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Time Magazine
2 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
How Antisemitism Is Impacting Synagogues Like Mine
Like many American Jews, each morning I brace myself before checking the news on my phone. Another antisemitic attack. Another vandalized synagogue. It's becoming routine—but it shouldn't be. History painfully demonstrates that whenever conflict flares in the Middle East, Jewish communities worldwide become targets. But the intensity of open harassment, rising hate crimes, and normalization of antisemitic rhetoric since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas is unlike anything I've seen before. The escalation from aggressive anti-Israel protest to outright violence is a nationwide phenomenon. Recent high-profile cases include the murder of two individuals outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., and the killing of an 82-year-old woman in Colorado who was attacked with a firebomb. Less widely reported was the man in California who was beaten unconscious by a group shouting 'F--- the Jews, Free Palestine.' Or, the 72-year-old man who was punched in the face by a group of young men yelling 'Free Palestine.' Or the man who repeatedly targeted and assaulted Jewish victims at protests relating to the war in Gaza. This list could go on and on. Each incident represents a dangerous point along a continuum—from rhetoric, to intimidation, to violence—and in every case, perpetrators justified their actions by claiming solidarity with Palestinians. However, these acts of anti-semitism do nothing to help Palestinians. Instead, they further distance us from the idea of two nations for two peoples, as well as the possibility of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Those who insist that Israel should not exist, and that Jews around the world should be punished for the actions of the Israeli government, move far beyond the realm of compromise, conciliation, and political discourse and, in effect, become pro-violence. This wave of antisemitism is creating palpable anxiety within Jewish communities. Increasingly, Jewish families find themselves making difficult choices: some have purchased firearms for protection; others are enrolling in self-defense classes, determined not to become victims. No community should feel compelled to arm itself just to survive. Yet across the country, securing Jewish institutions is no longer precautionary—it is essential. Synagogues and community centers have been forced to harden infrastructure, overhaul safety protocols, and reshape budgets just to maintain basic security. Federal nonprofit security grants help, but proposed funding levels remain dangerously inadequate. Still, we are not retreating. Synagogues are full. Jewish families are standing taller, not shrinking away. We teach our children to be proud, to be resilient, and to live with hope even amid rising fear. We know something fundamental has shifted—but we will face this moment with strength and open eyes. That said, we cannot confront this threat alone. After each attack, we hear heartfelt declarations of solidarity—statements of support, thoughts, and prayers. These gestures are meaningful, but passive concern will not protect us. What we need now is courage. If you must protest Israel's policies, you are of course free to do so. But stay away from our synagogues, our schools, and our community centers. That's not activism—that's intimidation. If you are not Jewish but want to be an ally, here's what that looks like: Check in. Speak up. Your Jewish neighbors feel increasingly vulnerable. If someone around you uses an antisemitic slur, confront it the same way you would any other form of bigotry. Your voice, especially as a non-Jewish ally, shows us we are not alone. Support increased security funding. Jewish organizations across the country have called on Congress to significantly expand funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which protects vulnerable religious communities of all faiths. Congress must act with urgency to meet this moment and ensure the safety of targeted communities nationwide. We also need the faith leaders, public officials, and allies who stood with us after Oct. 7 to stay with us now. We know there's no shortage of hatred to confront in the world. But we are still here, and we are still hurting. To be sure, we must also condemn hate crimes against Palestinian Americans. Indeed, Jews have prayed for peace for generations—long before the modern State of Israel existed. We continue to pray for peace today, for Israelis and Palestinians alike. But real peace requires more than the absence of rockets or bombs. It requires safety, dignity, and the active resistance of those who refuse to normalize hate. Antisemitism cannot become America's new normal. If we accept hatred today, we shouldn't be surprised when violence returns tomorrow. Rabbi Brian Strauss is the senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Yeshurun in Houston, the largest Conservative synagogue in the United States.
