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April 11, 2025
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
1) Programming note: Since Sunday and Monday are the first two days of Pesach, you're getting the newsletter today. The following Sunday is the last day of Pesach, so no newsletter that Sunday either, but maybe I'll send another one off-schedule to make up for it. Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!
2) Today, April 11, is 553 days since October 7, 2023. The Hamas-led attack on Simchat Torah was one of the largest terror attacks in history, resulting in 1,182 fatalities (including 44 Americans) and over 4,000 wounded. 251 hostages (210 alive, 41 dead bodies) were taken during a day of brutal savagery and sexual violence. It was the largest single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, with more than one in every 10,000 Israelis killed, and the third overall deadliest terrorist attack in the world to date.
3) Trump has not secured the release of any hostages since the last hostages under the agreement Biden negotiated were returned on February 27, despite warning Hamas several times that there would be "all Hell to pay" unless they released the hostages. The 59 remaining hostages include five Americans. Edan Alexander is the only remaining American believed to be alive. Hamas holds the bodies of Omer Neutra, Itay Chen, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Gad Haggai. We cannot rest until all the hostages are released.
4) We should condemn, not applaud, the Trump administration's crackdown on free speech and democratic guardrails under the guise of fighting antisemitism. We should be outraged that Trump is using Jews to advance an agenda that will make us and all minorities less safe.
5) And in the In Case You Missed It section, the latest on Trump's poor choice for Antisemitism Envoy, the government's flimsy case against Mahmoud Khalil, and more. Note that because of Shabbat and Pesach, I'll be slower than usual in responding to replies to this newsletter.
This is an independent reader-supported newsletter. You're welcome to read for free, but if you get something out of this newsletter, you can give something back by credit card or PayPal, by Venmo @Steven-Sheffey (last four phone digits are 9479), or by check. Thank you.
Hi Steve,
Donald Trump's assault on civil liberties and democracy under the guise of fighting antisemitism is fooling no one except those who want to be fooled.
In an interview with the Guardian, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), co-chair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus, pointed out that if Trump were sincere about protecting Jews, he would root out the “numerous antisemites he has appointed to some of the highest positions in government...if he were serious about antisemitism, Trump would be bringing cases in front of the Office of Civil Rights rather than destroying it.” (The Office of Civil Rights investigates antisemitism on campus.)
Yet some Jews support Trump's crackdown. I understand why. They are frightened. They are tired of hearing about due process and constitutional rights. They want antisemitism to stop now, they want their kids to feel safe on campus, and they don't care what Trump does if he claims he's doing it to end antisemitism.
Rabbi Sharon Brous said on March 8 that these extreme acts "may feel comforting to the Jewish community– finally someone is listening. But please hear me: these actions themselves constitute a form of antisemitism. What may feel, today, like a welcomed embrace is actually putting us at even greater danger.
"We, the Jews, are being used to advance a political agenda that will cause grave harm to the social fabric, and to the institutions that are best suited to protect Jews and all minorities. We are being used. Our pain, our trauma, is being exploited to eviscerate the dream of a multiracial democracy, while advancing the goal of a white Christian nation."
It matters how we fight antisemitism. Jews generally do not fare well under authoritarianism. The small minority of Jews who support the most extreme unconstitutional measures to crack down on antisemitism on college campuses, real or imagined, think that the same measures will not someday be used against Jews. They forget 2,000 years of history and that we are a minority too, and not always a popular minority. Remember that poem?
Alexander Pascal urges us to "look to the Megillah, which we read for Purim only weeks ago. It tells us how King Ahashveros of Persia flipped on a dime from endorsing a policy of genocide against the Jews of Persia to executing that policy’s architect, Haman. And look to the Exodus story we'll [soon recount] at our Passover Seders. One pharaoh elevated Joseph to a position of great power, and welcomed his family into Egypt during famine. Another enslaved the Israelites, and murdered their babies.
"So, too, must we worry about our contemporary leaders changing with the wind. Trump has already shown that he will exploit antisemitism to advance his own political and financial interests. Any Jew in the U.S. who thinks that he won’t, when it suits him, scapegoat and persecute Jews with the full power of the federal government, and his unprecedented digital bully pulpit, is tragically naive."
