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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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In seismic party shift, nearly half of House Democrats vote to end aid to Israel
Cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel came closer than ever to becoming the majority position among House Democrats on Wednesday, a striking sign of how swiftly the party has shifted just months before the midterm elections that could determine control of Congress.
As many as 103 of 212 Democrats supported a measure to eliminate the $3.3 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, while 98 joined all Republicans in opposing the amendment proposed by Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a fierce Israel critic who lost the Republican primary in May. Another 10 Democrats abstained. It received more support than the Block the Bombs Act, which would only prohibit the sale of certain offensive weapons to Israel and has 77 co-sponsors.
The vote underscored that support for ending U.S. military aid to Israel is no longer confined to the Democratic Party’s progressive left.
Less than three years ago, only 37 members opposed an emergency defense package for Israel following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the start of the war in Gaza. Opposition to U.S. aid to Israel has now moved toward the Democratic mainstream, fueled by voter anger over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the wars in Gaza and Iran, a string of progressive primary victories and growing frustration with the influence of election spending by the group AIPAC in Democratic politics.
The vote marks a break from one of the last bipartisan consensuses on foreign policy: stalwart support for Israel as a U.S. ally.
Leadership and Jewish Democrats split
The Democratic leadership, Jewish members and Jewish organizations were split over Wednesday’s measure, which supporters described as an urgent message to the Israeli government to change course.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, hoping to become the chamber’s next speaker, opposed the amendment, arguing that cutting off all U.S. assistance to Israel would go too far and could also affect humanitarian aid for Palestinians. Still, he declined to pressure members to vote against the measure, and acknowledged the deep divisions within his caucus. Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the Democratic whip, and outgoing Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, supported the measure.
That balancing act and the overall vote may foreshadow an even bigger challenge should Democrats reclaim the House in November. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday found that 49% of Pennsylvania voters in the key presidential election battleground state believe the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left.
Ahead of the vote, Jeffries called to renegotiate the next memorandum of understanding between the United States and Israel to reflect what he described as a changed reality — a move welcomed by many Democrats. And he wasn’t humiliated by the outcome. But allowing nearly half the caucus to support even a symbolic vote to end aid could further empower the expanding democratic socialist bloc that may seek greater leverage in his upcoming speakership bid.
The vote also highlighted the growing diversity of views among Jewish members.
Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts, Becca Balint of Vermont, Sara Jacobs of California, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois all voted in favor. Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, co-chair of the Jewish Caucus, did not vote due to a family medical emergency. Nonetheless, he said in a lengthy statement, had he been present he’d have voted against the measure because it would have also cut funding for U.S.-backed peacebuilding programs.
Rep, Brad Schneider of Illinois, the other co-chair of the caucus, echoed Nadler’s concerns and added, “We must work to rebuild a bipartisan consensus that supports Israel’s security and sovereignty as a Jewish and democratic state, while also recognizing the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and ultimately statehood.”
Jewish organizations were similarly divided.
Democratic-allied groups, the Jewish Democratic Council of America and Democratic Majority for Israel, called Massie’s bill a “cynical political ploy” by Republican leaders to allow a vote to “drive a wedge within the Democratic Party.”
J Street, the pro-peace advocacy group, likewise opposed the amendment, while saying the level of support among Democrats reflected a dramatic shift in the old consensus in Washington.
The Union for Reform Judaism lobbied lawmakers to oppose the amendment, arguing that eliminating aid outright would undermine Israel’s security.
The New Jewish Narrative welcomed the vote. “The level of support for this amendment reflects a sea change in how Americans view the actions of the Israeli government,” the organization said in a statement. “We hope that our Israeli brothers and sisters take notice of this loud and clear statement and will take the necessary steps to change what their government is doing.”
What happens to AIPAC?
The vote presented one of the biggest strategic tests yet for AIPAC.
In recent years, the pro-Israel campaign fundraising organization and its affiliated super PAC invested heavily in Democratic primaries, aiming to elect and protect candidates supportive of military aid while drawing clear lines around who it considered friends of Israel.
Wednesday’s vote raises new questions about whether that approach can still hold.
One early sign came from Rep. Pat Ryan of New York. Ryan, who has represented a competitive swing district and was once among the most outspoken pro-Israel Democrats — including voting to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib in 2023 — announced after the vote that he would reject future support and return contributions he had received from AIPAC.
