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Persona: Community Members

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Meeting the Moment: CJP’s Center for Combating Antisemitism

By Melissa Garlick, Senior Director of Combating Antisemitism and Building Civic Engagement

Combined Jewish Philanthropies’ Center for Combating Antisemitism (CCA) is a growing hub for Boston’s work in responding to antisemitism and bringing local and national partners’ work together strategically and in coordination with each other toward a vision where antisemitism becomes socially and politically unacceptable in Greater Boston. 

As ADL’s recently released annual audit confirmed, our community has been experiencing a staggering 189% rise of antisemitic incidents in Massachusetts. And this has also been coupled with the lack of preparedness by many civic leaders to adequately understand or respond to Jewish trauma. 

Leaders of businesses, educational institutions, and civic spaces in Boston need the tools and the resources to respond so that ultimately, we can reverse this disturbing trend and strengthen our civic and communal institutions.

Expanding infrastructure

This is long-term work. CJP, with our partners, are already growing our relationships with civic leaders across the city, bringing antisemitism training and education to businesses and other non-Jewish civic spaces. We’re educating our Jewish teens and their educators about antisemitism. And through our Communal Security Initiative, we are responding to the increased needs of our Jewish communal institutions for security preparedness.

CJP’s Center for Combating Antisemitism is building out its capacity to: 

  • Mobilize civic and business leaders and engage them in our work to ensure that their institutions are safe and supportive places and spaces for all Jews.
  • Educate the next generation — and the academic institutions that serve them — about antisemitism, Jewish history, and Jewish life to ensure that they both can confidently respond to acts of hate.
  • Ensure that our Jewish community remains strong, safe, and vibrant by expanding CJP’s successful Communal Security Initiative.

We know that the latest report from the ADL comes amidst already rising incidents, grief, and trauma, and at a time where our community has been experiencing deep levels of anxiety and fear. We cannot let the fear throw us into despair. Instead, we must come together to use this information as power to educate our families, our networks, and our colleagues.

There’s more you can do

We’re quickly ramping up and expanding so we can effectively meet this moment, but we need your help — each of us plays a role in this work.

We’re all in this fight together and will continue to work every day to ensure that Jews can live loudly, proudly, and safely in our community.

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Boston teens visited the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism headquarters

By Molly Kazan, Fighting Antisemitism Manager at Combined Jewish Philanthropies

On Sunday, April 7, 18 teen leaders from CJP’s Jewish Teen Initiative (JTI) Peer Leadership Fellowship visited the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) headquartered at Gillette Stadium. Fellows explored how FCAS’ work connects to CJP’s Center for Combating Antisemitism, and how they themselves can become better change agents in local efforts to fight Jewish hate.   

The visit was planned in response to a February 2024 study the Fellows conducted amongst their peers citing growing concerns in antisemitism among Boston-area Jewish teens. The Peer Leadership Fellowship is a signature program of JTI at CJP that trains and empowers teens in grades 10 through 12 to become communal connectors through monthly gatherings.  

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Ally Challenge Grant

CJP’s Center for Combating Antisemitism (CCA) is excited to invite applications for grant funding to support community allyship work, through our new Ally Challenge. To support community based allyship work to support combating antisemitism, grant funding may be provided to up to four projects of up to $50,000 each to aid in launching or catalyzing progression of a grassroots-led project that furthers community bridge building or allyship work.

Funding will be one-time for June 2024–June 2025.   

Project proposals for this period could include joint civic rights mission to the South, interfaith youth service projects, cross-community advocacy, or art projects. We invite creative proposals to support specific projects within this time period that would have shown impact on cross-community relationships and allyship.

Applications are due by 5:00 p.m. ET on Friday, May 3.  
For more details and to apply, please visit this form.  

To learn more about CJP’s work to combat antisemitism, please visit: https://ma.cjp.org/antisemitism-initiative  

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Inspiring Anti-Hate Commercial Premieres at Oscars

By Foundation to Combat Antisemitism

Did you know 895 Jewish temples received bomb threats in 2023? This video, “Neighbors,” which debuted during the Academy Awards on Sunday, March 10, recounts the actual events that transpired in an American synagogue that received a bomb threat and was evacuated. In response, the neighboring evangelical church offered their space for the Jewish congregation to conduct their services.

Hate loses when we stand together.

#StandUpToJewishHate

At FCAS (Foundation to Combat Antisemitism), we are dedicated to combating antisemitism through positive messaging and partnerships. Our initiative, Stand Up to Jewish Hate, is designed to empower both non-Jews and Jews to become defenders and upstanders for the Jewish community. We are passionate about promoting understanding, empathy, and tolerance among different groups, and our ultimate goal is to create a more inclusive and accepting world for all.

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Addressing Antisemitism Head-On

By Melissa Garlick, Senior Director of Combating Antisemitism and Building Civic Engagement at Combined Jewish Philanthropies

Underpinning Dara Horn’s newest piece on antisemitism appearing in The Atlantic, “Why the Most Educated People in America Fall for Anti-Semitic Lies,” is the same premise that grounds CJP’s growing work to combat antisemitism: that “one confounding fact in this onslaught of the world’s oldest hatred is that American society should have been ready to handle it.” Almost six months after the attacks of 10/7, it becomes clearer each day that antisemitism is both pervasive in our society and that American civic society and many of our leaders were not and are still not prepared to handle it.  

