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‘We have to be here fighting’: Deborah Lipstadt opens up on her Poland-Germany trip with Douglas Emhoff
BERLIN (JTA) — Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff made headlines late last month during a trip to Europe, where he met with other foreign leaders working to combat antisemitism and returned to his ancestors’ town in Poland.
But the trip was originally Deborah Lipstadt’s mission.
The historian, an authority on Holocaust issues and now the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, had planned to go to Krakow and Berlin on behalf of the Biden-Harris administration. The trip included a visit to the memorial and museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau on the 78th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation by Soviet troops and, in Berlin, a meeting with special envoys and coordinators who, like Lipstadt, are charged with the task of countering hatred against Jews.
The itinerary fit perfectly with Emhoff’s own anti-antisemitism campaign, so he asked Lipstadt late last year if he could come along.
As she reflected in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after returning home, Emhoff was not the only one to get emotional on the trip.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.
JTA: You met with special envoys on antisemitism from other countries, as you and Emhoff continue to work on a national plan to fight antisemitism at home. Did any concrete policy suggestions come out of those meetings?
DL: The meeting with the special envoys on antisemitism now is the third meeting we have had together.
But I think it was very important to send the message that we are all government appointees, and we speak government to government. So we have already gotten into that rhythm, and it was a very useful meeting. It was also a useful meeting because there were people there from the White House, from my staff, who are involved in this interagency process, and they got to hear from the people who are composing, writing, who have written national plans. And I think that was very helpful. So it was one of the most productive meetings.
You also attended an interfaith meeting with Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and Muslim participants, hosted by the Central Council of Jews in Germany in Berlin. What came out of that?
That actually went very well. The groups tended to talk about what they do together. …One of the things I urged the group, and it may have been bringing coals to Newcastle, but it is a sort of a new effort on their part… is that [talking about things that affect multiple faiths] is a good way of building relations. For instance, [my office had] a meeting in October, convened by the EU but with very strong support from the State Department, from my office, on ritual slaughter. Which of course affects both Jews and Muslims, kashrut and halal. So here is a tachles [goal], a brass tacks area which we could work on together. And that was an excellent meeting, a whole day at the EU.
What do you see as the main challenges in fighting antisemitism and hate today?
You know, some people say this is just like the 1930s. It is not. Back then, you had government-sponsored antisemitism. Whether it was Germany, whether it was other countries, even in the United States. We didn’t have government sponsored antisemitism, but there was a failure of the [U.S.] government [to respond].
On Monday morning, we were sitting in Topography of Terror [Berlin’s museum and archive on the history of the Gestapo], and it was government officials discussing “how do we fight antisemitism?” And everybody around that table is paid by the government. They are government officials, officially appointed. That’s a big difference. That is a humongous difference. That is a sea change.
And then we had the second gentleman there who could easily have said, “We came into office, we put a mezuzah up at our residence. We had a Chanukah party, a Rosh Hashanah party, we had a seder…” [Instead, it] is really clear that he has taken to this issue. He has really said it a number of times… and his wife [Vice President Kamala Harris] says, “He didn’t find this issue. This issue found him.”
RELATED: We’re visiting Auschwitz because the fight against antisemitism didn’t end with liberation
On the first day I met him, which was before I was sworn into office, he said he wanted to meet me and I spent some time with him. He said, “I want to work with you.” And then in October, we had a sukkah event at Blair House [the state guest house], where the State Department brought a sukkah, and we invited ambassadors and deputy chiefs of mission from Middle Eastern and Muslim-majority countries. So sitting around the table were the Israeli ambassador, the Turkish ambassador, the Pakistan ambassador, the deputy chief of mission from Qatar, the deputy chief of mission from Saudi Arabia… And [the Second Gentleman] and I were standing in the kitchen waiting to be escorted into the room, when people took their seats. And he said to me, “Deborah, where are you traveling, where are you going?” I said “Well, in January I am going to Auschwitz-Birkenau for the 27th.” And he said “I’m in.” And that’s how it happened.
