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‘An epidemic of hate’: Biden administration officials meet with Jewish leaders to tackle rising antisemitism
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Top Biden administration officials launched a roundtable on antisemitism on Wednesday by describing a “rising tide of antisemitism” and likening the atmosphere in the United States to that of Europe, where Jewish worship is held under lock and key.
“Right now, there is an epidemic of hate facing our country,” said Douglas Emhoff, the Jewish second gentleman, who convened and chaired the 90-minute session.
Jewish officials represented at the meeting were impressed by how comprehensive the meeting was, saying it went beyond the white supremacist threat that the Biden administration has focused on in the past to other sources, among them attackers who target the visibly Orthodox and Jewish students on campuses.
The meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, comes on the heels of weeks of antisemitic invective spewed by rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, and the dinner attended last month by West, Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and former President Donald Trump at Trump’s Florida residence. The discussion also follows alarming spikes in antisemitic invective on Twitter and other platforms.
“In my experience, there’s nothing more vicious than what we’re seeing today,” said Susan Rice, President Joe Biden’s top domestic policy adviser, who described growing up in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Washington, D.C.
Ten years ago, Rice said, when she was defending Israel against its many enemies as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she did not imagine a threat to Jews domestically. Now she says she hears antisemitic expressions coming from elected officials, public figures and entertainers, calling it an “incredible rising tide.”
Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department envoy to monitor antisemitism, said she no longer has the luxury of her predecessors, who traveled abroad to assess antisemitism in foreign countries. Now, she said, she had to treat the problem as a domestic and a foreign one.
“I can’t go to these countries and say ‘You have a problem,’” she said. “Now I have to say ‘We have a serious problem.’”
After multiple attacks on synagogues stateside in recent years, she said, Jewish places of worship were becoming more visibly fortified than they were for years when security, if it existed, was unobtrusive and synagogues were welcoming.
“For decades, when we traveled in Europe, we used to identify synagogues by gendarmes,” she said. “Now we see police cars, now we lock the doors in the United States.”
The Kanye West episodes evidently helped spur the convening of the meeting. George Selim, the Anti-Defamation League senior vice president who was present, said the meeting came together within a week, unlike similar events which can take months to organize.
“The urgency was clear, the meeting needed to be convened, it needed to be in person,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview.
Representatives of the dozen or so groups that attended were impressed by the level of attention: in addition to Emhoff, Rice and Lipstadt, there were officials from the National Security Council, the Officer of Public Engagement, and the Office of Faith-based Partnerships.
The representatives were impressed by how personal Emhoff, who is married to Vice President Kamala Harris, made the battle. He described how moved he has been by American Jews who are proud of him — the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president. “I’m in pain right now, our community is in pain,” he said.
Emhoff’s unabashed identification with the Jewish community helped elevate the issue of combating antisemitism, said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad).
“He and I might see Jewish ritual and practice a little differently. But one thing Jewish people will remember forever in our history is that when the time came for him to make his decision, he decided to identify unequivocally as a Jew,” Shemtov said.
Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, the group that underwrote successful lawsuits against the neo-Nazis who organized the deadly 2017 march in Charlottesville, Virginia, said the officials closely listened to every presentation. (The media was present for opening remarks by government officials, and was ushered out so the representatives of Jewish groups could speak freely.)
“We were watching them take copious notes, they were genuinely listening,” she told JTA.
The range of invitees and the topics addressed also extended beyond the threat posed to Jews from the extreme right, an area that has until now been the Biden administration’s focus, through a summit on extremism in September and a speech Biden gave in Philadelphia last summer.
Speakers addressed antisemitic attacks on the visibly Orthodox which, particularly in the New York area, are most often not carried out by white supremacists. And there were officials from at least three groups that represent the visibly Orthodox: The Orthodox Union, which is Modern Orthodox, along with Agudath Israel of America and American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), which are haredi Orthodox.
Speakers also were sensitive to the plight of Jewish students on college campuses, who often face hostility from peers whose sharp criticism of Israel can sometimes manifest as antisemitism.
“On college campuses, the supposed bastions of liberal ideas and ideals, many students believe it better to camouflage their Jewish identity,” Lipstadt said. One of the speakers was Julia Jassey, a senior at the University of Chicago who is the CEO of Jewish on Campus, a student group that tracks antisemitism on campuses.
The Jewish participants said they benefited from hearing how others experienced antisemitism. Abba Cohen, Aguda’s Washington director, said he found receptive listeners when he described an increased effort by local councils to limit the building of Orthodox communities. He and Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union, also described the threat to the visibly Orthodox.
Their accounts moved others present who do not live the Orthodox lifestyle. “We all have different experiences with antisemitism and clearly for someone who’s Orthodox, it might feel different than for someone who’s not,” said Sheila Katz, the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women.
