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Why Pig Is Not Kosher and the Hidden Face of Antisemitism
Severed pigs head staked on the gates leading to the residence of University of British Columbia president Benoit-Antoine Bacon. Photo: Screenshot
The English historian Edward Gibbon (1737 to 1794), wrote six volumes of The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. His conclusions have been disputed ever since. But he ushered in a new era of historical and social theory that has dominated Western thought for centuries.
We like to find simple easy explanations — which never work out exactly the way we think they will. We live in a hyper world of facile theories, both about what is happening in the world today and what is likely to happen in the future. A world divided between good and bad people, rival religions, Zionists and anti-Zionists, and almost every other conceivable human political division. Many of them claiming moral high ground and predicting sea changes within the tide of human history. Theories are fine. But they are not reality.
I was brought up in a culture where there were divisions and disagreements, hatreds, and prejudices. But there was a veneer of politeness and sensibility that acted as a safety net. “I might hate you, but I won’t say so in public.” Hypocrisy? Perhaps, but it made life livable. This has now been swept away by the vicious destructive banality and corruption of the media and their pathetic victims.
I always felt the antisemitism embedded in British and most of European societies. Whenever our Jewish school played non-Jewish schools, we were assailed by Jew hatred. The artsy world tended to side with the Palestinians. One of the most vociferous opponents of Israel at Cambridge in my day was an aspiring Jewish actress and of course there was Roald Dahl. Of course there were many good Britons who were if not Philo-semitic at least understood a Jewish point of view that saw autonomy rather than assimilation as a solution to its sense of alienation.
Similarly, in the United States, a vein of antisemitism has run through that society since Peter Stuyvesant tried to ban Jews from New York. In 1862, in the heat of the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. And Harvard had antisemitic restrictions until after the second World War.
Even so, for many Jews escaping the killing fields of Europe, America was a Goldene Medina. It is all relative. Let us not forget that the gates of the US were slammed shut before the Second World War. Jews were looked on as outsiders — and when they did come, were pressured to assimilate.
For a short period in American history, there was a time when the idea that the Jews deserved to have a homeland of their own was accepted — even if the US often refused to get involved or took an apathetic position to Israel. Yet now that seems to be backsliding — and support for Israel is in peril.
The issue now is not whether Israel is right or wrong, good or bad, whether one can criticize or excoriate it. But whether it has any right to exist at all.
In New York, which was once considered to be a Jewish city, the man who would be mayor believes Israel as a Jewish state needs to be obliterated. We have experienced shock after shock these past two years. Hamas and Iran, dedicated to killing Jews, are praised and glorified. Not only our enemies, but even from within our own ranks, opposition to the idea of a Jewish state is returning to the time during the last century when most American Jews were anti-Zionist.
Ideological opponents delight in the claim that there’s a fundamental change in American society. And nearly everybody (except Iran, of course) is anxious to say that they are not antisemitic, heaven forbid. It’s just that they object to Israel.
And here we come to the pig. The Bible says that kosher animals have to have a cloven hoof and chew cud. Cows have both. Pigs only have one. Why is the pig picked as the epitome of non-kosher more than any other animal?
The answer is that the pig could put forward its two feet and show that he must be kosher because he has cloven hooves. But look further and you see that it doesn’t chew the cud. The pig may protest it is kosher. But it is not! The current wave of dogmatic liberals who are products of years of infiltration and indoctrination, still want to claim they are not antisemites heaven forbid.
Lord knows, throughout my career, I have criticized many aspects of the secular and religious Zionism of Israeli Society and Jewish life. I know full well what our faults, hypocrisies, and failures are, and wish we would not have war imposed on us with all its cruelties.
But when it comes to Israel as a Jewish state (in an imperfect world where nationalities still hold sway), the right to exist the way that we want to, is incorporated into most documents of human rights.
It remains rooted in the idea that we can choose how we want to live. And that includes the right of Judaism to a state of its own — predicated on the fact that no matter how the other nations of the world may have been polite, supportive, and helpful, there are within them, many who wish to see the destruction of the Jewish state and for that reason, they remind me of pigs. Yet most people love pigs.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to face an existential threat. The war in Gaza and its casualties continues. China is rearming Iran as fast as it can. North Korea and Pakistan are offering nuclear support. They are encouraging Iran to go on with its attempted genocide of Israel. Much of what is left of the Jewish community in Iran is either already dead or imprisoned. There is still no end to this. We have to stay strong.
Nothing remains static. That’s what we can learn from history. For all the fine theories, expert opinions, and predictions, we never know for certain how things will work out. And yet we soldier on. We cannot rest on our laurels. In the first battle the Israelites fought against Amalek it was Moshe holding his hands up high that made us realize that it is not by physical strength alone — but with spirit — that wars are won.
The author is a writer and rabbi in New York.
The post Why Pig Is Not Kosher and the Hidden Face of Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jews, Israelis Targeted in Austria Amid Surge in Antisemitic Incidents; Local Jewish Community Calls for Action
Illustrative: Pro-Palestinian protesters shout slogans and hold flags during a demonstration against Israel’s military action in the Gaza strip, in Vienna, July 20, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
Austria is facing a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel rhetoric, prompting outrage from the country’s Jewish community and urgent calls for authorities to take swift action against growing anti-Jewish hatred.
