Is European-Style Anti-Semitism Making Its Way to the United States?

While the situation of Jews remains far more precarious in Western Europe than in the U.S., there is plenty of reason to worry—such is the consensus of a panel of experts who recently gathered to discuss the subject. The veteran pollster John McLaughlin cites extensive survey data showing overwhelmingly favorable attitudes toward Jews and Israel among Americans (19:12), while Mitchell Silber, a former New York Police Department intelligence analyst, surveys the far more disturbing data from Britain (53:28). Elan Carr, the State Department’s anti-Semitism envoy, in an overview of the threats to Jews on both sides of the Atlantic, notes a disturbing trend whereby “If you call yourself an anti-Semite they run you out of town; if you call yourself an anti-Zionist, you get tenure” (1:19:17).

Going back to the early 1990s, the French journalist Marc Weitzmann explains the strange convergences of far-right, far-left, and Islamist anti-Semitism—and their anti-American corollaries—in his country (2:03:04). Finally, the French Jewish activist Simone Rodan-Benzaquen urges American Jews, and their allies, to avoid the mistakes made in Europe, where Jews did not begin fighting back vigorously against rising anti-Semitism until much of the damage was already done (2:35:22). (Moderated by Ken Weinstein and Nina Shea. Video, three hours.)

Read more at Hudson Institute

More about: American Jewry, Anti-Semitism, European Jewry, French Jewry

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society