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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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Trump’s new Gaza plan marks a radical break from Israeli policy — can it succeed?
The United States has in effect broken with Israeli policy, cleverly engineering the Palestinian Authority’s return to Gaza.
President Donald Trump’s plan for the second stage of the Gaza ceasefire, the launch of which was announced Wednesday, involves the creation of a transitional Palestinian technocratic authority with strong ties to the PA. This collapses fictions Israel has sustained for years: that Gaza can be stabilized without the PA, which was ousted from the territory by Hamas in 2007; that the PA is no better than Hamas; and even that Palestinian governance itself is illegitimate, a belief held by the most extreme Israeli nationalists.
Reality has finally prevailed, and that reality is that the PA, flawed though it is, remains the only Palestinian political body capable of replacing Hamas in Gaza.
The logic expressed by those, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who aim to keep the PA out of Gaza, has brought Israel to the brink. Splitting Palestinian governance between Hamas and the PA, long Netanyahu’s strategy, led to unmitigated disaster, and public anger is at a boil.
Which means that the PA must return to Gaza not only for the sake of Palestinians, but also for Israelis. The Zionist project must be steered away from permanent war, international isolation and internal decay. That means finding a way to work toward a sustainable future with the Palestinians — which almost certainly means, in turn, accepting the PA as their legitimate government.
Decades of misleading rhetoric
Since the establishment of a ceasefire, brokered by Trump’s administration, in September, Hamas has reasserted control over large parts of Gaza. Militarily weakened, it survived politically — because Israel still refused to empower any viable Palestinian alternative.
That return to the status quo in many ways serves Netanyahu’s agenda. Keeping Hamas in power allows for a state of permanent emergency and despair about the chances for peace — the very forces that Netanyahu has, for decades, successfully turned into political capital. “There is no difference between the PA and Hamas” became a mantra — as if a political bureaucracy and a theocratic militia that massacres civilians and rejects coexistence on principle could be legitimately compared.
Now, as long as Hamas rules Gaza, its very presence constitutes an emergency narrative that Netanyahu can use to delay the accountability over his responsibility for Oct. 7: Wartime is no time for politics.
The Palestinian Authority, by contrast, has been treated as dangerous because it represents a measure of pragmatism.
The PA, ineffective as it has been, could be the basis of a functional political framework that would force Israel to confront the need for separation from the Palestinians, real borders, and eventual Palestinian statehood. That’s especially true because there’s the potential for actual peace with a Palestine run by the PA, which already coordinates with Israel at enormous political cost in the West Bank, where its security forces arrest militants and dismantle extremist cells.
New governance for Gaza
The technocratic committee put forward to govern Gaza under Trump’s second phase plan is formally nonpartisan, but its personnel and legitimacy are largely drawn from the ranks of the PA, with Ali Shaath, a former PA deputy minister, set to lead the effort. Others come from the same institutional ecosystem, because there is simply no other reservoir of Palestinian administrative experience. The PA has publicly endorsed the framework. Israel must now also meet its own obligations under the Trump plan — no matter how distasteful its leaders might find the plan’s endorsement of the PA to be.
That means, chiefly, that Israel must declare clearly that once Gaza is stabilized by the technocratic committee, it is prepared to enter negotiations toward a Palestinian state, with final borders to be determined later. Israel can openly state its intention to retain major settlement blocs in the West Bank and seek long-term security arrangements in the Jordan Valley. But it should also affirm in principle its readiness to recognize a Palestinian state and guarantee access arrangements in Jerusalem.
These statements would not resolve the conflict, by any means. But they would go some way toward restoring credibility.
To get there, Hamas must surrender its weapons in Gaza, with an international stabilization force present to keep the peace. The best chance for disarmament is if the weapons are handed to Palestinians. By default, the PA security forces will be the best candidates for the job, as the new technocratic government lacks a security arm. Hamas’s senior leadership should probably be allowed to exit into exile.
To build a Palestinian consensus in this direction, regional powers — Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey — must make reconstruction conditional on disarmament. The choice must be unmistakable: real recovery without any trace of a Hamas militia – or years in tent cities.
If all this is achieved, the real work begins. Areas under the new authority must visibly improve. Adequate housing, electricity, water, education, employment, and free movement must return in ways Palestinians can measure. The comparison with Hamas rule must be obvious.
Reformations in the PA — and Israel
Such a process with the PA should also be made conditional.
As existing U.S. proposals suggest, the PA must be required to undertake concrete reforms, including by overhauling educational materials that appear to condone violence against Israelis and ending payments to the families of imprisoned militants.
