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Persona: Community Members

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At Brandeis, a New Holocaust Memorial Unlike Any Other

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.

Ester Gordon by Lauren Bergman for “Lives Eliminated, Dreams Illuminated” (Courtesy Dr. David M. Milch Foundation)
Henriette Cambridge by Lauren Bergman for “Lives Eliminated, Dreams Illuminated” (Courtesy Dr. David M. Milch Foundation)
Eva Shulsova by Lauren Bergman for “Lives Eliminated, Dreams Illuminated” (Courtesy Dr. David M. Milch Foundation)
Eva Nemova by Lauren Bergman for “Lives Eliminated, Dreams Illuminated” (Courtesy Dr. David M. Milch Foundation)
Esther Federika Polak by Lauren Bergman for “Lives Eliminated, Dreams Illuminated” (Courtesy Dr. David M. Milch Foundation)

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. 

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Listen In: How To Respond to Antisemitism

Melissa Garlick, Senior Director, Combatting Antisemitism and Building Civic Engagement, talks on Movin’ and Groovin’ with Ellen Kagan about antisemitism: what it is and how to respond. Melissa also talks about the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism that the White House shared, which is its first national plan ever directly addressing Jewish hate.  

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The Power of One to Make a Difference

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

I have dedicated my professional life to combatting antisemitism and hate and have realized that the starting place for this work is a hard acknowledgement that antisemitism can’t be solved with just one magic solution. With increasing incidents of antisemitism, violence, and division in our country, the feelings of despair can overwhelm and sometimes distract from the mission. But every day, individuals in our communities are choosing to use their power by lifting their voices, sharing their stories, building solidarity, and raising awareness.   

I am personally inspired by recent stories that highlight the power of one to make a difference in this work—including the bravery of Chanie Krinsky, who shared her story and her voice in NBC’s coverage on the rise of antisemitism in Massachusetts, and the determination of Arlington High School senior Cooper Katzman, who hiked 275 miles to raise money for the ADL and the fight against antisemitism. 

Each one of us has the power and the responsibility to take action in the collective work to combat antisemitism. We can draw inspiration and motivation from people like Chanie and Cooper as we strive toward a future where all Jewish people are able to live proudly and safely. 

Here are some action steps you can take to make a difference in fighting antisemitism: 

  1. Educate yourself and become a better advocate—knowledge is power. Do you know how to talk about and intervene with antisemitic tropes and myths? Do you know how to explain them and their impact on you? Check out the ADL’s Guide to Antisemitic Tropes and learn more.
  1. Raise awareness—use your own voice to elevate the problem of antisemitism and the impact on you and your community. Write in local outlets, engage in public conversations. 
  1. Know how to report antisemitic incidents. 
  1. Be a good ally—and remember, antisemitism is not only an attack on the Jews. Understand how antisemitism intersects and often is found with other “isms.” Build meaningful relationships across communities and reach out to others in times of need for solidarity.     
  1. Celebrate and find joy. Proudly displaying Jewish identity and finding times of joy are essential to the fight against antisemitism.
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Teen Hiked 275 Miles to Combat Antisemitism


By Kara Baskin

While some high schoolers were kicking off their summer by sleeping in, Arlington High School rising senior and athlete Cooper Katzman was hiking 275 miles to raise money for the Anti-Defamation League. From June 26 until July 4, he walked Vermont’s Long Trail—often in the soaking rain—from Canada all the way to Massachusetts.

He dedicated each day of the journey to a horror caused by antisemitism, from Brighton Rabbi Shlomo Noginski’s 2021 stabbing to Pittsburgh’s 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting. While Katzman initially set out to raise $1,800, he collected over $6,000. I spoke to him about the emotionally and physically transformative trek.

How and why did you decide to embark on this journey? I bet a lot of people your age would be pretty overwhelmed by the prospect.

