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How Jewish comedy found religion, from Philip Roth to ‘Broad City’
(JTA) — In the 2020 comedy “Shiva Baby,” a 20-something young woman shows up at a house of Jewish mourners and gently offers her condolences. When she finds her mother in the kitchen, they chat about the funeral and the rugelach before the daughter asks, “Mom, who died?”
While “Shiva Baby” explores themes of sexuality and gender, the comedy almost never comes at the expense of Jewish tradition, which is treated seriously by its millennial writer and director Emma Seligman (born in 1995) even as the shiva-goers collide. It’s far cry from the acerbic way an author raised during the Depression like Philip Roth lampooned a Jewish wedding or a baby boomer like Jerry Seinfeld mocked a bris.
These generational differences are explored in Jenny Caplan’s new book, “Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials.” A religion scholar, Caplan writes about the way North American Jewish comedy has evolved since World War II, with a focus on how humorists treat Judaism as a religion. Her subjects range from writers and filmmakers who came of age shortly after the war (who viewed Judaism as “a joke at best and an actual danger at worst”) to Generation X and millennials, whose Jewish comedy often recognizes “the power of community, the value of family tradition, and the way that religion can serve as a port in an emotional storm.”
“I see great value in zeroing in on the ways in which Jewish humorists have engaged Jewish practices and their own Jewishness,” Caplan writes. “It tells us something (or perhaps it tells us many somethings) about the relationship between Jews and humor that goes deeper than the mere coincidence that a certain humorist was born into a certain family.”
Caplan is the chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She has a master’s of theological studies degree from Harvard Divinity School and earned a Ph.D. in religion from Syracuse University.
In a conversation last week, we spoke about the Jewishness of Jerry Seinfeld, efforts by young women comics to reclaim the “Jewish American Princess” label, and why she no longer shows Woody Allen movies in her classrooms.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity
[Note: For the purpose of her book and our conversation, this is how Caplan isolates the generations: the Silent Generation (b. 1925-45), the baby boom (1946-65), Generation X (1966-79) and millennials (1980–95).]
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Let me ask how you got into this topic.
Jenny Caplan: I grew up in a family where I was just sort of surrounded by this kind of material. My dad is a comedic actor and director who went to [Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s] Clown College. My degrees were more broadly in American religion, not Jewish studies, but I was really interested in the combination of American religion and popular culture. When I got to Syracuse and it came time to start thinking about my larger project and what I wanted to do, I proposed a dissertation on Jewish humor.
The key to your book is how Jewish humor reflects the Jewish identity and compulsions of four sequential generations. Let’s start with the Silent Generation, which is sandwiched between the generation whose men were old enough to fight in World War II and the baby boomers who were born just after the war.
The hallmark of the Silent Generation is that they were old enough to be aware of the war, but they were mostly too young to serve. Every time I told people what I was writing about, they would say Woody Allen or Philip Roth, two people of roughly the same generation.
In “Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials,” Jenny Caplan explores how comics treated religion from the end of World War II to the 21st century. (Courtesy)
The Roth story you focus on is “Eli, the Fanatic” from 1959, about an assimilated Jewish suburb that is embarrassed and sort of freaks out when an Orthodox yeshiva, led by a Holocaust survivor, sets up in town.
Roth spent the first 20 to 30 years of his career dodging the claim of being a self-loathing Jew and bad for the Jews. But the actual social critique of “Eli, the Fanatic” is so sharp. It is about how American Jewish comfort comes at the expense of displaced persons from World War II and at the expense of those for whom Judaism is a real thriving, living religious practice.
That’s an example you offer when you write that the Silent Generation “may have found organized religion to be a dangerous force, but they nevertheless wanted to protect and preserve the Jewish people.” I think that would surprise people in regards to Roth, and maybe to some degree Woody Allen.
Yeah, it surprised me. They really did, I think, share that postwar Jewish sense of insecurity about ongoing Jewish continuity, and that there’s still an existential threat to the ongoing existence of Jews.
I hear that and I think of Woody Allen’s characters, atheists who are often on the lookout for antisemitism. But you don’t focus on Allen as the intellectual nebbish of the movies. You look at his satire of Jewish texts, like his very funny “Hassidic Tales, With a Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar” from 1970, which appeared in The New Yorker. It’s a parody of Martin Buber’s “Tales of the Hasidim” and sentimental depictions of the shtetl, perhaps like “Fiddler on the Roof.” A reader might think he’s just mocking the tradition, but you think there’s something else going on.