It is this exact space that CJP is building out our work to combat antisemitism.  

In this month’s newsletter, we highlight CJP’s increased investments in security for early childhood centers and day schools to ensure that our Jewish communal organizations are prepared on physical security as they are forced to contend with the rise of antisemitism. Our partners at JCRC also wrote this month about growing calls by city councils in Greater Boston to hold public hearings for ceasefire resolutions. While JCRC has worked with council leaders to better prepare them on the complexities of these issues, the public hearings themselves have also brought an onslaught of antisemitic rhetoric and comments. Finally, as CJP builds out and supports work to better train and resource campus administrators with tools on antisemitism, we are highlighting resources for students as anti-Zionism continues on campuses during spring semester.

Through communal security, working with civic leadership, and supporting Jewish students, CJP and its partners are working to address that “confounding fact” Dara Horn so aptly highlighted so that our society once and for all ensures that antisemitism becomes politically and socially unacceptable by addressing it head-on.

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“Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.” Debuts on March 15

By Kara Baskin

On Friday, March 15, “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.” premieres at The Castle at Park Plaza. It’s the New England debut of a harrowing exhibit that has captivated and devastated audiences around the world.

The exhibition spotlights more than 700 original artifacts gathered from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and others. The objects are devastatingly personal: child-sized shoes, dolls that would never be held again, suitcases packed by deportees—everyday items imbued with horror.

Then there are the artifacts from the chambers: barracks, gas masks, bunk beds, a Model 2 freight car used to transport Jews to the camps, striped prison uniforms: now set behind glass cases, out of context but haunting in their spareness.

“The difference between a good historical museum and an ordinary museum is that a historical museum uses artifacts to tell a story. Some museums tell the story of the artifacts. We believe that a museum tells a story, and the artifacts are the tools with which we tell the story,” says Rabbi Michael Berenbaum, one of the exhibit’s consultants. He has served as deputy director of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and project director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

(Photo: Courtesy “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.”)

There are also the painfully ordinary stories of victims: The museum displays what’s known as the Lili Meier album, depicting the arrival of Hungarian Jews and the selection process imposed by the SS. Meier and her family were sent to Auschwitz from Bil’ki, Ukraine, then part of Hungary. They arrived on May 26, 1944, coinciding with professional SS photographers. Meier survived Auschwitz, forced labor in Morchenstern and later a transfer to the Dora-Mittelbau camp, where she was liberated. She brought the original album with her when she immigrated to the United States. 

But there’s also the Hoecker album, a stark juxtaposition showing laughing SS officers socializing and having fun, likely assembled by SS Obersturmführer Karl Hoecker, chief to the commandant of Auschwitz, SS-Sturmbannführer Richard Baer.

“We see the perpetrators of Auschwitz at play in their leisurely camp, a retreat center outside of the camp—the way in which they sang, the way in which they sunned themselves, the way in which they flirted,” Berenbaum says.

The voices of survivors are also woven throughout the exhibit, including those who endured the Sonderkommando, forced to dispose of gas chamber corpses. They describe the horror of deportation and killings, but also their hope for the future.

(Photo: Courtesy “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.”)
(Photo: Courtesy “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.”)
(Photo: Courtesy “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.”)
(Photo: Courtesy “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.”)
(Photo: Courtesy “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.”)

“We’re in the twilight. We’re one minute to midnight in the life of the survivors, and we’re now about to move from lived memory to historical memory,” Berenbaum says. “Auschwitz should be far away and long ago. But we’re hearing echoes of hatred, echoes of venom, echoes of antisemitism throughout society.”

And in an era when antisemitic incidents are on the rise, particularly in Massachusetts, it’s a stark reminder that the past isn’t far away at all. As part of CJP’s initiative to combat antisemitism, CJP is providing funding for 7,000 public school students to visit the exhibition to deepen education about the Holocaust and contemporary antisemitism. 

“I’d like visitors to understand where hatred can lead and where venom can take us as a society and as individuals,” Berenbaum warns. “We have a section on the rise of Nazism. A photographer went through Germany, city by city, town by town, village by village, and photographed all the antisemitic signs that were found throughout the towns: ‘Jews not wanted,’ et cetera. They put it in a photo album to demonstrate the pervasiveness of this venom. When you see that in its entirety, you realize that these have the potential not to be isolated instances of hatred but can morph into something much more explosive.”

The exhibit is recommended for visitors 12 and up. 

Tickets are expected to sell out; buying in advance is recommended at theauschwitzexhibition.com.

“It’s not an easy exhibition, but it’s an important exhibition. And for a family to spend quality time with something that’s deep, that’s important, that’s relevant—I’m sorry that it’s relevant—and has to be seen through the prism of rising antisemitism and rising hatred in our society, it’s an important opportunity to go as a family,” he says.

Kara Baskin is a writer for FaceJewishHate.org. 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.