Katz said the meeting was a relief because she often has difficulty explaining to her progressive allies why antisemitism persists as a threat.
“I feel like in the last, you know, year, I’ve been saying over and over again, this is getting worse. This is getting amplified, people are emboldened,” she said. “And there are a lot, particularly in the progressive community that would say, ‘No, no, that’s not what’s happening.’”
Some practical proposals were discussed, including a letter this week from a bipartisan slate of lawmakers advocating for a cross-agency “whole of government” task force to combat antisemitism, and an expansion of federal funding that currently underwrites security upgrades for Jewish institutions to include paying for extra police patrols.
The meeting did not result in concrete decisions, but participants said they left with the impression that the federal government was ready to dive deep into finding practicable solutions.
“For me, this is not the end. This is just the beginning of this conversation,” Emhoff said.
Other groups represented included the American Jewish Committee, Hillel International, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Reform and Conservative movements, and Secure Community Network, the security consultancy for the Jewish community.
“It sends a very important message that the sort of rampant antisemitism we’re seeing is unacceptable and that the highest office in the country is doing something about it,” Spitalnick said.
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The post ‘An epidemic of hate’: Biden administration officials meet with Jewish leaders to tackle rising antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Why I went to Michigan to talk to Jewish voters about Abdul El-Sayed
I’d just climbed the steps to another home on my canvassing list, a lovely residence in the suburbs of Detroit, and rang the doorbell. I was there last week to talk with Jewish voters about the upcoming Michigan Senate election. The woman who answered asked me to come inside, and I demurred, telling her that my project discourages its volunteers from accepting such invitations, for safety reasons. She was petite and elderly, with a soft, open face. She reminded me of my long deceased mother. We chit-chatted a little, then I got down to brass tacks. “What are your feelings about the race?” I asked. “About Abdul El-Sayed?”
Her face sagged. “You’re too late,” she said. “My husband and I already voted. For Mike Rogers. And I feel terrible!” She looked like she was about to cry. “Please,” she said, “Come inside.” I relented (but didn’t sit down on her sofa).
The Michigan race pits El-Sayed, a progressive young Democrat, against Rogers, a Republican former Congress member who is closely allied with Donald Trump. As a New Yorker, I don’t have a vote in the election. But I came to Michigan as a Jew who is increasingly frightened by the threat posed by MAGA and horrified by what Trump-think and Trump power is doing, and not just to immigrants, people of color, sexual and gender minorities, middle-class and working people, students, intellectuals, and those whose jobs and civic activity nurture liberal and progressive causes.
I’m also worried about us Jews.
We are disproportionately members of the communities I just listed. We are also vulnerable to antisemitic acts and policies, which appear to be increasing. (At my shul on Rosh Hashanah I was chilled to find flyers placed by the Siddurs, instructing how to hide or flee if a terrorist were to enter the sanctuary.) And we are vulnerable to the politics of Christian nationalism. I grew up in Texas in the 1950s and 1960s. I vividly recall being made to sing “The Crusaders’ Hymn” in grade school and memorize the words (“Onward Christians soldiers, marching as to war. With the cross of Jesus, going on before!”). Making public school kids do this is now illegal. But for how long?
Mike Rogers’ campaign gets much of its money from a rich Texan named Tim Dunn, a Christian nationalist who wants to abolish public schools. Not long ago, Dunn told a member of the Texas legislature — a Jew — that Jews should not hold major political office.
El-Sayed, on the other hand, is a public health expert with a long history of activism for progressive causes. A native-born American, he went to a suburban Detroit high school where he was on the football team and had many Jewish classmates. He has repeatedly said that the fact that he is Muslim is merely incidental to the fact that he is an American who deeply respects the rights guaranteed to everyone in this country under the U.S. Constitution — including to worship, or not, as one pleases.
Polling shows El-Sayed leading Rogers, but the margin of error puts them very close, and the race is tightening. Pundits say that if El-Sayed loses, the Senate could remain Republican. But if he wins, it would signal to the whole country that the Democratic Party is entering a new phase of progressivism — one prefigured by Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City.
Like El-Sayed, Mamdani is a Muslim who sharply criticizes the Israeli government. And though many New York City Jews are wary of him, his main opponent during his campaign, Andrew Cuomo, wasn’t part of MAGA or surrounded by antisemites, as Mike Rogers is. I’d canvassed for Mamdani, and the stakes are much higher in Michigan. So I decided to spend five days in suburban Detroit as part of a joint canvassing effort by Jews in Seed the Vote, Bend the Arc Action, IfNotNow Movement, and Michigan United Action. Our goal was to knock on doors and share our own stories with fellow Jews.
Mine is that my maternal grandparents fled here from the Pale of Settlement, and my mother told me about my grandmother escaping a pogrom after her parents dressed her with a large cross around her neck, and paid a peasant to hide her under hay in a cart. She was fifteen years old when the pogrom happened — prime age for a Jewish girl to be raped.
