6 | DECEMBER 26 • 2019

commentary
Trump’s Anti-Semitism Order

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D

emographers have
spent a great deal of
time in recent decades
trying to learn more about
the changing demographics of
American Jewry. But whatev-
er else he has accomplished,
President Donald
Trump has, albe-
it unwittingly,
gone above and
beyond those
efforts. In sign-
ing an executive
order extending
protections to
Jewish students against anti-Se-
mitic hate on college campuses
due to vicious incitement and
discriminatory actions pro-
moted by the BDS movement,
Trump has, in effect, provided
us with a sanity test for Jews.
It consists of the following
formulation: If you are so
deranged with hatred of Trump
and rabid partisanship that you
are even prepared to denounce
administration efforts to stop
anti-Semitism, then you should

immediately seek help.
Unfortunately, some Jews are
flunking that test, though to be
fair, their deluded reaction to
the executive order has been
influenced by biased media
reports and statements coming
from left-wing groups that are
the product not so much of
madness as of partisanship and
anti-Zionist sympathies.
The best example of this
was an article in the New York
Times that asserted that Trump
wanted to redefine Jewish
identity. In reporting about his
executive order concerning
the enforcement of Title VI of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
the paper said that Trump is
“effectively interpreting Judaism
as a race or nationality.
” The
upshot of the slanted report was
that the president’
s motive was
to distract the country from
his own alleged anti-Semitism
and to silence criticism of the
State of Israel. That was echoed
by another report from CNN.
Moreover, the Times and articles
published elsewhere intimated
that it was “inherently anti-Se-
mitic” for Trump to treat Jews

as a separate nationality since
it somehow fit in with the
views of white nationalists to
whom he has supposedly been
dog-whistling.
Along the same lines, still
other commentaries claimed
that the action was “bad for
the Jews” because it “separated
us from other religious groups
and saying that we are some-
thing other than American.
”
If that wasn’
t enough, it was
also asserted that even actions
beneficial for Jews would be ter-
rible if they came from Trump.
Others carped that the presi-
dent was suppressing the free
speech of principled critics of
Israeli policy.
These arguments are all root-
ed in false premises about the
executive order, the reality of
contemporary anti-Semitism
and the nature of Jewish iden-
tity.
The notion that Trump was
trying to redefine Judaism is
just nonsense. As even the
left-wing magazine Slate point-
ed out, Trump’
s order was in
line with past rulings by the
George W
. Bush Department

of Education and Barack
Obama Justice Department
(in an opinion written by then
Assistant Attorney General and
current Democratic National
Committee chair Tom Perez)
about extending Title VI pro-
tections.
The original language of the
act did not extend protection
against discrimination to mem-
bers of religious groups when
based on shared ancestry or
religion. That means that when
groups of people are discrimi-
nated against on the “perception
of shared race, ethnicity or
national origin”— as is the case
with Jews as well as Muslims
and Sikhs — the law offered
them no help. Both the Bush
and Obama administrations
agreed that was wrong.
Trump’
s effort orders that the
government use the definition
of anti-Semitism promoted by
the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance, which
is also the one recognized by
the U.S. State Department and
many other countries. That
definition correctly states that
“denying the Jewish people

Jonathan
Tobin

continued on page 8

Embracing the Christmas Tree
A

ccording to the 2013 Pew Study,
32 percent of Jewish homes will
put up a Christmas tree. I am
one of them.
My husband’
s and my first Christmas
tree was in a little apartment in
Hartford, Conn. I went to
Bed, Bath & Beyond and
bought a scruffy-looking
18-inch fake tree along
with the most generic
menorah you can imagine
and they sat side-by-side
on the kitchen counter.
This year, we have a
beautiful 9-foot tall Douglas Fir decorat-

ed with ornaments that tell the story of
our life together. Next to it (but not too
close for fire hazard reasons) sit at least
a dozen menorahs, including ones with
my children’
s Hebrew names carved out
of wood and our Menorah-saurus Rex.
In his opinion piece “
A Christmas
Tree Says Something,” Louis Finkelman
completely ignored the reason that
many Jewish homes have Christmas
trees. According to the 2013 Pew
study, 71 percent of families where one
spouse is not Jewish choose to put up a
Christmas tree. For these families, the
choice to put up a tree is likely to honor
the Christian traditions that are part of

Alicia
Chandler

continued on page 10