The anti-antisemitism movement is failing

More “calling out” by the same leaders of the same institutions isn’t going to work.

I don’t know why this one tweet from Jonathan Greenblatt at the Anti-Defamation League set me off — it’s certainly not the most contentious thing he’s ever said. But last week, when I saw his banal observation that antisemitism is bad combined with an exhortation to “call it out,” I’d simply had enough.

Because here’s the thing: The United States has unquestionably experienced a surge in antisemitism, a surge that has occurred while Greenblatt has been running the premier anti-antisemitism organization in the world, at a time when anti-antisemitism is, broadly speaking, extremely well-funded.

So while I am 100 percent aligned with him that antisemitism is bad, I think we have to ask if this rise really happened because we haven’t had enough people “calling it out.” Or, perhaps, are the strategies being pursued by the leaders of major American Jewish organizations failing, and they actually need to do something different?

I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

I’m also skeptical that they will do anything differently because the necessary pivot has aspects that conservative Jews will hate and aspects that progressive Jews will hate. The part conservatives won’t like comes first, so I’m going to ask you to bear with me and read to the end.

This is important to me, so I’m going to be as clear as I can: American Jews, as individuals and as leaders of institutions, need to think a lot more clearly and seriously about what’s going on.

And that starts with acknowledging that while antisemitism has always been morally wrong, in the very recent past it was a pretty marginal problem in the United States, and the institutions that are supposed to fight antisemitism trained for combat in this environment of low antisemitism.

And today, they have no idea what to do in an environment where prejudice against Jewish people is a genuinely non-trivial — and growing — social force.

The “calling out” paradox

American Jewish institutions have largely fallen prey to a sort of pathological behavior that often appeared in anti-racism advocacy during the Great Awokening.