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- General
- Boston Globe
A day of mourning in a time of fear
Other disasters have coincided with the 9th of Av. That was when the No date in the long annals of the Jews is so drenched in grief. For more than 2,000 years, observant Jews have marked the day by abstaining from food and drink for 25 hours. In synagogues worldwide, families will begin the fast at nightfall Saturday by sitting on the floor and reading the biblical Advertisement In a sense, Tisha B'Av encapsulates in a calendar date all the pain and loss that have been inflicted on the Jewish people through the generations by those who hate them. That hatred has ebbed and flowed, but it has never vanished. There Advertisement Tisha B'Av arrives this year as American Jews confront an inescapable and chilling reality: Antisemitism in the United States has surged to levels unseen since before World War II. The threat has been Advertisement Here in Massachusetts, anti‑Jewish hate crimes A In response to these attacks, the ADL commissioned a national survey. Its report stressed that a majority of Americans regard antisemitic hatred as a serious issue and oppose violence against Jews. But between the lines, the survey's findings were horrifying. Asked about the violent attacks in Washington and Colorado, as well as the torching of Shapiro's home, 13 percent of respondents said that such acts were 'justified,' 15 percent believed they were 'necessary,' 22 percent did not consider them antisemitic, and an astonishing 24 percent — nearly 1 in 4 respondents — pronounced the attacks 'understandable.' Advertisement These are no longer fringe views. Raw, antisemitic bigotry is Young people acquire their opinions from multiple sources, of course. But at least some of this animus against Jews has been As Tisha B'Av approaches, more than Advertisement For anyone born after 1945, this normalizing of Jew-hatred in the United States represents a chilling reversal. The Cold War era's moral taboo against antisemitism — bolstered by the revelation of Nazi Germany's genocide, and by the success of the Civil Rights and Soviet Jewry movements — used to render overt Jew‑hatred unthinkable in mainstream America. Now that taboo is shredding. Ours has become a society in which antisemitic venom — As a Jew, and as the son of an Auschwitz survivor, I find all this darkly ominous. So do many Jewish Americans I know. Yet with few exceptions, most of my non-Jewish friends and acquaintances don't seem to understand how frightening it is for Jews to sense history beginning to repeat itself — or how exposed, isolated, and endangered many Jews now feel. It has been pointed out often that the Advertisement That isn't merely a historical observation. It reflects a pattern first articulated in the earliest pages of the Bible. As an Orthodox Jew, I believe in the continuing validity of the promise God made to Abraham in Benjamin Disraeli, who twice served as Britain's prime minister, distilled the biblical pledge into an axiom of statecraft: 'The Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.' Winston Churchill agreed and on multiple occasions quoted his predecessor's maxim. 'We must admit,' More than 80 years later, the renowned journalist and historian Paul Johnson developed the point in It happened to Spain after it expelled the Jews in the 1490s, to France in the wake of the Dreyfus affair, and to Czarist Russia following the wave of antisemitic pogroms in the late 19th century. Germany's descent into genocidal madness led to cataclysmic military defeat in 1945 and brought on 40 years of communist dictatorship in the eastern third of the country. And the antisemitic obsessions of the Arab world over the past century have kept it mired in economic and cultural backwardness, when it could have become 'by far the richest portion of the earth's surface.' Conversely, nations that extended protection and freedom to their Jewish citizens have invariably flourished. Cyrus the Great of Persia liberated the Jews from captivity, and went on to rule the largest empire the world had seen to that time. The Ottoman sultans who welcomed Jewish exiles from Spain presided over a multicultural dominion that thrived for centuries. Above all, the United States — where Jews enjoyed freedom, opportunity, and safety they had never before known in their long Diaspora — grew into the wealthiest, strongest, and most important nation on the globe. Jewish Americans, making the most of the liberty and equality afforded them, became scientists and doctors, entrepreneurs and entertainers, retail innovators and writers, judges and educators. America's ascent to global preeminence was inseparable from its treatment of Jews as full citizens. 'I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse,' God said at the dawn of Jewish history, and history has repeatedly confirmed it. But the ancient promise — or, if you like, Paul Johnson's 'historical law' — is also a reminder and a warning to the American nation. Unchecked antisemitism is not merely a Jewish problem. It is an infection in America's soul and a threat to its future. George Washington, in his famous That vision animated America's founding promise and it helped shape the nation's greatness. But today, nearly 235 years after Washington wrote those words, the children of the stock of Abraham are afraid. If that fear is allowed to deepen and spread, the cost will not fall on Jews alone. Tisha B'Av is a day of mourning for the Jewish people — but it ought to be a moment of reckoning for all Americans. To drive out the virus of antisemitism, to ensure that Jews can live in safety and dignity, is not only to defend a beleaguered minority. It is to recommit to the very ideals that made the United States a light among nations. America has been blessed because it blessed its Jews. May it never learn what happens when it stops doing so. This article is adapted from the current , Jeff Jacoby's weekly newsletter. To subscribe to Arguable, visit . Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
New York Post
4 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Progs have abandoned progressivism, Columbia's ‘message of hope' and other commentary
