Antisemitism Exists But We Shouldn’t Believe Antisemites And We Should Double Down On Our Jewish Commitment

Rabbi Malcolm Cohen

Kol Nidre | Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Please remember, my sermons this year come with a health warning: they’re all responding to pain expressed to me from congregants. Not everyone will enjoy what I have to say, which is fair enough, we’re a diverse congregation. I don’t think what I’m saying is the objective truth, just my take. If you really feel strong disagreement and want to chat, please reach out directly. On Rosh HaShanah morning, I spoke about being American Jews and how that informs our opinion on what the American flag should symbolize. Tonight I want to talk about being Jewish Americans and what that means. Two sides of our identity, sometimes blurred, often intertwined, always competing for our attention. 

Tomorrow morning, I’ll focus on Zionism and our relationship with Israel but the pain I’m responding to tonight is about the antisemitism experienced by Jewish Americans and how it seems to have taken a new form. Since the Hamas massacre and kidnapping of Israelis on October 7, and since Israel started to respond militarily, Jews in America, and around the world, have become targets.  

Let me be clear about my sermon tonight. I have no interest in talking about the worsening situation of Jews in America so as to glorify in victim status. I have contempt for the so-called ‘trauma Olympics’ whereby different groups compete to say, “We have it worse!” “No, we have it worse, they hate us more, we are more oppressed”. That kind of oppression competition is uninteresting and unhelpful. I speak merely to paint what I think is a clear picture so we can realistically acknowledge the status of Jews in present day America and respond to it.

I believe we have to talk about new, contemporary antisemitism against Jewish Americans by connecting it to October 7. There has been more antisemitism in the world ever since Hamas brutally murdered Israelis and Israel responded. There, of course, have been many innocent Palestinians killed and I will certainly talk about our relationship to Israel and Zionism tomorrow. There is a troubling relationship, though, between the ramping up of the denunciation of Israel’s actions against Palestinians in Gaza, the general denunciation of Israel, and attacks against Jews, which drastically increased from October 8 onwards. 

There are many of us who feel heartbreak for innocent Palestinians in Gaza as the Israeli response to Hamas continues. Palestinian elderly, women, and children are being killed as a result. Anyone with feelings would feel something for them, quite rightly, regardless of Hamas’ huge share of the blame. Just a few minutes ago, we sang three times the line from the Book of Exodus: Adonai, Adonai, God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy to the thousandth generation”. These are the words which Moses hears when he asks to see God’s face on Mount Sinai. Our sages claim that these are the essence of God. While we can see instances of God’s anger in our sacred texts, Moses is taught that compassion and mercy are God’s default settings. The sages talk about God’s constant struggle for God’s compassion to out-weigh God’s anger. The same for us. We must always err on the side of compassion for the innocents. 

Many of us have agonized over the difference between antisemitism and legitimate Israel criticism. Nevertheless, I can distinguish between people who were being empathetic towards innocent Palestinian civilians and those who wished Israel and, in our case, Jewish Americans harm in a more problematic manner. Just ask anyone how they reacted on October 8. It’s the October 8 test. If they actively expressed sympathy for the plight of the Israelis who, and I’m sorry if I trigger you with this description, were raped, murdered and burned alive on October 7 and, early on, were voicing the need for the Israeli hostages to be returned, then fair enough. If they didn’t try to come up with a reason to justify the massacre, good for them. For those folks, they built up credit in my bank to also criticize Israeli military actions. However, if someone expressed shock at Israeli military strategy while ignoring harm to Israelis and Jews done on October 7 and since, that’s much more problematic. What does it say about the place of Jews in America that they could be criticized for supporting Israel in the very immediate aftermath of October 7 when Israel had not even responded yet?

My contention is with people outside of Israel, particularly in America, who are not associated with the Jewish community in any way, but went all in on Israel criticism from October 8 without any empathy for Israelis, and therefore many Jewish Americans. Articles which accepted Hamas’ version of events before the Israeli version. People who implied Israelis deserved October 7. Folks who saw Israel purely to blame and didn’t consider that worldwide pressure on Hamas to release Israeli hostages might be the quickest route to ending the war. People who came up to folks presenting as Jews, without even knowing them, and asked them if they were ok being baby killers. There is an inability to see how Israelis and Jews could even be seen as victims of hate and there is, in many cases, the blaming of random Jews for the actions of the Israeli government.  

In the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, not perfect by any means, one line stands out. “It is considered antisemitism to hold Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel”. This is the antisemitism which has reared its head consistently since October 7. 

When I spoke against a Gaza ceasefire resolution at Tucson City Council, in April 2024, I didn’t do it because I like war or because I thought the city shouldn’t get involved in foreign affairs. It was problematic that the council spent so much time on this one international issue to the exclusion of all others. I spoke out against the resolution because the resolution and the people supporting it never expressed any sympathy for Israelis or the plight of the hostages. They failed the October 8 test by several months.I was left with the impression that being slaughtered as Jews in Israel necessitates no empathy from some fellow Tucsonans. By extension, Jewish Americans who speak about Jewish suffering, in this time, are not worthy of compassion since they are unfairly held responsible for the actions of the state of Israel. 

