DOES ANTISEMITISM GET A PASS WHEN IT'S CALLED "RELIGIOUS LIBERTY"?

The Antisemitism Awareness Act now moving through Congress is, in many ways, a necessary and long overdue step. The goal of the bill is to provide clearer standards for addressing antisemitism in schools and universities. It does so by drawing upon a document created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) known informally as the working definition of antisemitism. You can read it here. The document, created by a collaboration of historians, Jewish community leaders, and legal scholars, addresses both traditional and contemporary forms of Jew-hatred. This includes conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, and attacks on Israel’s very right to exist—particularly those that employ traditional antisemitic tropes in their call for elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. It’s been adopted and endorsed by close to fifty nations and by numerous cities and a majority of states.

Initially, I did not support the IHRA definition. I worried it might be used to silence legitimate political criticism of Israel. But any reservations I had vanished on October 7, 2023. This was not because I suddenly came to believe that normal criticism of Israel should be considered antisemitic. The statement itself acknowledges that. My change of position coincided with the massive outcry of support for the destruction of Israel that began in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas massacre. On that day and ever since, I have become acutely aware of just how far so‑called “critics” of Israel stand from legitimate normal criticism—how often they are motivated not by opposition to Israel’s government, but by opposition to Israel’s existence. And by how quickly they went from condemning Zionism to condemning Jews. The IHRA definition reflects this sad reality. It’s an important tool in the fight against hate.

The bill now moving through Congress would officially tie the IHRA statement to the enforcement of federal anti‑discrimination laws, particularly Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many Jews have been heartened by the bipartisan support. Some Jewish organizations, including HIAS (a Jewish pro-immigration organization which I usually support), have expressed reservations.

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matthew Gaetz, GOP representatives, were among those who clamored for the change.

Recently, however, the bipartisan congressional coalition faced a troubling development. A handful of hard-right Christian nationalists—who had supported the bill—succeeded in inserting new language that effectively guts its meaning. To ensure that the bill could not be used to label the claim that “the Jews killed Jesus” as antisemitic, they added a clause stating that the legislation would not “diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, including the free exercise of religion.”

In other words, they are comfortable carving out an exception for one of the oldest and most dangerous antisemitic accusations in history—the charge of deicide.

The deicide libel is not some antiquated artifact of Christian theology. It is one of the oldest, most perfidious lies ever told about the Jewish people. I have often pointed out that antisemitism is different than other hatreds in that it is comprised of webs of conspiracy theories. Deicide is the Christian conspiracy theory with the most blood on its hands. It led to expulsions, pogroms, forced conversions, inquisitions, and eventually helped set the stage for the gas chambers. Deicide is not a matter of “religious opinion.” It is hate speech in its purest form. To exempt it from violating Title VI is to exempt one of history’s most dangerous acts of Jew-hatred.

It was the Catholic Church that first popularized this anti‑Jewish blood libel, based mainly on the Gospels of Matthew and John. But in a dramatic and historic shift, in 1965 the Second Vatican Council explicitly repudiated and rejected as antisemitic the charge that Jews are collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. In so doing, they recognized the enormous damage it had done to our people.

Now comes along a group of right‑wing Christian nationalists—who purport to support the Jewish people—to tell us that the charge of deicide can’t be considered antisemitic because it comes under the banner of “religious liberty.” Based on my experience with antisemites in the Bible Belt, I can assure them that being called a “Christ killer” is not only outrageous—it’s also dangerously antisemitic. It matters not one whit to me that these people include many who claim that they stand with Jews. Not when they then turn around and defend the very lie that helped fuel the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust.

As Humanistic Jews, we well understand the many challenges that accompany the rise of Christian nationalism. This betrayal is but one more example; a reminder that we are responsible for our own safety.

Yet another reminder is that the source of antisemitism is not the far right alone. Next week I'll be writing about the challenge from another direction when I address the findings of the new Harvard report on antisemitism. In more than 500 pages, it documents hundreds of listening sessions and written testimonies and thousands of surveys of students and staff. The results were far worse than anyone expected.

I'll be drawing some important conclusions about what, exactly, it's going to take for us to address this worsening crisis.