Twenty years ago, as I prepared for my beit din—the panel of rabbis who will judge whether a convert is ready to become Jewish—my rabbi told me I needed to be prepared to answer questions about Israel. “You don’t have to have any particular opinion on it,” she continued, “but you need to engage with it, because Israel is part of the Jewish experience.”  

Fast forward through the next two decades in which I lived in Jerusalem for 6 months, my partner became a rabbi, we had two children who have gone through Hebrew school, and I became a board member at our synagogue. Today I am a researcher and educator on topics related to race and justice. Several weeks ago, I sat in the audience at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) People of Color Conference (PoCC), where two speakers sparked accusations of antisemitism that have impacted independent schools across the country.

The narrative of what happened, amplified and distorted by people and organizations who were not even in attendance, describe a completely different conference than the one I actually attended. The infamously sensational NY Post wrote, for example, “an ‘equity and justice’ conference involving many of the country’s most prestigious private schools devolved into a ‘festival of Jew hate’ that had scared students leaving in tears.”  Had I seen a headline like this without context, I would be outraged and terrified, as many independent school parents have been. But as a researcher who was at the conference, I struggled to square what I had witnessed first-hand with the terrifying reports being issued.

Two Speeches

The conference included multiple speakers, two of whom have been accused of expressing antisemitic ideas. The first is Princeton professor and MacArthur Genius Fellow, Ruha Benjamin, PhD, who delivered a short talk at the close of the conference. She used her limited allotted time to describe a symposium her lab hosted featuring a virtual reality experience of Gaza entitled “The Phoenix of Gaza.” The project, she says, was “created by and for Palestinians and those who believe in the seemingly radical notion that all life is sacred.” Ironically—given all of the accusations of antisemitism she has endured—she does not mention the word Israel or the word Jewish once. The transcript of her speech can be found here. The high school students participating in the conference were present for this talk.

The other speaker, Dr. Suzanne Barakat, shared the story of her family’s escape from Syria, her brother and sister-in-law’s murders at UNC, where they had been dental students, and her struggle to have the official record recognize the Islamophobia behind their murders. She shared a chilling recording in which the arresting officer developed a chummy rapport with the person who murdered her brother in a triple homicide. She introduced the Pyramid of Hate, adopted by the ADL, to describe the connections between escalating levels of hate. She described Islamophobia and its impact on children in schools. The high school students in attendance at the conference were not at Dr. Barakat’s talk; they had alternative programming at that time.

The last third of her speech is the part that has been specifically called antisemitic. She shared definitions of terms such as “genocide,” “anti-Palestinian racism,” “Zionism,” and “antisemitism.” In sharing these definitions, she quoted from other sources almost exclusively, saying very little of her own besides what she quoted. Her sources included:

·     The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

·     The Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism

·     The Institute for a Middle Eastern Understanding

·     The Anti-Defamation League

·     Kenneth Stern (the author of the working definition of antisemitism in the US)

·     The Monitoring Centre of Racism and Xenophobia

·     The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

·     Author Ta-Nehisi Coates

·     The White House U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism

·     The Nexus Project

·     Israeli Professor Neve Gordon

·     Jewish Voice for Peace

The transcript of her talk can be found here.

Since the conference, the imputations of antisemitism have reverberated throughout the independent school world, threatening the reputations of both the PoCC conference and NAIS itself. In many school communities, administrators are being asked to parse this conflict, to dis-affiliate from the conference, to leave NAIS, or to disavow antisemitism.  

Beyond such explicit requests, well intentioned people are self-silencing because they do not want to be or appear to be antisemitic. They do not want students to be uncomfortable. They do not want to alienate families. They feel that if they question the pro-Israel narrative—or even simply express sympathy for Palestinians—they might lose respect in their communities, lose the capacity to be in relationship with families, become marginalized, or even lose their jobs. They fear they will be seen as antisemitic, regardless of what they do and have done to support and protect their Jewish students—as Jews—in their schools. And we have sufficient evidence that their fears are not unfounded.  

