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My Grandpa Mort was not what you would have called a religious man. Oh, he was definitely Jewish. But the kind of Jew who squished nearly 30 people in for seder in his 2 bedroom condo, not the kind who lit Shabbat candles every week. The kind who made sure his sons became Bar Mitzvah and flew across the country to see his granddaughters become Bat Mitzvah (and to see this one become a rabbi), but not the kind who would avoid scallops, if you know what I mean.
A few years ago, I interviewed my grandfather about his experiences with Judaism throughout his life, and one thing he said really surprised me. When I asked what he imagined the future of Judaism to be, he replied that Judaism would always exist because of antisemitism— that, essentially, Jews would never be able to fully assimilate out of existence even if we want to, because antisemites would always sniff us out. It reminded me of Amelek. In the Torah, we are told to blot out the name of our enemy, Amelek. We are told to remember to forget him! And so, of course, we remember him.
Coming of age alongside the Shoah, I can completely understand why antisemitism would be a central narrative of my grandfather’s life. He didn’t talk about it often, but there were little things, like not being able to rush fraternities at Stanford. And, even in San Francisco in what was arguably among the most assimilationist times in American history for Jews, his closest friends were always members of the tribe.
What my grandfather raised is a quintessential question when it comes to antisemitism: is it eternal? Is it a pernicious force that has dogged us throughout history because, to someone, we will always, always be the scapegoat? Should people not be allowed to convert to Judaism because, as one Jew told me, it’s signing up to get on the train to Auschwitz? Every year we come together on Kol Nidre ready for a clean slate, having, ideally, made amends with those we’ve wronged, and seeking atonement from God for missteps that go beyond the interpersonal realm. But what about the misdeeds done to us?
As early as the 5th century BCE, Egyptians accused Jews of being loyal to the Persians and blamed them for the plague, but Jew hatred’s strongest throughline can be traced to Christianity. When Christians stopped observing practices like circumcision and kashrut, but Jews did not, that divide brought about distrust that turned to hatred, and when Rome became a Christian Empire, extant cultural dislike of Jews became legally codified. You know much of the rest. In the middle ages, accusations of blood libel– of murdering Christian children and other innocents to bake matzah. Barriers to professional guilds, leaving Jews to pursue careers in moneylending, which then led to the stereotype of Jews as wealthy and miserly. Forcing Jews to live in ghettos, apart from the rest of society. Over time, blaming Jews for capitalism and communism — sometimes during the same time period. Expelling Jews, again and again. Forcing conversion and then not taking those conversions as valid. And, through it all, until Vatican II in the 1960s, blaming Jews for killing Jesus Christ.
Logically, Christianity had no choice but to be against the Jews. If Jesus was the Messiah, that meant that Judaism was no longer the true path. This idea, supercessionism, replaces Jews with Christians as God’s chosen people.
Christians were hardly unique in harboring prejudice. Some classical Muslim sources are also hateful and fearful toward Jews, but in most Muslim countries Jews were able to live alongside Christians as second class citizens until the 19th century, when colonial interests pushed the Ottoman Empire first to reforms and then backlash. This led to a period of instability for Middle Eastern and North African Jews, culminating in forced migration in the decades following Israel’s founding.
These are all examples of Jew hatred, but the word antisemitism is far more modern. The original German word antisemitimus was coined by Wilhelm Marr in 1879. Pamela Nadell writes in her book Antisemitism: An American Tradition, that Marr “popularized this new term to explain animosity to Jews justified by the fact that they are a debased race as distinct from antagonism toward the heirs of the people who murdered Jesus…. He recast the Jews as Semites, a term borrowed from linguistics in which languages related to Hebrew were labeled Semitic.”1
This is why, when someone today says that prejudice against those who speak Arabic or other Semitic languages is also antisemitism, that’s incorrect, and it’s why in recent years scholars and journalists have started to write antisemitism as a single word rather than a hyphenated one, further underscoring that antisemitism is not referring to the linguistic category but rather to, and only to, Jews.
Antisemitism used the false science of eugenics to place white Jews in a separate category from the ideal Aryan whites and other European groups like Italians and Slavic people. When Jews emigrated en masse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, due in great part to rampant antisemitism, those who arrived in Ellis Island were subject to IQ tests. These tests categorized 83% of Jews as (and these were the actual category names) “morons” or "imbeciles,” a higher percentage than any other European group.2 While Ellis Island did not change the last names of new arrivals despite the common myth, more Jews than any other group petitioned to have their names changed once they were established on American soil, because they suspected, often correctly, that they would have an easier time navigating this new land with a name like Fine than Gorfein, in my great grandfather’s case. I imagine that many folks here today know similar stories about their own families.