He’s not mocking the tradition as much as he’s mocking a sort of consumerist approach to the tradition. There was this sort of very superficial attachment to Buber’s “Tales of the Hasidim.” Allen’s satire is not a critique of the traditions of Judaism, it’s a critique of the way that people latch onto things like the Kabbalah and these new English translations of Hasidic stories without any real depth of thought or intellect. Intellectual hypocrisy seems to be a common theme in his movies and in his writing. It’s really a critique of organized religion, and it’s a critique of institutions, and it’s a critique of the power of institutions. But it’s not a critique of the concept of religion.
The idea of making fun of the wise men and their gullible followers reminds me of the folk tales of Chelm, which feature rabbis and other Jewish leaders who use Jewish logic to come to illogical conclusions.
Yes.
You write that the baby boomers are sort of a transition between the Silent Generation and a later generation: They were the teenagers of the counterculture, and warned about the dangers of empty religion, but also came to consider religion and tradition as valuable. But before you get there, you have a 1977 “Saturday Night Live” skit in which a bris is performed in the back seat of a luxury car, and the rabbi who performs it is portrayed as what you call an absolute sellout.
Exactly. You know: Institutional religion is empty and it’s hollow, it’s dangerous and it’s seductive.
Jerry Seinfeld, born in 1954, is seen as an icon of Jewish humor, but to me is an example of someone who never depicts religion as a positive thing. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
“Seinfeld” is more a show about New York than it is necessarily a show about anything Jewish. The New York of Seinfeld is very similar to the New York of Woody Allen, peopled almost entirely by white, middle-class, attractive folks. It’s a sort of Upper West Side myopia.
But there’s the bris episode, aired in 1993, and written by Larry Charles. Unless you are really interested in the medium, you may not know much about Larry Charles, because he stays behind the camera. But he also goes on to do things like direct Bill Maher’s anti-religion documentary “Religulous,” and there’s a real strong case for him as having very negative feelings about organized religion which feels like a holdover from the Silent Generation. And so in that episode you have Kramer as the Larry Charles stand-in, just opining about the barbaric nature of the circumcision and trying to save this poor baby from being mutilated.
The few references to actual Judaism in “Seinfeld” are squirmy. I am thinking of the 1995 episode in which a buffoon of a rabbi blurts out Elaine’s secrets on a TV show. That was written by Larry David, another boomer, whose follow-up series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is similarly known for its irreverence toward Judaism. But you say David can also surprise you with a kind of empathy for religion.
For the most part, he’s classic, old school, anti-organized religion. There’s the Palestinian Chicken episode where the Jews are rabidly protesting the existence of a Palestinian-run chicken restaurant near a Jewish deli, and where his friend Funkhouser won’t play golf on Shabbos until Larry gets permission by bribing the rabbi with the Palestinian chicken. There, rabbis are ridiculous and can be bought and religion is hollow and this is all terrible.
But then there’s this bat mitzvah montage where for one moment in the entire run of this show, Larry seems happy and in a healthy relationship and fulfilled and enjoying life.
That’s where he falls in love with Loretta Black during a bat mitzvah and imagines a happy future with her.
It’s so startling: It is the most human we ever see Larry over the run of the show, and I believe that was the season finale for the 2007 season. It was much more in line with what we’ve been seeing from a lot of younger comedians at that point, which was religion as an anchor in a good way — not to pull you down but to keep you grounded.
So for Generation X, as you write, Judaism serves “real, emotional, or psychological purpose for the practitioners.”
I wouldn’t actually call it respect but religion is an idea that’s not just something to be mocked and relegated to the dustbin. I’m not saying that Generation X is necessarily more religious, but they see real power and value in tradition and in certain kinds of family experiences. So, a huge amount of the humor can still come at the expense of your Jewish mother or your Jewish grandmother, but the family can also be the thing that is keeping you grounded, and frequently through some sort of religious ritual.
Who exemplifies that?