The definition of antisemitism is contested within the international Jewish community

Many school professionals are unequipped to respond to these accusations because very few schools have an official definition of antisemitism. It is also not commonly known that the definition of antisemitism is contested within the international Jewish community. At the moment, there are two prominent definitions of antisemitism, both of which are relatively new in international politics.  The first, ratified in 2016, is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition.  This is the definition that has shaped the accusations of antisemitism at PoCC because the talks mentioned Palestinians or presented quotes critiquing Israel.  The second prominent definition of antisemitism in the international Jewish community is the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), which was written in response to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition because the framers saw that antisemitism would be increasingly impossible to identify if it was conflated with Israel politics.  I encourage readers to read both definitions of antisemitism in full—each is only two pages long. But I will do my best to describe them further here.

IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) Definition of Antisemitism

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism has been widely adopted by governments and organizations, in part because of a push by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance to get it adopted at a time when no other definition was officially on the table. It states, “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

This definition from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is vague, and does not seem to implicitly include critique of Israel. David Feldman, Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism in London, calls this definition “bewilderingly imprecise.” The definition is expanded by examples of antisemitism listed below the definition, such as “Denying Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavor” or “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” It is in the examples where the definition classifies critique of Israel as antisemitic.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition first came into use in 2010 when far-right organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America used Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to challenge any speech that is critical of Israel, calling it antisemitic. The IHRA definition became codified in the U.S. in 2019 when then President Trump issued an executive order in which he adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism. In response to Trump’s actions, the American Jewish Committee’s antisemitism expert, Kenneth Stern, argued that this conflation of critique of Israel with the definition of antisemitism is a distortion. The working definition of antisemitism in American law had until that point been filed under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and afforded protections to Jews, Sikhs, and Muslims from “intimidation, harassment, and discrimination.” These are the protections that we need in schools to make Jewish students—and all students of minority religious groups—safe to be themselves and practice their religions.

Stern, himself a Zionist, says that the IHRA definition adopted by Trump, undermines the purpose of the Title VI provision protecting people of minority religions, and renders it practically inapplicable. “For comparison’s sake,” he writes, “There’s no definition of anti-Black racism that has the force of law when evaluating a Title VI case. If you were to craft one, would you include opposition to affirmative action? Opposing removal of Confederate statues?” (Stern, 2019, para 6). In other words, saying that critique of Israel is antisemitic and should be illegal would be like saying that critique of affirmative action constitutes anti-Black racism and should be illegal. It puts the force of law behind an issue that people acting in good faith must need debate in a democracy. But it also does something much more sinister. It suggests that policy debates are a form of hate crime, which makes it impossible to distinguish between direct harm and the expression of ideas.

Beyond this, the conflation of antisemitism with critiques of Israel means that people seeking to identify antisemitism miss some of the most threatening forms of antisemitism to Jews today. As Dr. Brian Klug, a member of the faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University, whose research focuses on Jewish identity and antisemitism, has written in The Nation:

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"The IHRA definition tends to divert attention away from the threat that Jews face from the far right and populist movements, divide the forces opposing racism (and other forms of bigotry), and muddy the waters over the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. This, in turn, places unacceptable constraints on political debate about the future for Israel/Palestine and on protest by Palestinians and their allies (including many Jews)."

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The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism

The second prominent definition of antisemitism in the international Jewish community is the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), which was written in response to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition because the framers saw precisely what Stern saw, that antisemitism would be increasingly impossible to identify if it was always conflated with Israel politics. The JDA was created and signed by over 150 international scholars of Jewish studies and antisemitism, including several Israelis. The framers are clear that they created the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism because of the inadequacies of the IHRA definition; they wanted people to be able to identify antisemitism without conflating it with viewpoints on Israel. The framers write:

"People of goodwill seek guidance about the key question: When does political speech about Israel or Zionism cross the line into antisemitism and when should it be protected? The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) is intended to provide this guidance, and so should be seen as a substitute for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition."