You have been to Auschwitz many times…
Dozens of times, I can’t keep count. You know I have been many times, but I work very hard so that it never becomes de rigeur. That it becomes “min haminyan” as you would say in Hebrew. … All you have to do is remind yourself of what happened there. And so it doesn’t matter if it’s your first time or your 15th time. If you are cognizant of what happened there, it sits with you.
…When I go to Auschwitz, especially when it was around my trial [after being sued by British writer David Irving for calling him a Holocaust denier], I had to look at things in a very forensic way, you know: How do we prove this, how do we show that. And that of course sits with me still. But I was well aware that this was [Emhoff’s] first time and what an emotional impact this was having on him. … The thing that always strikes me about Auschwitz, the thing that you hear resounding in your ears in a thunderous way, is the silence. The absence. The little kid that would have worn the shoes that you saw in the display. The people who wore the eyeglasses. The men who shaved with that shaving stuff.
So that is always there. And it hits me at moments and then I become the historian. Analyzing. But it was very powerful, and what was also powerful was, in a way, though this seems counterintuitive, going to Poland first, which was just laden with emotion, especially for him, he went to the town where his family comes from, and got a lot of information. And then going to Germany. One would have thought, go to Germany first and then go to Poland, but in a way the emotional part became the backdrop for the business meetings in Germany.
[Emhoff] very kindly at one point described me as his mentor. Well, if I am his mentor, he is an A1 student. He is really intent on showing not just his passion about the issue but in learning about the issue. He is an accomplished lawyer, an experienced lawyer, and he knows that feeling is not enough, you’ve got to have information, and he gathered that every place he went.
Do you really have the feeling that antisemitism is on the rise or is it just more acceptable to express it?
I think both. I am not out there crunching the numbers statistically, but certainly it is more acceptable. Certainly, it is increasingly normalized. Whether it’s among comedians, whether it is articles in the newspaper, whether it is at demonstrations, it is increasingly normal. And even becomes fodder for entertainers. So whether those same people felt the same before and didn’t say anything or they now suddenly feel that, I don’t know. But many people who might otherwise have been more reticent about expressing certain things previously seem to feel freer to say antisemitic things now.
If antisemitism keeps coming back, what gives you hope?
First of all, what gives me hope, what gives me strength, is I know what I am fighting for, I am not just fighting against. I have a very strong sense of my Jewish identity, I have a very strong sense of who I am, Jewishly. I am lucky, I had a great education, etc.
Earlier this year, I guess it was September, the president did a phone call, it was his practice during the vice presidency, before Rosh Hashanah, or between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, to do a phone call with — this time I think it was 1,200 rabbis. And I came along after he spoke with them to answer questions. And one of the questions was what gives me joy and what gives me strength. And what I said to the rabbis was that I never want to become a “because of antisemitism Jew.” Driving me out of the woodwork because everyone dislikes me, hates me, or wants to harm me. Not everyone — but there are people who want to harm me.
On Monday when I was at all those meetings [in Berlin], it was Jan. 30, 90 years after Hitler came to power, right there where we were standing. Not far from there people were marching in the streets with tiki torches! Championing among other things “death to the Jews.”
And here we were, back: Yes, the good news is here we are back, openly talking about fighting [antisemitism], here we are back, government officials tasked with fighting it, someone at the ambassadorial level from my country, the second gentleman, anxious to help in this effort, but nonetheless we were back there fighting. So on one hand, you can say, “Great, we have the special envoy, great we have the second gentleman who was so open to taking this on. This is unbelievable.” But we are here fighting. We have to be here fighting.
What was your most memorable experience from the recent trip?
