Action: Take Action

By Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston

We are grateful to Jewish Council for Public Affairs for leading our community in unequivocally saying that the Jewish community rejects Islamophobia, anti-Arab hate, antisemitism, and all forms of bigotry.

We are proud to have been part of the drafting of this statement on behalf of our community.

The Jewish Community Rejects Bigotry and Hate
By Jewish Council for Public Affairs

In the wake of the attack in which a six-year-old Muslim boy was murdered and his mother critically injured by a man who targeted them because of their faith and the Israel/Hamas war, over 100 Jewish groups released a statement today condemning the attack and rejecting any effort to exploit the situation in Israel and Gaza to spread hate and bigotry.

The statement, which was organized by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and signed by 130 national and local groups, explicitly rejects “Islamophobia, anti-Arab hate, antisemitism, and all forms of bigotry”:

“We stand in solidarity with all our neighbors under threat, and urge our elected and civic leaders, law enforcement, schools and universities, and employers to make clear there will be zero tolerance for any act of hate.”

“As Jewish leaders, we want to be very clear: we unequivocally reject those targeting our Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian American neighbors with bigotry, threats, and violence,” said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “This is a moment of profound pain for our community—and we refuse to allow some to exploit that pain as an excuse to spread bigotry or extremism of any kind. Our communities’ safety is inextricably linked, and only by coming together and calling it out can we defeat the forces of hate and violence.”

You can read the full text of the statement here and below:

Since Hamas’ terror attacks in Israel on October 7th, we’ve seen bigots and extremists exploit the crisis to spread hate, disinformation, and extremism.

This is a moment of deep Jewish pain, mourning the lives taken and praying for the safe release of the hostages in Gaza—and this pain and fear is compounded by a horrific rise in antisemitism here in the United States and around the globe.

We also know that we are not the only ones being targeted in this moment. Our Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian American neighbors are facing bigotry, threats, and violence—including the despicable murder of a six-year-old child this weekend outside Chicago, by a man who reportedly espoused anti-Muslim hate.

Let us be unequivocally clear: The Jewish community rejects Islamophobia, anti-Arab hate, antisemitism, and all forms of bigotry. Particularly as extremists continue to exploit this moment, we are reminded that all of our communities’ safety and futures are inextricably linked—and recommit ourselves to fighting hate in all its forms.

We stand in solidarity with all our neighbors under threat, and urge our elected and civic leaders, law enforcement, schools and universities, and employers to make clear there will be zero tolerance for any act of hate.

View the complete list of groups and organizations that signed the statement.

By Rich Tenorio

When former President Barack Obama administration member Carol Fulp was asked about allyship during a panel at “The Good Fight Forum,” she knew exactly how to respond. 

“First and foremost,” she said, “allyship is showing up. Allyship is speaking up. Allyship is looking up. It’s teaming up.” 

All four actions were well-represented at what has become an annual conference in the Boston area by the Anti-Defamation League, with this year’s edition taking place at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront hotel on Oct. 10, 2023. The conference occurred three days after the deadly surprise terror attacks by Hamas against Israel. Launched from the Gaza Strip, the attacks left over 1,300 Israeli service members and civilians dead, including men, women and children. The number of wounded has surpassed 3,300, while an estimated 100 to 200 hostages have been taken by Hamas. 

Fulp spoke at a panel alongside Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden and Idit Klein, the head of the Jewish LGBTQIA+ group Keshet and the lone Israeli among the trio. Rabbi Jonah Steinberg, New England regional director of the ADL, moderated the discussion. 

Allyship to Boston’s Jewish community has been on display ever since the Oct. 7 terror attacks. Two days later, numerous city and state political leaders joined in a solidarity gathering for Israel on Boston Common. Among them were Gov. Maura Healey, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. 

At “The Good Fight,” Hayden shared insights into how to disrupt hate directed against the local Jewish community. 

“We have to be committed to conversations in the hard way,” he said, “fighting against the out and front, blatant ‘isms’ we’re fighting against, rather than the silence of it.” He added, “I don’t know if one is better than the other.” 