The same with campus protests against Israeli actions. The right to protest is enshrined in the Constitution. How long a campus protest is allowed to continue or how disruptive it is allowed to be, can be dealt with by existing university policies or existing laws. That’s not the issue. The issue is when Jewish students are barred from classes or accused of being baby killers without uproar outside the Jewish community. The issue is that whenever the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, appears or whenever anti-Israel protesters use the slogan, “Globalize the Intifada”, then there is a legitimate discussion to be had about antisemitism. 

Public protests and slogans on campus do not paint the full picture, though. “The student whose professor declared in class one day that all Jews have the blood of Palestinians on their hands. The student whose teaching assistant said that Hamas should be running America. The student whose dorm resident advisor, who identified as an anti-Zionist, refused to look at or speak to her. The students who reported that some of their Jewish classmates were afraid to come to Hillel for a Shabbat dinner or study session with a rabbi, worried they’d be ostracized for engaging with a “Zionist” entity”. These anecdotes are the tip of the iceberg. Within months of October 7, forty per cent of Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism and three-quarters said they had witnessed it.  

You could speak to Kol Ami member, Doug Levy, about the two occasions this year when someone lobbed a rock through the window of his law practice where his menorah was located. Then you know that some people don’t care what we think about Israel or anything else, they just wanted to do violence to property they thought was Jewish. There was nothing else in Doug’s window aside from the Menorah. After the first rock was thrown, Doug put a wonderful sign in the window, which read, “No matter where you are from, we’re glad you’re our neighbor”, in English, Spanish, and Arabic. In answer to that another rock was thrown through his window. 

In America, you’re allowed to say whatever you want to whomever you want but you don’t get to control the consequences of saying those things and you certainly don’t get to control the analysis of the slogans you shout or the rocks you throw. Showing contempt for Jewish Americans who accuse you of antisemitism is wrong. If anyone in America was accused of any other kind of racism or prejudice, many of them would do the hard work of self-examination, many wouldn’t reject the accusation out of hand, merely claiming it as a device to silence them. Jews, when calling out the problematic nature of these banners are sometimes told that, in expressing such views, they are actually the persecutors of the holders of that banner, that their warnings as to the meaning of that banner are irrelevant and badly intentioned. They are told they are wrong or that they are using claims of antisemitism to silence legitimate criticism of Israel. 

As Jewish Americans, the threats don’t stop there. Jason Goldfischer, a Jewish teacher, recently posted on his social media about his experience at the National Education Association Representative Assembly. Just one of the troubling things that happened at the conference was that, after the unanimous vote to honor Asian American and Pacific Islander Month and National Day of the Black Educator, as they should do, the group then immediately debated whether Jewish American Heritage Month was even worth recognizing. Nearly half the room voted against it. 

Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky worked at the Israeli embassy in Washington and were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. The event was for young professionals to work on responses to humanitarian crises around the Middle East and North Africa back in May. They were gunned down by a man shouting the ‘Free Palestine’ slogan. A completely pointless antisemitic act perpetrated against young Jews who believed in working for peace. Even if they were completely disinterested in working for peace, they should still not have been a target! My British rabbinic colleague, Marc Soloway, in Boulder, Colorado, had to bury his congregant, Karen Diamond, a few months ago, after she died from burns sustained in June. A man attacked her and others on a hostage awareness march with Molotov cocktails, again shouting ‘Free Palestine’. These incidents are what ‘Globalize The Intifada’ can look like in America. 

The British Jewish writer, David Baddiel, in his book, “Jews Don’t Count” explains that at the heart of modern antisemitism is the false assumption that Jews can’t suffer prejudice because they pass as white. Firstly, to state the obvious, not all Jews are white. Secondly, even though the Jews who are white can pass as non-Jews, they can still suffer the same antisemitism as any other Jew as soon as they congregate in a Jewish institution or at a Jewish event. Ironically, white Jews with no outward signs of their Jewish identity, can sometimes uncover antisemitism since anti-Jewish comments are made in their presence with the assumption they are not Jewish. In these terms, though, antisemitism can be problematically portrayed as an act of self-defense, punching up, not punching down at a minority. The theory goes that, since Jews are in a position of societal power, privileged, as it were, attacking Jews is portrayed as fair, a version of ‘sticking it to the man’. 