Michael Roth, the Jewish president of Wesleyan University, writes that "Jews who applaud the administration’s crackdown will soon find that they do so at their peril...What our government is doing now is wrong in itself, but beyond that, it poses a bigger threat to Jewish people’s safety than all the campus protests ever could."
Lila Berman, a professor of American Jewish history at New York University, said that much of the Jewish experience in pre-World War II Europe was about “people who thought they had legal status in a country being stripped of that legal status” and then being deported or deprived of due process.
Sound familiar?
We should never minimize even one act of antisemitism. Neither should we exaggerate antisemitism. There are over 4,000 universities in the United States. The vast majority do not have the highly publicized problems that we've seen in a handful of elite universities. Those elite universities are not war zones.
The incidents we hear about are news because they are atypical, not because they are representative samples of what goes on every day. Some of these incidents are antisemitic; others are perceived as antisemitism by some Jewish students who have been brought up to believe that criticism of Israel is criticism of their identities.
As Chemi Shalev wrote, "One of the main reasons for the growing disillusionment of American Jews, especially the younger generation, is the unbearable discrepancy between the idyllic Israel they were sold and their realization of reality on the ground."
The kids on campus who complain the most and the loudest about antisemitism tend to be the kids who were sold this fantasy and lack the tools to respond to criticism of Israel that is new to them only because their pre-college education about Israel consisted mainly of right-wing indoctrination.
That's an explanation for why Jewish students experience the same events differently, not an excuse for real antisemitism on some college campuses, which does exist--albeit not to the extent that some students (and especially parents) think it exists.
We have to teach our kids about the real Israel before they go to college, not the land without a people for a people without a land myth that some of us teach them. If we can teach honest American history and raise kids who love America (something our MAGA friends think is impossible), we should be able to do the same with Israel.
This includes teaching our kids to understand the difference between criticism of Israel, even unfair or offensive criticism of Israel, and antisemitism.
The Nexus Project's Campus Guide to Identifying Antisemitism in a Time of Perplexity is a good place to start.
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. In last week's newsletter, I incorrectly stated that Michael Sovern was president of Columbia University for 60 years. He was a professor at Columbia for 60 years, but he was president from 1980 to 1993.
In Case You Missed It:
1) From 1941 and relevant today: Who Goes Nazi?
2) Trump nominated Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun as Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) explains why the Senate should not confirm him.
3) I know I write a lot about antisemitism, but Rabbi Mendel Teldon raises points worth considering when he asks, "Can we please stop talking about antisemitism?"
4) Trump Claims Nazis Treated Jewish Prisoners With “Love."
Trump made the unbelievable claim during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Watch a snippet.
5) Erwin Chemerinsky and Laurence H. Tribe: We should all be very, very afraid.
6) The small but vocal authoritarians-are-us segment of the Jewish community has done its best to rationalize the administration's attempts to deport Mahmoud Khalil. But the Trump administration is not hiding the ball. They are basing their case on what they claim is their power to deport people based on “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful.” For background, read the section on Khalil in my March 16 newsletter, which is even more relevant now that we know the government's rationale.
7) A coalition of 27 American Jewish organizations have moved to file an amicus brief in federal court in Vermont, expressing concern over the arrest, detention, and potential deportation of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national and PhD student at Tufts University.
8) The Real Housewives of Hasbara (some background here).
9) Emily Kaiman: My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street.
10) A good primer on protected speech, discrimination, and harassment on campus. If universities would take guidelines like these seriously, we'd have far fewer problems on campus.
Social Post of the Week. @JewishWonk.
Video Clip of the Week. The Oxford comma.
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. The great Clem Burke, drummer for Blondie, passed away last week. Bang A Gong (Get It On).
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read and the original home of the viral and beloved Top Ten Signs You're At a Republican Seder (yes, I wrote it). If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, why not subscribe and get it in your inbox every Sunday? Just click here--it's free.
I periodically update my posts on the IHRA definition of antisemitism and on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism. My definition of "pro-Israel" is here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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