"But if an organization has formally adopted the IHRA Definition it can use the JDA as a corrective to overcome the shortcomings of the IHRA Definition."

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In the FAQs for the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), the framers respond to the question, “What is the underlying political agenda of the JDA as regards Israel and Palestine?” The framers answer:

"There isn’t one. That’s the point. The signatories have diverse views about Zionism and about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including political solutions, such as one-state versus two-states. What they share is a twofold commitment: fighting antisemitism and protecting freedom of expression on the basis of universal principles."

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In other words, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) allows people to recognize antisemitism that is wholly separate from beliefs about Israel. It neither critiques nor defends Israel. It exists to help us get specific about the contours of antisemitism so that we can keep our Jewish students safe from harm while not restricting the content of conversations about Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Israelis, and Palestinians.

While the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism responds to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, particularly with regard to depoliticizing the definition of antisemitism, both definitions have been critiqued for neglecting to define antisemitism in reference to what is possibly the greatest threat to Jews in the world today, which includes self-declared white supremacists and neo-Nazis promoted and supported by right wing governments around the world. Lara Friedman, the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, who is Jewish, said on a panel hosted by Harvard Divinity School in 2021:

"It is unconscionable that at this moment in time…the energies around combatting antisemitism are not aimed at actual antisemitism, the stuff that’s threatening the lives of Jews, the stuff that means we need armed guards at synagogues… Immediately after the Pittsburgh massacre…the worst antisemitic attack in my lifetime, we saw immediate efforts—Members of Congress saying ‘See, we have to pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act.’ …The Antisemitism Awareness Act is about quashing criticism of Israel. It’s not about going after white supremacists…the stuff that was actually at play (in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting)."

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What does this mean for our schools?

Individual school communities need to decide collectively how they define antisemitism, and to what end. At the local level, individual schools are not going to stop, solve, perpetuate, or otherwise impact the conflict in Israel-Palestine. They are responsible for being places for learning and growth for children of all religious and political backgrounds. They are responsible for protecting and supporting Jewish and Israeli students, just as they are responsible for protecting and supporting Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students. Each school should ask, “What definition will help us do so?”

The definition of antisemitism should work to keep Jews safe as Jews in school, while not curtailing free speech or the cultural and religious safety of others, including Muslims and Palestinians. Further, the definition should not be so all-encompassing and ill-defined that a conference that educates participants on the lives of Gazans or Islamophobia could be called antisemitic for doing so.

According to a letter to the president of NAIS from several Jewish organizations (the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, Jewish Federations of North America, and PRIZMAH Center for Jewish Day Schools): “Jewish students and faculty attending PoCC were forced to hear this damaging and antisemitic rhetoric repeated time and again and watch as their peers applauded.” The letter also says:

"Perhaps the most heartbreaking report we received from the conference was from a Jewish student who stated that he and his peers “felt so targeted, so unsafe, that we tucked our Magen Davids [Jewish stars, a historic symbol of Jewish peoplehood] in our shirts and walked out as those around us glared and whispered.” No student should ever be made to feel this way because of their identity. Indeed, we know that the entire purpose of PoCC is to ensure that this does not happen."

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These quotes and accusations are very serious. They have an impact on everybody who was part of that audience or conference. For many people, attendance at this conference became a stain against them. They were questioned and asked to disavow antisemitism for simply being in attendance. As one diversity director, who is Black and non-Jewish, shared:

"I happened to have been there that night and I was one of the people who gave Dr. Barakat a standing ovation, but I was reacting—and I think most people were—to her efforts to designate the murder of her family as a hate crime. She ended her talk with images of her family, her brother, his wife, their wedding—beautiful images of a beautiful family. At my table we were all in tears. And we stood in support, in solidarity, just feeling that this was important work and wishing her well in pursuit of this justice. I was not personally standing to support her definitions of antisemitism or genocide, which she had pulled from various sources. It really felt unfair to be labeled or accused as supporting antisemitism in that space because I know that’s not what I was doing. And I believe that’s not what most of the people there were doing."

