Antisemitism is Never Justified
On February 25, 1996, Sarah Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld, two young American Jews, tragically lost their lives in Jerusalem due to a Hamas terrorist’s bomb. Both were students at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, where I was teaching, and were spending a year studying in Israel. They were planning to get engaged soon.
Yesterday, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were in Washington, D.C., also on the verge of getting engaged.
Certain moments bring deep-seated fears into sharp focus. For Jews, antisemitism is a persistent worry, a concern consistently validated by history. However, since October 7, 2023, this sense of anxiety has intensified. These two incidents, occurring thirty years apart, serve as a reminder that hatred and violence against Jews do not require any particular reason or justification.
Statistics, while alarming, can feel impersonal. FBI data from 2023 indicates that 68% of religion-based hate crimes targeted Jews, who constitute less than 2% of the population.
The normalization of hatred is what truly chills the conscience of decent individuals. During my time as a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Divinity School in 2023, I observed some Harvard students advocating for the “globalization of the intifada.”
The shooter in yesterday’s murder claimed his actions were for a “free Palestine.”
Establishing causality is complex. There is no direct link between campus protests at institutions like Columbia, Harvard, Berkeley, and UCLA and the actions of the gunman. However, causality is still a factor. Allowing racism to go unchecked inevitably leads to assaults against African Americans. Similarly, displaying swastikas inevitably puts Jews at risk. A disturbing confluence of statements about Jews has emerged across the ideological spectrum, with antisemitic sentiments expressed in both left-leaning spaces and on , often echoing conspiratorial rhetoric that has plagued Jews for centuries.
One might assume that witnessing the same hatred espoused by Jihadists and echoed by figures from both the far-right and far-left would make it clear that conspiracy and hate, not truth, are the driving forces behind antisemitism. We hear claim that Judaism is “pedophile-centered” and promotes “child sacrifice,” aligning with Roger Waters, who Jewish stars next to dollar signs and Jews to return to Eastern Europe. Different ideologies, same underlying hate. The ever-changing nature of hatred towards Jews is always rationalized, but never justifiable.
On the night of Milgrim and Lischinsky’s murder, I was at West Point, addressing graduating Jewish cadets. I spoke about the connection between Jewish tradition and their commitment to serving the nation. They understand, as all Americans should, that an attack on Jews is an attack on the very foundation of our country. This murder is a devastating blow not only to the lives of the two victims and their loved ones but also to the institutions and ideals of the United States. It’s significant that the Liberty Bell bears a verse from Leviticus and the Statue of Liberty is inscribed with the words of a Jewish poet. As history teaches us, from the Exodus onwards, freedom speaks with a Hebrew accent, as Heinrich Heine noted. And those who oppose what freedom represents begin—but never end—with the Jewish people.
We grieve, yet again, over the brutal manifestation of an age-old hatred. However, as a Rabbi and a Jew, I offer not only mourning but also a warning: What begins with the Jewish people never ends with us. It ends with the erosion of the values that bullets cannot destroy, but cowardice can: freedom, equality, tolerance, and goodness. On the streets of the capital last night, the gunman was aiming at those values as well.
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