known as Hansen’s Law, named for the historian Marcus Lee Hansen, who observed that while the children of immigrants tend to run away from their ethnicity in order to join the mainstream, the third generation often wants to learn the “old ways” of their grandparents.
In 1973, “The Jewish Catalog” turned Hansen’s Law into a “do-it-yourself kit” for young Jews who wanted to practice the traditions of their grandparents but weren’t exactly sure how. Imagine “The Joy of Cooking,” but instead of recipes the guide to Jewish living had friendly instructions for hosting Shabbat, building a sukkah and taking part in Jewish rituals from birth to death. Co-edited by Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld and the late Richard Siegel, it went on to sell 300,000 copies and remains in print today.
Fifty years later, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld has written a new book that he calls a “bookend” to “The Jewish Catalog.” If the first book is a Jewish “how to,” the latest asks, he says, “why bother?” “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century” asserts that an open society and egalitarian ethics leave most Jews skeptical of the rituals and beliefs of Jewish tradition. In the face of this resistance, he argues that the purpose of Judaism is not obedience to Torah and its rituals for their own sake or mere “continuity,” but to “encourage and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”
Strassfeld, 73, grew up in an Orthodox home in Boston and got his master’s degree in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. Coming to doubt the “faith claims” of Orthodoxy, he became a regular at nearby Havurat Shalom, an “intentional community” that pioneered the havurah movement’s liberal, hands-on approach to traditional practice. He earned rabbinical ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College when he was 41 and went on to serve as the rabbi of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side and later the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Manhattan flagship of Reconstructionist Judaism.
“To be disrupted is to experience a break with the past and simultaneously reconnect in a new way to that past,” writes Strassfeld, who retired from the pulpit in 2015. This week, we spoke about why people might find Jewish ritual empty, how he thinks Jewish practices can enrich their lives and how Passover — which begins Wednesday night — could be the key to unlocking the central idea of Judaism.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: I wanted to start with the 50th anniversary of the “Jewish Catalog.” What connects the new book with the work you did back then on the “Catalog,” which was a do-it-yourself guide for Jews who were trying to reclaim the stuff they either did or didn’t learn in Hebrew school?
Michael Strassfeld: I see them as bookends. Basically, I keep on writing the same book over and over again. [Laughs] Except no, I’m different and the world is different. I’m always trying to make Judaism accessible to people. In the “Catalog” I was providing the resources on how to live a Jewish life when the resources weren’t easily accessible.
The new book is less about “how to” than “why bother?” That’s the challenge. I think a lot of people take pride in being Jewish, but it’s a small part of their identity because it doesn’t feel relevant. I want to say to people like that that Judaism is about living a life with meaning and purpose. It’s not about doing what I call the “Jewishly Jewish” things, like keeping kosher and going to synagogue. Judaism is wisdom and practices to live life with meaning and purpose. The purpose of Judaism isn’t to be a good Jew, despite all the surveys that give you 10 points for, you know, lighting Shabbat candles. It’s about being a good person.
So that brings up your relationship to the commandments and mitzvot, the traditional acts and behaviors that an Orthodox Jew or a committed Conservative Jew feels commanded to do, from prayer to keeping kosher to observing the Sabbath and the holidays. They might argue that doing these things is what makes you Jewish, but you’re arguing something different. If someone doesn’t feel bound by these obligations, why do them at all?
I don’t have the faith or beliefs that underlie such an attitude [of obligation]. Halacha, or Jewish law, is not in reality law. It’s really unlike American law where you know that if you’re violating it, you could be prosecuted. What I’m trying to do in the book is reframe rituals as an awareness practice, that is, bringing awareness to various aspects of our lives. So it could be paying attention to food, or cultivating attitudes of gratitude, or generosity, or satisfaction. My broad understanding of the festival cycle, for example, is that you can focus on those attitudes all year long, but the festivals provide a period of time once in the year to really focus on, in the case of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for example, saying sorry and repairing relationships.