I did my first real backpacking trip in the summer of 2020 with my cousin, about 60 or 70 miles of this trail. I’ve been surrounded by people like my dad, who’s very good friends with [renowned trail-runner] Joe McConaughy, who has been my biggest inspiration. I push myself to the limit to see how fast I can go.

Tell us about the ADL aspect. Is this the first time you ever did such a rigorous hike for a major cause?

I had never done something like this. But Joe had gone for a fastest-known time in honor of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. Obviously, I’m not going to have as many people viewing my story, but I do have this platform. I felt I had a responsibility to do something to affect my community.

From a teenager’s perspective, what’s going on in your community? You write on your fundraising website about the rising tide of antisemitism.

At least since I’ve been in middle school, there’s always been stuff at Arlington schools. Antisemitic graffiti has been the biggest one, and a rabbi’s house was burned. While I’ve never been attacked for being Jewish, I know all these stories. All these things are happening around my community. In the hike, I [honored] Steve Ross, who my family was very close to. He was a Holocaust survivor. My family has a lot of connections to people who have been very affected by antisemitism. I feel connected to those attacks. Even though they weren’t hurting me, they were taking away from my community as a whole.

Let’s talk about the physical endurance required, as well as the emotional and mental breakdown of how you did this. How did you mark each day?

I had a lot of time to think and process. The weight of the responsibility on my shoulders motivated me and kept me going. There were many points when even my dad said, “You do not have to keep going.” My feet hurt; my legs burned. Everything was uncomfortable. I was wet. It felt like I had no reason to keep going, but there was just that little voice in the back of my head telling me that I had chosen this path and chosen this responsibility. I felt that it really kept me going.

Tell us about the fundraising. It seems as if you set a modest goal for the ADL, and you really exceeded it. What was that experience like?

Honestly, that was way crazier than I imagined. I had set the goal at $1,800, because “18” is symbolic in Judaism. My parents shared with their friends and our family, and it seemed like a reasonable goal. Within the first few hours, I had gotten $2,000 in donations, and I was just completely surprised. And then, as I kept going, [noted trail-runner] John Kelly’s wife took a picture of me. She posted it to their website, and then I started to get all these donations from the United Kingdom—people I didn’t even know. It was way more support than I ever could have imagined.

What advice would you give to someone who’s setting out to do something physically similar? It seems absolutely grueling.

I curse myself out a little for not training! But obviously I had done similar things like this before. I sort of knew what to expect, though I don’t think I’ve ever experienced discomfort like this. But I had amazing support. I also think that it’s really not to compare yourself to everyone else [in terms of time]. Stay motivated, which is hard. But everyone has a different path to get to the end, and I think everyone is capable of doing this if they put in the work, have the right mindset and stay positive.

What were your days like?

My time came out to something like eight days, 19 hours and 20-something minutes. I did it myself, and my dad would do three food drops. But the first day I saw the weather, it was pouring rain—for the next seven days. I actually did the first three days, going farther than I expected. By day four, I got back on pace. I dropped a few miles just to relax. Without my dad’s support, I couldn’t have done it. He did so much. He would hike in a couple of miles to meet me with food and water. He would carry my pack at points. The last day, I did about 40 miles, and he hiked about 33 of those miles with me.

One of his friends, Scott, would send me messages. He said: “I’m proud of you. I know you’ve already been out there a few days, and maybe some of those days have given you some tough times. It’s not always milkshakes and rainbows on the trail. You’ve got to work through those hard days so you can get to the good ones.” And then he sent me this quote from “Ted Lasso”: “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Just those things from people who weren’t even there, just sending me support and love, was huge.

Cooper Katzman (Courtesy photo)
Cooper Katzman (Courtesy photo)
Cooper Katzman (Courtesy photo)

Do you have another journey planned?

In the moment, there were so many times when I was like: “Why am I even doing this? This sucks! This is the worst thing I’ve ever done! I’m so uncomfortable.” But as soon as I was done, I wanted to get back out and do another one. And, from what I’ve seen, doing something like this can give you a massive platform. So, I definitely want to try to do something like this again, to maybe raise awareness or support for either the same or a different cause.

