last word
Joel Bolstein
Sasha Rogelberg | Staff Writer
R abbi Michel Yechel Teumin
arrived on Ellis Island in 1922,
having fled from the perva-
sive antisemitism in his hometown of
Berezin in now-Belarus.

He was the last passenger to step
off the boat and, upon doing so, was
greeted by members of his village,
whom he had helped gather funds to
escape. Each villager placed a dollar in
Teumin’s hand.

Joel Bolstein often heard this story
from his grandmother, Teumin’s
daughter, about his great-grandfather.

Even amid pogroms and anti-Jewish
violence, the rabbi found a way to help
his community.

As chair of the Pennsylvania Human
Relations Commission, Bolstein, 62, tries
to embody his great-grandfather daily.

“I think about it all the time — every-
thing that they went through so I could
live here, free from discrimination,”
Bolstein said. “I don’t want anybody
to be discriminated against because
my family history is such that we know
what it is. We know what discrimination
feels like, what it looks like. I think it’s
at the root of everything that I do.”
Bolstein has served as PHRC
commissioner since 1999 when he
was first appointed by then-Gov.

Tom Ridge. The Doylestown resident
is also a partner at Fox Rothschild.

In the 24 years he’s been a part of
the commission — which monitors
and investigates complaints of bias,
hate and discrimination and provides
educational outreach — Bolstein has
seen combating antisemitism go from
inapplicable to central to his job.

To address rising anti-Jewish hate,
Bolstein has worked with PHRC
Executive Director Chad Dion Lassiter
to fortify Black-Jewish relations in the
commonwealth. He believes that forms
of hate are connected, and to address
42 JUNE 15, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
antisemitism, you must confront all forms
of hate and “speak with one voice.”
Bolstein comes from 22 generations
of rabbis, and the Torah his great-grand-
father brought from his village sits
in the ark at the Chabad Lubavitch
of Doylestown, where Bolstein is a
member. Although he doesn’t speak
behind a pulpit, Bolstein’s approach to
his work is near-spiritual.

“Evil has been around since Adam
and Eve, and part of me says that
there’s evil in the world because God
wants all of the good people to fight
that,” he said. “That’s kind of the philos-
ophy that I bring to this, which is that
good people have to get together and
address all the hatred — not just the
antisemitism — but racism and every-
thing else that’s affecting our society.”
Drawing from the Torah, Bolstein
compares the obligation to address
discrimination to the story of Noah:
Following the flood that wiped out evil
from the world, God insisted that Noah
and his family finally leave the ark to
begin the work of rebuilding society.

The trouble is, in Bolstein’s world,
evil only appears to be mutating, not
disappearing. When he joined PHRC, Bolstein was
still getting to know Pennsylvania. He
grew up in the homogenous Scotch
Plains township of New Jersey, where
there were few minorities. Most of his
work as commissioner was investigat-
ing employment and housing discrimi-
nation against mostly Black community
members. The most helpful tool he had
was simply to listen and learn.

“You do start to see that there is
systemic racism. You can’t say it’s not
there. It’s there. It goes back many
decades, in terms of employment
and housing and education, how we
fund education, redlining in terms of
housing,” Bolstein said.

But about a decade ago, Bolstein
investigated a flyering incident in
Central Pennsylvania, where hundreds
of leaflets with antisemitic tropes were
distributed on cars and around a movie
theater, bringing antisemitism to the
forefront of his mind.

“That’s probably when it really started
to materialize for me,” Bolstein said.

After the Tree of Life synagogue
complex shooting, Bolstein could tell
that antisemitism would be a growing
issue. Partly because of social media, white
supremacists are empowered through
quickly growing online communities.

Hate groups used to lurk in people’s
basements, finding secret meeting
places. Today, Bolstein said, white
supremacists can find an “electronic
basement” online, where they can
meet frequently and anonymously.

“That’s the worst part about it,”
Bolstein said. “It’s out there; it’s under
the surface. You can always see it, and
then it pops up like it did with the Tree
of Life synagogue shooting.”
It’s a bleak thought, and Bolstein
once more turns to his Judaism to give
him hope and energy to carry on: “I
believe we’re here for a reason. ... I’m
here because God wants me where
I am.” ■
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Courtesy of Fox Rothschild
USES SPIRITUALITY TO FUEL FIGHT AGAINST HATE