My favorite example is the 2009 Jonathan Tropper novel, “This Is Where I Leave You.” I’m so disappointed that the film adaptation of that sucked a lot of the Jewish identity out of the story, so let’s stick with the novel. In that book, where a family gathers for their father’s shiva, the characters are horrible people in a dysfunctional family writ large. They lie to each other. They backstab each other. But in scene where the protagonist Judd describes standing up on the bimah [in synagogue] to say Kaddish [the Mourner’s Prayer] after the death of his father, and the way he talks about this emotional catharsis that comes from saying the words and hearing the congregation say the words — it’s a startling moment of clarity in a book where these characters are otherwise just truly reprehensible.
Adam Sandler was born in 1966, the first year of Generation X, and his “Chanukah Song” seems like such a touchstone for his generation and the ones that follow. It’s not about religious Judaism, but in listing Jewish celebrities, it’s a statement of ethnic pride that Roth or Woody Allen couldn’t imagine.
It’s the reclamation of Jewish identity as something great and cool and fun and hip and wonderful and absolutely not to be ashamed of.
From left, Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson and Seth Green in an episode of “Broad City” parodying Birthright Israel. (Screenshot from Comedy Central)
Which brings us to “Broad City,” which aired between 2014 and 2019. It’s about two 20-something Jewish women in New York who, in the case of Ilana Glazer’s character, anyway, are almost giddy about being Jewish and embrace it just as they embrace their sexuality: as just liberating. Ilana even upends the Jewish mother cliche by loving her mother to death.
That’s the episode with Ilana at her grandmother’s shiva, which also has the B plot where Ilana and her mother are shopping for underground illegal handbags. They spend most of the episode snarking at each other and fighting with each other and her mother’s a nag and Ilana is a bumbling idiot. But at the moment that the cops show up, and try to nab them for having all of these illegal knockoff handbags, the two of them are a team. They are an absolute unit of destructive force against these hapless police officers.
I think all of your examples of younger comics are women, who have always had fraught relationships with Jewish humor, both as practitioners and as the target of jokes. You write about “The JAP Battle” rap from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” which both leans into the stereotype of the Jewish-American Princess — spoiled, acquisitive, “hard as nails” — and tries to reclaim it without the misogyny.
Rachel Bloom’s character Rebecca in “Girlfriend” self-identifies as a JAP, but she doesn’t actually fit the category. It’s her mother, Naomi, who truly is the Philip Roth, “Marjorie Morningstar,” Herman Wouk model of a JAP. So Bloom is kind of using the term, but you can’t repurpose the term when the original is still there.
So as an alternative, I offer up a new term: the Modern Ashkenazi American Woman. It’s very New York, it’s very East Coast, it’s very particular to a type of upbringing and community that in the 1950s and ’60s would have been almost exclusively Conservative Jews, and then may have become a bit more Reform as we’ve gotten into the ’90s and 2000s. They went to the JCC. They probably went to Jewish summer camp.
But even that doesn’t even really speak to the American sense of what Jewish is anymore, because American Jews have become increasingly racially and culturally diverse.
There is also something that’s happening historically with Generation X, and that’s the distance from the two major Jewish events of the 20th century, which is the Holocaust and the creation of Israel.
The Silent Generation and baby boomers still had a lingering sense of existential dread — the sense that we’re not so far removed from an attempted total annihilation of Jews. Gen X and millennials are so far removed from the Holocaust that they don’t feel that same fear.
But the real battleground we’re seeing in contemporary American Judaism is about the relationship to Israel. For baby boomers and even for some older members of Gen X, there’s still a sense that you can criticize Israel, but at the end of the day, it’s your duty to ultimately support Israel’s right to exist. And I think millennials and Zoomers [Gen Z] are much more comfortable with the idea of Israel being illegitimate.
Have you seen that in comedy?
I certainly think you can see the leading edge of that in some millennial stuff. The “Jews on a Plane” episode of “Broad City” is an absolute excoriation of Birthright Israel, and does not seem particularly interested in softening its punches about the whole idea of Jews going to Israel. I think we can see a trend in that direction, where younger American Jewish comedians do not see that as punching down.
You’re teaching a class on Jewish humor. What do your undergraduates find funny? Now that Woody Allen is better known for having married his adoptive daughter and for the molestation allegations brought by another adoptive daughter, do they look at his classic films and ask, “Why are you teaching us this guy?”
