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The Quiet Antisemitism: My Experience as a Jewish College Professor
There are plenty of examples of blatant antisemitism and attacks on Jews that have occurred over the past 10 months. It seems that every day, we read about a synagogue being attacked, a Jewish student being spat on or assaulted, or the all too mainstream protester chants calling for Intifada or for Jews to go back to Poland — and the list goes on.
Perhaps less obvious — but more frequent — is the antisemitism that’s happening under the radar: things that are circumstantial and much harder to prove.
I’m not talking about Jewish writers having their lectures cancelled out of concern “for their safety” — it’s clear to everyone (except the organizers) where the motivation comes from.
No, this is the kind of discrimination that Black people and others experienced before the Civil Rights movement — and even after: being rejected as a tenant on a lease to an apartment, passed over for a job or promotion based on the color of their skin , or — as in my case — perhaps not having a contract renewed at a college after speaking out against their policies regarding “free speech.”
Do I have proof that me being Israeli or Jewish had anything to do with my dismissal?
Absolutely not.
But are the circumstances suspicious? Yes.
Two years ago, I accepted a Visiting Assistant Professorship in the English Department of a private Midwestern college in the United States. It was a one-year contract, and following the first year, the Chair of the Department notified me how much he appreciated my work — noting the anonymous student evaluations that gave me high marks, that a large number of students requested to take a second class with me, and that I helped raise the visibility of the college through public performances by my students. He also informed me that there was restructuring going on in the English Department, which would result in some of the classes I was teaching being offered only periodically.
In short, he asked me if I would be interested in remaining affiliated with the school, and return either every other semester, or, for instance, if another English teacher took a sabbatical. That suited me fine, as it allowed me to continue teaching, but also gave me time for my own creative endeavors back in Los Angeles, where I was commuting from every week.
On October 7, I was not teaching on campus. But like so many other colleges, a segment of the student population rose up to protest Israel. And even though I was a thousand miles away, I received an email from a student member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) notifying all faculty that the group was calling for a one-day strike to protest, accompanied with a list of atrocities Israel had allegedly committed, even listing the bombing of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza two weeks earlier, which had already been attributed to a stray missile from Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
How was it possible for one student to access the entire faculty and student body to spew their propaganda?
I contacted the Provost and Dean of the college to inquire. She replied that this was a recent policy change put into place two years earlier to encourage freedom of expression. I asked how this policy might play out if I rebutted the student’s charges through the college-wide email system, only to have another student rebut my defense, and so on and so on?
She replied that if it got out of hand, the school would shut it down.
I replied that the situation had already gotten out of hand, and trusted I wouldn’t be receiving anymore emails from such organizations.
The student newspaper got wind of this, and contacted me for my opinion. Here’s what they wrote in their article:
Safdie, who is of Israeli and Syrian Jewish descent, found sections of the message antisemitic and questioned why he received the email. “I’m all for freedom of expression, but I’m not sure this decision was able to foresee such a situation where students might abuse the privilege and create a hostile work/study environment for other members of the community.”
Fast forward several months, when I returned to campus for the Spring semester. Within a week of arrival, I received an email from the new chair of the English Department (who was also the associate Dean of the Race and Ethnic Studies program). She wanted to set up a Zoom meeting with me — even though our offices were 10 feet apart.
In a carefully worded statement that sounded like it was crafted by an attorney, she got to the point. Although the college was extremely pleased with all the work that I’d done, and that all my students loved my teaching, the college was making budget cuts and were not going to be able to renew my contract.
When I tried to explain to her my prior arrangement with the previous Chair, she simply replied that she’d be happy to write me a letter of recommendation.
Something about the Zoom call and her demeanor felt suspicious.
On a whim, I did an Internet search on my new Chair.
The first thing that came up on her Twitter Feed was a statement on the masthead of a literary magazine she edited, condemning the alleged mass killing and displacement of Palestinians in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks.
As I explored further, I discovered other parts of the statement:
The Israeli military—with the support of the U.S. government—has bombarded Palestinian civilians relentlessly, in violation of international law, and deprived Palestinians of food, water, fuel, and electricity.
And:
Because we work to “bring our readers into the living moment, not as tourists, but as engaged participants,” we believe that Palestinians need space to speak directly, whether from siege in Palestine or in diaspora. So too do others who bear witness to the ongoing settler-colonial violence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Two days after the Zoom meeting, I figured I might as well take the Chair up on her offer to write me a letter-of-recommendation; it was March, and I could still apply to other universities for employment the following year. (Universities can be suspicious if you leave a position after just two years, so a letter would be crucial to securing a position.)
