Why I don’t love ‘Jew hate’ as a substitute for ‘antisemitism’

I read a lot about antisemitism — as a professor researching prejudice, as a former fellow at a Holocaust memorial center, as a blogger for The Times of Israel, as the son of a Jewish father who was so grateful to get to live in the United States and as the father of a Jewish son in that same country, but with antisemitism on the rise.

I’ve noticed a shift in what I’m reading. The media, especially social media, are increasingly replacing the term “antisemitism” with a new term: “Jew hate.”

“Simply put, antisemitism is Jew hate,” Richard Lovett, cochairman of Creative Artists Agency, the world’s leading entertainment and talent agency and a marketing and branding powerhouse, remarked last month in an address encouraging his industry to fight antisemitism. Also last month, the governor and attorney general of Massachusetts, the mayor of Boston and other state leaders launched a campaign to “#StandUpToJewishHate,” an effort bankrolled by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Brooke Goldstein, the founder of the pro-Israel Lawfare Project and author of the book “End Jew Hatred,” has started an organization with the same name. The nonprofit JewBelong launched the #EndJewHate billboard campaign in 2021 in cities around the country.

London’s Jewish Chronicle — the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world — has now run several articles using “Jew hate” in addition to or instead of “antisemitism.”

I have asked colleagues who work on Holocaust remembrance, fighting antisemitism and promoting tolerance why they now prefer “Jew hate” to “antisemitism.” They consider it strong and clever branding, jarring and unapologetic, and I can’t argue with that. The phrase packs a punch. And it aligns Jewish groups with a larger social phenomenon: the various efforts to study and stop the menacing resurgence of hate groups. There are new university centers for the study of hate, new hate-focused conferences and several journals dedicated to hate studies. Hate is hot. Branding antisemitism as “Jew hate,” it is hoped, will help to mainstream concern about antisemitism.

The popularity of “Jew hate” coincides with concerns about the term “antisemitism.” Once usually spelled “anti-Semitism,” the term is increasingly spelled without the hyphen and with

JEROME A. CHANES AND MARK SILK

JTA

There was a young lady of title

Who insisted on wearing a sheitel. She didn’t care much

For kashrut and such,

“But the sheitel,” said she, “now that’s vital!” a lowercase first “s.” This change was made out of concern that the former spelling reinforced the pseudo-scientific, long-discredited idea that Jews are members of the “Semitic” race.

As the old limerick suggests, there has long been a tradition of picking and choosing Jewish observance in America, whether it involved keeping kosher or observing Shabbat, or, in this case, covering your hair with a wig (a sheitel) if you’re a married woman.

But in America today, choice has come to occupy a central place not merely in how Jews practice Judaism but in the very way they conceive their religious identity.

Over the past several decades, Americans have come to regard their religion less and less as an ascribed identity — as something they were born into — and increasingly as what they choose to be at the present time. This shift has had a particularly dramatic effect on Jewish Americans, in whose tradition religious identity had for millennia been ascribed at birth. The tension between ascription on the one hand, and choice on the other, informs American Jewish religion.

Understanding religious identity as chosen is crucial to understanding the future of Judaism in the context of its denominations, its numbers, its relationships with other faith communities, its stance on public affairs — and, perhaps most important, its ability to renew itself in response to pressures from outside and from within.

Reform, after steady growth in synagogue membership from the late 1970s until the new century, is no longer the fastestgrowing movement. Still, Reform in America, while it struggles with the boundaries of “who is Jewish,” has lowered the barriers to participation in its brand of Judaism. “Inclusiveness” is the byword for contemporary Reform, both externally (outreach to non-Jewish spouses), and internally, by welcoming those Reform Jews who choose to embrace rituals — tallit and kippah and tefillin, mikveh, full synagogue services — traditionally considered outside the sphere of a movement that does not regard halacha, or traditional rabbinic law, as binding.

Have Reform’s accommodations worked? So far, the answer appears to be “yes,” as the percentage of Reform in American Jewry has remained stable at around 35-40% for decades.

Nevertheless, adopting “Jew hate” in place of “antisemitism” is a big mistake. It misses way too much.

For its part, the question for the Conservative movement is more about ascribed identity than about anything else. The movement is struggling with the question of how long it can

The term “antisemitism” — like the reality it describes — encompasses not only hate, but also fear and envy. People can fear or envy Jews without hating them. True, these biases can lead to stereotypes about Jews and the negative consequences of those stereotypes. People with preconceived notions about Jews are likely to notice and remember selectively or simply hear and believe whatever supports their biases while disregarding, disbelieving or downplaying information to the contrary. One Jewish head of a major newspaper or movie studio, according to this thinking, shows that Jews control the media. In this way, antisemitism can be self-perpetuating even when not powered by outright hatred.

“Jew hate” does not take into account apathy, the lack of concern that throughout history has allowed the actual haters to get away with much more than they would have otherwise. Nor does “Jew hate” take into account a dangerous kind of admiration. Well-meaning people may have positive stereotypes about Jews being intelligent and good in certain professions. These biases are not hateful, but they do reduce Jews to stereotypes.

