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Things are only going to get worse for Jews from here
I spent last week compiling a summary of news from the past year for the American Jewish Year Book, an annual project that allowed me to zoom out on 2025 — and the results are bleak.
Even as my reporting has often uncovered evidence that the most doomer takes on contemporary antisemitism are wrong, key signals are pointing toward things getting worse for Jews, and antisemitic attitudes growing with few checks.
The country’s largest Jewish advocacy groups are downplaying its rise on the right, afraid of appearing partisan and damaging ties with the Trump administration. At the same time, the Jewish establishment — the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America, the Conference of Presidents and other big institutional players — refuses to acknowledge any distinction between Jewish identity and Zionism, making it difficult to influence the growing share of Americans whose political turn against Israel sometimes slips into antisemitism.
Progressives, meanwhile, tend to view antisemitism as a secondary or tertiary issue — if not a complete distraction from their priorities. And their work on antisemitism is often stymied by an inability to understand the complex relationship that most American Jews have with Israel.
So despite Jewish organizations’ massive investment in combating antisemitism — and huge levels of concern among Jews — there are shockingly few meaningful checks on growing antisemitic sentiment across the political spectrum, and little indication that such checks will emerge in the near future.
***
The antisemitic turn on the right has not been subtle. President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused American Jews of disloyalty, and his administration is stocked with high-level appointees who have either espoused antisemitism — Elon Musk thinks Jews are destroying Western civilization, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson believes Leo Frank was guilty of the crimes he was lynched for and White House official Paul Ingrassia has a self-professed “Nazi streak” — or fraternized with avowed antisemites, like FBI director Kash Patel’s repeated appearances on a podcast whose host called for the mass deportation of Jews.
Prominent Trump supporters in the media — like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Theo Von — have either made antisemitic comments or brought on offensive guests.
And data has consistently shown that conservatives hold the most openly offensive views about Jews, and anecdotes suggesting the same continue to pile up. At a recent roundtable of young conservatives hosted by the Manhattan Institute, three of the four responses to the question “What do you think of Jewish people?” included: “They’ve got Hollywood on lock,” “Don’t they own, like, a ton of the media, and, like, just kind of everything?”; and, “I would say a force for evil.”
Yet none of the country’s largest Jewish advocacy groups have directed their energy at addressing conservative antisemitism or the Trump administration’s tolerance of at least certain forms of antisemitism.
Instead, Eric Fingerhut, chief of the Jewish Federations of North America, cautioned his network’s members against signing an April statement criticizing the Trump administration’s approach to antisemitism and urged synagogues to apply for federal security funding, even though it appeared to prohibit them from engaging in diversity work. When asked about Patel, the FBI director who cozied up to an antisemitic podcaster, Fingerhut called on Congress to significantly boost his budget.
I don’t mean to single out Fingerhut — his approach is the same as almost every other major Jewish establishment figure; most have spent the past year focused on opposing progressive groups like teachers unions, student protesters and politicians like Zohran Mamdani.
Paradoxically, focusing on criticizing the left rather than the right helps avoid allegations of partisanship because the Democratic Party and major Jewish leaders are often aligned on Israel. It’s not viewed as an attack on the Democrats for Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL chief, to compare student protesters to ISIS terrorists; President Joe Biden basically agreed with Greenblatt that the demonstrators were antisemitic, even if he used more restrained language. Kamala Harris refused to allow a Palestinian speaker at last year’s Democratic convention and the party’s top brass dragged their feet or outright refused to endorse Mamdani in the New York City mayor’s race.
Trump, on the other hand, has steadfastly refused to condemn his movement’s antisemitic wing. Carlson delivered a keynote address at the Republican convention last summer and Trump defended him after he interviewed Nick Fuentes, a notorious Holocaust denier. And Vice President JD Vance has dismissed examples of overt antisemitism on the right as “edgy, offensive jokes.”
This dynamic makes a full frontal assault on the antisemitic elements of the right much more fraught for Jewish groups that want to maintain a working relationship with the Trump administration.