On Saturday night [in Poland], one of the members of the White House staff that was with us after Shabbos had hired a car to go to the little village, shtetl, whatever, that her family came from. She wanted to go to the cemetery to see if she could find any names. Now the chances of her finding the names, in the daylight, when it is 70 degrees out and comfortable [would be hard enough]. Here it was below freezing, snow was falling, the ground was icy, and it was pitch black. We were with a genealogist, but the cemetery was locked. So we thought we would have to climb the fences. I thought, “Oh my God, we are going to have an international incident!” But our driver got the key to the cemetery from the people across the street, and I asked, “How did you know?” And he said, “The people across the street always have the key.”
So we didn’t have to break in. She wanted to say a prayer, and she was totally capable of saying the prayer herself but obviously she was deeply moved, and she asked me to recite the “El Maleh Rachamim” [prayer for the soul of a person who has died] for her. And when I stopped, she gave all the names of the people, many of whom were buried there but we couldn’t find the exact places. And then I said “shenikberu” [“who is buried here”], and the person holding the flashlight for me, I couldn’t see, it was tiny print, and he’s Israeli, he said, “po.” Here, here, here! I had never said an “El Maleh Rachamim” for people who were caught up in this tragedy, here. In situ. It was very powerful.
And then on the 30th [in Berlin] after our special envoy meeting, we all walked over to the [city’s] Holocaust memorial. And Felix [Klein, Germany’s special commissioner on antisemitism and Jewish life] had brought stones. And we were standing there, and to borrow a phrase from Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” there was this pregnant pause. And I said, “Would you like me to recite a prayer?” And I recited the prayer, another “El Maleh Rachamim,” and I became totally verklempt [overcome with emotion]. Because I was just a 12-minute walk, if that long, from where it was planned and carried out, and that was very powerful as well.
So the trip was pregnant with meaning, but I think more than just meaning, hopefully also impact.
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The post ‘We have to be here fighting’: Deborah Lipstadt opens up on her Poland-Germany trip with Douglas Emhoff appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Proposed laws aim to test the Supreme Court’s ban on public school-sponsored prayer
Public schools have been barred from sponsoring official prayer since the Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling in Engel v. Vitale, a landmark decision that cemented the principle of church-state separation in American law.
Now, lawmakers in several states are advancing measures that aim to bring prayer back into public schools — with potential to reverse decades of precedent as politicians push for Christian prayer to return as a commonplace part of the school day.
In Tennessee, a bill introduced last month would require public schools to set aside time for voluntary prayer and the reading of “the Bible or other religious text.” Students would opt in to the prayer period by getting their parents to sign a consent form, which also requires participating students to waive their right to sue.
Texas enacted a nearly identical law last year, empowering school boards to institute prayer and Bible-reading periods in schools across their districts by March 1 — a move more than 160 religious leaders urged school boards to reject in an open letter last month.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton encouraged students to use the time to recite the Lord’s Prayer “as taught by Jesus Christ.”
In Florida, a proposed amendment to the state constitution would allow students and teachers to lead prayer over a loudspeaker at school-sponsored events — even though the Supreme Court ruled student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games unconstitutional two decades ago.
Meanwhile, a federal bill introduced by Rep. David Rouzer (R-N.C.) last month would withhold federal funding from public schools that “restrict voluntary school prayer,” and new guidance from the Department of Education released last week allows teachers to pray with students.
Nik Nartowicz, lead policy counsel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Supreme Court’s church-state separation precedents like Engel v. Vitale aren’t in immediate jeopardy — but they are steadily being undermined.
“Teachers have a little bit more right to pray in public schools than they did last time. And then it just kind of slowly builds,” Nartowicz said. “The very principles of religious freedom in public school are very clearly under attack.”
A Jewish plaintiff
In 1951, the Board of Regents of New York proposed that public schools start the day with what it called a “non-denominational” prayer. Students were able to opt out with a parent’s signature.
“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen,” the prayer read.
Five families sued, arguing that the school-organized prayer violated their constitutional rights. They came from a range of religious backgrounds, including Judaism, atheism, Unitarianism and humanism.