Did you have an experience or epiphany during your journey that really crystallized why this cause, antisemitism, matters to you so much?

I had a lot of very meaningful moments not only with myself but with my dad. We were able to talk and have really great conversations. The last two miles of the trail, it was late, probably 11 p.m., and it was super-wet. The trail was soaked, just a puddle. And I just stopped talking. And for those two miles I was in the zone, in the flow, and I had a very clear picture in my mind of how every single person who had ever hiked the trail was just supporting me. Their power and energy were in my legs. That’s kind of how I felt throughout the whole thing. I just had this whole community, all of these people, sending me love and support, and it carried me and pushed me over the edge.

What would you say to other people your age who might not hike, but who want to fight and raise awareness against antisemitism?

Do what you love. Do what you have a passion for. People will see that. Hiking doesn’t have to do with antisemitism, but you can connect it. You can connect anything you have a passion for to whatever cause you’re trying to fight for. And I think people will see that passion, and people will support you. The more support you get, the more passionate you’ll get. It’s a cycle.

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. 

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Communities Fight Back Against Antisemitism

By Rich Tenorio

An antisemitic letter is left in the lobby of a college Hillel. A middle school student makes a threat against Jewish classmates that raises fears of violence. Orthodox Jews are targeted for antisemitic abuse because of the way they dress. These are all incidents that have happened to Jewish communities in New England in recent years. Members of the communities affected discussed how they responded, which can go beyond only calling out antisemitism.

In 2022, the Boston neighborhood of Brighton engaged in a community-wide debate over whether to change zoning laws to allow local Orthodox Jews to create a synagogue. There was an incident in which graffiti apparently depicted a Hasidic man smoking a dollar bill, accompanied by a potentially antisemitic statement, according to Ariella Hellman, director of government affairs for the Orthodox organization Agudah Israel New England. Hellman noted that this was especially alarming to community members given the summer 2021 attack on local rabbi Shlomo Noginski, who was repeatedly stabbed outside the neighborhood synagogue Shaloh House.

In March 2023, Agudah Israel of America was represented at a Washington, D.C., conference between Jewish community members and elected officials. Hellman was pleased by the concern shown by elected officials.

She also praised the response to the Brighton graffiti from the City of Boston, which included the expedited acquisition of equipment to remove the hateful image and words.

“It meant a lot to us,” Hellman said.

During the first half of 2023, multiple municipalities in Massachusetts faced antisemitic incidents and took decisive steps to respond to them.

In April, a swastika was found in Natick, close to a local commuter rail station and a Chabad house. As The Boston Globe reported, the hateful imagery was addressed in a creative way: A non-Jewish woman from the area showed her support by using sidewalk chalk to cover the Nazi symbol with an image of a flower and an anti-hate message. Meanwhile, the local Chabad rabbi, Levi Fogelman, organized a protest march that drew Jewish and non-Jewish attendees.

In June, during Pride Month, Congregation Agudath Achim in Taunton was defaced with antisemitic, anti-LGBTQIA+ and anti-Black graffiti, as the Taunton Daily Gazette reported. Because the synagogue has security camera equipment, the vandalism was captured on video, although the perpetrator remains unidentified. The synagogue took concrete steps to address the incident: Both the local police and the Anti-Defamation League were alerted, while an email about the incident was sent to the congregation. The Taunton Gazette article cited two board members stating that this was the first vandalism of Agudath Achim they could remember in their four decades of involvement with the synagogue.

In 2019, when a student in Great Barrington allegedly threatened Jewish classmates, fears were raised of violence toward the latter, according to Rabbi Neil P.G. Hirsch, spiritual leader of the Hevreh of Southern Berkshire.

“The gun violence couldn’t be actualized, but we realized it still had been traumatic to young people, Jewish kids of the school, many of whom are part of my congregation,” Hirsch said.