Regardless, he said, “There are more for us than against us. You have to believe that, hope that, trust that. For me, personally, you have to pray that.” 

Fulp shared lessons in allyship she learned from a good friend, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. 

As Fulp explained, “Allyship is to be willing to accept criticism, because we don’t know it all. We need to be open to things we might be doing wrong, things we might be doing that are hurtful. Being sensitive enough, trusting enough with your ally, they can share, ‘This is hurtful, inappropriate or a microaggression.’ These are all things that allies learn, because there is trust with their ally.” 

In addition to this panel discussion, there were other panels over the course of the day, with speakers including Steinberg and CJP president and CEO Rabbi Marc Baker, plus two voices from Israel—Shalem College administrator and scholar Daniel Gordis, and Carole Nuriel, ADL senior regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. 

“In the face of this ugliness of the situation, there was so much heroism,” Nuriel said. “So many people wanted to rescue others … I believe there was manifest solidarity and empathy all around. There was so much unity, togetherness, love and empathy. That will help us win.” 

“What we know at this point is first and foremost what this was and was not,” Gordis said. “This was a pogrom. It was not about freedom fighters seeking freedom or Palestinians seeking a Palestinian state.” 

Several speakers referenced statements directed against Israel following the Hamas attacks—namely a letter from over 30 Harvard University student groups that blamed them on Israel. Some of the groups have since withdrew their support of the letter amid outcry. 

Peggy Shukur, the ADL’s deputy regional director, said, “Although Hamas is known for organized terror,” people are “witnessing a shocking counter-narrative of the attacks that is getting traction on and off campus—‘Israel is to blame for the attacks.’” And, she said that the previous afternoon, “in Cambridge, people chanted, ‘We don’t want no Jewish state, we want ‘48!’” 

Rabbi David Wolpe, currently at Harvard Divinity School as a visiting scholar, had a suggestion. 

“Look at the enemies Israel is fighting,” he said. “Remember 9/11. These are the people Hamas just let over their border. Appeal to people not already totally captivated by an evil ideology. Those are the people we should be talking to.”

Rich Tenorio covers antisemitism news for JewishBoston.com. His work has appeared in international, national, regional and local media outlets. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a cartoonist. Email him at richt@cjp.org. 

Stay informed with our antisemitism newsletter

By Kara Baskin

Starting on Sept. 7, 2023, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University welcomes a revolutionary multimedia exhibition spotlighting the Holocaust’s youngest victims. “Lives Eliminated, Dreams Illuminated” (LEDI) memorializes 23 young women and girls who were murdered during the Holocaust with paintings based on archival photographs, accompanied by unique musical compositions and narrative storytelling.

Rina, Anna, Marcelle, Eva and more: Their short lives are captured in soul-stirring portraits by renowned American painter Lauren Bergman and accompanied by music from award-winning Israeli composer Ella Milch-Sheriff, the child of Holocaust survivors. Both artists specialize in the frailty of human life and the complexity of human emotion, especially as it relates to women.

Unlike many museum exhibits, this one is wholly interactive and immersive; each visitor is given headphones to experience each piece of art and vignette as a stand-alone piece, ideally spending five minutes or so per painting, composition and corresponding original photograph. There’s time to pause and contemplate; time to absorb; time to connect not just intellectually but emotionally with each work, visually and musically.

Milch-Sheriff’s cousin, arts and social impact philanthropist Dr. David Milch, conceived of the LEDI experience during a chance meeting with Bergman in 2019 at New York City’s Pierre Hotel. Also the son of Holocaust survivors, Milch was attending an event to support the Museum of Eternal Faith and Resilience. Bergman’s Holocaust portraits and stark captions were on display—and he was moved by her ability to crystallize the brevity of these lost lives through the dichotomy of archival photos and artistic reinterpretations of their faces.