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Meet Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism

By Rich Tenorio

As Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsh has been seeking to forge alliances since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on her country. In the U.S., she’s met with multiple officials, from legislators to mayors to university presidents.

She sees a number of possibilities for partnerships, including with fellow antisemitism envoys from other nations, as well as with administrators on college campuses. For her, the need has never been greater: Noting that antisemitism was surging even before the attacks, she cites an even greater rise since then, by hundreds of percentage points. 

“Antisemitism is like any other form of racism and bigotry,” she said. “It cannot be fought alone by Jews. It’s not just a threat to Israel, or Jews around the world. I do believe it is a threat to the foundations of democracies, to shared principles of life and liberty.” (Learn more about how CJP is responding in Greater Boston with its 5-Point Plan to combat Jewish hate.)

“Hopefully we can make a dent in it,” Cotler-Wunsh said, “whether by coalitions of special envoys, legislators around the world, and Jewish and other leadership.”

There are roughly 30 special envoys for combating antisemitism around the world, representing such countries or bodies as the U.S., Canada and the European Parliament.

“They’re not only allies, they’re critical allies,” Cotler-Wunsh said. “Many of them advise their own governments and heads of state. They’re entrusted to monitoring and combating antisemitism.”

Part of this, she said, is through the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by over 10,000 entities. She calls it a working definition, meant to be used as an educational resource, not as a censor.

Based in Raanana, she took up her current position only about three weeks before the Oct. 7 attacks. Before that, she had a wide-ranging career that included serving as a member of the Knesset, where she founded an inter-parliamentary task force to combat antisemitism on social media. Raised in Canada, she is the stepdaughter of the former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler, whose legal career has included defending both Natan Sharansky and Nelson Mandela at various points.

Building allyship since Oct. 7

Cotler-Wunsh’s collective experience allows her to battle antisemitism on three fronts—in international institutions, on college and university campuses and on social media.

“What I have done over the last several decades includes my own legal work as an activist, lecturer and academic,” said Cotler-Wunsh, who holds a master of laws degree from McGill University in Montreal. “It’s intersected by the research, professional and legislative [spheres]. It has been, over time, focused not just on antisemitism but on its modern, mainstream strain of anti-Zionism, as well as on the positives of Jewish indigeneity, identity and peoplehood.”

Fighting antisemitism on college campuses

On American college campuses, she would like to see more awareness of what she describes as a strong connection between many Jewish students and Zionism.

“I have a very simple demand,” Cotler-Wunsh said. “I expect an equal and consistent application of an infrastructure that protects everybody else…to those who self-identify as Zionist—Jews and non-Jews.” She noted, “Not all Jews have to self-identify as Zionist, but they cannot deny those that do have the right to do so.”

She’s pleased by the reception she’s gotten from high-level administrators. “All of the university leaders have been very civil, as I would expect from conversations with presidents, chancellors and provosts,” Cotler-Wunsh said.

Yet, she added, “It’s the complete opposite with students who may disagree but are unwilling to engage with ideas with which they may disagree in this critical moment of reckoning for academic spaces.”

When Cotler-Wunsh spoke at Stanford University in January, she recounted a particularly tense situation.

“I had to be snuck out the back door by the police,” she said. “I did not walk out the front door like any other human being.” She added that she was escorted out of the event “in the face of demonstrations and chants like, ‘We don’t want no Jew state, we want all of ‘48,’ ‘Zionist, Zionist you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,’ and, ‘There is only one solution: intifada revolution.’”

Read about how CJP recently provided support to local Hillels to help create safer and more welcoming campuses.

Israel and global Jewry

Despite such experiences, Cotler-Wunsh sees reason for optimism for Israel and global Jewry.

“I do think this [is] a critical moment of reminder that we are a people,” she said. “When you see us as a people, what binds us together is far greater than what sets us apart, enabling [us] to overcome challenges we have faced as a people from time immemorial.”

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.

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Webinar: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Universities, and Terror Financing

March 13, 2024, 12:00 p.m.

Part of the “Navigating Antisemitism on Campus and Beyond” series presented by the Brandeis University, this talk will delve into the financial aspects of individuals and entities associated with terrorist groups and, in turn, their connection to national organizations influencing campus politics and student groups. Presented by Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President for Research, Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Register Here
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Why Is the World Against Jews? How To Respond During a Time of War

March 13, 2024, 7:30 p.m.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed when seeing statements or hearing from friends about the Israel-Hamas war? Not sure how to engage in a meaningful, productive way? This discussion will help you to respond to statements like, “Israel is committing genocide of the Palestinian people,” and, “The Palestinian people were oppressed by Israel for so long that is no wonder they lashed out on Oct. 7,” and, “Netanyahu is just after Gaza’s resources.”

A mixture of history, politics and parenting, this discussion is designed to give you tools to respond to statements like this. No prior knowledge of the conflict or history is needed. Join us for real information to answer these complex statements.

Speakers:

  • Marc Baker, president and CEO, CJP
  • Emily Briskman, associate vice president, JUF campus affairs and executive director, The Hillels of Illinois at Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago
  • Emily White, assistant vice president of campus affairs and executive director of JUF’s Israel Education Center
Register Here