Liberal: Progs Have Abandoned Progressivism 'Today's progressives aren't really progressive in the true sense of the term,' contends The Liberal Patriot's Ruy Teixeira. 'The quintessential moral commitment of midcentury progressives was to make American society truly colorblind.' Now, progs 'favor color-conscious remedies like affirmative action.' They view 'merit and objective measures of achievement . . . with suspicion.' Progressives used to be steadfast defenders of free speech,' but now, they inflate free expression 'with 'violence' and 'harm' and making people feel 'unsafe.'' And they 'prize goals like fighting climate change, procedural justice, and protecting identity groups above prosperity.' 'So can today's progressives be considered 'progressive' when they don't really support free speech, cultural pluralism and the open society? They cannot and voters, especially working class voters, are unlikely to consider them so.' Campus watch: Columbia's 'Message of Hope' 'Because Trump took a stand — and took the heat from progressives and the news media — things may finally change for the better at Columbia,' prays USA Today's Nicole Russell. 'Columbia University has agreed to pay [a] $200 million fine to the federal government to settle accusations that the school failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism on campus.' Trump was 'standing against a culture on university campuses that promoted progressive values to the exclusion of dissenting opinions': 'Conservative students were shunned. And Jewish students were targeted because of Israel's defense of its citizens.' 'Institutions that accept taxpayer dollars must be held accountable.' 'This is a win for Trump, a scathing reprimand of higher education and a message of hope for American Jews.' Economy: Middle Class' Historic Gains 'Six months into his second term, President Donald Trump is delivering on his promise to create another middle-class economic boom,' cheers W.J. Lee at the Association of Mature American Citizens. Indeed, 'a new Treasury Department report reveals that middle-class and blue-collar workers are experiencing real-wage gains not seen in nearly 60 years': From December 2024 to May 2025, average hourly earnings for middle-class workers rose 1.7%, outpacing inflation. That 'translates to the most impressive half-year real-wage gain at the outset of a presidency' since Richard Nixon's 0.8% increase almost six decades ago. 'The only other time it came close to that? Eight years ago, during Trump's first term.' From the right: Climate Alarms Fall Flat 'The climate alarmists regularly seize on weather events they believe will help them exploit their narrative' but 'ignore contradictory information,' quips the Issues & Insights editorial board. Examples? 'The Northwest Passage is experiencing its third-highest level of sea ice extent in the last two decades,' despite Al Gore's 2009 warning that 'the Arctic polar ice cap could be gone during summer within five to seven years.' Similarly, 'efforts to attribute the deadly Texas flood . . . to human carbon dioxide emissions have been debunked,' and though 'a Tampa, Fla., meteorologist blamed 'climate change' . . . for 90-degree days having doubled in the city,' the average number of days reaching 95°F or higher in the state of Florida has not increased since 1895. Science beat: Fund University Research Locally 'Given the Trump administration's funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, the US must rethink how it endows innovation at American universities,' argue Thomas D. Lehrman and George Gilder at The Wall Street Journal. Publicly funded university research 'has fostered such innovations as the Global Positioning System, cancer therapies, recombinant DNA, and magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI.' That history shows that 'US technological leadership depends on creativity from our campuses.' States looking 'to lead in research and innovation should follow the school-choice playbook and establish a class of nonprofit organizations.' It falls on state leaders to support and 'accelerate the scientific research essential to competing with global rivals and inventing lifesaving technologies.' — Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
USA Today
7 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump wins again: Columbia's $200 million fine will reshape higher education
Liberals have howled for months over President Trump's targeting of Ivy League universities. I doubt they'll view the Columbia agreement as a win for students and for our nation as whole. But it is. In an agreement ripped from the pages of President Donald Trump's "The Art of the Deal," Columbia University has agreed to pay $200 million fine to the federal government to settle accusations that the school failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism on campus. The move is a capitulation to Trump's harsh rebuke of elite universities because of the rampant antisemitism unleashed on campuses after the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This is a win for Trump, a scathing reprimand of higher education and a message of hope for American Jews. Jewish students were told to flee campus Columbia agreed to pay the $200 million fine to resolve multiple civil rights investigations centering on its failure to stop antisemitic protests on campus. The threats were so severe that a rabbi warned Jewish students to flee campus a day before the start of Passover in April 2024. Columbia also has agreed to appoint an independent monitor to update the federal government on its compliance with civil rights laws and to pay an additional $21 million fine to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. These are mind-boggling agreements by one of the country's most elite universities. Opinion: Liberals claimed Trump would end democracy. They were wrong again. In March, Trump cut off $400 million in federal funding to Columbia and launched investigations into 59 other colleges and universities because of their admissions policies and the antisemitic protests on their campuses. If you had told me then that Columbia would bow the knee to Trump just four months later, I'd have laughed. Trump is reshaping higher education Columbia's agreement to pay a $200 million fine is a strong indication that Trump was right about widespread antisemitism on campus. Even so, liberals have howled for months over Trump's targeting of Ivy League universities, and I doubt they'll view the Columbia agreement as a win for students and for our nation as whole. It is, though, and they should. Trump also froze Harvard University's funding over hiring policies that elevated diversity, equity and inclusion ideology over merit-based appointments. Progressives called Trump a "despot in the making" and an enemy of free speech. But Trump was in reality standing against a culture on university campuses that promoted progressive values to the exclusion of dissenting opinions. Conservative students were shunned. And Jewish students were targeted because of Israel's defense of its citizens. Columbia is now paying the price for that intolerance. Opinion: In-N-Out owner places order to go − out of California I hope the Columbia settlement helps reshape higher education in the Ivy League and beyond. Institutions that accept taxpayer dollars must be held accountable for antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. Because Trump took a stand − and took the heat from progressives and the news media − things may finally change for the better at Columbia. Ball to you, Harvard. You next? Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at nrussell@ and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm. Sign up for her weekly newsletter, The Right Track, here.