In “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century,” Michael Strassfeld argues that the challenge of each generation’s Jews is to create the Judaism that is needed in their time. (Ben Yehuda Press)
Passover is coming. Probably no holiday asks its practitioners to do so much stuff in preparation, from cleaning the house of every trace of unleavened food to hosting, in many homes, two different catered seminars on Jewish history. Describe how Passover cultivates awareness, especially of the idea of freedom, which plays an important part thematically in your boo
The Sefat Emet [a 19th-century Hasidic master] says Torah is all about one thing: freedom. But there’s a variety of obstacles in the way. There are temptations. There’s the inner issues that you struggle with, and the bad things that are out of your control. The Sefat Emet says the 613 commandments are 613 etzot, or advice, that teach us how to live a life of freedom. The focus of Passover is trying to free yourself from the chains of the things that hold you back from being the person that you could be, not getting caught up in materiality or envy, free from unnecessary anxieties — all these things that distract us or keep us from being who we could be.
The Passover seder is one of the great rituals of Judaism. We’re trying to do a very ambitious thing by saying, not, like, “let’s remember when our ancestors were freed from Egypt,” but rather that we were slaves in Egypt and we went free. And at the seder we actually ingest that. We experience the bitterness by eating maror, the bitter herb. We experience the freedom by drinking wine. We don’t want it just to be an intellectual exercise.
Unfortunately the seder has become rote. But Passover is about this huge theme of freedom that is central to Judaism.
I think some people bristle against ritual because they find it empty. But you’re saying there’s another way to approach rituals which is to think of them as tools or instruments that can help you focus on core principles — you actually list 11 — which include finding holiness everywhere, caring for the planet and engaging in social justice, to name a few. But that invites the criticism, which I think was also leveled at the “Catalog,” that Judaism shouldn’t be instrumental, because if you treat it as a means to an end that’s self-serving and individualistic.
Certainly rituals are tools, but tools in the best sense of the word. They help us pay attention to things in our lives and things in the world that need repair. And people use them not to get ahead in the world, but because they want to be a somewhat better person. I talk a lot these days about having a brief morning practice, and in the book I write about the mezuzah. For most Jews it’s become wallpaper, but what if you take the moment that you leave in the morning, and there’s a transition from home to the outside and to work perhaps, and take a moment at the doorpost to spiritually frame your day? What are the major principles that you want to keep in your mind when you know you’re gonna be stuck in traffic or a difficult meeting?
And a lot of traditional rituals are instrumental. Saying a blessing before you eat is a gratitude practice.
But why do I need a particular Jewish ritual or practice to help me feel gratitude or order my day? Aren’t there other traditions I can use to accomplish the same things?
Anybody who is a pluralist, which I am, knows that the Jewish way is not the only way. If I grew up in India or Indonesia and my parents were locals I probably wouldn’t be a rabbi and writing these books.
But a partial answer to your question is that Judaism is one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world, and that there has been a 3,000-year conversation by the Jewish people about what it means to live in this tradition and to live in the world. And so I think there’s a lot of wisdom there.
So much in Jewish tradition says boundaries are good, and that it’s important to draw distinctions between what’s Jewish behavior and what’s not Jewish behavior, between the holy and the mundane, and that making those distinctions is a value in itself. But you argue strongly in an early chapter that that kind of binary thinking is not Judaism as you see it.
Underlying the book is the notion that Rabbinic Judaism carried the Jewish people for 2,000 years or so. But we’re living in a very different context, and the binaries, the dualities — too often they lead to hierarchy, so that, for example, men matter more than women in Jewish life. And we’ve tried to change that. We are living in an open society where we want to be more inclusive, not less inclusive. We don’t want to live in ghettos. Now, the ultra-Orthodox say, “No, we realize the danger of trying to live like that. We don’t think there’s anything of value in that modern world. And it’s all to be rejected.” And it would be foolish not to admit that in this very open world the Jews, as a minority, could kind of disappear. But I think that Judaism has so much value and wisdom and practices to offer to people that Judaism will continue to be part of the fabric of this world — the way, for example, we have given Shabbat as a concept to the world.