Hirsch and fellow rabbi Jodie Gordon held a series of conversations for students and parents about what happens when young people encounter antisemitism. Hirsch also reached out to the school district superintendent, the county district attorney’s office and community organizations, including the local Jewish federation. He found a way to help the Jewish students process their experiences. They traveled to Boston, where they participated in a healing session at Mayyim Hayyim and heard a talk on the history of antisemitism from Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston. Hirsch reported no major incidents of hate in the Berkshires since then.

In the fall of 2022, an antisemitic letter was anonymously dropped off in the lobby of a Hillel in Providence, R.I., that is affiliated with both Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

“In the end, it was discovered that it had not been written by a student,” said Rabbi Josh Bolton, the executive director of the Brown RISD Hillel. “The university, the university police, the Providence police, everyone worked very, very fast, with a real sense of mission…We just felt, all around, very, very supported.”

He stressed the importance of continuing to offer vibrant weekly programming that draws not only Jewish students but also non-Jews on campus.

“We really want to be a place where Jewish students feel proud and excited to bring non-Jewish roommates,” Bolton said. “We don’t want to be a parochial club, but one of the great centers of student life that reflects what is best in Brown and RISD. We want Hillel and Jewishness to be seen as one of the thick threads around the fabric of the university, a source of meaning for students who are Jews and non-Jews.”

Sources indicated that fighting antisemitism is a complex process.

On campus, Bolton said, “I don’t want Jewish leaders to feel they have to be reactive to every perspective, every incident that strikes them as somehow distasteful. I want it to be about the fact that our Jewish community, including student leadership, goes beyond the cycle of reactivity.”

He noted, “Brown and RISD are not excluded from the national trend” of antisemitism on campus. “There are incidents.” Yet, he added, “I don’t think those incidents in their own right constitute the actual narrative of the Jewish story here. I think it is one of great resilience, flourishing and vitality.”

Hellman, of Agudah, said, “You have to be very proactive about it. We meet often with Precinct 14 of the local police department. Because we’re proactive about the relationship, when these things come up, we can rely on our government partners to support us.

“Of course, calling it out is important. But the Orthodox community is a little more quiet. In calling it out, we don’t want to be even more attractive to the haters, not give them any more air. We try to keep it as quiet as possible but address the issue. The local police department has increased patrols. The mayor’s office got the graffiti cleaned up. It meant something to our community. Our government partners have our backs.”

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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Rabbi to Run ADL New England

By Rich Tenorio

After 12 years running Harvard University Hillel, Rabbi Jonah Steinberg has exchanged Cambridge for Boston, where he is now the New England regional director for the Anti-Defamation League.

Asked about his priorities in the new position, Steinberg said, “I’m really encouraged to see young people connecting with the more than century-long work of the ADL and continuing to do that in such constructive, uplifting ways.” And, he said, “Building partnerships, allyships with organizations in our Jewish community and between organizations in our Jewish community and neighbors in New England are priorities. It’s important to make connections in this quiet time.”

Steinberg knows that things have often been anything but quiet lately.

He cited the ADL’s “Hate in the Bay State” report, which tracked a 41% rise in antisemitic incidents in Massachusetts between 2021 and 2022, from 108 such incidents to 152. The latter number was sixth nationwide. He noted a June 16, 2023, incident in which the sole synagogue in Taunton—Congregation Agudath Achim, a progressive congregation that displays a Pride flag on its building—was defaced with a swastika and antisemitic, anti-Black and anti-LGBTQIA+ graffiti.

“It underscores how vital the work of the ADL is, how timely, how necessary,” Steinberg said. “Of course, I am concerned. All are concerned about the rise of antisemitism and other forms of hate that we see.”

Steinberg joined ADL New England shortly after the launch of CJP’s “Face Jewish Hate” initiative at TD Garden on May 15, 2023. He is ready to assist in the fight against antisemitism in the Boston area and nationwide, including through two initiatives announced in the first half of 2023: CJP’s 5-point plan and the White House national strategy.

