The recently concluded festival of Sukkot celebrates both the exodus from Egypt and the conclusion of the harvest. While its signature rituals—dwelling in huts (sukkot) and waving branches of palm, myrtle, and willow along with a citron—seem decidedly unmodern, Meir Soloveichik argues that the holiday’s “message speaks profoundly to the moral and spiritual challenges of our time.” Yet its significance has changed dramatically as the Jews went from an ancient agricultural people living in their own state on their own land to a people living in exile and rarely engaged in farming, and then to a people once again living in an independent nation-state in their homeland. (Video, 36 minutes.)

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.