Our Jewish neighbors feel less safe, have changed behaviors due to rising antisemitism

Polling has confirmed what I’ve been seeing in more than a year’s worth of news stories. Our Jewish neighbors don’t feel as safe as before and rising antisemitism is changing the way some Jews go about their day.

Christian, please read the first two news stories and maybe the contents of “The State of Antisemitism in America 2024” report. Then remember that Jesus is Jewish.

In Matthew 25:31-26, Jesus judges the righteous and unrighteous based on how they treated “my brothers.” Many American Jews, Jesus’ brothers and sisters in the flesh, are worried and afraid. Let us comfort them and stand by them and so minister blessing to Jesus himself.

Call your Jewish friends and ask them how antisemitism is affecting them. Pastors, reach out to your local rabbi and ask if their synagogue has experienced any hostility or how congregational disagreements over the Israel-Hamas War have affected their pastoral duties. Ask them what you can do to help in this season.

These headlines are presented as a snapshot of what our Jewish neighbors are thinking and feeling and to provide data as you pray about these issues. CMJ USA does not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed in these articles.

📋Survey: A third of US Jews have experienced antisemitism, 3/4 feel less safe (Times of Israel)

Perceptions about the threat of anti-Jewish hate have gotten worse in almost every category compared to 2023, the American Jewish Committee finds

• 😓56% of American Jews changed behavior in the past year over antisemitism fears, survey finds (JTA)
• 📄Read the AJC report

📰NY Times downplays Israeli post-Oct. 7 losses, Hamas role in war, data study says (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle)

Research by Yale professor says newspaper minimizes Palestinian violence following Hamas attack on Israel, leaving readers with ‘distorted’ view of the conflict

📖Where was God in the Holocaust? A NY poet and activist asks the question in a book of ‘psalms’ (JTA)

The son of survivors challenges the comforting messages of Judaism’s best-known collection of verse

😧Holocaust knowledge gaps widen among young adults, study reveals (JNS)

Nearly half of American respondents—48%—could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during World War II

⚔️One nation under God: The American rabbis split from their flocks by politics (The Jewish Chronicle)

Religious leaders have felt themselves growing apart from their congregants as ‘toxic polarization’ swells in the US

✡️An installation in Pennsylvania marks a milestone in the journey of Orthodox women rabbinic leaders (JTA)

Rabbanit Leah Sarna, the first senior rabbinic leader of her Orthodox synagogue, creates another crack in a persistent glass ceiling.

🍴Why Do Anti-Zionists Target Israeli Restaurants? (Complied by Jewish Journal)

Miriam, an Israeli restaurant in Brooklyn, was vandalized with the words “genocide cuisine.” Here are three takes on the sinister motives of this crime:

• An Expression of Antisemitism, Seth Mandel, Commentary:  Israel is the name of a geographic location; if you are upset about Israelis eating or making a particular kind of food it is because you actually object to Jews eating or making that food.
• An Act of Projection, Matthew Schultz, Jewish Journal: Those most eager to erase Jewish history are those who have been most profoundly shaped by it. Hence those whose mosque sits on the site of an ancient Jewish Temple accuse the Jews of being foreign colonizers with no historical connection to the land. Those whose sacred book is filled with stories and ideas taken directly from the Hebrew Bible accuse the Jews of stealing their falafel.
• An Attempt to Demoralize, Refael Hasid, Forward: As the owner and chef of the beloved Brooklyn Israeli restaurant Miriam… I choose to focus on the outpouring of support we receive from the community.

🚙How a road trip tracking the Jewish American dream led to North Dakota (Times of Israel)

Imagine absolutely nowhere, multiply it by 100, add cows, and endless wheat fields. It was the motherlode and my kids asked all the right questions

For more on the Jews that ventured west in search of freedom to be Jews, check out the documentary Jews of the Wild West. I recently saw it on PBS. I learned much, including how some of the Jews of my home town of El Paso arrived there.

👢Church kicks out priest who mimicked Elon Musk’s Nazi-like salute (Forward)

Father Calvin Robinson borrowed Musk’s hand gesture and phrasing, to cheers from the audience

Editor’s note: Calvin Robinson has been a controversial figure since before he was ordained. He is an opinionated ultra-conservative who uses controversy as a platform much like Elon Musk. Musk gave a stiff-armed salute the day of President Trump’s inauguration, surely to provoke his critics. Robinson deliberately mimicking Musk, especially while in his priestly cassock, was foolish and hurtful to our Jewish neighbors. Shame on those at the National Pro-Life Summit who applauded Robinson’s gesture.

❓Conversion post-Oct. 7: Quest for answers in sea of questions (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle)

'What’s a Jew? Who is a Jew? I didn’t really have a good answer. So after Oct. 7, I needed to figure some of that out'

🙅🏻‍♀️Don’t tell me about war (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle)

I refuse to listen to opinions about Israel from people who have never lived through a missile attack or attended the funeral of a child bludgeoned by an axe in their community

🧕🏻My Jewish family was forced out of our homeland. We must not let Gazans suffer the same fate (JTA)

You don’t counter the fantasy of erasing Israel by proposing the same for Gaza, writes an Israeli influencer whose family was forced to leave Iraq and Tunisia

Excerpt: “Indeed, the loudest voices in the “Free Palestine” movement aren’t calling for a two-state solution. They’re not talking about peace. They want Israel gone. They want Jewish sovereignty erased. They don’t see Oct. 7 as an atrocity — they see it as a model.

“But you don’t fight anti-Zionist eliminationism with eliminationist rhetoric of your own. You don’t counter the fantasy of erasing Israel by proposing the same for Gaza.

“That’s not strength. That’s surrender — to the idea that this is a zero-sum war where one side must be erased for the other to survive.”

✍🏻How I became a vulgarizer — and why you should become one too (Forward)

For an author of graphic narratives, vulgarizing is the point, not a criticism

Excerpt: “History podcasts, Hamilton, Ken Burns documentaries, “Vulgarizers one and all. More fundamentally, these are examples of people talking to people about people — seducing them, storytelling them, vulgarizing them into the dangerous, scary, unpredictable act of thinking for themselves. Not by giving answers, but by helping readers ask better questions as a prelude to thinking for themselves.”

A lesson here for us on how we tell the biblical story of Israel and Jesus. We must become better storytellers.

📚Book Takes on the Story of a Catholic Mistaken for a Jew at a Nazi Labor Camp (Jewish Journal)

Chris Bensinger’s novel “The Sooner You Forget” follows the story of a young Catholic man who, while serving in the United States Army, ends up in a Nazi labor camp

🏈How Yiddish inspired the Philadelphia Eagles’ winning play in Super Bowl 2025 (Forward)

The Jewish legacy of the ‘tush push’

💖Iranian ex-commander - now believer in Jesus - addresses members of Knesset: 'I’m here, standing with Israel' (All Israel)