Asked about identifying perpetrators of hate crimes and bringing them to justice, Steinberg noted the work of the ADL Center on Extremism, headquartered in New York.

“In some instances, we can be quite specific on who is behind an incident,” he said, adding that some perpetrators are “proud to leave a signature; in other instances, we can’t be sure unless and until law enforcement concludes an investigation and comes to a clear identification as to a perpetrator. But, in all instances, these actors, whether targeting people directly—most concerning of all—or targeting places in which people gather, are not only targeting the individuals themselves or those particular spaces, but our entire community.”

Steinberg comes to the ADL from a diverse background. His appointment is groundbreaking, as he is the first rabbi in his position. (He noted that he is not the first rabbi to join the ADL, mentioning fellow spiritual leader Ron Fish.) Like his predecessor as New England division head, Robert Trestan, Steinberg was born in Canada. As a teenager, Steinberg also lived in Vienna, where his father headed the regional office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee during the Cold War.

“Of course, in those years, that was as far east as you could get and still be in a Western capital,” Steinberg recalled. “It was the center of operations for what was then Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, a transit point for Soviet Jews, Iranian Jews, Persian Jews out of those countries.”

He said that in those days, Austria contained “a deeply antisemitic culture, a culture where antisemitism was deeply enmeshed,” to the point where its schoolchildren used the term “full Jew” as “an insult to one another, not so much me, my sister or members of my family. I heard it as an insult among Austrians. They never did the collective national soul-searching.”

Steinberg went on to become a rabbi, as well as a faculty member at multiple universities. He eventually headed Harvard Hillel for more than a decade—an experience that’s given him valuable perspective in his new job for dealing with antisemitism and anti-Zionism on campus.

“I would say, after 12 years on campus, I could see a unique focus on Israel,” he said. “It is really unlike the treatment of any other national, ethnic or religious community on college campuses. I think that former Harvard president Larry Summers was very right in calling it antisemitism in effect, if not in intent.”

In his new position, Steinberg said, “it’s important to us to work with deans and [diversity, equity and inclusion] offices to make sure we tackle antisemitism … along with tackling other forms of hate that manifest on campus.”

Steinberg is now ready to apply his lessons from Harvard to his new work in Boston and New England.

“I had one dozen wonderful years with the university community,” Steinberg said of his time in Cambridge, “and I hope now to be working with our entire community. I’m not leaving college behind or the university behind in the work of the ADL. This was the right call at the right time.”

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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NBC Boston Covers Jewish Hate

On Wednesday, July 12, NBC Boston interviewed Chanie Krinsky of Chabad Jewish Center in Needham and CJP’s Sarah Abramson about what has become a horrifying trend.

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When Antisemitism and Anti-LGBTQIA+ Hate Converge

By Rich Tenorio 

(Photo: Viktor Makhnov/iStock)

Pride Month is a time to both mark the progress we have made in LGBTQIA+ rights and recommit to continuing the fight. The attacks against LGBTQIA+ people in legislatures and communities across the country, alongside rising antisemitism, remind us of the work ahead. For LGBTQIA+ Jews, the intersection of anti-LGBTQIA+ hate and antisemitism heightens fear and concern. 

“There is absolutely a connection between antisemitism and anti-LGBTQIA+ hate,” Jay Smith, chief communications officer of the national Jewish LGBTQIA+ advocacy group Keshet, wrote in an email. “We see similar tropes and conspiracy theories around power, grooming and predators. Currently, we see that the same groups protesting drag shows and Pride events are those with white supremacist and antisemitic views.” 

Last year, there were over 140 anti-LGBTQIA+ protests at drag events, with some protests also featuring antisemitic propaganda and signs, according to “Antisemitism & Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate Converge in Extremist and Conspiratorial Beliefs,” a January 2023 release from the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League that Smith referenced. 

