Why I Don’t Talk Much About Anti-Semitism

I received a thoughtful response to my Mother’s Day post, the inaugural edition of Ray Hartmann’s Soapbox.

In that piece, I described my mom’s lifelong numbness to the trauma she experienced after being sent to America at the age of 9 as a refugee from Nazi Germany and losing her parents and little sister in the Holocaust.

The response came from an old friend whose grandparents also were murdered by the Nazis. She wasn’t impressed by my take:

“I was disheartened (understatement) that your piece referencing all the shitty things happening locally and globally right now made ZERO mention of the crazy rise in antisemitism and related hateful actions. It seems like a glaring missed opportunity. I hope it was more oversight than intentional. And I hope you will write about it.”

Hers was the only message of its kind among quite a few warm and complimentary comments that came my way. But she has a fair point.

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The omission wasn’t intentional so much as a reflection of my aversion to talking about anti-Semitism. Why? Because the phrase “anti-Semitism” has been so hijacked by people who either don’t mean what they say, dramatize its usage, rush to employ it lazily, or otherwise grind it into the ground. From both the political Right and Left.

I try to find other words when that happens.

Of course, anti-Semitism is rampant today. In 2024, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) documented 9,354 antisemitic incidents—assaults, vandalism, harassment, and worse—across the United States. That’s by far the most since the ADL began tracking in 1979: a 5 percent increase over 2023, 344 percent up over the past five years, and a whopping 893 percent surge in the past decade.

No sugar-coating any of that.

But I’m not wild about using the Holocaust as a starting point for a discussion of antisemitism. There’s no credible threat that Jews are facing another Holocaust in this country. But the rise of white Christian nationalism in America poses a genuine threat to Jews and many other minority groups—Blacks right alongside us at the top of the list.

We lose the plot when we invoke the worst of the worst as a default comparison. For every lowlife Holocaust denier, there surely are thousands of Americans who harbor some level of hostility toward Jews—mostly not in public—but who are also appalled by the thought of six million people having been slaughtered for any reason.

Let’s not go there to invoke anti-Semitism when a rapidly growing number of Jewish children are expected to shut up and go along with hearing—and being expected to participate in—Christian prayers when they walk into their classrooms. Does it really matter whether it’s anti-Semitism, insensitivity, or ignorance that informs those who ignore how devastating that sort of thing can be to any “nonbeliever” kid?

Do we really want to see the highly charged currency of anti-Semitism used, for example, to label a president who routinely defaults to hateful and hurtful tropes when referencing Jews? Space doesn’t permit a full accounting of Donald Trump’s sinister insults and attacks on Jews, like having stated publicly that if he were to lose the 2024 election, it would be Jews' fault—or that Jews should be grateful for all he has done for “their country,” Israel. Or that he wants “little guys in yarmulkes counting my money.” And so on.

Yes, Trump has a lifelong track record of being whatever term you want to describe that connotes “no friend of Jewish people, not even a little bit.” But, no—he’s not Adolf Hitler. And invoking the Holocaust to frame his awful conduct – including implementing the white Christian nationalism of Project 2025 – does him a favor.

Sinking to Trump’s depths and engaging him in a name-calling contest could not be the worst strategy imaginable. Haven’t you heard the one about “when you wrestle a pig, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it?”

So, no, I don’t care to invoke the Holocaust to warn about the dangers facing Jews in America today. And I’m not trafficking in the phrase “anti-Semitism” at a time when its overuse and misuse has rendered it so impotent. No need to go there; it just makes things worse.

Which is not to say my friend doesn’t have a point.