You know, in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, there are no Jews. So clearly, Jews and Judaism are not essential for the world to exist. And that’s a good, humbling message.
OK, but one could argue that while Jews aren’t necessary for the world to exist, Judaism is necessary for Jews to exist. And you write in your book, “If the Jewish people is to be a people, we need to have a commonly held tradition.” I think the pushback to the kind of openness and permeability you describe is that Jews can be so open and so permeable that they just fall through the holes.
It certainly is a possibility. And it’s also a possibility that the only Jews who will be around will be ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But if Judaism can only survive by being separatist, then I question whether it’s really worthwhile. That becomes a distorted vision of Judaism, and withdrawing is not what it’s meant to be. I think we’re meant to be in the world.
Your book is called “Judaism Disrupted.” What is disruptive about the Judaism that you’re proposing?
I meant it in two ways. First, Judaism is being disrupted by this very different world we’re living in. The contents of the ocean we swim in is very different than in the Middle Ages. But I’m also using it to say that Judaism is meant to disrupt our lives in a positive way, which is to say, “Wake up, pay attention.” You are here to live a life of meaning and purpose, and to continue as co-creators with God of the universe. You’re here to make the world better, to be kind and compassionate to people, to work on yourself. In my mind it is a shofar, “Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep!” “Judaism Disrupted” says you have to pay attention to issues like food, and justice, and teshuva [repentance].
You were ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. Do you think your book falls neatly into any of our current denominational categories?
[Reconstructionist founder] Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s notion of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is the one that I feel closest to. But I feel that the denominational structure isn’t particularly useful anymore. There’s basically two categories, Orthodox and the various kinds of liberal Judaism, within a spectrum. The modern world is so fundamentally different in its relationship to Jews and Judaism that what we’re seeing is a variety of attempts to figure out how to respond. And that will then become the Judaism for the next millennium. It’s time for a lot of experimentation. I think that’s required and out of that will come a new “Minhag America,” to use Isaac Mayer Wise’s phrase for the emerging custom of American Jews [Wise was a Reform rabbi in the late 19th century]. And we don’t need to have everybody doing it one way. As long as people feel committed to Judaism, the Jewish tradition, even if they’re doing it very differently than the Jews of the past, they will be writing themselves into the conversation.
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Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch? Or a Jewitch?
When I was a little girl, I played Witch all the time. I was The Grande Madame — the Queen of all the Witches. I even wrote spooky musicals for the neighborhood kids. We set up lawn chairs in my friend Susie’s backyard in Queens, and made our parents watch. If I had been more business minded, I would have sold tickets.
Now I teach music and something must have stayed with me, because October is my favorite month — Witchy Music Month. This week, I put on my pointy hat, plugged in my spooky orange lights, and played some scenes from The Wizard of Oz and Snow White for the kiddos.
Then I noticed something.
Both witches had big, hooked noses. What they used to call “Jewish Noses.” The noses that kept New York surgeons busy when we hit 18. Many of us got nose jobs. It wasn’t a secret. It was expected.
My mother said no, so I couldn’t get one, but it didn’t stop me from kvetching. (I also asked to be sent to a Swiss Finishing School — again, no.)
I looked it up. A big study in 1914 debunked the theory that Jews actually had big noses — 14% aquiline, compared with 10% of the regular population. Considering that Jews are a people sometimes “bottlenecked from geographic diversity” in a more modern study in 2022, meaning that we weren’t allowed to live anywhere we wanted, and definitely meaning that we inbred, it doesn’t sound like we owned Big Nose.
Tell everybody.
