When I was growing up in small-town East Tennessee, people who weren’t familiar with my Norwegian surname would sometimes call me Ellerstein, substituting the common suffix in Jewish names for the -t-s-e-n that doesn’t roll trippingly off an English speaker’s tongue. I thought that was pretty cool, since I was steeped in the popular culture of the 1950s, reading poets like Allen Ginsburg and laughing with comics like Jack Benny and George Burns.
I think the logic behind it must have been something like this:
Jews are Yankees and they have funny names.
Pete talks like a Yankee and he has a funny name.
Therefore Pete’s a Jew. QED.
My father, who grew up in Brooklyn and went to a majority-Jewish high school, said the same thing happened when he was a kid. As a small-town kid who visited family in New York and dreamed of life in a big city, I thought that was pretty cool, too. Again, when I visited Jerusalem in 2012 with a Holy Land tour group, my baggage was tagged to Peter Ellertstein. I still admire Jewish writers like Judy Blume and comics like Sarah Silverman, and I still think it’s pretty cool.
That doesn’t make me an expert on Judaism by any means. But it’s one reason I’m disturbed by the way accusations of antisemitism have been politicized on American college campuses. I don’t want to see the issue trivialized by partisan politics. Another reason, vastly more important, is that Krister Stendahl, a Swedish Lutheran theologian whom I also admire, maintained that Christians, especially Lutherans, have a responsibility to fight antisemitism. (I blogged about it HERE in 2022.)
“Most acts of anti-semitism have indeed been isolated acts,” Stendahl told a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor in 1981. “But the question we need to ask is: To what extent are these acts occurring in a Christian culture that pictures Jews as despicable?”
Ironically enough, the Monitor worried 40 years ago that America might be “sliding back into a period of anti-Semitism reminiscent of the 1930s.” Perhaps the irony is in the eye of the beholder, though. The Monitor cited things that sound entirely familiar today:
[…] the anti-Semitism issue is a Gordian knot. It’s an issue that is snarled in Middle East politics, tangled in the verbal jousting in the United Nations over the Palestinian issue, caught up in the confusion created when politically active evangelical Christians speak out in favor of greater support for Israel — while at the same time a leading pastor in their ranks makes a now-notorious remark that “God does not hear the prayers of Jews.”
That “leading pastor” was Bailey Smith, in 1980 the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. His remark was a source of embarrassment to Ronald Reagan, then the Republican candidate for president, and Jerry Falwell, in the early stages of promoting his “Moral Majority.” Occasional Christian Zionists, as they have come to be known, have been embarrassing Republicans with antisemitic remarks ever since.
Some of today’s leading Republicans, likewise, have an apparent blind spot for xenophobes and antisemites that led an op ed columnist for the Jerusalem Post to observe, “Jew-haters can be found on the extremes of both parties, but the GOP seems to attract a disproportionate number.” And, of course, the conflict between Israel and Palestinian nationalists can develop antisemitic overtones.
All of which has been exacerbated since Oct. 7 by student protesters and politicians — of both parties — who reduce complex issues, as politicians are wont to do, to bumper-sticker slogans and “gotcha” questions at congressional hearings. It all burst into headlines Dec. 5 at a hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee.
Ironically enough, the poster child for gotcha questions at the hearing was US Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, who has her own history of uncritically sharing antisemitic tropes.
Or, perhaps it isn’t ironic. Perhaps Stefanik realizes she has a problem with liberal Jewish voters because, as the Times of Israel pointed out, she has “drawn condemnation for comments echoing the white supremacist ‘great replacement theory,’ which in its original form claims that Jews are orchestrating the mass immigration of people of color into Western nations in order to replace their white populations.”
Shortly after the hearing Douglas Herbert, international affairs editor for FRANCE 24, that country’s public broadcasting service, had a spot-on analysis of the political context for Stefanik’s sudden concern with antisemitism — and that of Republican members of the committee:
It’s about “wokeism,” and what they’re basically saying, their argument now is [that] what’s happening here shows that these elite universities’ far-left agenda is very racialist. What [the universities] accuse Republicans of doing — of stifling debate, of being against free expression — they say the far-left is doing themselves by basically failing to confront outright anti-Semitism. They’re holding up the mantle, especially this GOP Republican Stefanik, as the great defender of the Jews up against the left establishment who would leave Jews open as free targets to be bashed by Palestinian supporters.