After a week of email silence, the Chair wrote me back, saying that she wasn’t familiar with my teaching and requested to attend one of my classes to observe my skills. I invited her the following week to attend a class, which fit her schedule, but she did not show, and didn’t even write to give an explanation.
I followed up with an email to offer her another opportunity, followed by a second and third, but there was nothing but email silence.
I should also mention that, at the one faculty meeting we had, she stayed as far away from me as possible, and if I approached, she would quickly engage in discussion with another professor. The topic that day was adding a requirement for English Majors to take an anti-Racism class. One of the new offerings for the following year was focused on racism against Palestinians.
By the end of April, I decided to contact the Associate Dean of Humanities who oversaw the English Department, and sure enough, within an hour of my email, I finally received an email back from the Chair of the English Department, offering to attend my class, but letting me know that she was too busy to write me a letter of recommendation until the end of May — well past the end of the semester, and too late to help with a teaching application for the following year.
If there was ever a thought of going to the administration to complain about my treatment, that was quickly extinguished following an SJP demonstration that demanded that the college divest from Oracle. Apparently, Oracle’s website had stated support for Israel, and the Head of Financial Aid for the college felt the need to apologize for the school’s actions.
A response from the school’s administration read thus:“The business strategy or public statements from Oracle do not represent the viewpoints of the College. Due to the College’s contract with the business and the cost it took to make such major system changes, the College does not have any feasible or affordable alternative.
It also went on to assure protesters:
Less than 0.5 percent of the College’s investments are tied to Israeli companies and that none of these investments are directly held by the college.
As the semester ended, on another whim, I searched the Human Resources page of the college, and sure enough, there was a listing for a new English professor. The skills they were looking for were for someone who taught poetry as well as Race and Ethnic studies courses — none of which I was qualified to teach.
Was the college looking to shift away from courses like Screenwriting, Playwriting, and Non-Fiction — three popular courses I had taught that were always in high demand and had long waiting lists?
I guess I’ll never know.
Oren Safdie is a playwright and screenwriter.
The post The Quiet Antisemitism: My Experience as a Jewish College Professor first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewishness found me on my European vacation
To visit Europe is to look at many old, stone churches. My recent trip was no exception, but a few things set our tour of Geneva’s Cathédrale Saint-Pierre apart.
The most obvious difference between it and your typical Notre Dames and basilicas is aesthetic: Saint-Pierre is a Protestant church at the hub of John Calvin’s ministry in the Old Town. There’s no crucifix or stations of the cross and the stained glass eschews biblical scenes, a rebuke of Catholic extravagance. An exception is a small adjoining chapel.
Our Swiss guide gave us the name of this alcove, the burial place of Cardinal Jean de Brogny: Chapelle des Maccabées.
I assumed she was giving some French term for “tomb” that shared a root with “macabre.” I was wrong. The chapel, whose gorgeous, 15th-century stained glass depicts the Evangelists, the Last Supper and Jesus seeming to teach what may be the first-ever CCD class, is one of the few Christian structures to boast an explicitly Jewish name. (The Book of Maccabees, replete with martyrs, is part of the Catholic canon, not the Protestant.)
As for that ghoulish word “macabre,” linguists believe it to be a cognate with the name of the Hasmonean rebels, perhaps a reference to many of their grisly fates.
I should say now that when I am on vacation I don’t seek out Jewish landmarks. A lot of times there isn’t much to see: a street sign clinging to the name of a ghettoized population long-since liquidated, an old cathedral built on top of an even-older synagogue, a museum in a basement in Barcelona.
When I arrived in Paris before setting sail on a Rhone river cruise, my
fiancée, her family and I paid a visit to the Shoah Museum there. English-speaking Chabadniks tried to get me to wrap tefillin while I waited in line at L’as Du Fallafel, the kosher-certified institution in the Marais. Nearby we found a Hellenic-themed juice bar — Temple du Jus — which boasts an ancient sandstone wall with inscriptions in Greek and Hebrew (next to a chintzy, fake Ionic column).
France boasts the largest population of Jews in Europe, mostly now from North Africa. There are synagogues in Avignon and Lyon, but on this trip, the less obvious markers were the ones that kept asserting themselves. There was the Rue Léon-Blum in Arles, named for the three-time prime minister of France. Geneva has Rue Albert-Cohen, for the Corfu-born Swiss novelist.
