24 | DECEMBER 12 • 2019
A
be Foxman, former national
director of the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL), drew a large
audience Nov. 20 to the Berman Theater
to hear his talk on a timely topic: “How
to Deal with Anti-Semitism in the 21st
Century.”
Foxman is a well-known and respected
activist. Leaving the ADL in 2015 after
nearly three decades of leadership, he
helped create in 2016 the Center for the
Study of Anti-Semitism, which he leads,
at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New
York City.
The presentation was sponsored
by Partners Detroit, the ADL and the
Jewish Community Center and hosted
by Carolyn and Aaron Frankel, who
introduced Foxman, his longtime friend.
The format was a fire-side chat between
Foxman and Rabbi Shragie Myers, exec-
utive director of Yeshiva Beth Yehudah in
Southfield.
Myers begin by asking Foxman about
his remarkable personal history and
path to ADL. Foxman was born in 1940,
shortly after the Soviet Union took the
eastern part of Poland and the Holocaust
began to take shape. Before his parents
were sent to a ghetto in 1941, they sent
Foxman to live with a Catholic nanny in
Vilnius, Lithuania. He was reunited with
his parents in 1944, and the family moved
to the U.S. in 1950.
Foxman earned a bachelor’
s degree
from the City College of New York, a law
degree from New York University, and
joined the ADL in 1965. He suggested
this advice when seeking a career: “You
have to know what you want to do, and
you have to be lucky.”
The remainder of Foxman’
s chat was a
wide-ranging perspective on anti-Semi-
tism, both historical and modern, regard-
ing the ideas he developed during his
more than 50 years working with ADL.
He told the crowd to always keep two
main lessons in mind. First, the study of
anti-Semitism is not an exact science; and
second, there is no one single cause for
anti-Semitism.
“It is a virus without an antidote or a
vaccine,” he said. “It serves so many mas-
ters for so many reasons.”
Foxman did not declare the fight to
be futile. He said anti-Semitism can and
must be attacked through organizations,
social programs, education and politics.
Foxman said he was an optimist, that
there has been progress despite the ebb
and flow of the fight, and that he believes
in the future.
He acknowledged anti-Semitism is
resurgent in America, that the “covers
are off the sewers.” The pervasive social
media and online world and the current
political atmosphere have encouraged
anti-Semitism, “identity politics,” anti-im-
migration and other extreme positions.
What can we do? Foxman believes we
have to avoid the tendency to look to
the “good old days.” There were none, he
said. In the modern era, “we need to be
creative in building a new firewall [against
anti-Semitism]; we have to be imaginative;
and we have to be proud.”
The lesson he has learned is that after
facing a serious threat, “Jews stand-up,
brush themselves off and continue to be
proud of being Jewish.”
The audience was appreciative. Don
Cohen, a former director of ADL’
s
Michigan Region, said, “I agree that,
unfortunately, anti-Semitism is a prob-
lem to be handled rather than solved.
His focus on constraining and deterring
anti-Semitic acts rather than changing all
attitudes was spot-on.”
Allan Gale, who had a 40-year career at
the JCRC/AJC in Detroit, thought the chat
was “very insightful.”
But, he said, “I have a concern
anti-Semitism has moved to gun violence,”
he said, underscoring the importance of
constraining anti-Semites from acting on
their beliefs.
We need to be creative in building a new
fi
rewall against anti-Semitism; we have to be
imaginative; and we have to be proud.
— ABE FOXMAN
MIKE SMITH
Jews in the D
‘Virus with No Antidote’
Former national ADL director says the fi
ght against anti-Semitism is not futile.
MIKE SMITH CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Abe Foxman and Rabbi Shragie Myers in dialogue