Antisemitic incidents have been on the rise in America for years, escalating explosively with the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway, California.
Banner headlines sometimes mask more common incidents like repeated vandalism of my seminary, the Hebrew Union College, or innumerable experiences of Jews being held to double standards or verbally assaulted for no reason save their faith.
Very recently, the horrific murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim in Washington, D.C., and the attack in Boulder, Colorado, against Jews peacefully raising awareness of hostages held captive in Gaza have shocked us again.
Though violence against Jews has become part of normal life, we remain horrified by each new incident.
The war in Gaza has inflamed both passions and fears. Critique of Israel is both valid and moral, especially as the country has escalated its devastating violence in Gaza and cut food aid to a trickle.
But rhetoric that defines Jews as murderers or calls for their destruction exceeds moral outrage and becomes antisemitic violence of its own.
Even as I experience profound grief and fear at all of these events, I am appalled they are being leveraged for destructive political ends. Let me be clear as an American and as a rabbi: Antisemitic attacks like the one in Boulder should not be used to violate sacred principles of American democracy.
It horrifies me that the Colorado assailant’s family might be deported because of the actions of their husband and father. Deuteronomy and Ezekiel insist that children not be punished for the sins of their parents, and our American Constitution guarantees due process of law for every person who lives here.
When President Donald Trump appeals to antisemitism as justification for deportation or travel bans, he spits in the face of ancient Jewish and modern American values.
He has also shamelessly used political opposition to the war in Gaza — or Israeli policy more generally — as smokescreen for political moves against immigrants and universities.
The Trump administration has claimed to promote policies designed to combat antisemitism, when in fact, this talking point simply masks their efforts to undermine university education.
Their blatant hypocrisy is on display when, for example, Jewish culture and Holocaust education are defunded by cuts at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The administration has withheld $790 million of federal funding from Northwestern University, claiming “Title VI investigations” after antiwar demonstrations on NU’s campus last year.
I didn’t like those protests, and I felt that some protesters crossed the line into antisemitic rhetoric. Nevertheless, I denounce the administration’s hollow claims that Northwestern’s response to them merits this retaliation.
This administration claims to speak up for the Jews while in truth, they wear us as a fig leaf to disguise their antidemocratic attacks on higher learning.
My synagogue is only steps away from the University of Chicago campus, and many members of my community research, teach and work there. Unexplained revocations of student visas, threatened cuts of governmental grants and a general atmosphere of concern and intimidation undercut the occupations and well-being of members of my community.
I’m expressing my own views, but as I see it, the Jews in my community — whether more liberal or more conservative, whether more damning or supportive of Israeli policy — are largely united on this front: We don’t want to be pawns in Trump’s political games. This is bad for us, bad for our congregations and bad for the communities in which we live.
Antisemitism is real, and the Trump administration is peddling it. The targeting of Jews during times of civil unrest is as old as our people itself, and I implore my neighbors to take this threat seriously.
Antisemitism is not the same as anti-Zionism, as my anti-Zionist Jewish friends will be the first to tell you. But sometimes antisemitism does get dressed up to look like anti-Zionism, especially when “Zionists” as a category are the targets.
Many Jews, myself included, call ourselves Zionist because we believe in the urgent need and historical right for a free and democratic Jewish state to exist in our people’s ancient homeland. My Zionism has led me to oppose Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government, and it also reminds me there is always a hope for the flourishing of goodness and rightness when people work together for a common and righteous cause.
With this hope in my heart, I pray the diverse communities of our city and nation find peaceful ways to disagree and that we may come to understand we are fundamentally united in this nation that prizes freedom — religious freedom, political freedom, the freedom to express and be who we are.
Daniel Kirzane is the rabbi of KAM Isaiah Israel in Hyde Park and serves as the vice president of the Chicago Association of Reform Rabbis.
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