On Saturday, a group of pro-Palestinian activists burst into the opening of the Salzburg Festival — one of the world’s premier events for opera, music, and drama — waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slogans.
As Austrian Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler began his opening speech at the event, six individuals stormed the stage, aggressively waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Blood on your hands!” along with other antisemitic slurs.
The Salzburg Festival.
A frenzied white Austrian on stage, screaming in German about those bloody J*ws.
I’m sure we’ve seen that before… pic.twitter.com/b6oNyTwZRT
— Joo
(@JoosyJew) July 28, 2025
The incident raised alarming questions about the event’s security, as the six protesters gained easy access while wearing fake, misspelled staff IDs with fictitious names, revealing a clear failure in background checks.
According to festival director Lukas Crepaz, security measures and control checks have been significantly strengthened. The six activists were arrested, and authorities continue to investigate the incident.
Elie Rosen, president of the Jewish Community (IKG) of Salzburg, Styria, and Carinthia, condemned the incident, calling the disruption of the Salzburg Festival’s opening a “targeted political provocation, carried by openly anti-Israel rhetoric.”
“Jewish life in Austria must not become the collateral damage of political agitation,” Rosen said in a statement. “We often hear powerful statements at commemorative events condemning antisemitism.”
“But where are Israel’s outspoken supporters when real solidarity is needed? Antisemitism takes many forms and frequently starts with the silence of the majority,” she continued. “Hatred toward Israel is not a legitimate form of protest.”
In a separate incident last week, an Israeli couple was denied access to a campsite in Ehrwald, a village in western Austria, after attempting to make a reservation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.
According to local media, the couple attempted to register at the campsite, but after revealing their Israeli passports, they were denied entry and asked to leave, forcing them to find alternative accommodations.
“We have no place for Jews here,” the campsite operator reportedly told them.
When asked for comment, the campsite operators told the German newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, “These people should much rather take care of the many children in Gaza. Otherwise, there is nothing to say.”
In another incident last week, a group of well-known Israeli classical musicians reported being refused service at a pizzeria in Vienna after staff overheard them speaking Hebrew.
One of the musicians recounted that while they were ordering their food, the waiter asked them which language they were speaking. When they replied Hebrew, the waiter allegedly told them, “In that case, leave. I’m not serving you food.”
“The initial shock and humiliation were profound. But what struck us even more deeply was what came next – or rather what didn’t. The people around us were clearly startled, some offered sympathetic glances … and then, quietly, they went back to their dinners, their conversations, their wine – as though nothing had happened,” one of the musicians wrote in a post on X.
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‘All of Our Strength’: Over 1,000 Pro-Israel Activists Gather in DC for Solidarity Conference
2025 Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit. Photo: ICC.
Over 1,000 Jewish students, faculty, and activists amassed in Washington, DC on July 27-29 to attend the Israel on Campus Coalition’s annual National Leadership Summit (NLS), an electric event which achieved creating the atmosphere of both a festival of Jewish elation and an academic conference.
Founded in 2002, the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) is a nonprofit organization that describes its mission as inspiring college students to defend and hold pride in the state of Israel. One of its major initiatives is the “microgrants” program, which helps pro-Israel campus groups organize events about Israeli culture and society. Another, the ICC Community Impact Fellowship, awards college students a $1,000 stipend for completing a leadership seminar in which they are trained in civic engagement, coalition building, and rapidly responding to antisemitic and anti-Israel events on their campuses.
Demand for a spot at this year’s 2025 conference exceeded the nonprofit’s capacity to host the thousands of students who signed up to be a conferee at what is recognized as the largest gathering of pro-Israel students in the country. Hundreds were waitlisted and encouraged to reapply next year. Those whom ICC did select were flown out to DC and billeted at the Capital Hilton, all expenses paid. They were joined – for the first time ever – by a delegation of faculty from the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) and staff from most major Jewish organization in the US, from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to StandWithUs (SWU).
“We just ultimately believe that we’re better when we use all of our strength as a movement,” ICC chief executive Jacob Baime told The Algemeiner on Monday during an interview. “And we’re not the only ones who feel that way. The other side does as well, having mounted a highly professionalized coalition, well-funded, well-coordinated effort with many groups involved. We need our partners and the different perspectives they hold too.”
When The Algemeiner last attended NLS, the world was not yet one year removed from Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the deadliest day in modern Jewish history since the Holocaust. Jewish students and ICC staff, many of whom have family members and friends who were affected by the atrocities or were later drafted into the war it precipitated, were still laboring to comprehend what had become a new and unprecedented world – one in which classic antisemitic tropes had resurfaced to corrupt public debate, anti-Jewish violence occurred daily across the world, and anti-Zionist groups were taking over college campuses and converting them into outposts of antisemitic hate.
As such the event aimed to inspire Jewish students “take back the campus,” an effort advanced by an infantry of social media influencers.
