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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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pride and protest?
I don’t pretend to possess
any panaceas for an inordi-
nately complex problem, but I
can imagine what bolder and
more proactive rejoinders to
violent antisemitism might
look like.

If extremist rhetoric is
more of a threat today, maybe
Jews should propose limits on
group libel that are as of now
shielded by First Amendment
protections. There is historical
precedent for this, as explored
in a 2019 article by Jewish
historian James Loeffler. In
the 1940s and ’50s, American
Jews engaged in pioneering
legal and legislative advocacy
to criminalize group libel.

Their efforts resulted
in a major 1952 Supreme
Court victory in the case of
attack once again suggests it
does, maybe Jews should get
behind reinvigorated social
welfare programs.

If the danger comes from
easy access to guns, which
may have played a role in
Colleyville as well, perhaps gun
control ought to be a higher
communal Jewish priority.

True, gun reform has attracted
the tireless work of a number of
laudable Jewish organizations,
but there’s still much more that
could be done to place it at the
top of the communal agenda.

The dearth of widespread
conversations about these or
other far-reaching measures,
let alone communal consensus,
is all the more baffling when
you consider the one notable
exception: anti-BDS laws that
have been enacted in over 30
beliefs about Jews that rarely
changes across time and
place, and that it is inherently
different from other forms
of bigotry in its ontological
salience. If that is the consensus,
it is natural to embrace
responses that focus more on
how Jews orient themselves
relative to their enemies rather
than actually taking on the
problems of Jew-hatred. If one
sees antisemitism through the
prism of ahistorical pessimism,
maybe it cannot be taken on
at all.

We need not see antisem-
itism in this way. We might
instead conceive of Jew-hatred
as not unlike other forms of
prejudice even if Jew-hatred,
like all prejudices, has certain
unique characteristics. We
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.

Beauharnais v. Illinois, which
held that a white suprema-
cist’s campaign against Blacks
amounted to libel and was
therefore beyond constitu-
tional protection. That this
history is largely forgotten and
required Loeffler’s uncovering
is instructive.

If social media is a repos-
itory of antisemitic bile,
Jews should be at the front
of those pushing for tech
companies to moderate their
content more vigorously. The
Anti-Defamation League has
taken this on, but it appears to
be alone in the Jewish space.

If violent antisemitism flows
downstream from socioeco-
nomic despair, or if it in some
way overlaps with the scourge
of mental illness, as this latest
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM states. Even as the constitu-
tionality of these laws appears
increasingly dubious, many
American Jewish organizations
continue to support them. But
why unify around legally brash
solutions that may depart from
the American Jewish legacy of
free-speech liberalism and that
invite negative attention only
when it comes to boycotts of
Israel, and not around remedies
that ensure our safety at home?
These are complicated
questions. The ways most
Jews understand antisemi-
tism adds to that complexity.

This includes the notion that
antisemitism is the oldest and
severest form of group hatred,
that it is endemic to Christian
civilization, that it ultimately
stems from a consistent set of
might instead consider how
Jews have devised all sorts of
ways of dealing with animosity
— against themselves and
others — and while some
have fallen short, others have
successfully met the particular
social and political problems
of their era and may hold great
promise in our own.

Approaching the problem
with a more critical eye will help
us see our specific challenges in
context and, even if daunting, as
surmountable. And that might
invite bolder responses than the
ones currently in play. l
Judah Bernstein holds a Ph.D. in
Hebrew-Judaic studies and history
from New York University and is
a student at New York University
School of Law.

JEWISH EXPONENT
KVETCH ’N’ KVELL
Saget Obit Missed Being a Full House
AS I PERUSED THE JAN. 14 Jewish Exponent, I saw the
full-page obituary for Bob Saget (“Local-born Actor, Comedian
Bob Saget Dies at 65”). I settled in to read about this beloved
actor with local connections, figuring the Exponent would have
an exceptional recounting of Saget’s life from local people who
had known and loved him.

Boy, was I wrong. I did not know Saget personally, but people
I know did. Surely the article would mention he was an Abington
High School graduate. Nope. Undoubtedly, it would mention that
he was married — to his Abington High sweetheart — at Beth
Sholom Congregation, and perhaps that he showed a snippet of
his wedding video on “The Tonight Show.”
Certainly, locals who knew him and posted loving tributes
to him after his death — such as David Tilman, cantor emeritus
of Beth Sholom, and local bandleader Eddie Bruce — would
be interviewed. Perhaps a beloved Abington teacher would be
tracked down, or some of his crowd from his Abington days, or
even the then-student reporter for the Abingtonian whose 1994
interview of Saget made the rounds online after the comedian’s
death. Nope, nope and nope again.

All a JE reporter would have had to do is execute a search for
“Bob Saget” and “Abington” on social media, and these local
tributes, and many more, would have popped up, leading to a
more robust homage to one whom this area called its own. JE,
you truly were asleep at the wheel for this one.

Tali Joan Segal | Fort Washington
Groner Responds
I am writing to clarify comments that were included in the article
about my upcoming retirement (“Perelman Day School Leader to
Retire,” Dec. 23), and explicitly recognize the important contri-
butions of our now-retired teachers. I deeply appreciate their
many years of hard work and dedication that put Perelman in the
strong position I found when I arrived, and paved the way for its
continued success.

I have the utmost respect and appreciation for all of the
teachers who made Perelman a place where students develop
a lifelong love of Judaism while thriving academically. These
teachers worked ceaselessly to create a truly warm and vibrant
community, one that is cherished by generations of students and
parents. I know that I, as well as the teachers today, stand on the
shoulders of those who came before us. l
Judy Groner | Head of School, Perelman Jewish Day School
STATEMENT FROM THE PUBLISHER
We are a diverse community. The views expressed in the signed opinion columns and let-
ters to the editor published in the Jewish Exponent are those of the authors. They do
not necessarily reflect the views of the officers and boards of the Jewish Publishing
Group, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia or the Jewish Exponent. Send
letters to letters@jewishexponent.com or fax to 215-569-3389. Letters should be a
maximum of 200 words and may be edited for clarity and brevity. Unsigned letters will not be
published. JANUARY 27, 2022
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