As a senior editor for a French TV network, Herbert doesn’t have a dog in our domestic political fights, and he’s a seasoned observer. I think he’s right about “GOP Republicans” (did he mean MAGA Republicans, substituting one acronym for another?), at least when they raise the issue to shift public attention away from their own failings onto left-wing “woke” elites. He’s also right on the money when he suggests, as he does earlier in the broadcast, that GOP allegations of runaway antisemitism on campus have little to do with real antisemitism. Stefanik seemed to confuse the concepts of intafada, genocide and antisemitism during the hearing. And she wasn’t the only one.
Herbert’s instinct is corroborated by an article in Roll Call, a newsletter with deep experience in covering Capitol Hill, headlined “Campus antisemitism hearing includes attacks on diversity, liberals.” Reported Daniela Altimari:
“Institutional antisemitism and hate are among the poisoned fruits of your institutions’ cultures,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., told Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, Claudine Gay of Harvard University and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“The buck for what has happened must stop on the president’s desk, along with the responsibility for making ‘never again’ true on campus,” said Foxx, who chairs the Education and the Workforce Committee.
But Altimari made it clear Foxx and other Republicans on the committee had other items on their agenda:
At various points during the lengthy hearing, GOP lawmakers blamed the rise in anti-Jewish bias on university diversity policies, a failure to read the Bible and a campus climate that silences conservatives. Several Republicans cited a Harvard Crimson survey that found just 1 percent of the faculty of Arts and Sciences identify as conservative, which they say suggests the university is a bastion of liberalism that rejects diverse viewpoints. [Harvard president Claudine] Gay told lawmakers she had no idea if the survey was accurate and said Harvard does not collect data on the political leanings of its teachers or students. [Link in the original.]
Roll Call also made it clear that actual antisemitism is more complex than the partisan potshots that made headlines at the hearing:
While Republicans blamed the progressive culture on college campuses for fostering a climate of antisemitism, historian Pamela Nadell said the roots of anti-Jewish bias are more complex.
“The antisemitism igniting on campuses today is not new; it is part of a long history of American antisemitism,” she told the panel.
Nadell, who chairs the Jewish studies program at American University, cited several examples, including right-wing protesters who chanted, “Jews will not replace us” while marching in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.
In addition to a rise in antisemitic behavior since early October, many Muslims are reporting a sharp increase in bias crimes. Last month, three Palestinian American college students were shot while visiting Burlington, Vt. One of the men has been paralyzed, his family said. The case is under investigation as a possible hate crime.
Finally, Altimari answered a question I’d had as I followed other media accounts of the hearing: Weren’t there any Democrats on the committee? Turns out yes, there were:
Democrats accused Republicans of hypocrisy, saying they support a 55 percent cut to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which is responsible for investigating instances of antisemitism and other hate crimes. The office is currently investigating reports of discrimination against Harvard and Penn, as well as several other institutions.
“You cannot have it both ways,” said Rep. Robert C. Scott of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “Calling for action and then hamstringing the agency charged with protecting students’ civil rights rings hollow.”
Added Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn.: “Talk is cheap. Budgets show the true willingness to act.”
And so it goes. (Click HERE for more on the difference between the very real evil of antisemitism and what I term the “performative anti-anti-semitism” of many House Republicans.) Antisemitism is a fraught subject, and it means different things to different people, especially in an age like ours of hyperpartisanship. It has been on the upswing since 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president. But Wikipedia, which has the advantage of being crowdsourced and therefore reflecting a consensus, defines it quite simply as “hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews.”
More specifically, continues Wikipedia, antisemitism is a form of racism primarily “motivated by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or by negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism.” For nearly 2,000 years, it has been associated with Christianity, “typically encompassing doctrines of supersession that expect or demand Jews to turn away from Judaism and submit to the religion presenting itself as Judaism’s successor faith.”
(It is this doctrine of supersessionism, by the way, that motivated Martin Luther to write the diatribes against Jews that were picked up by 20th-century Nazis. Which, in turn, motivated Krister Stendahl to make interfaith dialog an important part of his life’s work. And, also in turn, motivates me to speak out in this small way. As Christians, we have a lot to atone for.)
While antisemitism is largely a product of Christianity, Wikipedia notes a “new antisemitism” that exploits the Arab–Israeli conflict but adds, “this is distinct from people who view Israeli government policies negatively, which is not inherently antisemitic.”