“Jew hate” does not adequately capture antisemitism born of ignorance — not only of Jewish history and culture but also of the history and effects of antisemitism. Ignorance about Jewish culture, history and traditions can contribute to discrimination against Jews, thus perpetuating antisemitism even when there sustain its policy of forbidding its rabbis from performing marriages between Jews and non-Jews. The question of intermarriage is central to the future of Conservative Judaism, as its contemporary identity is defined and has always been defined by the clear line it draws between Jew and non-Jew. This dilemma suggests that the future of the Conservative qua independent movement is highly uncertain. is no hate. The rising and amazing ignorance of the facts of the Holocaust, for example, sets the stage for more people to dismiss or downplay its severity. That, in turn, will breed resentment — or worse — toward Jews, who are increasingly being cast as obnoxious and self-pitying for insisting that the Shoah happened and seeking to remind the world how bad it was. pressions of Jewish Renewal that took root in the 1960s and ’70s — the havurah movement, Jewish feminism, practices that bear its spiritual approach — found newer expressions in communities such as Kehillat Hadar in New York; Yeshivat Maharat, which provides Orthodox ordination to women; The Kitchen in Los Angeles; “partnership” minyanim that maximize women’s participation within the parameters of traditional halacha, and New York’s unaffiliated B’nai Jeshurun congregation. Indeed, while the formal structures that generated Renewal recede in memory, Renewal has had a broad and deep impact on American Judaism and on American Jewish life. The impulse of Renewal, whatever its varied expression, was and is to create alternatives to the prevailing Jewish movements and forms. These alternatives are “chosen” ways of participation, and Renewal is yet vibrant.

Many analysts suggest that Reform and Conservative Judaism will ultimately merge and become a single heterodox movement. That, or Conservative will remain as a smaller movement, concentrated in large population centers.

If it irritates people when a Jew doesn’t care to join them in singing Christmas carols or to buy the annual Christmas stamp, that’s not necessarily hatred. It’s probably just ignorance of what it means to be in the minority versus the majority. Nevertheless, such ignorance, like ignorance of the Holocaust, can have an antisemitic effect.

Most alarming, the concept of “Jew hate” undermines the fight against antisemitism by — and this was supposed to be a point in its favor — making antisemitism just one instance of a broader category: hate. It should go without saying that one should be against most forms of hate. “Hate has no home here” lawn signs are admirable. But there are essential differences between each form of hate. They are not simply flavors to be served up when the media or a corporation wants to take a popular position. Diseases of the society, like diseases of the body, need to be understood and combatted on their own specific terms. Antisemitism has its own distinct history and pathology. The fight against antisemitism is not just the fight against white supremacy or misogyny or Islamophobia with a different name on the tee shirt.

Ultimately, what worries me most is that the concept of “Jew hate” lets people off too easily. Most people aren’t going to defend hatred, but having disavowed hatred, there’s still a lot to answer for. Antisemitism is real and there seems to be no end in sight. The digital age has amplified the speed and spread of anti-Jewish tropes, extremist ideologies and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Metal detectors and armed guards are now common at major Jewish gatherings. That’s a sign of real sickness in the culture, but rebranding antisemitism to fit more neatly into the “fight hate” agenda isn’t the cure.

Todd L. Pittinsky is professor of Technology and Society at Stony Brook University.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

The wildcard in American Judaism is, of course, the “nones,” those who identify as Jews of no religion. According to Pew, the percentage of U.S. Jews who do not claim any religion is 27% — higher among the young and going up. The future of Judaism in America will depend in part on the relative percentages of Jews with religion and Jews of no religion: Which will grow, and which will decline?

Orthodoxy, meanwhile, claims 17% of Jews ages 18 to 29, compared with just 3% of Jews 65 and older, according to Pew. If current trends continue, their proportion of the entire Jewish population in America will grow from a small minority to a dominant majority by the end of the century.

Yet there is no one “Orthodoxy” in America. Orthodoxy is expressed in Modern and Centrist forms, the many flavors of Hasidism, the numerous forms of non-Hasidic “haredi” Orthodoxy, Chabad-Lubavitch and the Orthodoxies that push the religious and ritual envelope in countless ways. It’s about choice.

But the price for Orthodoxy may be high, as the increased fractionalization of the movement demonstrates. Haredi groups (what we call Sectarian Orthodox, and others call “ultra-Orthodox”) operate by preventing choice, especially in some of the more sectarian Hasidic groups that create barriers to prevent adherents from leaving. More progressive Orthodox groups have adopted strategies that accommodate choice.

Orthodoxy will remain strong, but its future presents no consistent pattern.

Understanding Jewish Renewal is central to understanding the present and future of American Judaism. The varied ex-

What has changed in American Jewish religious life? It is what Will Herberg, in his landmark book “Catholic-Protestant-Jew,” did not see in the 1950s: There is no longer any pressure to remain within any given religious community, nor in any movement or stream of Judaism, nor within Judaism itself (as the rise of the “nones” suggests). The American Jewish religious future — for all the movements, denominations and post-denominationalists — will be positioned in this dynamic.

When religious identity is increasingly seen as a matter of personal choice, groups that have depended upon ascribed identity to guarantee their numbers will be challenged to develop not only new means of keeping and attracting members but also new ways of conceptualizing and communicating who and what they are.

Jerome A. Chanes is co-editor with Mark Silk of The Future of Judaism in America and the author or editor of four previous books and more than 100 articles, reviews, book-chapters and encyclopedia entries on Jewish public affairs, history, and arts and letters. Forthcoming is a book setting a historical and societal context for 100 years of Israeli theater.

Mark Silk is director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and professor of religion in public life at Trinity College, Hartford.