The current level of antisemitism in the U.S “is a political problem, not an educational problem” that “requires a new set of organizations” to solve, David Bernstein, founder of the North American Values Institute, said on Thursday.  

“A group of radicals have seized control over some of the key institutions, from higher education to K-12. It didn’t happen overnight, it happened over a number of years, but it sort of reached a tipping point,” in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks, Bernstein said during an online conversation hosted by Tikvah Ideas. The discussion addressed the re-emergence of antisemitism in American life, the Jewish community’s efforts to confront it and the effectiveness of legacy organizations trying to do so. 

The event also featured historian Jack Wertheimer — who earlier this month published a Mosaic essay on the rise of antisemitism in America, in which he interviewed some 40 Jewish community professionals. The talk was moderated by Mosaic‘s editor Jonathan Silver. 

Bernstein continued, “In order to fight against radical ideology, we have to ask, what’s the opposite of that? And to me, that’s Western values, enlightenment values, classical liberal values. We like to call them American civic values, right? These are the values of pluralism, free expression of ideas, or in Jewish terms, it would be machloket l’shem shamayim, arguments for the sake of heaven. Equality of opportunity, the rule of law. This is the core of the American creed. And I believe it is that core has kept America safe and has sort of pushed the radicals to the margins of society.”  

“I believe that that is faltering, it’s faltering on the left, I think it’s increasingly faltering on the right. I think we have to regain the high ground on those issues. So when I think about building coalitions and fighting antisemitism, it’s not so much that I think there’s some magic bullet about antisemitism.” 

Rather, Bernstein suggested coalitions “rebuilt around shared interests and values — but not on the shared interests and values that the mainstream organizations traditionally have done.”

“They’ve been building coalitions around progressive causes,” he said, “believing that progressives would shield us from what they saw as the true radicalism, the true antisemitism from the right. But there’s this other set of values that I think were actually at the center of American Jewish security that we took for granted. And it’s those values that I talked about, those classical liberal values. And so what I’m looking to do is to find allies.”

For example, Asian Americans and Hindu Americans aren’t necessarily going to take an interest in keeping anti-Israel rhetoric out of the classroom, Bernstein said. But they will work with Jewish groups to oppose the rise in K-12 classrooms of the “oppressed-oppressor ideology in the same way we are.” 

The “mistake” Jewish organizations are making in the K-12 space is saying “as long as you don’t touch us Jews, or you don’t talk about Israel, we’re okay with it,” Bernstein said. “I think they have much more leeway to [denounce] this anti-colonialist framework [that’s being taught].” 

“It’s not about seeking agreement, it’s about seeking alignment,” said Bernstein, who added that  change would “require a new set of organizations that are not bound by those same constraints,” as legacy organizations are.

Wertheimer responded, “I’m not sure that we necessarily need new organizations that will do that.”

“A lot depends on which sectors we’re talking about,” he continued. “The difficulty that we have here is the conflation of antisemitism and ‘anti-Israelism,’ to use a shorthand here. And those organizations that are trying to push back against anti-Israelism are trying to educate about the history of the Middle East, the history of Israel, how it came about, and so on,” continued Wertheimer. “That’s not going to win the kinds of allies that you’re talking about.” 

At the same time, he said local Jewish federations — especially large ones — that depend heavily on government funds, then “channel [funds] to various human services agencies that are under the umbrella of federations.”

“And so I’m supporting [Bernstein’s argument] in the sense that those federations have to be careful not to alienate the government officials who are going to be making the allocations decisions of those funds, and they can shift them around.” 

But because the majority of American Jews identify as liberal or left of center, “they feel uncomfortable pushing back against progressives,” Wertheimer argued.

“Because there are elements of the progressive agenda that they sympathize with, reproductive rights as an example, but there are a range of issues,” he continued. “What progressives want in those areas is good for American society, and therefore will also be good for Jews.” 

Wertheimer said that critics of legacy organizations are “unwilling or unable to acknowledge that many of these organizations that are involved in this campaign also have to deal with internal Jewish politics.”

“It’s not as if the American Jewish community is prepared to speak with one voice,” he continued. “This is a community that is deeply divided over politics, and Jews are not unique in this regard. Obviously, the American population at large is deeply divided, and many of these organizations, including federations, are trying hard to hold the Jewish population together as best as possible, but that then limits what they can say.”

Silver said that in trying to build alliances, Jewish organizations sometimes overlook evangelical Christians. 

“There’s a large fact that there are millions of Christians in the United States that are praying for Israel when they wake up in the morning, and praying for Israel when they go to sleep at night. And that, in their mind, they think that the nations that bless Israel will be blessed, and are not only open to acquiescing to the presence of Jews in their country, but love Jews,” he said. “The American Jewish community, by and large, has not shown the kind of gratitude and alliance building that that opportunity represents.” 

Wertheimer posed “an educational challenge” to the Jewish community, in an effort to address this. The “large majority of Jews are concentrated in blue states and in blue cities, and they don’t have very much contact with [evangelical Christians]. Not only that but they still maintain this kind of reflexive fear of what pious Christians really think about Jews and what the motivations are for this,” he said. “And that’s part of an educational challenge that needs to go on within the Jewish community.”