Still, the “hook-nosed” Jewish stereotype remains. Hard to get rid of stereotypes, and harder to get rid of what most people find conventionally attractive. Especially when Disney adds to the Big Hooked Nose in Snow White’s witch — with some well-placed warts.
The most famous Jewish Witch story was when King Saul wanted to go to battle with the Philistines and consulted the Witch of Endor. She summoned Prophet Samuel’s Spirit for the King. Alas Samuel prophesied Doom, and King Saul and his son Jonathan were killed the next day.
The irony was that King Saul had banned all witches, until he needed one himself.
And do you remember what TV writer Sol Sacks named Samantha’s mother in the TV series, Bewitched? Yes, Endora. I bet Sacks’ Hebrew School teacher was proud.
My son, Aaron, is most like me, and I guess most susceptible to my witchiness. He really believed when he was little, and I remember once picking him up from his second grade class. As I bent down to tie Aaron’s shoe, I felt 100 little eyes on me. When I straightened up, I was surrounded by a solemn crowd. A little girl pointed and said, “Aaron, she doesn’t look like a witch.”
I have to admit, I was a little insulted.
I also have to admit that I did use my powers on Aaron and I am a little ashamed. When he was six, he hated Shabbos because of its restrictions. No TV, no piano, no trips in the car to the 7-Eleven for Slurpees; and endless synagogue.
But this happened on a Wednesday night. He was in a mood and was smashing all her plastic swords and yelling, and I was on the phone trying to accept a music gig with a bride and groom. I told the couple I’d call them right back.
“Aaron,” I looked at him. “If you don’t stop right now — I’m gonna make it SHABBOS!”
He dropped his swords in petrified horror. “C-c-can you really DO that?”
And then I did something I’m even more ashamed of. I smiled.
The post Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch? Or a Jewitch? appeared first on The Forward.
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Turkey-Qatar Partnership Grows While Hamas Refuses to Disarm, Raising Alarm Bells Over Gaza’s Future
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is welcomed by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in Doha, Qatar, Oct. 22, 2025. Photo: Murat Kula/Turkish Presidential Press Office/Handout via REUTERS
As Qatar and Turkey further expand their relationship, concerns are mounting that their growing influence in Gaza could bolster Hamas and complicate the fragile ceasefire, as both countries pursue their regional ambitions in the war-torn enclave.
On Wednesday, Ankara and Doha signed new agreements on defense, trade, and strategic planning, deepening a partnership that continues to raise alarm bells among Israel, Gulf states, and experts, who warn that their expanding roles in Gaza’s reconstruction efforts could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.
As part of his three-day Gulf tour, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Doha to meet with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
During the 11th meeting of the Turkey–Qatar High Strategic Committee, the two leaders issued a joint declaration reaffirming their commitment to maintaining the US-backed Gaza peace plan.
Erdogan’s diplomatic visit came a day after Hamas leaders met with Qatari and Turkish officials in Doha to discuss the ongoing Israel-Hamas ceasefire and plans for rebuilding Gaza after the war.
As both nations expanded their relationship with new cooperation agreements, Turkey has reportedly sought to acquire billions of dollars’ worth of military technology from Qatar, including 24 used and 16 new Eurofighter Typhoon jets.
If approved, the deal would allow Doha to provide Ankara with an immediate solution to its operational gap, bypassing the Eurofighter production schedule, which is currently overbooked due to high global demand.
Amid rising geopolitical tensions, Turkey’s move to acquire advanced multi-role combat aircraft would strengthen its position as a key regional power and reduce reliance on American-made systems, while representing a major step in modernizing its combat aviation fleet.
However, concerns over Qatar and Turkey’s expanding partnership come at a time when the fragile Gaza ceasefire, though seemingly holding, faces mounting challenges, as the Palestinian terrorist group continues to refuse disarmament — an essential component of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan.
On Saturday, Hamas reiterated the group’s refusal to give up its weapons as part of the ceasefire.