And they do want to maintain that relationship — in large part because the current administration is aligned with the Jewish establishment in going after the anti-Zionist left.
***
On the other side of the political spectrum, I’ve seen two problematic tendencies increase over the past year.
The first is that Jews are often thought of as a privileged group. This can minimize concern about antisemitism. (“Sure, it’s bad, but not as bad as other forms of discrimination.”) Or it can fuel suspicion that claims of antisemitism are just a smokescreen for the powerful elite to shield themselves from criticism.
The second factor is a misunderstanding of the Jewish relationship to Israel. Some wrongly assume Jews all support Israel, conflating Jewishness with the Zionism they oppose. Others wrongly insist Israel has nothing to do with Jewishness, making it OK to demonize every Jewish person who refuses to unequivocally denounce Israel’s existence.
These combine to create a perilous climate for Jews, fueling animus toward Jewish targets with only the faintest connection to the Israeli state’s actions in Gaza — a student dinner hosted by Baruch College’s Hillel, a Minneapolis synagogue on the anniversary of Oct. 7, a Cincinnati rabbi slated to speak at an anti-Nazi rally before organizers determined that his liberal Zionism made him a “white supremacist.” These are only a few examples among many small indignities experienced on college campuses and in workplaces by Jews with even slightly complicated views about Israel.
The porous boundary between opposition to Israel and antisemitism is especially stark online. “It was promised to them 3,000 years ago” — a meme originally poking fun at the ancestral Jewish claim to modern Israel — has transformed into a way to mock supposed Jewish entitlement, disconnected from any political valence. (“A video of Jewish content creators joking about bringing free shampoo home from a hotel?” my colleague Mira Fox explained over the summer, “well, they must think those toiletries were promised to them 3,000 years ago.”)
When Jews raise concerns about this rhetoric, the response is often a mix of the factors I mentioned above: A little antisemitism is no big deal because Jews aren’t oppressed, or it’s not antisemitic because it’s only a dig at Zionists. And, in cases where the vitriol is aimed at Jews that have nothing to do with Israel, well, they’re probably Zionists.
Some young leaders on the far-right, including Fuentes, have sought to join criticism of Israel with explicit antisemitism. But, in contrast, young progressives driving the political turn away from Israel remain less likely to agree with classic antisemitic tropes than conservatives, and more likely to say antisemitism is a problem for society.
***
This should make them a relatively easy audience to reach.
But rather than wage a battle for the hearts and minds of these progressives, the largest Jewish organizations have opted for blunt force. They’ve joined with the Trump administration to pressure universities to arrest, expel and, in some cases, deport student protesters, and implement strict new rules for demonstrations. And they’ve sought to legislate definitions of antisemitism that include criticism toward Israel, while outlawing school curriculum that they believe is biased.
Some of these policies may be sound. But, with perhaps the sole exception of Robert Kraft’s quixotic public service announcements about antisemitism — one features Shaquille O’Neal calling for a “timeout on hate” — none of these efforts focus on convincing people to change their minds about Jews.
Instead, they effectively aim to outlaw or restrict expression of negative views toward Israel, leaving whatever harmful beliefs about Jews that might be tied to those positions to fester in silence.
There are a variety of projects that seek to explain, first of all, why progressives should care about antisemitism and, second, how to critique Israel without slipping into antisemitism, including The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere, Safety Through Solidarity and PARCEO training.
But these efforts receive little funding. Amid the hundreds of millions of dollars that philanthropists are throwing at countering antisemitism, why are projects made by and for progressives left out?
The reason, I suspect, is that the Jewish establishment is not interested in teaching people how to oppose the existence of a Jewish state in Israel without engaging in antisemitism. To them, opposition to Zionism is itself antisemitism, which erodes their credibility with anti-Zionists who genuinely want to avoid antisemitism.
Nobody is going to listen to a Jewish organization that says, “Your political ideology is always going to be antisemitic — and I’m going to try to get your school to expel you for promoting it — but in the meantime could you please try to be careful about using these slogans because they make some of your Jewish peers feel uncomfortable?”
