In America, Jews Should Fight Anti-Semitism with the Full Force of the Law

Last week, a neo-Nazi group threatened that it would make Saturday a “Day of Hate” dedicated to attacking Jews. Fortunately, the day passed without incident. Yehuda Kurtzer takes the occasion to analyze the inadequacies of many common Jewish responses to such anti-Semitic provocations, and suggests reverting to a tried-and-true model:

In the aftermath of the Leo Frank lynching in 1915—the murder of a Jewish man amid an atmosphere of intense anti-Semitism—Jewish leaders formed what would become the ADL by building a relationship with law enforcement and the American legal and political establishment. The ADL recognized that the best strategy to keep American Jews safe over the long term, in ways that would transcend and withstand the political winds of change, was to embed in the police and criminal-justice system the idea that anti-Semitism was their problem to defeat.

For Jews, the high-water mark of this strategy came in the aftermath of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh. It was the low point in many ways of the American Jewish experience, the most violent act against Jews on American soil, but it was followed by a mourning process that was shared across the greater Pittsburgh community. The words of the kaddish appeared above the fold of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. That [would have been] inconceivable at most other times of Jewish oppression and persecution. It tells the story of when we are successful—when anti-Semitism is repudiated by the general public. It is the most likely indicator that we will be collectively safe in the long run.

A strategic plan to defeat anti-Semitism that must be collectively embraced by American Jews [should include] more investment, across partisan divides, in relationships with local governments and law enforcement. . . . [This] means real education and relationship-building with other ethnic and faith communities that is neither purely instrumental nor performative—enough public-relations visits to Holocaust museums!—so that we have the allies we need when we need them, and so that we can partner for our collective betterment.

Read more at Jewish Telegraphic Agency

More about: American Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Leo Frank, Police

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