In a statement following the vote, AIPAC proclaimed that “AIPAC members will be actively engaged throughout this election cycle, and future election cycles, to support members of Congress of both parties who support a strong U.S.-Israel alliance and oppose those who don’t. “
Whether Wednesday’s vote proves to be the high-water mark of Democratic frustration with Netanyahu or another step in a continuing realignment may depend less on Congress than on events in Israel itself.
Netanyahu, who is running for reelection in October, has himself suggested that Israel should eventually phase out its reliance on American military aid when the current 10-year memorandum of understanding expires in 2028. That possibility could make positions once viewed as politically risky increasingly acceptable even among traditionally pro-Israel Democrats.
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Delightful recording of children’s songs by Melbourne’s Yiddish day school
די באַקאַנטע ייִדישע טאָגשול אין מעלבורן, די „שלום עליכם שול“, האָט לעצטנס לאַנצירט אַ רעקאָרדירונג קינדערלידער דורך דער דיגיטאַלישער מוזיק־פּלאַטפֿאָרם „ספּאָטיפֿײַ.“ דער אַלבום איז מלא־חן.
די רעקאָרדירונג, „אונדזער קינדערגאָרטן שײן“, איז אַ זאַמלונג קינדערלידער, װאָס מע זינגט טאַקע אינעם קינדערגאָרטן פֿון דער „שלום עליכם שול“ — די איינציקע טאָגשול אין דער וועלט, וווּ מע לערנט די תּלמידים יעדן טאָג ייִדיש.
די רעקאָרדירונג באַשטייט פֿון 31 לידער. זיי נעמען אַרײַן באַקאַנטע ייִדישע קינדערלידער; נײַע שאַפֿונגען פֿון לערערינס אין דער שול, און איבערזעצונגען פֿון ענגלישע קינדערלידער. ס׳רובֿ פֿון די לידער ווערן געזונגען פֿון דער קולטור־טוערין און פֿײַנער זינגערין פֿריידי מראָצקי אָבער עס זענען אויך דאָ קינדער סאָליסטן אויפֿן אַלבום, ווי יוני רינגלבלום, וואָס זינגט דאָס באַקאַנטע אַרבעטליד, „מיטן זעגעלע“.
בײַ געוויסע קינדערלידער האָט די שול אַ ביסל דערהײַנטיקט די ווערטער. אין „מיטן זעגעלע“ טאַקע האָט מען געביטן די לעצטע שורה — „אַרבעט מאַכט דאָס לעבן זיס“ (אַ פֿראַזע וואָס האָט מיר תּמיד אויסגעזען איבערגעטריבן און אַפֿילו פּראָפּאַגאַנדיסטיש) — מיט אַ מער שׂכלדיקער שורה: „קינדערלעך אַרבעטן אַזוי זיס.“
דאָס ליד „זונטיק בולבעס“, וואָס באַשרײַבט ווי אַן אָרעמאַן עסט בלויז קאַרטאָפֿל אַ גאַנצע וואָך, האָט מען אויך געביטן. אין די אַמאָליקע שטאַרק אָרעמע געגנטן אין ווילנע איז טאַקע געווען אַזאַ געוואַלדיקע אָרעמקייט אַז געוויסע ייִדן האָבן אפֿשר געגעסן דאָס זעלבע עסן יעדן טאָג. אין דער מאָדערנער וועלט אָבער קענען אַפֿילו די אָרעמסטע ייִדן באַקומען שפּײַזקופּאָנען פֿון דער רעגירונג, אַזוי אַז קיינער דאַרף זיך נישט האַלטן מיט אַזאַ נעבעכדיקער דיעטע. דערפֿאַר האָט מען אינעם ליד פֿאַרביטן דאָס וואָרט „בולבעס“ אויף „אַרבעט“: „זונטיק — אַרבעט, מאָנטיק — אַרבעט, דינסטיק און מיטוואָך — אַרבעט… שבת איז די צײַט צו זײַן מיט משפּחה; זונטיק — ווײַטער אַרבעט.“
די רעקאָררידונג, פּראָדוצירט דורכן מוזיקער גדעון פּרײַס, און פֿרײדי מראָצקי, איז געשטיצע געוואָרן פֿונעם קרישטאַל פֿאָנד.