This approach has convinced some progressives that “antisemitism” just means criticism of Israel — in part because prominent Jewish leaders describe it this way — rather than a genuine form of bigotry.
Ostracizing Israel’s harshest critics might have worked when anti-Zionism was a fringe belief. But the aftermath of Oct. 7 heralded a near-consensus among liberals, including many Jews, that Israel is a villain on the world stage. Attempting to simply ban people from expressing these views — or taking away their phones — is not going to help address the antisemitism that can get mixed in with animus toward Israel.
The good news is that things are still not as bad as some would have you believe. Mamdani, who became a fixation for many Jewish leaders during the race for mayor, has been remarkably conciliatory to the Jewish establishment, modeling a version of anti-Zionism that mostly avoids some of the pitfalls I’ve outlined. And Jews still have a place in the mainstream conservative movement, which has directed most of its ire toward other minorities — after all, it was Somali immigrants, not Jews, who Trump recently referred to as “garbage.”
For now, this explosion of antisemitism remains mostly — though, tragically, not entirely — confined to feelings of social alienation rather than violence or systemic discrimination.
But that only buys time to find meaningful remedies that, to date, have been few and far between.
The post Things are only going to get worse for Jews from here appeared first on The Forward.
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A poet’s reaction to this summer’s terrorist attack in Berlin
דעם 25סטן יולי איז דער פּאָעט דזשײק שנײַדער געפֿאָרן קײן װײַמאַר כּדי צו מאָדערירן אַ כּמו־טעלעװיזיע־פּראָגראַם אױף ייִדיש מיט דער אַקטריסע עלענאָר ריסאַ, אַן אונטערנעמונג אין משך פֿונעם פֿעסטיװאַל „ייִדיש־זומער װײַמאַר“. אױף מאָרגן איז ער אַהײמגעפֿאָרן קײן בערלין, װוּ ער האָט מאַרשירט אינעם יערלעכן שטאָלץ־פּאַראַד – אײדער אַ טעראָריסט האָט אַטאַקירט דעם פּאַראַד, דערמאָרדעט אײן פֿרױ און פֿאַרװוּנדיקט מער װי 30 מענטשן. אָט דער „פּאָעטישער באַריכט“ דאָקומענטירט כראָנאָלאָגיש זײַנע פֿראַגמענטאַרישע געדאַנקען און אײַנדרוקן פֿון דעם דאָזיקן מעת־לעת.
װאָס איז טײַטש „לײַװ“?
פֿון דזשייק שנײַדער
פֿאַרבײַגעגאַנגענע רעקלאַמעס׃
פֿאַרטאָפּלט אײַער עקראַנצײַט!
װערט אַ זעלנערין פֿאַר דײַטשלאַנד!
אײַער דירה־געלט איז צו טײַער!
איך דאַרף נאָך מסרן מײַן ראָװער־גנבֿ.
כאַפּן די פֿאַרלאָזלעך פֿאַרשפּעטיקטע באַן.
שױן זיצט מײַן סטודיאָ־עולם און װאַרט.
פּונקט אַזױ װי די װערטער פֿון דער װאָך.
אונטערװאַרטן, אָפּװאַרטן, צוּװאַרטן.
פּונקט אַזױ װי יאַנקלס נײַער װערטער־װידעאָ.
עס װאַרט אַ שיסל מיט ברױנע עם־ען־עמס.
איך האָב שױן אײן מאָל פּראָבירט דעם קלאַנג.
אַ שמועס־שעה אױף פֿאַרשטומטן ייִדיש.
אַ טעלעװיזיע־פּראָגראַם אָן טעלעװיזיעס.
אַ לעבעדיקע לאַכטאַשמע, דאַנקען גאָט.
„אונדזער עולם“ איז דאָך דאָ אין װײַמאַר.
איך דאַרף נישט איבערחזרן אױף כינעזיש.
פּאָסטקאַרטלעך פֿון װאַרשע, סאַו־פּאַולו.
אַכט מדינות… אָבער נישט דײַטשלאַנד.
עלענאָר באַװױנט אונדזער נישט־טעלעװיזיע.
