O pinion
Security Requires Our United Actions
BY MICHAEL BALABAN
THE HOSTAGE CRISIS at
Congregation Beth Israel in
Colleyville, Texas, was a horrific
reminder to the American
Jewish community that we
continue to find ourselves the
target of scapegoating, hate
and extremism. Thankfully, all
of the hostages at Congregation
Beth Israel made it out alive
and unharmed.

I am extremely grateful for
the work of law enforcement
and grateful for the efforts
of organizations that focus
on security measures, such
as our partners, the Secure
Community Network (SCN).

Despite the
positive outcome, emotions of fear and
sadness cross my mind, but it is
mostly anger that I feel. Violent
attacks against Jews have
happened in broad daylight on
the streets of major cities and
at Jewish spaces in Pittsburgh,
Monsey, Jersey City, Poway,
and now Colleyville.

Despite cries of Never
Again, antisemitism, hate and
extremism continue to rise in our
country. We are experiencing
the worst wave of sustained and
violent antisemitism our county
has ever seen. At this moment,
our nation is plagued by hate
speech, vandalism, desecration,
violence, murderous attacks and
acts of terrorism. The Jewish
community continues to be the
target. What used to hide in the
shadows is now on public display,
often promoted unabashed.

It is a struggle to compre-
hend how we arrived here.

We fought against this hatred
and for a time, we thought we
conquered it.

Let us be clear, these
are attacks on all of us.

Antisemitism is not just a
“Jewish problem.” Rather it is a
societal problem. An attack on
Jews praying is an assault on
our American right to religious
freedom — the very essence of
what makes up America.

For antisemitism
to flourish, it requires one group
to become the “other.” First,
it starts with the Jews, but let
us be very clear — it never
ends with Jews. As a country
founded on many beliefs,
faiths, backgrounds, religions,
and politics, America’s beauty
was to be a safe haven for all.

Uniting on this issue, our
security must be a top priority
for all synagogues, agencies
and institutions who are
seeking to ensure that our
community is a safe place.

For decades, security has
been a major priority for the
Jewish Federation of Greater
Philadelphia, but Colleyville
and the rise of antisemitism
demands we increase the
following collective actions:
and coordination with law
enforcement to stay apprised
about any threats facing the
Jewish community.

• Engage in advocacy with
our members of Congress
and senators to double
the funding level of the
Nonprofit Security Grant
Program in 2022.

• Increase resources to
secure the safety of our
communities. • Instill pride of being Jewish
in our children rather than
fear. • Invest in education on how
to combat antisemitism.

• Build relationships with
communities that are
committed to combating
hate and bigotry.

• Invest in training to ensure
that our
community members and institutions
are prepared.

• Increase communication
The Jewish Federation of
Greater Philadelphia calls on all
our communities to unite. The
more we are united and joining
to collaborate on security
initiatives, the safer and secure
our community will be. I look
forward to working with all of
you across our communities to
bolster security measures and to
make sure that we will remain
safe, secure and prosperous for
many years to come. l
Michael Balaban is the president
and CEO of the Jewish Federation
of Greater Philadelphia.

Colleyville an Opportunity for American Jews to Rethink
Our Approach to Curbing Antisemitism
BY JUDAH BERNSTESIN
THE JAN. 15 ASSAULT on
a synagogue in Colleyville,
Texas, has renewed the familiar
yet always harrowing question:
How should Jews combat
antisemitism? Contemporary
Jewish leaders, organizations and
pundits have offered various
answers to this question in the
past, but they rarely target the
14 JANUARY 27, 2022
specific socioeconomic, techno-
logical, legal or other systems
that give antisemitism life today.

Beyond synagogue security
measures, American Jews have
yet to rally around a coherent
policy agenda that may help
diminish antisemitic violence.

One obstacle is the way so
many Jews and their spokes-
people view antisemitism: as
ineradicable and inevitable and
otherwise unique among preju-
dices. However, as someone
trained in the academic study
of modern Jewish history, I
see that while Jewish history
is rife with Jew-hatred, such
hatred takes many forms and
has many causes, often specific
to various times and places. By
separating and distinguishing
these causes, perhaps we can
recover old solutions as well as
open the door to new strategies
to combat antisemitism.

The current approach to
antisemitism can be seen, for
instance, in the July 2021 “No
Fear” rally in Washington,
D.C., held in the wake of attacks
on American Jews during the
most recent Gaza flareup.

That “Rally in Solidarity
with the Jewish People” was
intended to be a unified
Jewish communal response
to antisemitism. It offered the
ideal forum for politicians,
celebrities and other digni-
taries to roll out their vision
for how to stop Jew-hatred in
its tracks. What the speakers
at the rally provided, however,
were mostly attitudinal or
public relations solutions,
urging the crowd to embrace
vocal protest, bipartisanship,
JEWISH EXPONENT
Jewish education and pride.

Or consider one of the
most successful books to
grapple with the question,
Bari Weiss’s 2016 manifesto
“How To Fight Antisemitism.”
Weiss’s answers to the titular
query included calling out
antisemitism even when it’s
hard, displaying one’s Jewish
pride without fear, expecting
solidarity from neighbors and
allies, disavowing identity
politics, remaining committed
to “liberalism,” supporting
Israel and striving to “nurture”
one’s Jewish identity.

Many feel that these are
important first steps, but Weiss’s
suite of answers is puzzling
given her view that antisemi-
tism is ubiquitous in American
politics and culture. By her
own argument, antisemitism
is part of the west’s “cultural
DNA” and therefore teeming
on the political right and left in
the United States. It is similar
to how Nikole Hannah Jones,
the journalist behind The New
York Times’ “1619 Project,”
asserts that “anti-Black racism
runs in the very DNA of this
country.” Regardless of one’s opinions
of anti-racism activists in the
United States, their efforts
have birthed ambitious policy
proposals that seek to revamp
criminal justice, policing,
housing, schooling and more.

Why haven’t activists against
antisemitism done the same?
If antisemitism is indeed
a systemic bigotry on par
with other varieties of preju-
dice, doesn’t it demand more
thoroughgoing responses than
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