For the first time I’m not including Woody Allen. I had shown “Crimes and Misdemeanors” for years because I think it’s his most theological film. I think it’s a great film. And then a couple years ago, I backed off, because some students were responding that it was hard to look at him with all the baggage. He’s still coming up in conversation because you can’t really talk about the people who came after him without talking about him, but for the first time I’m not having them actually watch or read any of his stuff.
They have found things funny that I didn’t expect them to, and they have not found things funny that I would have thought they would. They laughed their way through “Yidl mitn fidl,” the 1936 Yiddish musical starring Molly Picon. I also thought they’d enjoy the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup” and they did not laugh once. Some of that is the fact that Groucho’s delivery is just so fast.
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The post How Jewish comedy found religion, from Philip Roth to ‘Broad City’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Nothing to Save’: Defections, Command Breakdown Grip Iran’s Security Forces as US-Israel Strikes Pound Regime
Images of Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei and late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are displayed at a gathering to support Mojtaba Khamenei, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 9, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
A taxi driver in Tehran this past week said he had picked up a commander from Iran’s Basij parliamentary force who, midway through the ride, hurled his mobile phone out the window into the rubble of a bombed building. The officer explained that many of his comrades in the Basij, the paramilitary organization operating under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were doing the same, hoping the Iranian regime would assume they had been killed.
The anecdote was relayed to The Algemeiner during a press briefing by Maneli Mirkhan — an Iranian strategist and founder of Dorna, an organization working on plans for a democratic transition in Iran — and reflected what she described as the “defection and collapse” of the regime’s forces of repression.
Similar stories abound in other reports from inside Iran. The French Le Monde newspaper recounted an incident in which a woman was caught by a neighbor, an intelligence services employee, while filming an airstrike. The man accused her of spying, and his wife called the police to report the “infidel,” the newspaper said.
“The irony: nobody answered. A mundane scene, but one that reveals much,” the article noted.
Mirkhan cautioned against overstating the regime’s immediate collapse, saying it remains in place. But “the confidence within the regime and within its ability to survive is no longer there,” she said.
The families of members of Iran’s security apparatus were increasingly urging their sons to stay home, she said, as targeted strikes by the joint US-Israeli operation hit bases used by repression units. According to her account, “several hundred” personnel linked to those forces were being killed daily in strikes on their facilities.
Among the targets in recent days was the IRGC’s Sarallah headquarters, a central node of Iran’s internal security system, as well as the headquarters of three brigades belonging to the Faraja special units, which handle crowd control and the suppression of protests.
With some facilities destroyed, units have begun moving into civilian infrastructure such as sports centers and other public buildings as backup bases and resting areas, she said. But the more immediate problem, according to Mirkhan, is that the chain of command is fraying.
Her organization, she said, is in contact with networks inside Iran to help provide exit strategies for members of the security forces who are seeking to defect. Most of those reaching out are rank-and-file personnel and mid-level commanders, she said.
“What we are witnessing is that they are disoriented because of a lack of clear command,” Mirkhan said.
She described what she called “moral fatigue” among regime forces, saying that in this environment state propaganda has been one of the few things still “giving them a bit of energy.” But even that, she said, is now being weakened as the system that carries and reinforces the regime’s messaging comes under pressure.
Mirkhan argued that expanding access to outside information — including through satellite television and internet connections — could further erode loyalty among security personnel by showing them there is “nothing to save anymore.”
She said the public response should be read in the context of the fighting. The Israel Defense Forces is warning Iranian civilians in some areas to stay home ahead of major strikes — similar to its policy in Gaza — and with attacks concentrated in specific zones, many people are not evacuating or gathering in the streets for now. But Mirkhan said that should not be mistaken for support for the regime or an absence of public anger.
“We saw it on the first night of strikes, when the news of [former Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei’s death was confirmed,” she said. “Even with lots of risk to their lives, people were in the street.”
Mirkhan outlined the war’s three aims — destroying the regime’s nuclear program, weakening its capacity for regional aggression, especially its missile arsenal, and opening space for Iranians themselves to bring down the regime. That last goal, she said, would not be achieved by military action alone.
“Regime change is not something that will be operated by the attacks,” she said. But the strikes can help “open the space where people can regain strength, can go out in more security, and build up what they need to bring down the regime and replace it.”
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An Inspiring Call for Unity Among All Jews
Jewish Americans and supporters of Israel gather at the National Mall in Washington, DC on Nov. 14, 2023 for the “March for Israel” rally. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, addressed congregants Friday night at Westchester Reform Temple, focusing on unity within the Jewish community and was introduced by the temple’s senior rabbi, Jonathan Blake. The tone they both struck was remarkably encouraging.