ליבע־בריװ פֿונעם אונטערװעש־שופֿלאָד.
דאָס טײַערסטע קלײד פֿון אַ גאַנץ לעבן.
אַז מען דערמאָנט פֿראַנק לאָנדאָנען…
כּדי צו שטראָמען באַדאַרף מען נײַעס.
אַזאַ מין איצט באַדאַרף אַן איצטיקײט.
אַנישט קומט דער נעטפֿליקס־עפֿעקט.
אָן־סופֿיקע אַפֿישן אַדורכצובלעטערן.
בײַ ממשותדיקע נײַעס קומען שטױס־מעלדונגען.
די מאָבילקעס, טאַבלעטן און זײגערלעך װיברירן.
און שױן איז אונדזער שמועס־שעה פֿאַרבײַ.
שױן האָבן מיר געבענטשט עלעקרטישע ליכט.
געריסן די חלות, געגעסן די אוגערקעס.
אֵין כּל, אֵין כּל, אֵין כּל…. „טײַ“.
נישטאָ קײן צײַט פֿאַר אַ חצות בײַם טײַך.
די באַן פֿאָרט אומהײמלעך איצטיקיסטיש.
אינסטאַגראַם האָט פֿאַרגעסן זײַן ייִדיש.
שױן אַהײמגעפֿאָרן מיטן דינג־ראָװער.
שױן געגלעט מײַן הינטלס קאָנוס־קאָפּ.
שױן אָנגעטאָן מײַן בער־קאָסטיום.
שױן געפֿאָרן צום פּרײַד־לחײם.
שױן געקװעטשט אױפֿן נײַנטן קנעפּל.
שױן איבערגעקערט אַ טעלער מיט נאַשן.
שױן געהערט מעשׂיות פֿון נעכטן בײַ נאַכט.
שױן פּאָזירט אינעם יערלעכן באַלקאָנבילד.
אַלע טראָגן װי תּמיד די סאַמע מאָדישע זאָקן.
אַ פֿרײלעכן פּרײַד. פֿרײלעך צו זײַן פֿרײלעך.
אַראָפּ און אַרױס מיט די אַנדערע פֿײגעלעך.
אַן אַנדער שׂימחה־גרופּע װאַרט שױן אין דרױסן.
איך טאָר נישט קװעטשן דאָס פֿרײלעך־קנעפּל.
איך טאָר נישט נאַשן קײן שװאַמעלע־שאָקאָלאַד.
מיר יאָגן זיך נאָך די אַנטלאָפֿענע פּאַראַד־װאָגנס.
הײַיאָר פּראָקלאַמירט מען כּמו־פּאָליטישע לאָזונגען.
דעות זענען רײצנדיק. די „גוטע גבֿירים“ בלײַבן.
מיר מאַרשירן טאַנצעװדיק, טאַנצן מאַרשירעװדיק.
ס׳איז דער הױפּטשטראָם־פּרײַד, דער באַנאַלער.
נישט דער לעסבישער, נישט דער פּאַלעסטינישער.
מיר פֿאַרלירן אַ חבֿר אַלע פֿינף מינוט.
מיר װאַרטן אױפֿן קלאָזעט־הײַזעלע.
מיר האַלטן זיך אָפּ בײַ נאָלנדאָרף־פּלאַץ.
דאָרט אױבן אַרבעט מײַן צײנדאָקטער!
דאָרט װוּ עס הענגען די נחת־פֿענער!
אַ ביר פֿון אָרגאַנישן סופּערמאַרק.
כּדי אַרײַנצוגײן דאַרף מען זיך אָנטאָן.
איך דאַרף נאָך ענדיקן דאָס „לײַװ“-ליד.
איך דאַרף שפּאַצירן מיטן קאָנוס־קעפּל.
איך דאַרף נאָך שרײַבן עטלעכע רשימות.
קודם־כּל, פֿאַר װאָס נישט אַ שניצל?
די קיך פֿאַרמאַכט זיך צען אַ זײגער.
מיר באַשטעלן אין דער לעצטער מינוט.