She and her extended family made it to Pittsburgh. To the United States, the capital of democracy and pluralism. In all of history, Jews have never done so well as we have under democracies like this one. We’ve become so comfortable, as one Detroit-area rabbi remarked in his Kol Nidre sermon this year, that his community’s biggest intramural argument used to be over where to get the best bagels.
Then a Lebanese-American man whose relatives had just been killed by an Israeli air strike on Lebanon drove a truck into Temple Israel, a metro-Detroit synagogue. Dozens of preschoolers were inside. No one was hurt, but the building was damaged. El-Sayed, quickly made a lengthy statement condemning the culprit’s inexcusable antisemitism and vowing to support Jewish safety. But he also tried to explain the man’s terrorism. “Hurt people hurt people,” he said.
He later apologized for introducing political context so soon. But months later, his words still anger some people with whom I spoke. One woman glared, said she had grandchildren at the synagogue preschool, and slammed the door on me. Other canvassers described a man in a car who saw their t-shirts, sporting slogans like “Jews for Shared Safety,” and screamed that if he were to see El-Sayed and his family on fire right now across the street, he would do nothing to help them. He added that he was on the board of a shul.
Rogers’ campaign and its supporters are flooding TV and the social media with material excoriating El-Sayed as a dangerous Islamic fundamentalist and antisemite. AIPAC has also painted him as a threat to Jews, and spent over $30 million attacking him to defeat him in the primary. El-Sayed won anyway, but Michigan’s Jews remain saturated with a miasma of anti-El-Sayed propaganda. The woman who reminded me of my mother said she voted for Rogers because her father was a Holocaust survivor and she had to put Israel first, even though she knew Rogers could “roll back everything, including civil rights and abortion rights, that we Jews have worked so hard for. And even though I’ve never voted Republican in my life!”
I also canvassed Jews who were enthusiastically voting for El-Sayed. Other supporters, though, were terribly conflicted. At one door, a person — I won’t say their gender because they were so anxious about being identified — told me they are high up in local, Jewish-inflected Democratic Party politics. (I looked them up later and verified this.)
They, too, invited me into the sanctum of their home, as though afraid for the neighbors to see them talking with me. “I voted for El-Sayed,” they said. “But it was a horrible decision to have to make!” They strongly agreed with me about the need to vote for him, but they didn’t want their Jewish bigwig colleagues to know. “Half of them would never speak to me again,” they said. “What about your personal friends?” I asked. “Could you talk to them about the need to vote for El-Sayed?” “Yes,” they said. “I can do that.”
“This is what canvassing is about,” I told myself as I left.
Some Jewish bigwigs who openly support El-Sayed have been holding wine-and-cheese house parties for the un-decideds. Michigan Jews for Democracy sponsors these intimate gatherings. I went to one last week, at the house of Elaine Driker, formerly board president of Hillel of Metro Detroit. Former Michigan Congress member and political progressive Andy Levin addressed the group.
The setting was a cozy living room. To ensure that attendees felt comfortable voicing their feelings, journalists were told they could quote the speakers, but questions from the audience were off the record unless the individuals asking them agreed later to be quoted. The attendees were engaged, intent, and split, with some expressing strong support for El-Sayed and others venting reservations.
At the end. Levin summed things up. “We’re here struggling as Jews,” he told the audience. With young progressives entering the Democratic Party, he added, “We are really coming into a new era of politics in the United States, and I’m really hopeful about it.” He talked of the need to elect El-Sayed, then “hold him to be a great senator for the Jewish community.” Yes, he is a Muslim, Levin noted, and that is good. He added that, for Jews as for everyone, pluralism in government “has been great for us.”
This election in Michigan, Levin concluded, is “a time of great wrestling with God. Of wrestling with each other.” Then we all repaired to a room to eat brie and fine bread and wrestle some more.
The post Why I went to Michigan to talk to Jewish voters about Abdul El-Sayed appeared first on The Forward.
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Noah Wyle, TV’s nice Jewish doctor, is People’s Sexiest Man Alive
(JTA) — Noah Wyle, the Jewish actor who both mends and steals hearts as a doctor on the hit HBO Max medical drama “The Pitt,” has been named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.
Tuesday’s announcement described the actor’s “smoldering intensity” and “leading-man looks,” while noting that “he loves to do the dishes.”
Wyle, 55, told People he initially thought the news was “a classic set-up for a prank.” His wife, Sara Wells, helped persuade him to accept the honor, he said, because she believes his qualities as a husband and father are worth celebrating.
The actor, who starred in the ’90s medical drama “ER,” is enjoying a career resurgence as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the brilliant, troubled emergency-room physician at the center of “The Pitt.” The role has earned Wyle two consecutive Emmy Awards for outstanding lead actor in a drama series, along with renewed attention to his own Jewish heritage.