When we talk about antisemitism in the 1930s-1940s, it’s understandable to focus on Europe, but for American Jews this was also a difficult period. Before the 1930s, there had been no more than 5 official antisemitic groups in the United States. In the 1930s and 1940s, there were over 100. By 1945, 67% of Americans said that Jews held too much power, and almost a quarter of Americans polled believed that Jews were the national, religious, or racial group that posed the greatest threat to the United States, compared to single digit responses for German and Japanese Americans.3
It’s impossible to imagine how different the world would be if Hitler had not risen to power, if Jews had not been scapegoated, if the two thirds of European Jewry murdered had been able to live and flourish.
And in the decades following, antisemitism has shown up again and again, in ways overt and subtle, socially devastating and physically deadly. I need not speak about the horror of October 7th except to say that in one day over one thousand Israeli civilians were murdered and hundreds were taken hostage, and on that same day people—some of whom we may have considered our allies against fascism— cheered Hamas on.
This is what happens to a scapegoat. Just like the poor goat sent into the wilderness in Torah with the sins of the entire Israelite people on its back, Jews as scapegoats are saddled with whatever society doesn’t like. Responsibility for Capitalism in times of economic distress. Responsibility for Communism in times of political unrest. Today, when scapegoated by the Right, responsibility for a climate of racial diversity and tolerance that they fear. When scapegoated by the Left and increasing segments of the Right, responsibility for all of Israel’s misdeeds, sometimes culminating in calls for violence.
I could easily spend the rest of this drash simply laying out the antisemitism that our ancestors, and we, have been subject to. There is far too much to hold. Just to name the victims of the Holocaust would take 70 days. We Jews have indeed been victims, and we continue to be victimized. When people today say that concern about antisemitism is overblown, they are not looking at how much it has become, from microaggressions to overt attack, a large part of the Jewish experience.
And, to understand antisemitism today, we need to look at Israel. If I were to ask every person sitting here to identify the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, I imagine I would get a slightly different response from each of you— from there being no difference at all to there being scarcely any overlap. And I imagine that some of you wouldn’t know how to begin to answer. T’ruah, in its 2024 guide to antisemitism, put it well: “Some, both within and outside of the Jewish community, have deployed accusations of antisemitism in order to shut down and even criminalize pro-Palestinian activity. Others have knowingly or unknowingly engaged in antisemitic speech or conduct in the process of criticizing Israel. For some, nearly every criticism of Israel is antisemitic. For others, no criticism of Israel can be antisemitic. The truth is somewhere in between.”
In the years since October 7th, we have been living the heartache of the in between, and that heartache is continuing to tear our communities apart.
A little later in this service, Cantor Melissa will sing Ki Hinei Cachomer. This liturgical poem compares Jews to lumps of clay held by the sculptor (God). At will, God shapes the clay. All we can do is appeal to God for love rather than anger. We have no control over our fate. This is a beautiful poem, but it does not reflect the noninterventionist God I typically believe in. I believe that we Jews, along with all people, make our own choices, and sometimes people choose wrong.
There’s a new film in Israel, NAZA, which features interviews with Israeli soldiers involved in strikes in Gaza and argues that the IDF’s AI targeting programs deliberately struck massive numbers of Palestinian civilians in order to execute low-level Hamas operatives. This documentary has caused immense uproar, with Netanyahu calling for legislation that would strip Israeli citizenship from the filmmakers and protesters outside the filmmakers’ homes calling for their deaths and the deaths of their families. I am ashamed that this is the response of the state that claims to have the most moral army in the world.
We can disagree about how many Palestinian civilians have lost their lives and we can debate whether what is happening in Gaza can best be described as a war or as a genocide, but surely we can all acknowledge the number of innocent people— including hundreds of thousands of children— under bombardment over the last three years. We can disagree about whether Israel was doing what it needed to do and whether Hamas could have done more to protect civilians, but surely we can agree that Israel has used its vastly superior firepower to level much of Gazan society without succeeding in eliminating Hamas. We can disagree about whether violent Settlers are an aberration or a societal mainstay, and we can debate about whether Palestinians live under apartheid, but surely we can agree that religious nationalists who were once on the fringe are now government ministers and are publicly articulating genocidal intent without repercussion. We can speak against Binyamin Netanyahu and we can remind one another that the government is not the people, but surely we can see that in the latest polls Bibi looks likely to maintain power after the October elections and even if he loses, his opponent can hardly be called liberal and does not favor the 2-state solution that so many of us call for. We can say that we love Israel, and we can call it our home, but surely we can admit that it has become an extremist society where many of us —including my son and me and a number of committed Jews in this room— would not be recognized as part of the Jewish community.
