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