They both stressed the need for internal unity regardless of personal political beliefs and differences. This message was refreshing and paved a path towards unity among Jewish people by addressing the challenge of confronting antisemitism across the political spectrum, and not getting stuck on left-right divides.
The ADL leader said that antisemitism today appears across multiple parts of the political spectrum, and that confronting it requires responsibility from both sides of the ideological divide.
Rabbi Blake’s introduction addressed developments related to Iran and Israel, and urged congregants not to allow their personal political views about current administrations in either Israel or the United States to influence their assessment of the broader geopolitical challenges.
“The stakes are larger than partisan politics,” he said, emphasizing that moral clarity is necessary when confronting a regime that has supported terrorism, threatened nuclear breakout, and vowed the destruction of America, Israel, and supportive Gulf states.
During Greenblatt’s address, he compared the recent holiday of Purim to today’s events, and drew a contrast between the past and the present by pointing out the Jewish people’s ability to defend themselves today. He asked the audience to recognize the miracle of Israel’s existence and to not take it for granted. And it was really encouraging to hear the leader of the country’s largest antisemitism advocacy organization speak with moral clarity.
Greenblatt also spoke about Jewish identity and resilience, encouraging community members to remain engaged in Jewish life and communal institutions. He reminded the congregants that the ADL is still concerned about marginalized peoples, but must now focus on its own people, since Jewish people are being targeted.
His hopeful and positive tone is exactly what we need right now, as he urged attendees to “show up” for one another and for Jewish organizations as part of the broader effort to respond to rising antisemitism.
The event took place amid heightened concerns about antisemitic incidents globally, and ongoing conspiracy theories around Israel forcing the hand of the United States into this war. Rabbi Blake and Greenblatt delivered a warning — and also encouragement — exactly when it was needed. We must starkly confront the challenges we are facing — but also stay optimistic about the future — and both men did exactly that.
Daniel Rosen is a cofounder of Emissary4all. Emissary is a movement which seeks to utilize technology to organize individual individuals and communities to combat antisemitism online and off-line. You can follow him on Instagram at mindsandheartsunite
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How Colleges and K-12 Schools Are Marching Forward with an Anti-Israel Agenda
A pro-Hamas activist wears a keffiyeh while marching from the City University of New York to Columbia University. Photo: Eduardo Munoz via Reuters Connect
Universities continue to protest the Trump administration’s efforts to expunge DEI and rein in costs, while receiving help from Congress, which has restored funding to schools. Scientists in particular have resumed their complaints regarding Federal budget cuts and increased oversight, while the media have resumed stories about the economic and social impacts of cuts on sciences, states, and individuals.
The place of antisemitism in the priorities of the higher education industrial complex were reflected at the American Association of Colleges and Universities annual meeting. In contrast to the many sessions on DEI and artificial intelligence, only one was devoted to antisemitism, which was paired with the topic of “Islamophobia.”
In a sign that senior university leaders have simply decided to wait out the administration regardless of appearances, Georgetown Law School appointed Elizabeth Magill, former University of Pennsylvania president, as dean. Magill resigned her position after a disastrous appearance before Congress, where she failed to stand up to hate against Jewish students. The committee that appointed her at Georgetown was comprised largely of leading Democratic donors.
University pushback against pro-Hamas students continued at a lower rate in February. American University suspended its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter, which promised “resistance.” Students at Northwestern University who had rejected antisemitism training on the basis that it discriminated against them as Palestinians and Arabs — and who were subsequently suspended by the university — dropped their lawsuit.
Several court cases have challenged university efforts to discipline pro-Hamas protestors. In one, a district judge ordered the University of Massachusetts to lift the suspension of a student who organized a campus protest, arguing that his First Amendment rights had been breached. A judge also blocked the deportation of pro-Hamas activist and professional student Mohsen Madawi on procedural grounds. A Federal court also ordered the release of Tufts University graduate student and Hamas supporter Rümeysa Öztürk.
More positively, the New Jersey Superior Court has rejected Fairleigh Dickinson University’s effort to quash a lawsuit by a Jewish chaplain who had been disciplined for opposing an anti-Israel event on campus. Notably, the court rejected the university’s claim regarding precedent in a recent case involving MIT, in which a court held that antisemitic conduct motivated by “anti-Zionism” was protected as academic freedom.