As JTA reported last year, Wyle drew on his father’s Russian-Jewish background in helping create Robby, his first Jewish character. The doctor wears a Star of David necklace and, in a pivotal scene in the show’s first season, clutches it while reciting the Shema, a central Jewish prayer, during an emotional crisis.
Wyle, whose father is Jewish and mother is Episcopalian, did not grow up in a religious household. But in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle this year, he said Judaism had become more relevant to his life through the show and that his daughter, then 10, has expressed the most interest to “pick up the mantle of Judaism.” She helped him with the pronunciation of the Shema, he said, and her bat mitzvah has been scheduled.
Wyle has also brought Jewish history into “The Pitt.” In an episode he wrote for the show’s second season, a patient with ties to the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Wyle said portraying a Jewish character offered an opportunity to present a humanist and healer at a time of heightened antisemitism. “I have come to learn that the world’s knowledge of Jews comes through depictions of them in the media,” he told the Jewish Chronicle.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says defending Israel would be ‘a lot easier’ if Netanyahu loses
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an incumbent Democrat running for reelection, said it would be “a lot easier” for her to defend Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loses Tuesday’s election. New York has the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel and is home to many ex-pat Israelis.
In an interview with Politico magazine published as Israelis headed to the polls, Hochul suggested that Netanyahu’s “overreach” in the Gaza war has become an obstacle to Israel’s international standing and that his government policies have killed any prospects for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
“I believe we have to get people of goodwill who can make this happen, and as long as Netanyahu is sitting there, that is not in his interest to do that,” Hochul said. “It’s just not, and it won’t happen.”
Hochul has remained a strong supporter of Israel despite growing criticism of the country within her party. She was the first foreign elected official to visit Israel shortly after Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 and criticized the pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
In 2024, she came under fire for making an analogy to her hometown, Buffalo, in defending Israel’s military campaign against Hamas amid mass Palestinian casualties in Gaza.
“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry my friends, there would be no Canada the next day,” she said in remarks to Jewish leaders, first reported by the Forward. “That’s a natural reaction. You have a right to defend yourself and to make sure it never happens again.” Immediately after it was publicized, Hochul apologized for implying that Israel had a right to destroy Gaza.
Hochul recalled in the interview privately warning Israeli officials during her visit to Israel that the country would lose international support.
“The world is with you when it comes to the brutal assault by a terrorist organization known as Hamas on innocent Israeli people,” Hochul said she told Israeli officials. “An overreach could change that dynamic, and that’s what’s happened.”
The Democratic governor also suggested that if Netanyahu continues as prime minister, it could complicate the prospects of a Jewish Democrat winning the party’s presidential nomination in 2028. The Israeli leader would remain “a lightning rod,” comparing his political survival instincts to those of President Donald Trump. “Who knows what he’s going to do next for self-preservation,” she said.
Closely watching the Israeli election
Hochul’s remarks came as Israelis voted in their first national election since Oct. 7, 2023, with unusually high turnout raising the possibility that participation could exceed 80%, a level not seen since the early 1970s.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is fighting to remain in power after nearly two decades in office. Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the security failures that allowed the Oct. 7 attack, while his supporters credit him with confronting Hamas and Iran. Recent polls suggest Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition could fall short of the 61 seats needed to form a government. His main challenger is Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief whose son and two nephews were killed in the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s campaign slogan, “It’s the right or Palestine,” taps into post-Oct. 7 fears about the establishment of a Palestinian state, warning that an Eisenkot-led government dependent on Arab support will lead to Palestinian statehood. But a Netanyahu defeat would not necessarily bring the changes Hochul wants. Eisenkot and other opposition leaders like Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman also oppose a Palestinian state.
A balancing act
Hochul’s comments also reflect the political challenge she faces at home, where she has maintained strong ties with Jewish leaders while working closely with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a fierce critic of Israel.
Hochul endorsed Mamdani last year after staying neutral during the Democratic primary. But she has continued to distance herself from the mayor on issues of antisemitism and Israel, which has left many Jewish New Yorkers uneasy. Her most recent state budget included a measure establishing a buffer zone around houses of worship to prevent disruptive protests from blocking access, an issue on which Mamdani had raised objections.
In the Politico interview, Hochul said Mamdani had brought “new energy” to the party, even as she acknowledged their disagreements. “Again, differences on approaches to the Jewish community, Israel and all that — that’s another topic,” she said.
A recent poll found that 65% of Jews in New York City disapproved of the mayor’s handling of antisemitism, while Hochul received 54% approval.
Hochul is seeking reelection against Republican Bruce Blakeman, the Jewish Nassau County executive, who has made support for Israel and opposition to antisemitism central themes of his campaign. But Blakeman has struggled to match the support former Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin received from Jewish voters and Hasidic voting blocs four years ago.
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