Gabriella Spitzer, a queer Jew who spoke at a Pride Shabbat at their hometown synagogue, Temple Israel of Sharon, voiced concern about queerphobia in Jamaica Plain, including vandalism at a local church and protests outside a drag story hour. 

“The response to these incidents has been strong and interfaith, and I really appreciate some of the leadership of some of the local queer Christian clergy in speaking up against both anti-queer hatred and antisemitism,” said Spitzer, the author of a new Haggadah released this year, “Haggadah Min HaMeitzar: A Seder Journey to Liberation,” which they describe as traditional, queer and environmental. 

“I’m very aware of the rise in Christian nationalism and white power and general fascist tendencies in this country,” Spitzer said. “And, more broadly, I am aware that whether the focus of the moment is queer folks or trans folks or Jews, it all comes from the same root of hatred and white supremacy and Christian supremacy.” 

They cited a historical precedent—Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish German sexologist whose books were burned by the Nazis. Hirschfeld was included in an anti-trans section of a manifesto written by the perpetrator of a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022. 

“I wish [Hirschfeld] was a story I learned in Jewish day school, not as an adult,” Spitzer said. “But it is a very important story to me, and in thinking about how fragile progress can be, how much, how far back the Nazis could put the world…only in the last couple decades are we back to where Magnus Hirschfeld was 100 years ago. And I think it’s an important point in thinking about how these kinds of hatreds are connected, and have been, and there’s nothing new about that connection. It’s old, and deeply felt in a lot of places.” 

Most individuals interviewed for this article expressed particular concern about a right-wing convergence of anti-LGBTQIA+ hate and antisemitism—among white supremacists in particular. In addition, the ADL release from January cited multiple reports of such convergence. 

“Hate groups view both Jews and LGBTQ+ people as a threat to Christian supremacy,” Smith said. “For centuries, antisemites have propagated conspiracy beliefs that Jews are undermining society and responsible for any unwanted changes in attitudes or social structures. Today, those lies are being told about LGBTQ+ people as well. These beliefs are extreme and dangerous, and the threats we face are real. As LGBTQ+ Jews, our lives and communities are at increased risk for violence.” 

One interviewee, Southern Connecticut State University English professor Corinne Blackmer, noted a convergence in homophobia and antisemitism on the left. Blackmer, a self-described Jewish lesbian feminist, experienced it personally in 2009, during the Gaza War between Israel and Hamas. She reported that her office door was vandalized with antisemitic, homophobic and anti-Zionist graffiti. 

“I’m not scared of my identity,” Blackmer said. “I put it on my office door. Really hateful comments were made.” 

According to Blackmer, when she was about to call the campus police, she found a threatening homophobic and anti-Zionist voice message. She followed through on notifying the campus police, who called in the New Haven police as a backup. The local media covered the story—albeit not in the way she had hoped. 

“[They] were perfectly willing to talk about this as an anti-gay attack, but very reluctant to talk about the anti-Zionism,” Blackmer said. “I continued to stress this was anti-Zionist. It really was, and also antisemitic.” 

She described further harassment—mud was daubed on her car, and there was another threatening voice message. She also said she was upset when a colleague attributed the attacks to a homophobic patriarchy but did not mention the anti-Zionist aspect. 

Blackmer went on to travel to Israel in 2016 through a grant from the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University and met with Israelis and Palestinians, including gay Palestinians whom she said have a difficult time on both sides of the Green Line. More recently, she published a book, “Queering Anti-Zionism: Academic Freedom, LGBTQ Intellectuals, and Israel/Palestine Campus Activism.”

“The book has been doing very well,” she said. “There’s been a lot of interest in it…Either I could hide away [and] avoid these issues, or take them head-on. I decided to take them head-on.” 

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 rich@jewishboston.com. 

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CJP, White House Follow Similar Paths Against Antisemitism 

By Rich Tenorio 

(Photo: Marc Dufresne/iStock)

As both the White House and Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston (CJP) have unveiled separate initiatives to combat antisemitism in 2023, local community leaders see common ground between the plans. 