Almost all of these distinctions went unnoticed in the House Education Committee’s hearing, and in a House resolution that called on the presidents of Harvard and MIT to resign for alleged indifference to antisemitism on campua. It passed 303-126. Republicans were split 219-1, and Democrats 84-125; three, all Democrats, voted present. So it exacerbated a split already developing among Democrats, and it was a reminder that simplistic language and divisive political posturing aren’t limited to one party.
And it looks like the committee’s performance art isn’t going away any time soon. On Dec. 7, two days after the hearing, it released a statement announcing an investigation and quoting chair Virginia Foxx, “Committee members have deep concerns with their leadership and their failure to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law.” Gabriella Borter of Reuters said the investigation would include “substantial document requests” and subpoenas.
So it looks like we’re off the races.
In the meantime, a detailed, nuanced article on student activists at CUNY by Emma Green, education writer for the New Yorker, brings several of the issues involved into focus. She zeroes in on a demonstration called by Students for Justice in Palestine at City University of New York’s Hunter College campus. But the dynamics are similar nationwide, and the action at CUNY reflects national trends that she analyzes. Green starts with a vignette from the demo:
[…] An adjunct history professor, Sándor John, took the bullhorn and spoke about being the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors. “We are told that to stand in defense of the Palestinian people, under the bombs provided by the U.S. government . . . is antisemitism,” he said. “Shame!” the crowd shouted back.
The argument that John was making—that anti-Zionism is not the same as antisemitism, and that opposing Israel’s military actions does not make Jews less safe—has gained traction on the Jewish left in recent years. But Jews, along with the rest of the country, are divided about where the line between the two lies. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a resolution declaring that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” but Jerry Nadler, a Jewish congressman who represents a large Jewish population in his congressional district in central Manhattan, voted “present” and spoke against the resolution.
Liberal or progressive Jews don’t speak for everyone, however. Green interviewed several Jewish students and faculty who don’t feel safe. She quoted one, who requested anonymity:
Across CUNY, many of the most vocal pro-Palestinian advocacy groups include Jewish organizers. But other Jewish students and faculty on CUNY campuses feel personally targeted by the pro-Palestine activism. “There’s stickers all over CUNY, everywhere, that say things like ‘Zionist donors stop censoring CUNY students.’ But we all know when it says ‘Zionist,’ they mean ‘Jewish,’ ” one CUNY professor, who asked not to be named, told me. “We have been totally and completely betrayed by the left. We don’t have any allies. We’re just out here on our own.”
Green also made as detailed and nuanced an effort as I’ve seen anywhere to explain the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that led up to the current war in Gaza. It is worth quoting in detail:
The students who shout in the streets, or even the faculty who defend them, do not represent the full range of views among those who advocate for Palestinian rights—or even among Palestinians in Gaza, who, directly prior to October 7th, expressed little trust in Hamas, according to an October survey by the Arab Barometer, a scholarly-research network. There are plenty of leftist scholars who don’t see the establishment of Israel as an exclusively colonial enterprise, but who see the Palestinian situation as a humanitarian crisis. Seyla Benhabib, a well-known Turkish philosopher and political theorist at Columbia who has long supported Palestinians’ right to self-determination, refused to sign a letter organized by professional philosophers in support of Palestine. “What I find most hurtful in this whole situation is the reduction of complexity,” she told me. “It’s as if people cannot hold two different kinds of thoughts in their minds.” In an open letter, she wrote that many of the faculty letters that have circulated since October 7th have framed “the conflict in Israel-Palestine through the lens of ‘settler-colonialism’ alone.” She told me, “I’m willing to accept that there is a situation of conflict. In a situation of conflict, there is resistance that is legitimate. And legitimate resistance should deal with the military. But what happened was an orgy of violence.” She went on: “If this distinction isn’t made, we are lost.”
Rashid Khalidi, one of the leading historians of Palestine, wrote a whole book making the case that the Zionist project is similar to other colonial ventures, and yet “there are differences,” he told me. “The Zionist project was a national project, as well as a settler-colonial project,” he said. “Zionism envisions the establishment of a Jewish state, not of a British state, in Palestine. Zionism is, in that respect, unique.” In his view, the point of applying academic frameworks, such as settler colonialism, to Israel is to illuminate its motivations and actions, such as its support for settlements in the West Bank. “Anyone who doesn’t see that as a settler-colonial process is not looking at the right things,” he said.
Khalidi is part of a line of scholars revered by pro-Palestine activists on the left—he is literally the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia. But, in recent days, he has occasionally issued gentle warnings to student activists. “No liberation movement was ever successful without being able to make a case in the metropole,” he said, using an academic term for the central state of a colonial empire. “You have to understand what the limitations are, not just of your rhetoric, but the political and moral and legal implications of what you support and say.” He, too, has noted students’ invocation of thinkers such as Frantz Fanon to justify civilian killings. “You’ve got to read Fanon very carefully to understand he’s talking about the psychological impact of colonial violence on the colonized. He’s not justifying it. He’s a psychiatrist. He’s explaining it. And it’s a lamentable thing to him.” And yet, “students are students,” he went on. “They’re not scholars, or fully developed adults yet. I think you have to cut them a lot of slack.” [Links in the original.]
Let’s hope the House committee will take the hint. Perhaps they call scholars to testify who can educate them on antisemitism, the Middle East and allied subjects.
We’ll see.
Hope springs eternal, but I’m going to have to wait and see. If recent history is any guide, my concern is that as the issue is further politicized, the very real evil of antisemitism will be trivialized and swept away in a welter of sound bites, gotchas and partisan rehtoric.
Links and Citations
Daniela Altimari, “Campus antisemitism hearing features attacks on diversity, liberals,” Roll Call, Dec. 5, 2023 https://rollcall.com/2023/12/05/campus-antisemitism-hearing-includes-attacks-on-diversity-liberals/.
__________, “House OKs measure seeking university presidents’ ouster,” Roll Call, Dec. 13, 2023 https://rollcall.com/2023/12/13/house-oks-measure-seeking-university-presidents-ouster/.
Douglas Bloomfield, “The GOP has an antisemitism problem,” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 29, 2022 https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-718382.
Gabriella Borter, “US House committee opens probe into Harvard, Penn, MIT after antisemitism hearing,” Reuters, Dec. 7, 2023 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-committee-opens-investigation-into-harvard-penn-mit-after-antisemitism-2023-12-07/.
Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman, “Federal attempt to combat anti-Semitism puts universities in an untenable position,” Sacramento Bee [Yahoo!News] https://www.yahoo.com/news/federal-attempt-combat-anti-semitism-140000957.html.
Emma Green, “How a Student Group is Politicizing a Whole Generation on Palestine,” New Yorker, Dec. 15, 2023 https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/how-a-generation-is-being-politicized-on-palestine.
Richard M. Harley, “Anti-Semitism: ‘Christians Have a Responsibility’,” Christian Science Monitor, June 4, 1981 https://www.csmonitor.com/1981/0604/060464.html.
Ron Kampeas, “‘Is that really her?’: Liberal Jews split on Stefanik after antisemitism hearings,” Times of Israel, Dec. 12, 2023 https://www.timesofisrael.com/is-that-really-her-liberal-jews-split-on-stefanik-after-antisemitism-hearings/.
Brian Kaylor, “The Second Coming of John Hagee,” Word & Way, July 18, 2023 https://wordandway.org/2023/07/18/the-second-coming-of-john-hagee/.
David Lauter and Jaweed Kaleem, “How antisemitism came roaring back into American life,” Los Angeles Times [Yahoo!News], Dec. 14, 2023 https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-hamas-war-intensified-debate-110039683.html.
“Reagan Rejects Fundamentalist’s Statement Against Jews,” Jewish Telegraph Agency, Oct. 6, 1980 https://www.jta.org/archive/reagan-rejects-fundamentalists-statement-against-jews.
Nicholas Revise, “Harvard students, faculty hope for end to anti-Semitism row,” AFP, Dec. 13, 2023 https://www.yahoo.com/news/harvard-students-faculty-hope-end-173340171.html.
Katherine Tully-McManus, “House votes to condemn campus antisemitism following last week’s testimony and resignation,” Politico, Dec. 13, 2023 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2023/12/13/congress/house-vote-antisemitism-college-campus-00131627.
“U.S. “moving into a dangerous phase” as anti-Semitic incidents surge, group says,” CBS News, Jan. 26, 2021 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-semitic-incidents-on-rise/
Wikipedia articles on antisemitism, Christian Zionism, Great Replacement, Make America Great Again, Roll Call, Second Coming, Krister Stendahl, Students for Justice in Palestine and supersessionism.
[Uplinked Dec. 25, 2023]
Ordinary Time 
Great piece!
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