“I found myself in front of a beautiful painting of [Holocaust victim] Eva Nemova. I looked at a photograph next to the painting, read the caption and froze: I immediately realized that I was looking at an archival photograph of a young girl who had been murdered in the Holocaust and that this was her life reimagined in the portrait. I was struck by it,” Milch recalls.

Not long after, he introduced Bergman to his prolific composer cousin, Milch-Sheriff, at a separate event. The two hit it off, and they began to imagine the portraits set to musical vignettes.

“Music goes directly to certain senses that are not necessarily our intellect [or emotions]. It speaks directly to our wholeness,” says Milch-Sheriff, who composed many of the haunting pieces from her small apartment in Tel Aviv, Israel, during the early days of COVID-19.

“When I listened to Ella’s music, I could feel the paintings in a completely different way. It makes it like 3D—all-surrounding,” Bergman says.

Bergman originally began the portraits in 2017, in response to the Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, an eerie echoing of the Nazi rallies in the 1930s. Milch-Sheriff’s compositions gave her work a new dimension, thanks to the duo’s rapport.

“When I first met Ella, we just went off by ourselves, chatting. I didn’t know about her. She didn’t know anything about me. But we just started talking, and I immediately sensed that we had a very deep connection. There’s this spark of ‘aha!’ when you meet someone who inspires you and who’s in sync with your message and your goals,” Bergman says.

Bergman’s message comes from a place of despair—but hope, too.

“This is a call to stand up against the hatred and divisiveness that’s rising around us,” Bergman says. “The call to action is to not be a bystander.”

After Charlottesville, and amid news of children being ripped from their parents’ arms at the U.S. border, she began to worry about the country’s new trajectory, “away from the tolerance and inclusivity I thought we were moving toward … and it shattered me. I had never, ever anticipated that I would see neo-Nazis and white supremacists marching through the streets,” she says.

Now, Bergman hopes that LEDI reminds visitors how fragile democracy truly is, and how women in particular are uniquely vulnerable, especially in a world where their rights are being stripped away in various settings.

“My work is always about describing societal issues through the female lens,” she says. “My mother was both a model and a feminist activist, so there was this juxtaposition of the idealized female, the beauty, with an activist, strong woman. My work has always probed those issues: What does it mean to be a female in society with these contradictory messages?”

Milch thinks back to 9/11, and how quickly the twin towers—and so many lives—were exterminated. He recalls how long it took to rebuild, and how hatred can reverberate for years, decades and centuries. Progress takes time; destruction happens immediately.

“Disorder happens furiously fast, whereas something creative takes time and intentionality,” he says. “My hope is that an exhibition like this stops people for a moment and focuses them on something which, truly, in my mother’s living memory, happened out of seemingly nowhere and had a reverberating effect with the escalation of antisemitism and intolerance.”

Indeed, there’s another family connection: Milch’s mom, 92-year-old Lusia Rosenzweig Milch, is also featured in the exhibition. She lost more than 100 family members in the Holocaust. She crossed the German Alps in mid-winter to safety in Italy, arriving in New York City, where she still lives today. In the exhibit, she shares personal memories and stories along with her portrait, adding one more humanistic element to an exhibit that manages to capture the most inhumane of horrors.

“Art and artistry give us a window, a mirror, a lever into understanding these tragedies of history. How do you deal with 6 million people killed during the Holocaust? One-and-a-half-million children. The numbers just numb us. But, if you can connect to an individual child via art and artistry, if it makes an emotional connection? We know how the brain works. The brain connects to things emotionally, and you can’t forget it,” Milch says.

Learn more about the exhibit, which will be at Brandeis University in Waltham from Sept. 7 through Oct. 25, 2023, at livesdreams.com.

Kara Baskin is the parenting writer for JewishBoston.com. She is also a regular contributor to The Boston Globe and a contributing editor at Boston Magazine. She has worked for New York Magazine and The New Republic, and helped to launch the now-defunct Jewish Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Email her at kara@jewishboston.com. 

Stay informed with our antisemitism newsletter