USA Today
08-07-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
What does antisemitism look like in America? A grandmother killed in the street.
As leaders of Jewish communities in the nation's capital region and in Colorado, we have experienced firsthand in recent weeks the devastating consequences of antisemitism. In Boulder, Colorado, 82-year old grandmother Karen Diamond volunteered at her local synagogue, made deliveries to homebound neighbors and participated in regular walks to raise awareness of hostages being held by Hamas. In Washington, DC, 30-year old Yaron Lischinsky and 26-year old Sarah Milgrim worked at the Israeli Embassy to promote peace among Israelis and Palestinians, address humanitarian crises in the Middle East and support the Jewish LGBTQ+ community. Six weeks ago, Karen, Yaron and Sarah were leading lives with meaning, purpose and joy. Today, they're all dead − killed by bullets and bombs. Their 'crime'? Caring about the future of the Jewish people and supporting Israel. As leaders of Jewish communities in the nation's capital region and in Colorado, we have experienced firsthand in recent weeks the devastating consequences of antisemitism. Amid our grief, however, is a steadfast determination: to do everything we can to protect all communities from hate − Jewish and non-Jewish alike. War in Gaza is excuse for antisemitism in America Bad actors, on the political left and the political right, are using the Israel-Hamas war to justify rhetoric and actions that isolate, vilify and harm Jews. When that behavior goes unchecked, social norms collapse. Previously unacceptable and radical language becomes normalized. And violence is often the result. American Jews make up a mere 2.4% of the U.S. adult population, yet we are increasingly and disproportionately being attacked. According to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic instances in the United States rose from 942 in 2015 to a record 9,354 in 2024: an 893% increase over a decade. Three states that we cover − Maryland, Virginia and Colorado − are in the top 10 for antisemitic instances. In 2023, the FBI reported, Jews were the targets of 15% of hate crimes and an astonishing 68% of religion-based hate crimes nationwide. These attacks happen every day: vandalism in classrooms, harassment and assaults on college campuses, bomb threats at synagogues and community centers, and violence in our neighborhoods. More than half of antisemitic instances documented in 2024 were related to Israel − a crucial element of American Jewish identity and a common thread connecting all three recent murders. Hatred directed at Jews will spread to other groups The unprecedented threats faced by American Jews today affect all of us. As antisemitism spreads, the tactics that reinforce it − dehumanization, intimidation and violence − erode the guardrails that keep all forms of hate in check. That allows extremism and violence targeting other groups to spread as well. That is why our organizations are so committed to building and maintaining coalitions with groups representing other races, ethnicities and faiths. By sharing the Jewish experience and learning from others, we build trust and understanding, and help ensure all people can participate safely and freely in public life. But these coalitions cannot defeat hatred and antisemitism alone. Policymakers must take immediate action to address the unprecedented threats we are facing. These steps include: Defeating antisemitism is essential to protect our shared American values of tolerance, inclusivity and respect. It is a critical component of our collective efforts to address hate in all its forms and promote a healthy civic culture that protects not just Jews, but all Americans. May the memories of Sarah, Yaron and Karen be a blessing. And may their example live on in all of us. If it does, our entire country will be better for it, and hate won't stand a chance. Ron Halber is the chief executive officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. Brandon Rattiner is the senior director of the Jewish Community Relations Council for JEWISHcolorado.
