With Trump, Kanye West and Kyrie Irving remarks, Jewish communities fear rising hate

• A record-high number of antisemitic incidents are unfolding across the United States.
• Jewish leaders say the surge is being partially driven by inflammatory statements made on social media by high-profile celebrities.
• "There’s people who take pride in being antisemitic, and that’s a bad development,” said Jewish scholar Alvin Rosenfeld of Indiana University.

Alvin Rosenfeld is one of the very few Jews who call Indiana home, but he’s always considered Indiana University in Bloomington, where he teaches Jewish studies, a Jewish-friendly campus. The program offers more than 30 Jewish studies courses yearly, and the “Hoosier Hillel family” touts its commitment to making the school’s 4,500 Jewish students – about 9% of the student body – their “home away from home.”

More recently, however, Rosenfeld said students have reported incidents in which vandals have removed or defaced the mezuzahs, or traditionally encased scripture scrolls, displayed on their front doors.

“A couple of weeks ago some jerk removed one, opened up the tube and burned the scroll,” said Rosenfeld, who directs the university’s Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. “That’s pretty nasty stuff. It’s certainly an act of ill will, but you can’t help but think it’s antisemitism."

Jewish leaders across the nation are reporting rising fears as antisemitism incidents surge, from the streets of Los Angeles to the boroughs of New York. Last week, the FBI said it had received “credible information of a broad threat” to synagogues in New Jersey.

In recent months, statements by high-profile figures have not only inflamed tensions but suggest antisemitism has seeped into the mainstream. Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, was locked out of his Twitter and Instagram accounts for violating policies of both platforms after posting antisemitic statements, threatening in a since-removed Oct. 8 tweet to go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE."

Last month, seven-time NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving endorsed a purported documentary espousing antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as those suggesting that Jews secretly control the world. While Irving has since apologized, he has refused to unequivocally denounce antisemitism.

In another social-media post last month, former President Donald Trump told the nation's Jewish Americans to "get their act together" in regard to U.S. support of Israel "before it is too late," a comment seen as a threat to political opponents.

“People are incredibly tense now,” said Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. “There have been (antisemitic) leaflets dropped at people’s homes and banners over the 405 Freeway, and we’re hearing almost every single day from college or high school students being accosted or people leaving swastikas on lockers.”

Antisemitism in the United States has been spiking since 2016. The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, last year recorded 2,717 such incidents, a 34% increase over the previous year and nearly triple the number in 2015. On Friday, The Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella group representing more than 300 Jewish communities nationwide, issued a statement expressing deep concerns “about the safety and security of our Jewish communities, in light of increasing hate rhetoric and antisemitic threats targeted at our institutions.”

The climate is stoking worries of another tragedy such as the October 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, where a gunman killed 11 people and injured seven others in the deadliest antisemitic attack ever in the United States.  

In December 2019, two people with antisemitic views killed three Jewish civilians at a kosher market in Jersey City, New Jersey; barely two weeks later and an hour north, a machete-wielding man brutally attacked five people during a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York.

“This is hitting a crescendo,” said Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta who was appointed in May as the U.S. State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism.

In Brooklyn, she said, orthodox Jews are regularly harassed on the street, “and they might tell people, ‘Oh, it’s no big deal,’ but it is a big deal. You know why it happened. It’s not random. And you begin to get nervous about walking down the street. All of that has a drip-drip effect.”

While Ye and Irving have been roundly criticized for their actions – multiple brands severed ties with Ye, including Adidas, JPMorgan Chase and Balenciaga fashion house, while the Brooklyn Nets have suspended Irving indefinitely – Jewish leaders worry that the social-media influence enjoyed by both stars can have far-reaching and dangerous consequences.

Kanye was "right about the Jews” have since appeared both on electronic message boards in Florida and been unfurled on banners off Los Angeles-area freeway overpasses.

Rosenfeld, of Indiana University, said comments once previously disregarded as peripheral now find staying power on social media. They come from a range of sources in the United States, he said, including the far right, the far left, radical circles of Islam and segments of the Black community.

“Social media feeds these things,” he said, and as a result, when public figures make antisemitic statements to millions of followers, “hostility of this sort, which has been around a long time on the fringes, is more and more in the mainstream, because the mainstream in part is defined by what’s on social media, reaching a great many people.”

While Jews for the most part haven’t stopped living their normal lives, “they’re more cautious and concerned,” he said. “In the past, even if a person harbored antisemitic feelings, they wouldn’t express them. Now there are people who take pride in being antisemitic, and that’s a bad development.”

Jews in the US 'can't take any chances'

Last year, an American Jewish Committee survey of 1,400 U.S. Jews found that 39% had altered at least one behavior in the previous year over safety concerns, whether it was wearing Jewish-identifiable clothing or attending Jewish functions. About a quarter had personally experienced antisemitism, said Holly Huffnagle, the committee's U.S. director for combating antisemitism. 