Finally, a report from the Department of Education noted that Qatar had tripled its contributions to American universities in 2025. Some $1.2 billion was given to American universities, with Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A&M, and Northwestern, being the largest recipients.
Faculty Support for Hamas Remains High
Faculty support for Hamas remains high despite administration efforts to persuade or force fewer expressions of enthusiasm.
There was a presentation at the CUNY Law School entitled “The Underground in Gaza,” which claimed that Hamas tunnels used for terrorism are part of “resistance to colonization” and “decolonial land use.” This will be followed by a conference at CUNY Graduate Center on “Palestinian History Between Past and Present” featuring a number of prominent anti-Israel scholar-activists.
One notable development in February was a report detailing how the Mellon Foundation has reshaped humanities and social sciences faculties towards social justice and “scholar-activism.” The report noted that as Federal funding for the humanities was reduced over the past two decades, the Mellon Foundation, under the leadership of Elizabeth Alexander, had offered institutions funding to adapt research, courses, curriculums, and entire mission statements to comport with the foundation’s social justice emphasis. In doing so the foundation pushed scholarship which emphasized race, class, gender, and inequality, with an anti-Western bias.
The report, and another on humanities funding from the American Enterprise Institute, complements those showing how the Qatar Foundation has inserted itself into university operations including personnel decisions, particularly with respect to DEI, as a condition for grants.
Unsurprisingly, another report on the University of California found that while students are the most visible actors, faculty and academic departments are key institutional drivers of the hostile environment. At UCLA alone, some 155 faculty members have publicly endorsed BDS and dozens of departments issued statements in support of pro-Hamas encampments.
Seemingly cognizant of the perception of Middle East studies as the focal point for campus anti-Israel agitation, a Columbia University provost released a report recommending adding additional faculty and courses in Israel studies. At the same time, reports indicated that the leading candidates for the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies were all scholar-activists with minimal publication records who had expressed support for Hamas and other Palestinian factions.
One result of relentless antisemitism and anti-Zionism on campus is a widening crisis for Jewish faculty. A new poll indicates that 40% of faculty felt compelled to hide their identities, while a similar figure were considering leaving academia.
Student Attacks Against Jews Continue, If Down Slightly
On campus, harassment of Jewish and Israeli students appears to have declined somewhat as a result of restrictions on pro-Hamas protests. Off campus protests continue, as in the case of an anti-ICE event outside of Columbia University which featured the same students and faculty who had supported Hamas in 2025 and 2024. Anti-ICE protests organized by groups such as Students for a Democratic Society and others such as SJP chapters which had been at the center of pro-Hamas protests, have been noted at many campuses including the University of Minnesota, Cornell, and Columbia.
A serious incident took place at a cafe near DePaul University where Jewish students attending a Hillel event were harassed and eventually driven out by pro-Hamas students and staff. The university president later expressed outrage at the incident, which was another in a series which have taken place at the institution.
The Princeton SJP chapter canceled the appearance of anti-Israel speaker Norman Finkelstein and stated he might appear at another time. The university noted it had not barred Finkelstein.
BDS resolutions continue to be proposed in student governments despite the fact that they are opposed almost uniformly by administrations and trustees. Examples in February include:
- The University of Maryland student government passed its fourth anti-Israel resolution of the year. Student government at Maryland has been dominated by pro-Hamas activists for several years despite the school’s large Jewish population;
- A resolution in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln student government calling for divestment from weapons manufacturers passed after language specifically naming Israel was removed.
Campus disruptions of speakers deemed insufficiently hostile to Israel continued in February. One example was the disruption of a talk by left-wing journalist Ezra Klein at Sarah Lawrence College. Klein was called a “Zionist pig” and signs held by protestors included “Nazi” and “Sarah Lawrence, we know you; you protect Zionist Jews.” Sarah Lawrence president Cristle Collins Judd sat next to Klein on stage and did not intervene, but reportedly commented to him, “Welcome to Sarah Lawrence.”
Judd’s emailed condemnation of the incident elicited protests for the SJP chapter who accused her of “blatant lies wielded to vilify students and manufacture consent for disciplinary charges” and claimed Sarah Lawrence was attempting to “suppress dissent against Zionism and imperialism at any cost.” The group threatened retaliation if disciplinary procedures were taken.
