Anne Frank was trending on Twitter recently. It was not because the Jewish girl who hid in a dark cubby for years and perished in the Nazi death camps was the subject of an amazing new documentary or featured in a Holocaust education program adopted by top school districts. No. Twitter was exploding with a vile discussion over how much “white privilege” she had.
Yes, the girl who was murdered for not being “white” had white privilege.
What we are witnessing isn’t solely relegated to the web. Rampant antisemitism is manifesting itself in real-life, physical attacks. In New York City alone, attacks on Jews are up 400% year over year.
Fifty percent of Jewish students on college campuses in America report hiding their identity for fear of harassment, threats, or even violence. High school and even grade school curricula across the country are churning out lesson plans based on critical race theory that portray Jews as white, privileged, powerful, and oppressive. This is how you get Anne Frank, the privileged corpse.
The insinuation that Jews benefit from “white privilege” would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sickening. Jews have been systematically targeted for not being white and have been subject to expulsions, ghettoization, pogroms, genocides, and other forms of shocking abuses in nearly every corner of the Earth. You’d think that college students would know this, but those charged with educating them have other agendas.
Recently, the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper at arguably the top university in the United States, endorsed the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement, an anti-Israel outfit with ties to designated terrorist groups. BDS ostensibly promotes boycotts of Israel, but its founder has admitted to seeking the destruction of the Jewish state. While BDS campaigns for these boycotts, what it is actually doing is ginning up anti-Israel sentiment to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.
In April, Students for Justice in Palestine organized a demonstration outside the Hillel Center at the University of Illinois, and one protester picked up a rock and threw it into a crowd of Jewish students who were observing Passover. At George Washington University last fall, a largely Jewish fraternity house was sacked, and a Torah scroll was desecrated.
Grade schools and high schools aren’t better. Nationally, the popularity of ethnic studies has ballooned in K-12 education. California was considering mandating an ethnic studies class for graduation and commissioned a model curriculum. When the guide came in, legislators reviewed it and said that it “reinforces negative stereotypes about Jews” and “would institutionalize the teaching of antisemitic stereotypes in our public schools.” While California rejected it as a state-level model, the authors of this 500-page Jew-hating tome are peddling it to school districts all over the state and the country.
While teenagers and young adults are in the crosshairs, what have our establishment Jewish organizations been doing to protect us? Failing. Instead of going on the offense against Jew-haters from across the political spectrum, the leaders of these groups have focused on social justice causes that help other minority groups. The Anti-Defamation League, the Reform and Conservative movements, the National Council of Jewish Women and the Hadassah Foundation, many synagogues, local federations, Jewish community relations councils, and other ostensibly Jewish organizations signed on to support Black Lives Matter.
Black lives do matter. But these are Jewish groups operating in a world where antisemitism is flourishing. Where’s the Young Jewish Lives Matter declaration? Why isn’t it all hands on deck to protect the next generation of Jews?
We are the future of the American Jewish community, and our own organizations have abandoned us. Our problem is not generalized “hate” or “domestic extremism” or “bigotry.” It’s antisemitism. It’s a five-alarm fire affecting us daily.
We are in a crisis situation, and Jewish leaders have their heads in the clouds, betraying the Jewish youth by just hosting more panel discussions and interfaith services. If Jewish leaders don’t have the decency to prioritize us, the next generation, we’re going to have to shame them into it. If our parents and grandparents aren’t going to take them to task, then we must.
Let us engage with our local leaders and persuade them to rethink their strategies, change their behavior, and reform their policies to make fighting against the new antisemitism their first and foremost priority. If they won’t abandon business as usual, we must move them out. Otherwise, we, the next generation of young Jews, will pay the price.
Our future is up to us. We must start putting pressure on our existing leaders, one community at a time.
Karys Rhea is a fellow at the Jewish Leadership Project.