“The proposed weapons handover is out of the question and not negotiable,” a Hamas official told AFP.
Hamas Politburo member Mohammed Nazzal also said the group could not commit to disarmament, as it intends to maintain security control in Gaza during an interim period.
Even though Hamas has publicly expressed these views before, these latest remarks have heightened concerns over obstacles to ending the war in Gaza, with the next phase of ceasefire negotiations waiting to begin.
In this regional context, experts warn that both Turkey and Qatar — as two of the largest state sponsors of Hamas, with long-standing ties to the terrorist group — could shield the Islamist movement in Gaza or even bolster its terror infrastructure, as they seek a central role in post-war efforts.
Alongside the United States and regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the two-year conflict in Gaza, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas, which has ruled the enclave for nearly two decades.
However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.
Turkey has also been a major international backer of Hamas and has maintained an openly hostile stance toward the Jewish state for years.
During his visit to Doha, Erdogan said the ceasefire “has provided relief to Palestinians,” but reiterated that a two-state solution was the only path to resolving the conflict with Israel.
Under Trump’s plan, Turkey is expected to join a multinational task force responsible for overseeing the ceasefire and training local security forces.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at opposition to any involvement of Turkish security forces in post-war Gaza.
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Major Body of University Professors Targets Antisemitism Prevention Policies at University of Pennsylvania
Anti-Israel encampment at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA, USA in May 2024. Photo: Robyn Stevens via Reuters Connect
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the largest and oldest US organization for defending faculty rights, is picking a fight over the University of Pennsylvania’s efforts to combat antisemitism, arguing that a range of faculty speech and conduct considered hostile by Jewish members of the campus community are key components of academic freedom.
In a letter to the administration regarding antidiscrimination investigations opened by Penn’s Office of Religious and Ethnic Interests (OREI), the group charged that efforts to investigate alleged antisemitism on campus and punish those found to have perpetrated can constitute discrimination. Its argument reprises recent claims advanced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) group, notorious for its defense of Sharia law and alleged ties to jihadist groups such as Hamas, in a lawsuit which aims to dismantle antisemitism prevention training at Northwestern University.
“Harassing, surveilling, intimidating, and punishing members of the university community for research, teaching, and extramural speech based on overly broad definitions of antisemitism does nothing to combat antisemitism, but it can perpetuate anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian racism, muzzle political criticism of the Israeli government by people of any background, and create a climate of fear and self-censorship that threatens the academic freedom of all faculty and students,” the AAUP said, threatening to scrutinize the university. “AAUP-Penn will continue to monitor reports related to OREI.”
Additionally, the AAUP described Penn’s efforts to protect Jewish students from antisemitism as resulting from “government interference in university procedures” while arguing that merely reporting antisemitism subjects the accused to harassment, seemingly suggesting that many Jewish students who have been assaulted, academically penalized, and exposed to hate speech on college campuses across the US are perpetrators rather than victims. The group also argued that other minority groups from “protected classes,” such as Arabs and African Americans, are disproportionately investigated for antisemitism.
Despite the AAUP’s claims, some University of Pennsylvania faculty have played an outsized role in organizing antisemitic activities on campus, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In 2023, professor Huda Fakhreddine helped organize the “Palestine Writes Festival,” a gathering of anti-Zionists which featured Gaza-based professor Refaat Alareer, who said in 2018, “Are most Jews evil? Of course they are,” and Salman Abu Sitta, who once said in an interview that “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.” Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman, was also initially scheduled as a speaker, despite a documentary exposing his long record of anti-Jewish barbs. In one instance, a former colleague recalled Waters at a restaurant yelling at the wait staff to “take away the Jew food.”
That event prompted a deluge of antisemitic incidents at the University of Pennsylvania, including Nazi graffiti and a student’s trailing a staffer into the university’s Hillel building and shouting “F–k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs. Fakhreddine, who days after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel attended an on-campus rally in which a speaker castigated what he called “the Israeli Jew,” later sued Congress to halt its investigation of campus antisemitism at Penn.