Senior PA officials have already signaled willingness to move on both fronts. These are achievable changes,
The payoff would be immense, potentially including normalization with Saudi Arabia, broader reconciliation of Israel the Arab and Muslim worlds, the gradual erosion of the global delegitimization campaign against Israel, and renewed international cooperation — especially in confronting Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and regional militias. In time, Zionism would once again be seen as a serious national project capable of difficult, mature decisions.
The catch: Little of this is likely to happen under the current Israeli government.
That is the central truth of 2026, an election year: a change of leadership in Israel is not optional for anyone who wants a better future. The disaster of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack was the culmination of years of strategic failure, ideological paralysis, and the reckless empowerment of Hamas. This is what happens when complacent societies repeatedly elevate unfit leadership in the face of existential danger.
So Israelis must decide: will they support a government that thrives on permanent conflict, or endorse the possibility of peace?
The post Trump’s new Gaza plan marks a radical break from Israeli policy — can it succeed? appeared first on The Forward.
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California’s Gavin Newsom Proposes Budget Increase for State Universities Amid Federal Funding Threats
California Gov. Gavin Newsom in Sacramento, California, US, on Aug. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a rumored potential candidate for US president in 2028, has proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in new funds for state universities amid the Trump administration’s policy of canceling federal grants and contracts held by institutions which it accuses of failing to combat campus antisemitism.
Newsom previously sought to cut funding to the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) by 8 percent during the 2025-2025 fiscal year (FY), before dropping that figure to 3 percent. Then on Friday, the governor proposed a new budget which would increase next year’s appropriation by $350.6 million for UC and $365.7 million for CSU, raising the state’s general fund for the schools to $5.3 billion and $5.6 billion, respectively.
“The budget introduced today by Gov. Newsom continues to provide critical support for the university and our students,” UC president James B. Milliken said in a statement responding to the news. “State support is more important than ever, as we face tremendous financial pressures stemming from rising costs and unprecedented federal actions. UC campuses rely on funding stability to serve students and maintain the academic and research excellence that has made UC the world’s greatest research university.”
He added, “An investment in UC is an investment in California’s future. I look forward to our ongoing partnership with Gov. Newsom and the legislature to ensure that our students have what they need to succeed at UC and beyond.”
The move, even as it defers $129.7 million for UC and $143.8 million for CSU to a later date, gives the schools breathing room as they fear the Trump’s administration’s confiscation of funds. Last year, for example, the administration impounded $250 million from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
US President Donald Trump ordered the money canceled in August after determining that the school exposed Jewish students to discrimination by refusing to intervene when civil rights violations transpired or failing to correct a hostile environment after the fact. He ordered the move even after UCLA agreed to donate $2.33 million to a consortium of Jewish civil rights organizations to resolve an antisemitism complaint filed by three students and an employee.
UCLA was sued and excoriated by the public over its handling of a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that an anti-Zionist student group established on campus in the final weeks of the 2024 spring semester. Witnesses said that it was a source of antisemitism from the moment it became active, and according to the lawsuits, students there chanted “death to the Jews,” set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.
Many antisemitic incidents occurred at UCLA before the institution was ultimately sued and placed it in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.
Just five days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as previously reported by The Algemeiner, anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. Other incidents included someone’s tearing a chapter page out of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, titled “Loudmouth Jew,” and leaving it outside the home of a UCLA faculty member, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staging a disturbing demonstration in which its members cudgeled a piñata, to which a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face was glued, while shouting “beat the Jew.”
On the same day that UCLA settled the suit, the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division ruled that UCLA’s response to antisemitic incidents constituted violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“Our investigation into the University of California system has found concerning evidence of systemic antisemitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability from the institution,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement at the time. “This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: the [Department of Justice] will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system.”
Newsom has positioned himself as an ally of higher education throughout its clash with Trump. In August, he demanded that Harvard University president Alan Garber resign rather than reach a deal with the Trump administration that would restore federal funding to Harvard in exchange for the school’s agreeing to conservative demands for addressing campus antisemitism and shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
“You don’t work with Donald Trump — only FOR Donald Trump,” Newsom protested, writing on the X social media platform. “Looks like Harvard has chosen to surrender. Alan Garber must resign. An absolute failure of leadership that will have demonstrable impacts to higher education across our country. He should be ashamed.”
He added, “California will never bend the knee.”
Newsom had days earlier criticized Trump’s effort to combat antisemitism and reform higher education, denouncing it as “disgusting political extortion.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Ex-Yale Law School Professor Dismisses Iran Protests Over ‘Zionist’ Backing, Justifies Regime Oppression
Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Dec. 29, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
A former Yale University professor who was fired over her connection to a fundraising front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a US-designated terrorist organization, has drawn scrutiny again for dismissing anti-regime protests in Iran due to “Zionist endorsement,” defending Tehran’s crackdown on dissent, and castigating US law enforcement.