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Many conference participants appreciated the conference’s attention to Muslims and Islamophobia, especially after a year in which fears and accusations of antisemitism have forced many Muslims and Palestinians to hide their identities in our schools.

Am I Jewish Enough to Weigh In?

Over the past year, I’ve wondered—as a Jew by choice—if I’m “Jewish enough” to suggest that we should talk publicly about Israel, even though it means we open the conversation to critique and disagreement. One aspect of Jewishness that I might never fully understand is the generational trauma of anti-Jewish persecution and the Holocaust. There’s a way that growing up white in the U.S. as part of a majority religion and ethnicity inoculated me from some of the terror that comes from being part of a targeted minority.  Intergenerational trauma is real for many Jews, as it is for many Black and Native people, among others, in the U.S.  

But there is a formulation at work in the response to PoCC, which suggests that there’s no way to be “Jewish enough” to critique Israel. Once a Jewish person critiques Israel, they are accused of being a “self-hating Jew” or “antisemitic.” The fact that Dr. Suzanne Barakat quoted from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), for example, discredited her in the eyes of the pro-Israel critics more than it supported her—because Jewish Voice for Peace (an organization made up, primarily, of Jews) is also called antisemitic for critiquing Israel. It doesn’t matter if one is a rabbi, a child of Holocaust survivors, or an Israeli Jew—if they critique Israel, they get framed as antisemitic. In this formulation, there is no one Jewish enough to critique Israel. And if a person critiques the state of Israel or, like Barakat did, quotes someone who critiques Israel, they will be labeled antisemitic. When the conference participants applaud those statements, then they and the conference will get labeled antisemitic too.

This fear that I’m not Jewish enough to say these things still scares me, for the same reason that many educators are afraid of this conversation: I do not want to make Jews less safe with the words that I write. In spite of my rabbi’s insistence that I don’t need to have a particular view on Israel in order to be Jewish, I also don’t want to assume the right to say something about Israel simply because I’m Jewish. I do not experience antisemitism and generational trauma the way many Jews do. I do not, in a word, want to be antisemitic. But what I realize now is that the groups that demand uniformity of opinion on Israel, that demand a silencing of discussion of Palestinian lives, and that label anyone antisemitic if they critique Israel, do not keep me, my family, or my synagogue safe. When critique of Israel is conflated with antisemitism, it makes it harder to recognize, name, and address intimidation, harassment and discrimination targeted towards American Jews as Jews. It silences speech and expression, which in turn hurts Muslims and Palestinians, and anyone who dares to support them. It creates a culture of fear where there should be dialogue. It creates a climate of ignorance and paralysis where there would otherwise be learning and collaboration.

No one who works in schools is not Jewish enough to weigh in on this conversation. Once the conversation became about what could and could not be said at PoCC, what we can and cannot teach in schools, or what we can and cannot talk about publicly in the U.S., it stopped being a conversation about Israel—and started being a conversation about us. This is a conversation about the United States, about democracy, about our schools, and about how we talk with one another. Whether a person is Jewish or not, this is a conversation about us—and we all need to be a part of it.

This is a conversation about us—and we all need to be a part of it.

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A nationally recognized writer, speaker, and facilitator, Ali Michael, PhD is the co-author of the surprisingly funny Our Problem, Our Path: Collective Antiracism for White People.  It looks like a textbook, but feels like a cross between memoir and therapy.  Currently her research focuses on tracking and understanding the anti-DEI campaign, facilitating conversations about Israel-Palestine, and using conflict theory to help schools navigate the current political moment.  More info available at alimichael.org.

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Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash