- “We affirm that as Jews we support diversity and the right to freedom of inquiry and dissent, as we ourselves so long dissented in Christian and Muslim religious-majority-societies where we have lived.”
By Alan Hirsch, Chair
As the Social Justice Committee of Congregation Bet Haverim, we cannot be silent as we witness the cultural appropriation of antisemitism by voices in our country that pander to and promote bigotry, racism, and intolerance. We challenge Trump’s claim he is protecting Jews by slashing University scientific research, both at UC Davis and academic institutions throughout the country. $8 Billion in cuts in university grant funding from the National Institute of Health for cancer and other bio-medical research is not even plausibly related to fighting antisemitism.
We object to stripping students and faculty of the right to free speech and court hearings in the name of antisemitism, particularly as part of deportation and visa issuance/renewal processes. Students have been arrested at home and on the street with no transparency as to why they are being held or deported, and in certain cases with the implication that they are being punished for their constitutionally protected freedom of speech.
We affirm that as Jews we support diversity and the right to freedom of inquiry and dissent, as we ourselves so long dissented in Christian and Muslim religious-majority-societies where we have lived.
We affirm a core Jewish value is to welcome the stranger. Therefore, we challenge the mistreatment and extrajudicial deportations and family separation of refugees and those seeking asylum on our shores from repressive regimes in Asian, and Central and South America.
We remember that most of our ancestors would not have survived had they been denied entry into the U.S. when they sought refuge from the terror in their native lands during the great Jewish migration between 1880 and 1920. Today’s bipartisan American laws on asylum, which the Trump regime is not complying with, were created to avoid repeating what happened during World War II when Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were turned away at our shores only to be returned to Europe to die in a concentration camp. The current laws saved over half a million Jews fleeing Communist Russia to the US from the 1960’s through the 1989 fall of the Soviet Union.
Therefore, Jewish history requires us to condemn the demonization, defamation, and denigration of immigrants in the strongest terms. The demands for racial and ethnic minorities “to go back where they came from” reeks of racism and xenophobia. Ethnonationalism was at the heart of the antisemitism experienced by our parents and generations of our ancestors.
Jews, like all minorities, thrive best in pluralistic democracies, where people are judged as individuals, “by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin,” or by their religion.
Antisemitism must be fought along with all other forms of intolerance, and we seek other minorities as allies to do this in a common struggle, as we have done since the Civil Rights movement. In addition, the battle against antisemitism must never be deceptively deployed to support discrimination against others, or as a wedge issue with other minorities.
It may seem to some non-Jews in the U.S. that Jews have the ear of a would-be king (Trump) who claims he will protect us via his Project Esther, instrumentalizing antisemitism as a later-day Red Scare tactic. But this strategy document was largely written by Christians and even criticizes liberal Jews for their tolerance. In fact, Judaism includes an actual biblical Book of Esther. It is the story of a similar fickle ruler whose mind was easily changed by a pretty girl. The Mishnah Talmud (Pirke Avoth 2.3) warns: Princes “approach a man only when they need him, but they don’t stay for him in times of his trouble.”
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The primary message of this blog essay portends to be anti-Jew bigotry (some call it ‘antisemitism’), but the essay quickly dilutes the subject by layering it beneath crushing layers of unrelated progressive causes. The result is that the central issue, real and rising hostility toward Jews, gets blurred into a cacophony of left-leaning background noise.
Omissions are glaringly obvious. There is no mention of Hamas, no recognition of the ongoing subtle-yet-very-real ‘not-quite-welcome’ that many Jewish students endure on campuses, and of course no reference to the illegal and disgusting demonstration of May 2nd, 2025 where 100%-masked persons shouted with a bullhorn inside the UCD Coffehouse: “We don’t want no two state, we want all the ’48,” an explicit call to end Israel’s existence. Is the subject really anti-Jew bigotry or is the author, like Gary May, hoping such glaringly anti-Jew events are normalized by pretending they didn’t happen?
The assertion that “Jews do best in pluralistic democracies” is presented without evidence. Ask French Jews emigrating to Israel, or British Jews living under constant security advisories, how well pluralism protects them. History shows that even the most tolerant societies can turn hostile with remarkable speed. To present pluralism as a guarantee of Jewish flourishing is not analysis, it is wishful thinking. The cherry on top of the wishing-thinking sundae is the author’s:
“We affirm that as Jews we support diversity and the right to freedom of inquiry and dissent, as we ourselves so long dissented in Christian and Muslim religious-majority-societies where we have lived.”
Um . . . first of all, Jews are losing this ideal in places like Davis and UC Davis (unless they disavow Israel as a country). Second, Jews not only dissented in Christian and Muslim religious-majority-societies, they were all-too-often killed or expelled from them. Since October 7th, I’ve been in a deep-dive into Jewish history. The number of events in which Jews are killed in 4, 5, even six-figure-mortality events is staggering.
The idea that anti-Jew hatred must always be fought “along with” other forms of intolerance sounds noble, but in practice it often ensures Jewish issues are sidelined. Jewish concerns are routinely diluted into broader coalitions that rarely prioritize them. That is not solidarity, it is avoidance dressed in moral language. And DEI is a Jew’s worst enemy, as we are classified simultaneously as victims and oppressors by the bigots, for whatever best fits the Jew-hating narrative.
The “Project Esther” section undercuts the seriousness of the topic with a forced biblical pun and seems more about anti-Trump sentiment than concern for the Jewish Community. Equating Trump with Ahasuerus, reduced to a “fickle ruler swayed by a pretty girl,” trivializes the discussion. Assigning blame to Christians for drafting the plan while dismissing Jewish voices that support it avoids the real question – and that question is, “do Jews face immediate and escalating threats today?”. The evidence is clear that anti-Jew bigotry, racism, and hatred are proliferating online, on campuses, and in street protests. None of that is being driven by strategy memos in Washington.
As evidence for the online hate, check out the growing and ever-emboldened anti-Jew bigots on YouTube: Rathbone deBuys, Jen Perelman, Peter Hager, Katie Halper, Rania Khalek, Krystal Ball, Kyle Kulinski, Sam Seder, Abby Martin, Norm Finklestein, Cenk Yunger, Ana Kasparian, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Kim Iversen, Amy Goodman, Max Blumenthal and many, many more. A lot of these YouTuber media personalities are Jews themselves — antizionist Jews. They spew hate like daggers from their eyes, yet couch the hate in the concept of ‘antizionism’, as if that is an excuse, and bath themselves in their own self-deluded superior morality.
There was virtually none of this vitriol – even from a good number of these same personalities – until October 7th, 2023. But even if they hide behind ‘antizionism’, one need only look at the comment sections of their YouTube vids: hundreds to thousands of Jew-hating comments, most not even trying to hide behind antizionism. Where any of these people decent human beings, each would condemn the haters in their own comment sections — but they are all silent.
With the backdrop of this ever-increasing sea of anti-Jew bigotry, presenting this serious subject in an essay splattered with liberal causes that many people — including many Jews — would agree with — only dilutes the seriousness of anti-Jew rhetoric that the real Jewish Community knows is being baked ever-deeper into the American psyche. And as a participant, you don’t even know it’s happening within you.
This is how it starts.
Alan Hirsch says “…the battle against antisemitism must never be deceptively deployed to support discrimination against others”
Not untrue. But how about this:
The battle against racism and bigotry must never be deceptively deployed to support discrimination against Jews (whether or not they are Zionists).
Or, more refined, “The battle against racism and bigotry must never be deceptively deployed to support hatred against Jews who are not antizionists.”
Oy vey, such wishful thinking. Of course there is a fine line between wishful and delusional thinking.