Montreux in Switzerland has a resplendent statue of the resort town’s longtime resident Freddie Mercury, arguably the world’s most-famous Zoroastrian. But when we visited, the construction workers building the Christmas village behind the Queen frontman were listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.” (If you stop inside the shopping mall right near it, you’ll find Cohen’s name on the tiles, marking his 1976 performance at Montreux’s Jazz Festival.)
Our hotel breakfast had a version of chocolate babka, part of their “luxury collection,” with a posted explanation of the “sweet braided bread which originated in the Jewish communities of Poland and Ukraine.”
Our second evening in Geneva we went to a chalet-themed fondue restaurant called Edelweiss. There, a Swiss accordion player sang the establishment’s eponymous, invented folk song of Austria penned by a duo of Jewish Americans in English for The Sound of Music.
In the city hosting the UN’s base in Europe, and before that the League of Nations, such an international display was maybe unsurprising, but what struck me more is that it felt so natural.
For years now, watchdog groups have been fearing for the future of European Jewry amid increasing attacks and widespread pro-Palestinian protests. This assessment, rooted in valid concern, at times marches in lockstep with a far-right hostile to immigrants from the Muslim world. That alarm comes at times from the very same parties, and in the case of the National Assembly’s Marine Le Pen, the same family, that once leveled their xenophobia at Jews.
What I saw on my petit tour was a kind of cultural victory that will be harder to shake, even as French and British Jews continue to make aliyah in record numbers. It would perhaps shock those who lived through World War II that so much of the so-called national character, to which new arrivals are being labelled a threat, is now so casually Jewish. Emphasis on the “ish.”
For the most part, this Jewishness blends with the dominant culture, forming the soundtrack to builders putting up their Christmas market, giving the name to a Catholic tomb attached to a Protestant landmark or sitting on the buffet table a few stations away from cured ham. It is at times imported, at times native, like Serge Gainsbourg, or naturalized like Albert Cohen.
It’s not going anywhere, and if you’re paying even the slightest attention, it’s hard to miss.
The post Jewishness found me on my European vacation appeared first on The Forward.
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Christianity won in the midterm elections — but not Christian nationalism
The midterms saw the election of many new Jewish congressional representatives — Brad Lander in New York, Daniel Biss in Illinois, Scott Wiener in California, Zach Dembo in Kentucky. But another group was surprisingly well-represented in the Democratic wins: Christian pastors.
For decades, Christian clergy have usually been associated with the Republican party, thanks to evangelical groups like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition. They have rallied Evangelical support for politicians around culture war issues like opposing abortion rights and gay marriage, and white Evangelicals have been one of the defining voting blocs for Republicans ever since.
In 2024, fundamentalist evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Trump, and they have been influential members of his cabinet and advisory team. Paula White-Cain, a charismatic Christian, is Trump’s personal faith adviser. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a member of an ultra-conservative denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches founded and led by Doug Wilson, a pastor who has said women should not have the right to vote and that slavery was good; Hegseth has instituted prayer services at the Pentagon, something once considered a violation of the separation of church and state, and he and his preferred preachers often promote Christian nationalism in the services.
But in the 2026 midterms, the pastors and seminarians who won their races were overwhelmingly Democrats. And they were not Evangelical — they were mainline Protestants.
This includes James Talarico, a seminarian currently enrolled in the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, who defeated Ken Paxton for the Texas Senate seat; Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist minister who became the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas since 1932; and Rev. Sarah Trone Garriott, who won her House race in Iowa.
The shift in American Christianity that these wins represent, of mainline Protestantism over fundamentalist evangelicalism, may sound esoteric — both groups are, technically, Protestant, after all. And it can get confusing; Garriott’s mainline Protestant denomination is called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
But the difference between the two Christian movements is essential to understanding the appetite for, and power of, Christian nationalism in the U.S., and represents Americans’ changing relationship to Jews and Israel.
What is mainline Protestantism?
The term mainline — or, sometimes, oldline — Protestant emerged in the early 20th century, during a debate between an emergent fundamentalist church movement and more modernist denominations. It referred to a historical group of churches that were influential in earlier American history, known as the Seven Sisters of American Protestantism.
But more colloquially, the term refers to a broader set of churches that share a theologically liberal style of scriptural interpretation, a focus on ecumenism — or acceptance and understanding among different Christian movements — and, usually, a progressive-leaning politics focused on social justice.
While mainline Protestants do not vote as a liberal bloc, the theology is less focused on culture war issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights; instead, they center the Social Gospel — a form of theology oriented toward loving thy neighbor and serving the poor. Most mainline churches allow women to be pastors and are accepting of LGBTQ+ members.
For much of American history, these churches were also the mainstream of American Christianity; they were the churches associated with WASPs and with wealthy, influential families like the Rockefellers. In 1970, mainline denominations accounted for 30% of Americans.
But in the 1970s, with the rise of major political evangelical organizations and leaders like Jerry Falwell, the balance of power shifted, and conservative, fundamentalist churches began to gain power. By 2024, only 14% of Americans identified as mainline Protestants according to the Pew Research Center; 23% identified as evangelical.
But judging by the midterms, mainline Protestant progressivism might be making a comeback.
Mainline Protestantism squares off against MAGA fundamentalism
The battle between fundamentalism and progressive mainline churches was not an undercurrent in many midterm campaigns; religion was an overt theme of attacks from the right on the Democrat pastors, and Republicans repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Democrat’s Christianity.
In the race for Iowa’s second congressional district, Republican candidate Joe Mitchell jeered at the Christianity of the mainline Protestant ministers running for a variety of seats, including his opponent, Presbyterian minister Lindsay James, who ran as a Democrat.
“I call them PINOs,” Mitchell said at a conference; the term, he explained, means “pastors in name only.”
Republicans ripped Garriott, also a pastor, as “the wicked witch of Woke” and denounced her preaching as “fake.” Zachary Nunn, who lost to Garriott, took a similar tone in lambasting his opponent.
“I don’t need a lecture from someone who pretends to preach from the pulpit,” the Republican said in May during a Des Moines campaign rally with Republican Vice President JD Vance.
Talarico — who is not ordained but is a current seminary student, and who centered Christianity in his campaign — was meanwhile castigated by evangelical Republicans for statements they called un-Christian, such as saying God is “nonbinary.”
His rival, Paxton, castigated his theology, saying Talarico’s beliefs are “literally the opposite of Christianity,” while Texas’ Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, said he has “never seen anyone commit so much blasphemy against the word of God and the Bible” and that the now-senator-elect was “going to Hell.”
At a service in a CREC church — Hegseth’s ultra-conservative denomination — a night was devoted to preachers inveighing against Hamilton’s Christian bonafides. Pastors called on the Democratic candidate in Kansas, a preacher at a large United Methodist congregation, to “repent” for his teachings, including that non-Christians aren’t going to hell. Vance accused him of wearing Christianity as “a skin suit.”
The Democratic pastors’ voting records, such as James’ support for gender-affirming care for minors or Talarico’s support for abortion access, were also framed as damning evidence of fake Christianity by Republican evangelicals.
Meanwhile, the ordained Christian Democratic candidates were open about their hope to reclaim Christianity from Republicans. Talarico made similar accusations to his critics, saying that “Christians in the halls of power are blatantly violating the teachings of Christianity on a daily basis and hurting our neighbors in the process.”
Garriott even stated that the representation of Christianity in Republican politics upset her so much that it motivated her to run for office to offer a different Christianity. “Faith has something to say to politics. And what we are seeing labeled as the faith perspective is not faithful to me,” she said in an interview with Religion News Service earlier in her campaign.
A Christian repudiation of Christian nationalism
Numerous members of Trump’s administration are outspoken Christian nationalists. Hegseth has a Crusades tattoo, and his preacher, Doug Wilson of the CREC, opposes the right of non-Christian Americans to hold office. Numerous architects of Project 2025, which advocated for a government imbued with “biblical principles” are members of the administration. JD Vance has stated that “Christianity is America’s creed.”
For religious minorities in the U.S., however, the mainstreaming of open Christian nationalism has been worrying; the Christianity pushed by these Christian nationalist figures has roots in antisemitism and Islamophobia, and imposing a version of religion that does not allow for diverse beliefs feels dangerous.
For many of these conservative Christians, supporting Christian nationalism is synonymous with being a devout Christian; they equate biblical values with morality, and advocating for a moral country is simple obedience to their beliefs. Not all Christians believe this is part of their religion, however; the mainline Protestants who just swept the midterms preach a Christianity that is overtly opposed to Christian nationalism.
Garriott has preached about the topic directly, saying that “evangelicalism, from a Christian nationalist perspective, is trying to make the nation, the government, and everyone the same.” She argued that her faith requires a diverse republic founded on ecumenism.
Talarico has similarly argued directly against Christian nationalism: “I believe the separation of church and state is sacred. I think a nation with one supreme religion is not just un-American, I also think it’s un-Christian, given how Jesus taught about religious supremacy,” he told Ezra Klein of The New York Times. “I have a special moral responsibility to combat Christian nationalism wherever I see it.”
This repudiation of Christian nationalism from within the majority religion of the U.S. is an essential defense for the minority religions of the U.S. And it comes from the ecumenism at the heart of mainline Protestantism. Though ecumenism historically focused on Christian unity, and acceptance of other denominations of Christianity, the theological bent toward nonjudgment — instead of conservative evangelicalism’s fire and brimstone — opens doors toward interfaith dialogue. Mainline Protestants are capable of antisemitism, of course, but the less literal theological interpretation that defines the movement helps keep minds open.
There is one detail of mainline Protestantism that may concern some Jews, however. Evangelicals have long been a source of stalwart support for Israel, thanks to the conservative movement’s eschatology, which focuses on the End Times when, it teaches, Jews must all return to the Holy Land in order for Jesus to return. In the past several decades, evangelicals who subscribe to this apocalyptic theology, including the current ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, Christians United for Israel founder John Hagee and Texas senator Ted Cruz, have referenced their Christianity as grounds for supporting Israel unconditionally.
Mainline Protestantism has its roots in churches founded before this form of dispensationalism was popularized, and they are therefore less attached — at least theologically — to the state of Israel. And though most of the Democratic ministers are moderate on Israel, that’s far from the hawkish pro-Israel template for religious politicians that has previously been defined by evangelicals.
Still, in 2024, Americans voted for an evangelical, conservative, Christian nationalist government. That made for a government full of people defending their right to say that Jews killed Jesus, to post the Ten Commandments in schools, to make Christian prayer a part of military service. And in the midterms, the vision of Christianity the Republican party promoted couldn’t even accept other Christians, much less minority religions.
But that’s not what Christianity has to be. In 2026, Americans voted for a different Christianity: one that is tolerant of other religions, values and viewpoints. That can only be good for the Jews.
The post Christianity won in the midterm elections — but not Christian nationalism appeared first on The Forward.
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Video: The queen of Yiddish cabaret
אַן אינטערוויו מיט דער אָנגעזעענער ייִדישער זינגערין, אַקטריסע און שרײַבערין עלענאָר ריסאַ איז לעצטנס אַרויפֿגעשטעלט געוואָרן אויף יוטוב.
אינעם שמועס געפֿירט פֿון אלי בענעדיקט פֿון דער ייִדיש־ליגע, דערציילט ריסאַ וועגן אירע ערשטע טריט אויף דער בינע, די מענטשן און פֿאָרשטעלונגען וואָס האָבן אויסגעבויט איר קינסטלערישן וועג, אירע אויפֿטריטן איבער דער וועלט, און דעם אופֿן ווי זי בויט אַ מוזיקאַלישע פּראָגראַם און קלײַבט אויס לידער. זי רעדט אויך וועגן איר בליק אויף דער צוקונפֿט פֿון ייִדיש־טעאַטער.
ריסאַ איז אַ געבוירענע ייִדיש־רעדערין פֿון פּויליש־ייִדיש, קאָן דער ווידעאָ אויך דינען ווי אַ גוטער לערן־מיטל פֿאַר ייִדיש־סטודענטן וואָס ווילן הערן אַ נאַטירלעכן ייִדיש.
עלענאָר ריסאַ איז אַן אַמעריקאַנער אַקטריסע, רעזשיסאָרין, דראַמאַטורגין און זינגערין, און ייִדיש איז איר מאַמע־לשון. זי איז אויפֿגעוואַקסן אין ברוקלין, די טאָכטער פֿון צוויי לעבן־געבליבענע פֿון פּוילן. אין משך פֿון לאַנגע יאָרן האָט זי געשפּילט, רעזשיסירט און געשאַפֿן סײַ אין ענגלישן, סײַ אין ייִדישן טעאַטער, און איז געווען די קינסטלערישע מיטדירעקטאָרין פֿון דער פֿאָלקסבינע.
זי האָט אויך געשריבן, רעזשיסירט און איבערגעזעצט אַ ריי פּיעסעס און מוזיקאַלישע פּראָגראַמען. אין די לעצטע יאָרן פֿירט זי דעם פּאָדקאַסט “Those Who Were There” בײַם פֿאָרטונאָף־אַרכיוו אין יעיל־אוניווערסיטעט און אַרויסגעגעבן אַ בוך זכרונות, The Letters Project.
The post Video: The queen of Yiddish cabaret appeared first on The Forward.
