A new history of the creation of modern Hebrew ends with speculation about whether the Hebrew language could become the basis of an Israeli identity that could unify Jewish and Arab citizens. In his review, Philologos evaluates the merits of this proposal:

[T]he great majority of Israeli Arabs are not about to start adopting Hebrew as their mother tongue in the historically foreseeable future. Although the process will be quicker among Christians and Druze, it will probably, in the best of cases, take quite a few more generations among them, too. Already today one hears many Israeli Arabs incorporating numerous Hebrew words and expressions in their Arabic speech, and Hebrew is becoming more and more a part of their lives; yet to the best of my knowledge, there is still not a single Arab family in Israel in which Hebrew is the language of the home, and until the first such linguistic signs appear, assimilation is at an early stage. The “Hebrew Republic,” alas (for I, too, would like to see it come to pass), is still far away.

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.