מיר עסן דאָס אױסגעפּלאַטשיקטן פֿלײש.
מיר שפּאַצירן אַהײם דורך די געסלעך.
צװײ פֿײגעלעך פֿון אַ גאַנץ יאָר מיט אַ הינטל.
שױן קומען די שטױס־מעלדונגען.
שױן שטײען מיר אױף דער שװעל.
איך דאַרף זיך שױן „מעלדן בשלום“.
איך דאַרף נאָך מעלדן מײַן ראָװער.
איך דאַרף נאָך ענטפֿערן אױף די בריװלעך.
צי בין איך בשלום? װער איז בלשום?
די מלחמה קעגן מלחמות איז אױס.
עס בלײַבן אונדז בלױז מײנונגען.
יעדער אײנער האָט זײַן אָפּרוף.
יעדער אײנער האָט זײַנע דעות.
יעדער אײנער האָט קלוגע פּירושים.
װער זשע װיל זײַן אין די נײַעס?
בערלין קײן װײַמאַר קײן בערלין, 26-25 יולי
The post A poet’s reaction to this summer’s terrorist attack in Berlin appeared first on The Forward.
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These Bundist pioneers were heroes in their time. Would they be in ours?
Academic stars in high school, Abrasha Blum and Luba Bielecka shared a slow burn romance and fervor for radical change. That hardly set them apart amid the ferment after the tsarist empire crumbled in 1919. No one would have predicted that Bielecka would go on to be awarded global nursing’s highest honor and Blum Poland’s equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
But their story poses a provocation in today’s hyper-polarized politics: Blum and Bielecka were devoted Bundists, and as such, they were not only socialists but anti-Zionists.
That combination can get you labeled today as anti-Israel and antisemitic, and even anti-American. Yet at the time they were Jewish heroes.
Bielecka repeatedly risked her life smuggling children out the Warsaw ghetto under Nazi occupation while directing the sole Jewish nursing school, sustaining its rigorous professional standards even as it was squashed into oblivion. Blum, a physically frail man, was dubbed the “ideological father of armed resistance” in the Bund; he led his band of militants into joining forces with the detested Zionists in the historic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. When the insurgency was crushed — as all the combatants knew it would be — Blum, an engineer by training, led the surviving remnant through the cavernous sewer system to safety. But soon thereafter, in fleeing the police, he plummeted three stories from an apartment building. Badly injured, he was taken to Gestapo headquarters and never seen again.
Blum and Bielecka engaged the world as they found it and fought for justice for Jews and humanity. Blum’s photo is on display at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum.
A lot has changed in 85 years. In 1939, most Americans Jews opposed Zionism and feared it would be misused by antisemites to justify allegations of dual loyalty. At the time, twice as many Jews lived in Warsaw as in all of British Palestine. The Bund swept 17 of 20 Jewish-designated seats on city council (Blum held one of them), far outdistancing all the Zionists parties together. Socialism made sense to Jewish voters, who were overwhelmingly “blue collar.” And so did doikayt (“hereness”), the doctrine that Poland’s three million Jews belonged there, not in a far-off desert, as the Zionists maintained.
The Holocaust radically and irrevocably changed the landscape. Ninety percent of Polish Jewry was exterminated. Even after the Nazis were vanquished, Jews continued to endure pogroms and were largely purged from Poland’s ruling communist party. By then, Israel was the sole destination in the world that welcomed large numbers of Jews.
Blum and Bielecka’s daughter, 17-year-old Aviva (née Victoria), was among the pioneers who migrated to a kibbutz in the new State of Israel. Zionism offered her the promise of milk and honey in a sanctuary free of antisemitism.
For years, her younger brother, Olek, held fast to his parents’ politics. But he too ultimately exited Poland, not for Israel but for the US, saddened that his father’s dream of “a prosperous Jewish minority inside Poland was impossible to realize.”
Like their parents, Aviva and Olek too engaged the post-WWII world as they found it and sought a better world.