But the case quickly took on a Jewish character, as a Jewish parent named Steven Engel became the lead plaintiff, and a broad cross-section of Jewish organizations became involved with the case. The American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith and the Synagogue Council of America — which represented 70 Jewish organizations spanning Orthodox, Conservative and Reform — all filed briefs urging the court to strike down school-sponsored prayer.
According to Bruce Dierenfield, author of The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed America, when the court released its decision the blowback was intense — and, at times, antisemitic.
The Supreme Court received the largest amount of hate mail in its history. Politicians called to amend the Constitution and impeach the justices, and 15 states refused to immediately discontinue prayer and Bible reading in their schools. An angry protester burned a cross in plaintiff Lawrence Roth’s family driveway.
“Some people say this case produced more of a backlash than almost any other case in American history,” Dierenfield said. “It seemed to be the death knell of ‘Christian America.’”
A changing landscape
In the decades after Engel, the Supreme Court repeatedly reinforced the ban on school-sponsored prayer, controversially ruling that even required moments of silence could be unconstitutional if intended to encourage prayer.
That line shifted in 2022. The court sided with Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach in Washington state who had been placed on leave for praying at midfield immediately after games, sometimes joined by players.
The school district’s actions “rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.”
The Kennedy ruling “was kind of a slap at the absolutism of Engel,” Dierenfield said. “It epitomizes somewhat of a new day.”
The decision also hinged in part on disputed interpretation of facts: The majority argued that Kennedy had engaged in “short, private, personal prayer,” while the dissent said he prayed with students in a setting where they could feel pressured to participate.
The case highlighted the often-blurry line between voluntary and coercive prayer, a tension made more complicated by peer pressure and the authority teachers and coaches hold over students.
According to Nartowicz, teachers and students are free to pray or read religious texts as long as they don’t disrupt or pressure others — but that boundary is crossed when teachers pray with students. Even though new policies make prayer and Bible-reading periods opt-in, he said, the practice can still feel coercive.
“If a teacher’s praying, because teachers have so much control over students, a student might say, Oh, I need to pray in order to make sure I’m in the good favor of so-and-so to get a good grade in their class,” he said.
Rabbi Michael Shulman of Congregation Ohabai Sholom in Nashville, Tennessee, who wrote an op-ed speaking out against his state’s school prayer bill, shares similar concerns.
He said children at his congregation are often the only Jewish students at their schools, and a school-sponsored period for prayer would only worsen their feelings of alienation.
“Anytime religion and government mix, there’s a danger of signaling that this is what the state is promoting — which beliefs are normal, which ones are not,” Shulman told the Forward. “So when public schools, that are state institutions, promote this, it really changes the meaning of what ‘voluntary’ is.”
‘Exactly the right time’
School prayer advocates are explicit about their goal: They want the Supreme Court, which currently has a 6-3 conservative majority, to take up their case.
It’s unclear if the court will choose to weigh in. In November, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in a case where a lower court had upheld a ban on broadcasting a pregame prayer over the loudspeaker at a high school football game.
But proponents of school prayer aren’t giving up. The Tennessee bill states that “the idea of separation of church and state departs from the religious liberty guaranteed by the Constitution of the State of Tennessee” and lists 11 Supreme Court decisions, including Engel, as examples of rulings that it says conflict.
“I think this is exactly the right time to have this issue brought back into the public square, both because our Supreme Court has, I think, more properly aligned in most recent decisions and because I think we just need to have prayer back in our schools,” Rep. Gino Bulso, the bill’s sponsor, told The Tennessee Conservative.
Meanwhile, Paxton has pledged to defend in court any school district that implements a voluntary prayer period.
For those who remember how fiercely Engel divided the country, a new showdown at the Supreme Court feels almost inevitable.