“We’re used to these statistics in Europe, but not here,” said Huffnagle, whose role, once focused on college-campus antisemitism, now encompasses social media and the workplace. She started in April 2020 as conspiracy theories blaming Jews for covid were proliferating.

Now, Huffnagle worries conditions in the United States might be mirroring those that preceded recent waves of heightened antisemitism in Europe. She and others blame the current uptick on timeworn conspiracy theories that surface in times of social and economic strife, with social media compounding the effect.

“It’s a combination of rising economic uncertainty and fading confidence in government and democracy,” Huffnagle said.

Tyler “Tye” Gregory, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area in California, agreed.

“When you see people challenge the integrity of elections and democratic norms, then you see conspiracy theories, and those are often leveled at Jews,” Gregory said. “It’s been happening for millennia, and it continues to present itself in the world – including at both extremes of our politics.”

As a result, synagogues, Jewish schools and cultural centers have beefed up security measures while men who wear yarmulkes, or women who wear necklaces bearing a Jewish star, might weigh the risks before venturing out.

Paul Rockower, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, said the issue is particularly acute in Arizona, where extremism is more common.

For instance, Republican state Rep. Mark Finchem, a secretary of state candidate, and state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who is running for reelection, have been criticized for touting endorsements from Christian nationalist Andrew Torba, who has charged that Jews control the government and want to crush gentiles. Both Finchem and Rogers also endorsed Jarrin Jackson, a controversial Oklahoma state senate candidate who has linked LGBTQ people with pedophilia and listed Jews among groups proving that "evil exists." 

“Once you go down that rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, there’s always Jews at the bottom where you land,” Rockower said. “Our people have been dealing with this for centuries.”

Rockower said the council has been fortunate to have the support of moderate political leaders as well as organizations such as the NAACP, “so we’re not facing these threats alone…. While we have seen an uptick of incidents, we have also seen officials reaching out to stand with us against these things.”

He and other community leaders in cities across the United States said they’re working with local authorities and law enforcement to address security concerns.

“We’re always concerned because you don’t know what statements of antisemitism will lead to,” Gregory said. He noted multiple instances earlier this year in which antisemitic flyers were strewn on yards and driveways throughout the Bay Area.

“They know where the red line is, and they’re careful to work around those lines so there’s nothing actionable,” he said. “On the surface, those flyers are harmless – but who is looking at the flyer who means our community real harm? What is it saying to them?”

Despite support from local communities and officials, Gregory said, it can sometimes feel like an uphill battle.

“An equal reaction to this,” he said, “is a palpable frustration that antisemitism is not taken as seriously as other forms of hate in this country. We’re often left off the menu. It comes down to the notion that ‘because most Jews are white-passing, we don’t have to prioritize their problems.’”

The American Jewish Committee’s 2021 companion survey of 1,200 U.S. adults found many lack familiarity with the term antisemitism: 18% had heard of it but didn’t know what it was, while 16% said they had never heard it.

“We can’t take any chances,” Gregory said. “We have to coordinate with police departments, district attorneys and law enforcement. That is the pragmatic reality of the moment we’re in.”

Jews demand support from more Americans

While beefing up security is one approach to combating antisemitism, Gregory and others say education and promoting awareness are key for people to, “hear the dog whistles that often fall on deaf ears.”

In California, which last year made ethnic studies a high school requirement, his group is encouraging academic leaders to include a segment on Jewish Americans. It’s also working with communities of color, in particular Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, to coordinate forces against the hate that both groups have experienced.

In Los Angeles, where the Jewish population hovers near 565,000, a survey of more than 3,700 Jewish households compiled last year by researchers at Brandeis University and the University of Chicago found that more than two thirds (68%) were “very concerned” about antisemitism in the United States.

Concerns were higher among older Jewish adults, even though young people reported more antisemitic incidents: Nearly a third (32%) of those aged 22-30 had personally experienced antisemitism, the report found.

Jewish leaders say the country has reached a moment in which everyone has a responsibility. Individuals who witness antisemitism need to call it out. Politicians need to stop cozying up to those who espouse it. Corporate leaders need to better incorporate awareness of Jewish diversity into equity and inclusion efforts.

“It’s crucial that we continue to live our lives without fear, to carry on a normal life in defiance of people who are hostile,” Rosenfeld said. “And the more people who denounce it and say it’s not OK, the better.”

While antisemitism dates back centuries, he said, “a lot of us thought, naively so, that once it was well known that anti-Jewish hatred could end in genocide that those feelings wouldn’t enter the public sphere. We were wrong.”

Antisemitism’s accompanying conspiracy theories, he said, have become nearly folkloric, part of popular parlance, despite being in irrationality. So while it might sound like a joke, Rosenfeld said, he’d suggest one other possible approach to the crisis – for Jews and non-Jews to commune over bowls of matzo ball soup, “to socialize and get to know each other.”

“We have to detoxify the notion that Jews are somehow a wicked people,” he said.