כּדי צו באַשטעלן דעם אַלבום, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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ADL and JCPA clash over teachers union, exposing a divide over how to fight antisemitism
(JTA) — Two leading Jewish civil rights groups stepped up after Jewish teachers reported antisemitic harassment last year at the National Education Association’s annual convention, only to devolve into disagreement ahead of this year’s convention.
The unusual public dispute between the Jewish Council of Public Affairs and the Anti-Defamation League brought to the fore a simmering tension over how to fight antisemitism within schools and unions. Should Jewish groups promote collaboration with the institutions on solutions — or prioritize confronting them over their failings?
Two days before the assembly, the JCPA and the NEA’s Jewish Affairs Caucus heralded new rules and policies it had developed in collaboration union leaders to “ensure the safety of Jewish members and educators at the [Representative Assembly] without undermining the union’s vital commitment to free speech and democracy.”
A day before the assembly, the ADL, which had worked with caucus members over the past year, told Jewish Insider in an unusual line of attack that it was “extremely frustrated about a so-called ‘agreement’ with JCPA that was reached without all NEA JAC leadership and delegates at the table.”
It also took aim at union leaders: “NEA’s inconsistent enforcement of its own protections has sent an unmistakable message: Jewish educators are not a priority. That must change now.”
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, responded to the ADL’s criticism in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“When you can’t criticize substance, you find reasons to criticize process,” Spitalnick said in an interview. “In this case, we’re both very proud of the substance and the process, and the results underscore that.”
JCPA has emphasized working directly with school leaders and public officials to combat antisemitism, and opposed the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus pro-Palestinian protests.
“It is both possible and necessary to fight antisemitism — on campus, in our communities, and across the country — without abandoning the democratic values that have allowed Jews, and so many other vulnerable minorities, to thrive,” the group wrote in an April 2025 joint statement condemning the crackdown.
That letter spurred behind the scenes pushback from another legacy group, the Jewish Federations of North America.
The ADL, meanwhile, has taken on a more confrontational approach to universities, assigning them “report cards” for campus antisemitism and also empowering Jewish educators to advocate for themselves.
Notably, progressive-leaning groups like the JCPA and centrist groups like the ADL and the JFNA flip strategies when it comes to addressing Trump administration policies that undercut Jewish civil rights advocacy. The centrist groups have at times retreated from confrontation with the government, while the JCPA has been more directly critical. In one instance, the JCPA was more outspoken about a Trump administration attack on the ADL than the ADL was.
“There are absolutely those on the right who think that we should just be burning it all down, and that is not an approach that’s going to make you safer or democracy safer,” Spitalnick said. “We believe deeply that the only path forward is one that confronts antisemitism wherever it exists, and does so in a way that recognizes our safety as Jews is tied to our democratic institutions, which includes unions and public education.”
The ADL and the JCPA found common cause last year after the NEA delegates narrowly passed a measure barring the union from using, endorsing or publicizing any materials from the ADL, which boasts a comprehensive library of anti-bias education materials. (The measure was ultimately rejected by the NEA’s board of directors.)
The JCPA at that time signed onto a letter led by the ADL describing “deep concerns about the growing level of antisemitic activity within teachers’ unions,” including reports that Jewish teachers were verbally accosted during the proceedings.
The harassment, including a reported case of NEA members appearing to cheer at a mention of the 2025 attack on a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, during the convention last year, last month sparked a new antisemitism investigation into NEA by the Trump administration.
Shira Goodman, the ADL’s vice president of advocacy, said in an interview the group “immediately had to take an adversarial advocacy position to address” last year’s conference.
The ADL centered its approach on engaging with Jewish teachers who had sought their help, including the incoming president of the Jewish Affairs Caucus. Goodman said that while the ADL had “some ongoing conversations with leaders at the NEA,” the bulk of its advocacy had been to “support teachers who are doing their own advocacy.”
“Working just with leadership wasn’t going to do it, but we also wanted to be there to support grassroots folks who felt like they wanted to be and remain within their union,” Goodman said.
Goodman added that she did not feel that JCPA and the ADL were working “in tandem.”
“JCPA has said publicly that they have relationships with AFT, with NEA. Different organizations in the Jewish community have different lanes and do different things,” Goodman said. “I just want to make sure that the teachers are represented, and that if somebody is speaking for the teachers, that the teachers have been part of that.”