“In the imperial countries, the police function as the domestic arm of the empire,” Helyeh Doutaghi wrote in an essay published by the far-left Progressive International on Jan. 6. “They suppress dissent, criminalize resistance, and enforce accumulation through violence particularly against Black, Indigenous, and other Peoples of Color.”
Doutaghi then claimed that law enforcement in New Haven, Connecticut, the location of Yale, is “trained by the Israeli military” and that “policing is inseparable from imperial colonial violence.”
In contrast, she argued, Iran’s “Law Enforcement Command,” notorious for atrocities such as killing a young woman who was in custody for not wearing a head covering in accordance with the country’s Islamic dress code, “exists within a radically difference context,” having faced “sustained attempts at regime change operations and color revolution tactics.”
Doutaghi appears to see Jewish maneuvering behind the Iranian people’s efforts to resist their government’s theocratic, authoritarian rule. She argued that the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests of 2022, which erupted in the wake of the regime’s killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, were commandeered by “Zionist endorsement, coordinated diasporic networks, and sustained media warfare” to achieve “regime change.”
The article came out as the Iranian regime began cracking down on a new round of anti-government protests with an unprecedented scale of violence, reportedly killing thousands of demonstrators over the past two weeks.
In a viral post, Paul Mason, contributing editor for The New World, said Doutaghi’s essay represents the “logic of decolonization’ theory,” in which, he added, “Western cops bad; Iranian cops good. Woman rights good — but not if it leads to revolution in Iran.”
Yale Law School (YLS) fired Doutaghi in March after independently verifying a report by Jewish Onliner which exposed her membership in Samidoun, which identifies itself as a “Palestinian prisoner solidarity network.”
Founded in 2011 in the Canadian province of British Columbia, Samidoun is a “front group” for the PFLP — which gained infamy in the 20th century for perpetrating a series of airplane hijackings — according to the US and Canadian governments. The US and Canada each imposed sanctions on Samidoun in October 2024, labeling the organization a “sham charity” and accusing it of fundraising for designated terrorist groups such as PFLP.
Samidoun also described the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel as “a brave and heroic operation.”
Yale noted that Doutaghi was publicly listed on Samidoun’s website as a member.
Doutaghi denounced the inculpatory facts uncovered by the university as “fabricated claims” and lodged counteraccusations which blamed her being outed on Zionists.
“Yale has engaged in bad faith throughout this ‘process,” she wrote in a statement posted on X after being placed on leave. “YLS’s singular concern with maintaining the approval of the Zionist backers who bankroll their complicity in genocide led the organization to pressure me into an interrogation that I had every reason to believe was designed not to uncover the truth, but to justify a predetermined outcome.”
She continued, “What is clear is that YLS actions constitute a blatant act of retaliation against Palestinian solidarity — a violation of my constitutional rights, free speech, academic freedom, and fundamental due process rights. I am being targeted for one reason alone: for speaking the truth about the genocide of the Palestinian people that Yale University is complicit in.”
Doutaghi is another example of the higher education establishment’s embrace of scholars who promote anti-Israel animus, an issue that is driving the campus antisemitism crisis, according to a recent survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN).
Fifty percent of survey respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration. Among those who reported the presence of such a boycott, 55 percent noted that departments avoid co-sponsoring events with Jewish or pro-Israel groups and 29.5 percent said this policy is also subtly enacted by sabotaging negotiations for partnerships with Israeli institutions. All the while, such faculty fostered an environment in which Jewish professors were “maligned, professionally isolated, and in severe cases, doxxed or harassed” as they assumed the right to determine for their Jewish colleagues what constitutes antisemitism.
Meanwhile, the faculty’s activism provided an academic pretext for the relentless wave of antisemitic incidents of discrimination and harassment which pro-Hamas activists perpetrated against Jewish and Israeli members of campus communities following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the groups said.
Another faculty source of campus antisemitism is the Faculty and Staff for Justice (FSJP) group.
FSJP is a spinoff of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group with links to Islamist terrorist organizations. FSJP chapters have been cropping up at colleges since the Oct. 7 atrocities, and throughout the 2023-2024 academic year, its members, which include faculty employed by the most elite US colleges, fostered campus unrest, circulated antisemitic cartoons, and advocated severing ties with Israeli companies and institutions of higher education.
In September 2024, AMCHA Initiative, a higher education watchdog, published a study offering evidence that FSJP inspired antisemitic hate crimes, anti-Israel divestment measures, and the collapse of discipline and order on college campuses. Using data analysis, AMCHA found a correlation between a school’s hosting an FSJP chapter and anti-Zionist and antisemitic activity. For example, the researchers found that the presence of FSJP on college campuses increased by seven times “the likelihood of physical assaults and Jewish students” and increased by three times the chance that a Jewish student would be subject to threats of violence and death.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.