Today, socialism and anti-Zionism are each experiencing something of a revival in the U.S. Self-described socialists have won mayoral elections in New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C. DSA-supported candidates won the Senate Democratic primary in Florida and narrowly lost Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary. A recent CBS News poll found that 58% of Democrats now hold a favorable view of socialism, whereas only 32% view capitalism positively. The gap is even wider among young people. Jews, despite their relative affluence, remain among the most liberal voters in the U.S., although their current views on socialism have not been scientifically surveyed.
Anti-Zionism looks quite different in 2026 than in 1939, at least to Jews. Israel, approaching its 80th anniversary, is far from the desert mirage ridiculed by pre-war Bundists. While only a minority of American Jews self-describe as Zionists, an overwhelming majority support Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Yet they are deeply troubled by Israel’s direction: Polls show that Zohran Mamdani, a socialist and anti-Zionist, is more popular among American Jews than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
We’re left with this thought experiment: What if Abrasha and Luba resided in America today? What would they view as justice and how would they engage to achieve it? What if they resided in Israel?
And finally, a question about the rest of us: Would we recognize them as heroes?
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AIPAC couldn’t stop Michigan’s El-Sayed in the primary. Now it’s trying again.
AIPAC’s super PAC has re-entered Michigan’s closely watched U.S. Senate race less than a month before the general election, spending nearly $100,000 on mailers attacking Abdul El-Sayed, despite earlier concerns by allies of his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, that it would boost the Democratic nominee.
The spending of $94,620 by United Democracy Project (UDP) on direct mailers was disclosed in a Friday campaign finance filing. It comes after Rogers publicly welcomed AIPAC’s support during a televised debate last week, reversing the position initially taken by people close to his campaign who worried the pro-Israel group’s involvement could hurt his chances.
A spokesperson for the group told Jewish Insider that the mailers target 130,000 identified Jewish voters in the swing state. It focuses on El-Sayed’s response to an attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield earlier this year. El-Sayed drew criticism for saying “hurt people hurt people” when discussing the attacker, whose brother was reportedly a Hezbollah commander killed in an airstrike on Lebanon. El-Sayed later apologized, saying he had been trying to provide broader context for the attack.
UDP spent more than $30 million trying to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary this summer and in support of Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost by about one percentage point.
Following the primary, allies of the Republican nominee reportedly asked AIPAC not to run ads to boost him, fearing that the group’s involvement would give El-Sayed the same political foil that helped him overcome its massive spending in the primary. Axios reported that AIPAC officials didn’t take that rejection easily.
But Rogers appeared to change course last Thursday when asked whether he’d welcome AIPAC’s support.
“Anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can’t condemn terrorism in our own country because he’s so close to the people who are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, again, I’ll take all of that help,” Rogers said at Thursday’s televised debate. El-Sayed interrupted to say he had condemned terrorism.
A new super PAC, Together for Michigan, aired an ad during the debate featuring Taylor Weintraub, whose child attends the Temple Israel preschool that was attacked in March.
Rogers went further on Friday at a campaign event with Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, accusing El-Sayed of being “so anti-Jewish” that a single mailer had upset him. Rogers said he welcomed help from Jewish supporters seeking to defeat his opponent. Kennedy also attacked El-Sayed, saying AIPAC would not be involved in the race if the Democrat did not “sleep in a Bin Laden jersey.”
El-Sayed, an Israel critic who has made opposition to AIPAC a central part of his campaign, responded by accusing Rogers of desperation. “You know Mike Rogers is in trouble when he begs AIPAC to start spending against me,” he wrote on X.
Some Jewish Democrats are publicly supporting Rogers, saying El-Sayed has failed to assuage concerns in his outreach to Jewish voters and in campaign appearances in recent months. If elected, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim member of the U.S. Senate.
Recent polls show El-Sayed with a narrow lead in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. Recent elections in Michigan have been decided by narrow margins. Trump won the swing state in 2024 by about 80,000 votes, while Democratic incumbent Elissa Slotkin defeated Rogers in the Senate race that year by fewer than 20,000 votes. Four years earlier, Joe Biden won Michigan by about 2.8 percentage points.
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