The professor’s civil complaint brimmed with classic antisemitic tropes, describing efforts to eradicate antisemitism as a conspiracy by “billionaire donors, pro-Israel groups, other litigants, and segments of the media” to squelch criticism of Israel and harm Arab students and academics. It also disparaged the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, calling it a tool of a “militant minority which believes that Israel can do no wrong” and alleging that it is “unconstitutional” and the bedrock of a larger plan of a “social engineering movement” to abolish the First Amendment of the US Constitution. A federal judge ultimately threw the case out of court.
The following year, the University Pennsylvania pledged in a report on antisemitism that it would never again confer academic legitimacy to antisemitism and formally denounced the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel as “discriminatory” and “anti-intellectual.” The university also passed other policies aimed at protecting academic freedom and free speech from attempts to invoke them as justification for uttering hate speech and founded the Office of Religious and Ethnic Interests, which the AAUP is now accusing of breaking the law.
The AAUP has defended antisemitic speech before.
In 2014, it accused the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign of violating the tenets of academic freedom when it declined to approve the hiring of Steven Salaita because he uttered a slew of antisemitic, extramural comments on social media, such as “Zionists transforming ‘antisemitism from something horrible into something honorable since 1948,” “Every Jewish boy and girl can grow up to be the leader of a murderous colonial regime,” and “By eagerly conflating Jewishness and Israel, Zionists are partly responsible when people say antisemitic s—t in response to Israeli terror.”
An AAUP report that chronicled the incident, which mushroomed into a major controversy in academia, listed those tweets and others but still concluded that not hiring Salaita “acted in violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure” and “cast a pall of uncertainty over the degree to which academic freedom is understood and respected.” At the same time, the AAUP said that it was “committed to fighting systemic racism and pursuing racial justice and equity in colleges and universities, in keeping with the association’s mission to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good.”
Other actions have moved the AAUP further into the world of left-wing anti-Zionism, tarnishing its image as a bipartisan guardian of scholarship and inquiry.
Following Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, two and a half weeks passed before the AAUP commented on the ensuing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and when it did, the group said nothing about the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities, instead discussing the importance of academic freedom. At the time, many professors cheered Hamas’s violence and encouraged extreme anti-Zionist demonstrations in which masses of students and faculty called for the elimination of the Jewish state “from the river to the sea,” which is widely interpreted as a call for genocide.
In August 2024, the AAUP issued a statement in support of academic boycotts, a seismic decision which reversed decades of policy and cleared the way for scholar activists to escalate their efforts to purge the university of Zionism and educational partnerships with Israel.
Coming amid a bitter debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses and Israel’s war to eradicate Hamas from the Gaza Strip, the statement did not mention the Jewish state specifically, but its countenancing the anti-Israel BDS movement was made clear, according to Jewish and pro-Israel leaders, by a section of the statement which said that boycotts “can legitimately seek to protect and advance the academic freedom and fundamental rights of colleagues and students who are living and working under circumstances that violate that freedom and one or more of those rights.”
In March, the AAUP held a webinar which promoted false claims about Israel’s conduct in the war with Hamas in Gaza.
Titled “Scholasticide in Palestine,” the virtual event accused Israel of “scholasticide” and “exterminationist” tactics of war. Such accusations cite damages sustained by education institutions and loss of life in Gaza, but rather than describing those misfortunes as inevitable consequences of a protracted war that Hamas started by launching the surprise Oct. 7 massacre, those leading the AAUP event argued that Israel’s aim was to murder educators and erase Palestinian history and culture.
“We are very concerned that AAUP, whose stated mission includes representing all academics and ensuring ‘higher education’s contribution to the common good’ continues to act in ways that demonize Israel, marginalize Jewish and Israeli members, and promote policies and events that portray a one-sided, politicized view of complex issues,” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.