“I do think there’s a great deal of intersection,” said Jeremy Burton, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston. 

The White House released the first-of-its-kind National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism on May 25, 2023. Ten days earlier, CJP launched the “Face Jewish Hate” campaign in the Greater Boston area, which is part of the federation’s “5-Point Plan for Fighting Antisemitism.”

Both plans were unveiled in an atmosphere of rising hate nationwide and in Massachusetts. The White House plan referenced data from the FBI: While Jews number less than 3% of the national population, they were targeted in over 60% of documented hate crimes with a religious motivation. Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tracked nearly 3,700 antisemitic incidents across the U.S. last year, an all-time high in the organization’s 43 years of collecting such data. Within Massachusetts, there were 152 such incidents in 2022, the sixth-highest total among the 50 states. The ADL also reported in January 2023 that almost 30% of Americans espoused six or more long-time antisemitic tropes. 

“As we see, antisemitism and hate in general are surging in the country and region,” said Rabbi Jonah Steinberg, the ADL’s New England region director. “It’s really a threat to democracy itself. While expressing gratitude toward the Biden-Harris administration and while we’re really glad about the White House strategy, it’s not about politics, but principle. The strategy is welcome—speaking up and calling out antisemitism now, and doing it under the highest leadership of the land.” 

Steinberg added: “Now, [the national strategy] calls for implementation. The work has only just begun. The work of CJP and the ADL has been going on for a long time.” 

Within the White House and CJP plans, two areas of convergence mentioned by multiple leaders in separate conversations were the issues of allyship and security.  

Cindy Rowe, executive director of the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA), said, “The call for allyship in both of the documents speaks very strongly to JALSA’s work, JALSA’s focus, as we move forward.” 

“I think the Biden administration, like many of us around the country, is really seeing a very threatening rise in white supremacy, people trying to divide our country, trying to manufacture an atmosphere of division and hatred,” Rowe said. “We who are impacted by antisemitism have to realize how connected it is to other hatreds being manufactured and create a coalition [and] make connections between what is going on so we can fight back together.” 

Other Boston-area leaders agreed. 

“CJP’s 5-Point Plan has an explicit section on community relations with allies,” Burton said. “An entire pillar is focused on the word ‘allyship’ in combating hate. That’s exactly right, as it should be.” 

Another such pillar of the CJP plan, he noted, is safety and security, which also dovetails with the national strategy. 

“In the security space, we continue to see the [Biden] administration has been committed to funding nonprofits at the federal level,” Burton said, adding that the national strategy urges state and local governments to tackle hate crimes through multiple means, including restorative justice, mental health services and victim support. 

“The need for security, so important in the CJP plan, is affirmed here by the [federal] government plan on pouring more money into efforts that complement CJP efforts,” said Robert Leikind, director of AJC New England. Leikind also saw convergence in “the idea that we need to educate about antisemitism—more specifically, concerns Jews have, including about anti-Zionism.” 

In discussing both plans, Jewish community leaders identified a further commonality—the need for continued work to combat antisemitism. 

“I think these plans are not ends of themselves, but the beginnings of a long journey,” Leikind said. “I think the timing of the CJP plan and the timing of the White House plan is incredibly fortunate. We have to sit down and do the hard work.” 

“I think it’s an important moment in the history of the Jewish community of the country,” Burton said. “We need to use it.” 

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 rich@jewishboston.com. 

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Understanding Traumatic Reactions to Antisemitism

By Kara Baskin

I know plenty of people who have been victims of antisemitism, from microaggressions to physical attacks. There is a sense of pervasive fear, of bracing for the worst. How do we conquer and counter this cocktail of dread and terror, both in the aftermath of an attack and overall? How do we take care of ourselves?
 
I spoke to Jessica Slavin Connelly about how to address antisemitic trauma. She’s a Boston-area psychotherapist and longtime Jewish educator and lay leader who has worked in the Jewish school community in various settings, including as an interfaith youth facilitator for the Anti-Defamation League. She’s also led antisemitism workshops for audiences ranging from kindergarten to adults.