Spitalnick said JCPA had engaged with JAC leadership and other Jewish organizations, including the ADL, throughout the negotiations with NEA. Last year, JCPA also led a workshop at NEA’s annual convention about antisemitism.
“All I could speak to is our approach, which has been to — instead of hammering the union with constant critique and framing a sort of zero sum dynamic in which it’s the union versus the Jewish community — making clear that the union’s success and Jewish safety, inclusion, are one in the same right, and that has led to the partnership we have with NEA,” Spitalnick said.
The ADL and other legacy groups have in the past expressed qualified support for Trump administration disciplinary actions targeting educational institutions. Spitalnick was adamant that was the wrong course, including in the most recent government investigation into the NEA.
“The question that everyone should be asking is what is motivating this, and at a time when we’re seeing – whether it be Republicans in Congress or others — use our real fears of antisemitism to fundamentally try to kill the unions by going after their charter and their fundamental existence, I would ask real questions about the motivation for this investigation,” Spitalnick said.
The ADL, meanwhile, wrote in a post on X that the federal government’s investigation “underscores what many Jewish educators have been saying for the last two years: no union member should be made to feel excluded, targeted, or unwelcome because of a core part of their identity.”
Alyson Brauning, the outgoing chair of the Jewish Affairs Caucus, who had collaborated with JCPA ahead of the convention, said the difference between this year’s conference earlier this month and last was “night and day.”
“I actually got to enjoy parts of the [Representative Assembly],” Brauning said. “Our table did not experience any harassment or intimidation in the hall at all. It was actually enjoyable and fun, and we got to do the business of the RA on the floor.”
Naomi Rodriguez, the incoming chair of the Jewish Affairs Caucus who had participated in the ADL’s “Hazak” program, said she “wasn’t aware” of all the work that JCPA had done behind the scenes ahead of the assembly.
“Maybe Alyson was, and she is the chair of the caucus,” she added. “As the incoming chair, I’ll be more on top of those things.”
Rodriquez, who is currently participating in a JCPA cohort to support teachers, said that as the incoming chair she would “accept support from anybody who wants to support us.”
‘This issue with antisemitism is a huge problem, and it’s only getting worse, and I really think we all need to work together, and collaborate and coordinate to ensure that we are as effective as possible in fighting it,” Rodriguez said.
In a statement to JTA, an NEA spokesperson said that the union had “enhanced our work to counter antisemitism and ensure all of our members are respected and supported.”
“That effort included extensive consultation with the Jewish Affairs Caucus, Jewish NEA members, and partners in the Jewish community, including the JCPA,” the spokesperson said.
Following the assembly, which took place in Denver from July 3 through 6, the ADL as well as several other prominent Jewish groups that had also lent support to the Jewish Affairs Caucus published a statement saying that the results of the assembly “provides reason for optimism.”
“We commend the important steps the NEA took to foster a more inclusive Representative Assembly this year,” the groups wrote.
They added a caveat: “Yet that experience does not yet reflect the reality facing many Jewish educators in their own communities. We continue to hear from educators across the country who report marginalization within their unions, hostile rhetoric, intimidation, and exclusion…That reality requires continued attention and action at every level.”
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations also joined the ADL’s statement, which did not include JCPA.
The JCPA “chose to have their own press release in the beginning and kind of break with what we had already decided as a group, and so that was why they weren’t part of this press release,” said Stephanie Hausner, the Conference of Presidents’ chief operating officer. The JCPA, like the ADL, is a constituent member of the conference.
Hausner said she felt the dispute between the organizations ahead of the conference “took away from the real issue at hand, which is how do we support Jewish teachers.”
“For the last year I’ve been working with all the organizations on this work, and I really thought we were in that place, and I hope that tomorrow we can get back to that place where everyone’s working together because I do think that it is better for the Jewish community,” Hausner said.
The ADL and JCPA “sometimes reach out to different audiences,” she said, but “in an ideal world, we all speak from the same notes and be able to to move together and work together on a regular basis, and we wouldn’t have some of this going on, some of this back and forth.”
“There are no two organizations that operate in this space and do things exactly the same,” Hausner added. “Hopefully, some of their efforts can complement each other moving forward.”
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