A talk entitled “Being Jewish in America Today” at the University of Virginia Jewish studies program by writer Adam Kirsch was similarly disrupted by student protestors “resisting the Zionist speaker.” Neither Sarah Lawrence nor Virginia have taken disciplinary measures against students.
A new AJC/Hillel survey indicated that 42% of American Jewish students have experienced antisemitism on campus. Half reported feeling uncomfortable or unsafe, while 34% indicated they had refrained from displaying their Jewish identity. Some 69% stated that Israel was an important part of their identities and 80% of parents indicated that antisemitism was part of their decision where to send children to college.
What’s Happening in K-12 Schools
One notable development in February was the involvement of outside groups such as the Party of Socialism and Liberation in training and organizing student walkouts and anti-ICE protests. These groups have shifted from pro-Hamas to anti-ICE protests and make the explicit equation of “Gaza” with “Minneapolis.”
The same groups, along with the Sunrise Movement, Code Pink, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and others, are working with the DSA and teachers unions in cities like Dallas to celebrate Palestinian “resistance” and oppose the US government.
Teacher training remains a focal point for radicalization, particularly in connection with mandated ethnic studies curriculums. The Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium was awarded a contract by San Jose (CA) schools to train teachers. Lesson materials include materials on “Stolen Land” and “Youth Incarceration and Resistance in Palestine.” The leadership of the consortium include University of California ethnic studies faculty connected with the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.
The school system also paid teachers to attend the Xicanx Institute For Teaching and Organizing (XITO) Summer Institute which presented materials on “Teaching Border Imperialism From Turtle Island to Palestine: Ethnic Studies as a Tool For Liberation” and “Transformative Teaching: Interactive Read-Alouds and Art as an Entry Point For Teaching Palestine in K-5.”
The addition of Anti-Palestinian Racism (APR) as a pedagogical foundation and legal enforcement mechanism in Canadian schools, effectively enshrining the Palestinian narrative as unquestionable truth and criminalizing expressions of support for Israel and even visible expressions of Jewish identity, has cemented radicalism. Canadian journalists investigating APR trainings for teachers in Hamilton (ON) have been denied access to materials on the grounds that sharing it publicly would be a “Danger to Safety or Health.”
To complete the equation, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario has hired the anti-Zionist group Independent Jewish Voices to provide antisemitism training for teachers. The group “firmly rejects the use of IHRA, which distorts the definition of antisemitism to conflate political criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and perpetuates anti-Palestinian racism” and will be “including anti-Palestinian racism tools into the training.” Unsurprisingly, antisemitic acts in Ontario schools increased dramatically after October 7th.
Individual teachers also continue to instigate dramatically antisemitic incidents. In one case a Muslim San Diego teacher was fired after posting a video in which she accused Israel of “hijacking protests in order to do the same BS that they’re always doing — which is just stealing from people. And that includes everything from goods and services all the way down to the livers and kidneys and eyeballs.”
Conversely a teacher at the elite UN International School in New York was fired after complaining about harassment from Muslim teachers who made statements regarding how “Jews are driven by money.” The school, which educates children of UN officials, received a Qatari pledge of $60 million in 2023.
A newly filed lawsuit against the State of California on behalf of Jewish parents and children accuses the state of failing to address systemic antisemitism in local school districts including Berkeley, Los Angeles, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Campbell Union, Fremont, and Oakland. The suit alleges that Jewish students were subjected to antisemitic harassment from teachers and peers with administrators taking no action or supporting their attackers. The trajectory of California schools reflected in the lawsuit appears to match that of British schools, which have been overwhelmed by horrific antisemitism towards the relatively small number of Jewish students.
Finally, a new campaign by left-wing and pro-Hamas groups in Canada has targeted Jewish summer camps for their support of “genocide.” The effort seeks to strip accreditation from at least 17 camps across Canada “because they encourage support for a genocidal, settler-colonial state.” The groups include the Palestinian Canadian Congress, Just Peace Advocates, the Ontario Palestinian Rights Association, and PAJU Montreal. Jewish groups condemned the campaign, which the Ontario Camps Association called “discriminatory and antisemitic in nature.”
The author is a contributor to SPME, where a different version of this article appeared.