“I sit on tenterhooks all the time about seeing that somebody’s going to bring a suit saying that they have the right to have organized prayer in public schools. I would not be the least bit surprised to see a case — see the Engel case come up again in the Supreme Court,” Jonathan Engel, Steven Engel’s son, said in a 2023 documentary. “So we may have to fight this battle again.”
The post Proposed laws aim to test the Supreme Court’s ban on public school-sponsored prayer appeared first on The Forward.
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Gunmen Kill Three People and Abduct Catholic Priest in Northern Nigeria
A police vehicle of Operation Fushin Kada (Anger of Crocodile) is parked on Yakowa Road, as schools across northern Nigeria reopen nearly two months after closing due to security concerns, following the mass abductions of school children, in Kaduna, Nigeria, January 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Nuhu Gwamna/File Photo
Gunmen killed three people and abducted a Catholic priest and several others during an early morning attack on the clergyman’s residence in northern Nigeria’s Kaduna state, church and police sources said on Sunday.
Saturday’s assault in Kauru district highlights persistent insecurity in the region, and came days after security services rescued all 166 worshippers abducted in attacks by gunmen on two churches elsewhere in Kaduna.
Such attacks have drawn the attention of US President Donald Trump, who has accused Nigeria’s government of failing to protect Christians, a charge Abuja denies. US forces struck what they described as terrorist targets in northwestern Nigeria on December 25.
The Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan named the kidnapped clergyman as Nathaniel Asuwaye, parish priest of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Karku, and said 10 other people were abducted.
Three residents were killed during the attack, which began at about 3:20 a.m. (0220 GMT), the diocese said in a statement.
A Kaduna police spokesperson confirmed the incident, but said five people had been abducted in total and that the three people killed were members of the security forces.
“Security agents exchanged gunfire with the bandits, killed some of them, and unfortunately two soldiers and a police officer lost their lives,” he said.
Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement on Sunday that Nigeria’s security crisis was “increasingly getting out of hand”. It accused the government of “gross incompetence” and failure to protect civilians as gunmen kill, abduct and terrorize rural communities across several northern states.
A presidency spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
Pope Leo, during his weekly address to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square, expressed solidarity with the victims of recent attacks in Nigeria.
“I hope that the competent authorities will continue to act with determination to ensure the security and protection of every citizen’s life,” Leo said.
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Israeli FM Sa’ar Stresses Gaza Demilitarization, Criticizes Iranian Threats in Talks with Paraguay’s Foreign Minister
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar made the remarks on Tuesday during a meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem with Paraguay’s Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano. The meeting included a one-on-one session followed by an expanded meeting with both countries’ bilateral teams.
Sa’ar told the media, “We support the Trump plan for Gaza. Hamas must be disarmed, and Gaza must be demilitarized. This is at the heart of the plan, and we must not compromise on it. This is necessary for the security and stability of the region and also for a better future for the residents of Gaza themselves.”
He also commented on Iran, saying, “I praise President Peña’s decision in April of 2025 to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. The European Union and Ukraine have also recently done so, and I commend that. The Iranian regime is murdering its own people. It is endangering stability in the Middle East and exporting terrorism to other continents, including Latin America. The attempt by the world’s most extremist regime to obtain the most dangerous weapon in the world, nuclear weapons, is a clear danger to regional and world peace.”
Sa’ar added that Iran’s long-range missile program threatens not only Israel but other countries in the Middle East and Europe. “The Iranian regime has already used missiles against other countries in the Middle East. European countries are also threatened by the range of these missiles,” he said.
Lezcano praised his country’s decision to open an embassy in Jerusalem. “Paraguay’s sovereign decision to open its embassy in Jerusalem was made in faith and responsibly. It reflects the coherent foreign policy that we consistently and clearly hold with regard to Israel,” he said. He added that Paraguay “unequivocally and unquestionably supports the right of the State of Israel to exist and to defend itself,” a position reinforced after the October 7, 2023, attacks.