If today you are still of the view that Israel can do no wrong, or at the least that the wrongs it commits can be justified, then I beg you to let your love for Israel guide you to acknowledge its misdeeds and see that when people call out what Israel is doing, or question whether Israel should exist at all as a state with different laws for Jews and non-Jews, it isn’t inherently antisemitic.
And, there is, as always, another side to this coin. We can disagree about BDS, and we can debate whether Israeli reservists should be considered combatants or civilians, but surely we can agree that it is never acceptable to target children and elders. We can disagree about whether it is appropriate to group “Zionist” with “Racist”, and we can debate whether people at the Columbia protests calling for Jews to go back to Poland were students or outside agitators, but surely we can agree that many Jewish students have felt frightened and excluded these past three years. We can disagree about the meaning of “From the River to the Sea” and “Globalize the Intifada”, and we can debate the appropriateness of focusing on antisemitism when in Gaza civilians are still being killed every day adding to a death toll in at least the tens of thousands, but surely we can agree that Hamas and Hezbollah flags at pro-Palestine protests cross the line into antisemitism. We can speak in support of progressive candidates and we can remind doubters of the Jewish outreach they’ve done, but surely we can see why their lack of support for a Jewish and Democratic state frightens large segments of the Jewish community—whether we think that it should or not. We can say that we are Americans, and that Israel is halfway around the globe, but surely we can admit that it is impossible to completely uncouple the diaspora from half of the world’s Jews, and that even if we could it would be a loss to completely give up on a greater number of Jews than were murdered in the Shoah.
If today you are of the view that Israel can do no right, that it is uniquely evil in this world full of cruel states, then I beg you to let your pursuit of justice for Palestine guide you to acknowledge the movement’s blind spots and see that when Zionist Jews call out rhetoric, or question their safety in the country they’ve called home in light of more and more people saying that Zionists aren’t worthy of safety and care, it isn’t inherently an overreaction.
I have immense fear for American Jews today: fear for the chabadniks I agree with on almost nothing but still see as my cousins, who might encounter the wrong person at the wrong time; fear for day school kids and working folks and retirees walking around wearing kippot and fear for those same kids being taught that they should wear a baseball cap since if someone saw their kippah they might want to hurt them, because what does that do to a child’s sense of identity and pride?; fear for families like mine that sometimes speak Hebrew in public; fear of what people will think when they find out I’m a rabbi, not because “wow that’s a weird job and can women even be rabbis?” but because if I’m a rabbi it means I’m a Jew and what do people assume that means now?; fear for what antisemitic violence will happen next.
And I’m angry. I’m angry because antisemitism is such a complicated and important topic, and yet lately it is being used as a political football— sometimes without any Jews even involved. I’m angry because Jewish organizations that I should be able to trust conflate all criticism of Israel with antisemitism, thus branding many Jews antisemites and making anti-Zionism that has crossed into genuine antisemitism into a “Boy who Cried Wolf” scenario. I am angry because leftwing organizations that I have supported don’t always prioritize rooting out antisemitism in their midst, and sometimes even accuse those who want to talk about antisemitism as “not being focused on what matters.” I’m angry because we do have to make difficult choices that often leave us in coalition with people we might need to be a little cautious around. I’m angry because I usually feel safest tucking my Magen David necklace away on the subway and I’m angry because I hate what many people, seeing that necklace, would think of me and what I stand for. I’m angry because I became a rabbi out of love for the Jewish people and our tradition, and I am always proud to be a Jew, and yet in recent years I have also felt shame— yes, real shame— for our people.
What does it mean for a rabbi to say on Kol Nidre that she is ashamed of the Jewish people? This is the sort of thing that is usually murmured to our most trusted loved ones, if that. Am I an apikorus, a heretic, for saying this out loud to a room full of Jews who look to me for moral leadership? Will some of you walk out as I speak, as some did last year when I spoke difficult truths about Israel? Will some of you stay now but slowly slip away in the months to come, turning instead to gentler congregations where rabbis do not utter such controversial statements? Maybe. I can’t know what you will do, and sad as I always am to lose people from our community, I also know that the truths I speak are things that many Jews long to hear from their leaders, and that they are truths I need to speak to feel at-one-ment with my own moral core.
So I say this: that I love you, and I love the Jews, and I don’t begin to claim to have all the answers— now or ever— but I can promise that I will be here for all of our wrestling with sacred questions. Who are we as a people? What do we stand for? How can we be for ourselves but not only for ourselves, as Hillel would instruct us, when sometimes those things seem entirely at odds?
Tomorrow, we’ll discuss how we might respond to antisemitism, and how antisemitism is tied in with other forms of baseless hatred. But tonight I just want to hold space with you all as we mourn the tragedy and complexity of this time.
Many of you know that my mother-in-law lives in Pardes Hana, a relatively quiet Israeli town. Every time she hears about an antisemitic incident in New York, she tells my husband to tell me to be careful. And every time he passes on the message, I remind him that when we visit her, our son sleeps in the Mamad— the steel-doored, blast-resistant “third bedroom” in her apartment— and I tell him to tell her to be careful. Most modern apartments and houses in Israel have a Mamad. Older buildings have common shelters, and residents of older-still homes might have to venture outside to public bomb shelters. They are everywhere in Israel, and for good reason. Our close family friends there have three sons. The oldest is in the army, the second was discharged for medical reasons, and the youngest will be drafted in a year or so. Their father, last time we visited, was preparing to go on reservist duty and sat in my mother-in-law’s living room with his rifle by his side.
Some would say that this can’t be helped— that with the amount of hatred toward the Jewish people we will always need to be ready to run, we will always be subject to unfair treatment, and we will always need to be prepared for a fight. Some would say that living in Israel, even with the need for sirens and shelters, is safer than living as a Jew in this city. That’s why we wanted Israel, right? To create a place where we Jews would be safe, where we would have autonomy, where for the first time in nearly two millennia, as HaTikveh reminds us, we could be a free people in our land. But Israeli Jews aren’t safe. They have perhaps never been safe. We are much safer in New York. And that reality is painful.
One of my mentors, Rabbi Jonathan Kligler, has had a significant change of position regarding Israel over the last three years. While he still loves Israel, he has come to look at it differently than he ever had in the past, and I expect that his words will strike each of you a little differently depending on your starting place. He wrote: “History has taught Jews that our presence in whatever larger society in which we live is conditional, and revocable at any moment. To cope with this reality, we have striven to show how extra-special we are, how indispensable, just so that we might be allowed to exist. When Israel was founded, we transferred this attitude to our new nation: we would show the world that we belonged by being exemplary, truly a light unto the nations, as it were. Nothing less could validate our claim to be a member of the family of nations. Like many of us,” Kliegler states, “I have held passionately to this elevated vision of Israel, despite the mounting evidence that much of it was wishful illusion. Since October 7, my ingrained defense of Israel as an especially moral society has slowly and painfully peeled away. Israel is in reality a nation of impressive accomplishments and horrible sins. In other words, a normal country.”
So I’ve said a lot this evening. I guess by now most of you know to expect that from me on Yom Kippur. I don’t expect everyone to agree with everything I’ve shared. In fact I’m pretty sure my exact words to my husband as I was writing this were, “I think I’m going to make everybody mad about something again.” I do hope that you heard something that resonated for you, that helped you to open your heart a little more. If your heart isn’t ready for that opening yet, we have tomorrow, and the year to come, and the years after that. In a world of silos, I hope we can continue to listen to one another, even when it’s painful, and to seek nuance together
In a few moments, the choir be singing Ya’aleh, a penitential piyyut crying out to God. The second to last stanza reads:
יַעֲלֶה דָפְקֵנוּ מֵעֶרֶב. וְיָבוֹא גִילֵנוּ מִבֹּקֶר. וְיֵרָאֶה בַּקָּשָׁתֵנוּ עַד עָרֶב:
“May urgent prayer rise at evening hour, and may rejoicing come forth with the dawn, and may our plea be heard throughout the day.”
I don’t believe in an interventionist God, but I do believe in a God that hears. I believe that when we voice our heartache, especially on this holiest of occasions, we nurture the possibility of a better future. Tomorrow, we’ll talk more about it. For now, I’m going to invite us to take a deep breath, and continue this service in our discomfort. May our fasts— physical and spiritual— gnaw at us, and may they help us to make the most of this day. G’mar chatimah tovah.
1 Nadell, 70-71
2 Nadell, 91
3 Nadell, 162