Here’s her advice.

On antisemitism’s many forms:

Several of my friends’ teenagers have been on text threads where casually racist messages and swastikas will suddenly pop up. Other times, it’s more public: bathroom graffiti or antisemitic signs billowing on bridges above the highway, or during an interview with a celebrity.
 
But antisemitism can often manifest more subtly as what Slavin Connelly calls “unintentional microaggressions,” even from a friend or a neighbor—the mom at drop-off who jokes that she only wants a Jewish lawyer or the neighbor who remarks on your kids’ Jewish nose. “A microaggression is anything that’s a generalization applied to a group of people,” she says.
 
“When first faced with antisemitism in our lives, people are often stunned, confused and scared, wondering if they’re overreacting and angry. Because, if [antisemitic incidents are] still happening, then what does that mean about all of the work the previous generations did to pass down our history, and what does that mean about our worldview? If reenactment, remembrance and maintaining Jewish identity hasn’t kept antisemitism from rearing its ugly head again, like we thought it would, then that may leave us questioning everything about our past, present, future, safety and Jewish identity,” she says.
 
These incidents—any of them—can feel hugely destabilizing, and your feelings are valid, whether you’re a kid or an adult.

On common responses to trauma: 

Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event. Slavin Connelly says that fight, flight, freeze or fawn reactions are common, either when talking about it or after witnessing something frightening.
 
Flight: Holing up at home, retreating and hiding out in fear and feeling out of control.
 
Fight: Posting angrily on social media, or cutting out relationships rather than expressing yourself calmly and assertively.
 
Freeze: Not knowing what to say when a friend makes a microaggressive comment, so remaining silent instead.
 
Fawn: Going overboard to make others feel comfortable with your Jewishness, assimilating or keeping quiet, even when uncomfortable.

On the after-effects of trauma:

Trauma is an ongoing experience. People who experience antisemitism might suffer lingering, ongoing symptoms: “You might ruminate, become easily angered or irritable, have disrupted sleep and a decreased ability to focus, experience a loss of appetite, feel disconnected from day-to-day life, become hyper-vigilant or unable to stop scrolling or turn off the news,” she says.
 
You might also experience cognitive distortions. “Experiencing a trauma typically involves a change in personal beliefs about the self and the world that can be scary and unmooring,” Slavin Connelly says. This often takes the shape of catastrophic, all-or-nothing thinking: The world is doomed, everywhere is unsafe, nobody is trustworthy. You might begin to shame yourself for feeling upset or become enraged when non-Jewish friends or family don’t speak up.

On self-care and taking action:

There’s help. Slavin Connelly urges people who’ve experienced trauma to reach out to their local Jewish community for communal support, to share with trusted friends and to “take action while also holding space for gam zeh ya’avor: ‘This too shall pass,’” she says.
 
It’s also OK to take a break and retreat if you need to. This can be hard, “especially for the Jewish community, where we are taught not to look away, to be there in times of crisis for others, to remember what our own community went through,” she says. “Depending on how much of this was part of the ethos of your upbringing, it can be very hard to look away, but ruminating over and over engages us in a loop that reinforces traumatization.” Go easy on yourself.
 
Tikkun olam (repairing the world) matters, too. Helping others is a refreshing way to put your feelings in perspective. “Help others on the micro level, one-to-one, human-to-human and zoom out to recognize that we are in a world where so many are experiencing hardship or prejudice and recognizing that while our thoughts, feelings and reactions about antisemitism matter, really matter, there are infinite other things that matter equally,” she says.
 
And, maybe most importantly, “Look to Jewish history not only backward in fear of repetition but instead as a reminder that the Jewish community has repeatedly faced hardships in a cyclical way over the course of history and has always endured, survived as a people and thrived,” she says.
 
For more support, visit cjp.org/mental-health.
 
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.