So, Jews don’t count when it comes to suffering persecution because of the erroneous perception that exists in our society, that Jewish Americans are all privileged, part of the white mainstream. Some think we control the banks and Hollywood, are shadowy puppet-masters behind the world economy. They accuse us of white colonialism in spite of our centuries-old connection to the Land of Israel. The new version of antisemitism, related to Israel’s fighting against Hamas takes the themes of various social justice movements and cuts and pastes them on to Israel and Jews, suggesting that innocent Palestinians are the people of color suffering at the hands of Israeli white supremacy.  

So, I’ve laid out the problem of antisemitism in the wake of October 7, but what should the response be? I come at this knowing I’m not in the same situation as many of you. I live a fairly sheltered existence, inside the Jewish community. I interact with folks outside, other religious leaders, but they know I’m a rabbi, and they’re always polite to me. Many of you work with folks who might feel negatively about Jews or Zionists and have problematic views about Jewish Americans because of it. 

For example, my wife, Sarah, is part of a network of Jewish therapists. She has heard many stories of fellow practitioners who have lost clients, post October 7, because their clients no longer were comfortable with a Jewish therapist, again, erroneously associating them with the actions of the Israeli government. Many of you have a vexed and difficult dilemma at your place of work, one which I don’t experience. Do you raise your head above the parapet and push back against this antisemitism or keep quiet to avoid conflict? If you’re a college student, do you speak out against antisemitism? It’s a tough question, as you’re coming to a point in life where you have just started to get a firm sense of who you are. Everyone has to make their own, private, choice about when or if to take a stand publicly. It might be helpful to think about what we might say in response to antisemitic comments but, of course, choose carefully when you think it’s safe to air them. We want to defend the Jewish People’s honor but we also want to keep our jobs and feed our families. A thorny dilemma. 

I just want us to avoid really holding on to our status as victims, as Jewish Americans, internalizing the negative things that others say about us and to us. Our medieval sage, Abraham Ibn Ezra explains: “וזה הדור היוצא ממצרים למד מנעוריו לסבול עול מצרים ונפשו שפלה (sh’feylah)/The generation that left Egypt learned from their youth to bear the yoke of the Egyptians and their soul was laid low”. The victim mentality was ingrained. In other words, when our identity as Jewish Americans keeps taking a battering, it might lead us to accept harmful circumstances for ourselves as the natural order of things. We might end up thinking, “Well, I guess this is the lot of Jewish Americans. What can we do?” I want to make a plea to all of us to not fall into that trap. Jewish Americans never deserve antisemitism in any form, there’s no excuse for it. We can’t control what others do or say to us but we should never blame ourselves. 

Given that we don’t control what people say about or do to us, as Jewish Americans, at the very least, we can double down on our commitment to Jewish community since this is our safe haven. Instead of worrying about explaining why we’re Jewish, we should expend energy on being Jewish! We are safe to engage in an honest exchange of views. We are safe to disagree with each other. We are also safe to come to services, events, classes, or programs and just be here with other Jewish folks and their families, on the whole not having to worry about what others think or say about us. The Jewish American community has a wonderful history of responding to difficult circumstances by building up strong institutions, the ADL, where we stand up for other minorities, not just ours, Jewish Family & Children’s Services, the Federation, the Jewish Community Foundation, the Jewish Museum and Holocaust Center. We can support both synagogues and those amazing organizations as we lean into community.

Also, in the name of not believing what others say about us, I want us to really understand the depth and richness of our tradition and the incredible power of Jewish community and synagogue life. In an American society, where we have been attacked and ostracized from various spaces, we should be doubling down on engagement with the beauty and complexity of our tradition. Whether you study or pray or engage in social justice or just want to connect with other Jewish humans and their families, there is something for you here at Kol Ami, something demanding, with substance.

More than anything, feel Jewish pride and strength within you. I will never forget an education seminar I attended in Poland. At the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, where Jews had held the Nazis off for weeks, my friends from the youth movement Habonim Dror shouted in Hebrew, “chazak v’amatz, be strong and courageous”. They were standing where men and women from their youth movement had fought oppression, Nazi tanks and soldiers, with every ounce of strength, every iota of determination. In the face of antisemitism, we should say, in our heart, or fervently, out loud, chazak v’amatz, be strong, be courageous, never feel ashamed of being Jewish. Never apologize for being Jewish. 

Jewish Americans have it pretty good here, historically, but things have taken a turn since October 7. We have been verbally and physically attacked. We have been problematically blamed for the actions of others. We have been told our pain doesn’t count. We have been ostracized from certain societal spaces. Yes, we should be judicious in our decision to speak up, depending on the context, but we should never apologize for being Jewish. We should never have to erase our Jewishness to make others feel okay. Yes, we can be self-reflective about how we and other Jews behave, but we should take care not to believe everything that others say about us. We should always know that synagogues, Jewish institutions, and a strong sense of community will continue to be, not just a safe haven, but a source of inspiration, energy and hope. Chazak v’amatz! Be strong and courageous. Shana tova. Fast well.

If you’d like to read Rabbi Malcolm’s Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon, click here.