New York Times columnist Bret Stephens stirred the pot last month by declaring American Jews’ combating antisemitism a “well-meaning but mostly wasted effort.” Following that State of World Jewry address at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y, Stephens, who is also editor-in-chief of the Jewish journal SAPIR, returned on Sunday to moderate a related, erudite debate entitled, “Is Fighting Antisemitism a Losing Battle?”
Stephens noted American Jews spend “roughly $600 million a year in efforts to combat antisemitism,” which “represents a 150% increase over what the community spent a decade ago.” Stephens later estimated that's over one-quarter of spending for Jewish causes.
Author and Tell Institute founder Dara Horn argued this fight “has failed,” and Jews “gave up our integrity to do it.” She observed that “almost every mass educational effort that we call fighting antisemitism ... has involved erasing who Jews are. In American schools, the only thing that people learn about Jews is the Holocaust. ... We’ve been teaching people you shouldn't hate Jews, because Jews are just like everybody else. The problem with this is that Jews spent 3,000 years not being like everybody else.” For Horn, “There is no point in fighting antisemitism, if we don't know what we're fighting for.”
In Horn’s telling, “Jewish civilisation is an anti-tyrannical movement based on a story of liberation that taught the world that freedom is possible, based on laws that taught the world that freedom requires responsibility.” Jew-hatred is related backlash, as not everybody appreciates the Jews’ “radical proposition” that everybody needn’t “conform or agree.” Horn explained, “If we are trying to convince people to love us or to pity us, we have already lost. Instead, we should be shouting our story from the rooftops. We should be telling people what we are fighting for.”
By contrast, Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt argued for fighting back, pointing to last week’s Torah portion instructing Jews to remember and wipe out Amalek, along with Mordechai urging Esther to save the Jewish people – not to flee. “Who do we celebrate in our history? Certainly, our teachers, our sages,” but “we also praise the Maccabees” and others who fought “for what was right.” Lipstadt’s focused on educating not Jew-haters but those “in the middle,” unsure about what’s true.
Horn worried that too little Jewish communal effort has focused on “Jewish knowledge, identity, education.” She offered Sinai and Auschwitz as two polar opposite moments in Jewish history, explaining, “you can't understand antisemitism without understanding the content of Jewish civilisation,” which the Nazis set out to destroy. Meanwhile, Lipstadt made the complementary case for financially accessible Jewish day schools and summer camps.
Horn criticised Holocaust education becoming “a case study in morality,” erasing Jews, and “eliminate[ing] the possibility of pattern recognition for antisemitism.” Horn also opposed “generic anti-hate messaging” seeking “some kind of sympathy or love.”
Lipstadt agreed that teaching the Holocaust so Americans “feel sorry for Jews or love Jews” won’t help. Lipstadt’s taught the Holocaust “because this was a Tremendum in the horrific history of the world,” and the victims’ “greatest fear” was being forgotten. Lipstadt also knocked those who can’t oppose antisemitism without also mentioning Islamophobia, while condemning all other prejudices individually.
As for allyship with other minority communities – which the American Jewish establishment prioritised for decades before October 7 – Lipstadt urged standing with others because particular causes are morally right, not to “win allies.” Horn disliked “the premise of shared pity” and noted polling finds what “resonate[s] with non-Jewish audiences” is highlighting what Americans “admire the Jewish community for . . . what they perceive as shared values, things like hard work, resilience, community, family.”
Lipstadt wants Jews to both fight and let non-Jews know “I don't want your sympathy,” but “this sits on you. You are doing this. You are letting this happen. This is a reflection on you. This is a reflection on your society.” That said, “it’s not a fight we can win. ... It’s a counter,” Lipstadt said. And within the Jewish community, “is the money [targeting Jew-hatred] being well spent? Some of it, yes, some of it, no.”
The budget is massive, and the post-October 7 period revealed weaknesses in communal priorities that should be rectified. Horn’s flagging the urgency of teaching about Soviet antizionism is especially well taken.
What American Jews most need is a philanthropic audit assessing what’s actually working. Funding from failed programmes should be rerouted to effective projects shielding Jewish life from antisemitism or inculcating Jewish wisdom, because a thriving Jewish future depends on a strong Jewish present.
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