This year’s NLS leaned more heavily into supplying students with information, facts, and statistics curated and presented by the most accomplished Middle East scholars, government leaders, and nonprofit executives in the global pro-Israel community. Social media influencers and celebrities took the stage as well, showcasing their strengths as spirited advocates who remind students why the issues under discussion relate to their contemporary experiences as young people and consumers.
Speakers included Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law; Col. Miri Eisin of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute; Miriam Elman of the Academic Engagement Network; and Dr. Ayal Feinberg, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights. On offer as giveaways were Douglas Murray’s recently published polemic On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization and Dina Powell McCormick and David McCormick’s co-authored book, titled Who Believed in You?: How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World.
“We wanted students to engage with ideas that touch on the entirety of the campus ecosystem and the subjects they may be asked to comment on,” Baime explained to The Algemeiner. “Oct. 7, the war, and its aftermath have changed the American pro-Israel movement forever.”
The obverse side of the conference’s educational objectives was wholesome fun for the 800 college aged conferees in attendance. They were treated to a buoyant concert in the Hilton’s Presidential Ballroom featuring the jazz-pop fusion act “All of the Above” and the rapper Duvbear, an 18-year-old who is emblematic of what Generation-Z calls “rizz.” Celebrities such as former NBA player Meta World Peace, former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho, and professional boxer George Foreman III afforded the students quick meet and greets and selfies. Capital Hilton staff carted out pounds of food – Latin, Asian, and Kosher – from its kitchens every several hours, fostering opportunities for socializing and being photographed on an ICC-themed “red carpet.”
University of California, Davis rising junior Toby Jacob told The Algemeiner that the nonprofit’s strength is its staff.
“The staff here is so knowledgeable and so capable,” Jacob said. “It can feel really scary when you’re dealing with these like large scale issues in your student government, with your administration – and to have people who have the resources to walk you through it is vital.”
Tessa Veksler, an NLS 2025 moderator who became the most recognizable pro-Israel activist of Generation-Z after being elected the first Shabbat-observant president of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s student government, agreed.
“When I was on campus going through the worst of the worst, I knew that ICC had my back and that I could count on the staff and the organization to be there at a moment’s notice,” Veksler said. “They exceptionally equip students with the tools to be able to lead themselves, and so there is an expectation that if you are an ICC fellow that you take the tools ICC gives and put in the work to go and become involved in student government and be the person to make the impact.”
She continued, “It’s a remarkable thing, and there’s a reason why I have stayed as involved as I am.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Devastated’: Wesley LePatner, Killed in Manhattan Mass Shooting, Was a Jewish Communal, Philanthropic Leader
A man holding a rifle walks into an office building at 345 Park Avenue shortly before a shooting that killed several people, in the Midtown Manhattan district of New York City, US, July 28, 2025, in a still image taken from surveillance video. Photo: Surveillance Camera/Handout via REUTERS
Wesley LePatner, an executive at Blackstone and a Jewish communal leader, was one of the victims of the mass shooting in Midtown Manhattan on Monday that killed four people and wounded a fifth in addition to the shooter, who died by suicide.
LePatner, 43, was an active member of the Jewish community and served on the UJA Federation of New York’s board of directors, which said it is “devastated by the tragic loss.”
“Wesley was extraordinary in every way — personally, professionally, and philanthropically,” the federation wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “An exceptional leader in the financial world, she brought thoughtfulness, vision, and compassion to everything she did. In 2023, we honored her with the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award at our Wall Street Dinner, recognizing her commitment to our community and her remarkable achievements, all the more notable as a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field.”
In her acceptance speech, LePatner said, “Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I would be up on this stage two decades later [after attending her first UJA Wall Street dinner]. UJA has many super-powers, but its most important in my view is its power to create a sense of community and belonging, and that ability to create a sense of community and belonging matters now more than ever.”
She also explained that “UJA stepped in early and fixed my feeling out of place by connecting me with senior Goldman Sachs women who were further along in their careers and personal lives, but equally committed to their Jewish community and identity.”
“I was an American,” she said, “but I was first and foremost Jewish.”
LePatner was also a supporter of Israel, leading a solidarity mission with UJA after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“In the wake of Oct. 7, Wesley led a solidarity mission with UJA to Israel, demonstrating her enduring commitment in Israel’s moment of heartache,” the UJA Federation of New York said in its statement. “She lived with courage and conviction, instilling in her two children a deep love for Judaism and the Jewish people.”
In addition to serving on the board of directors of the New York UJA, she was also on the board of trustees at The Abraham Joshua Heschel School — a pluralistic Jewish day school in New York. The Forward reported that school representatives wrote in an email that “there are no right words for this unfathomable moment of pain and loss.”
“It was a rare z’chut, a rare privilege, to know Wesley and to learn from her. She was a uniquely brilliant and modest leader and parent, filled with wisdom, empathy, vision, and appreciation,” they continued.
David Greenfield, CEO of the Met Council, posted on X that “Wesley was an amazing person who was also tremendously talented leader. She volunteered with her kids [at the Met Council] to feed those in need.”
LePatner graduated from Yale summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and met her husband on the first day of school in 1999.
She is survived by her husband and two children.