12 | OCTOBER 7 • 2021 

opinion

Beyond Naming and Shaming: New 
Strategies Needed to Combat Antisemitism
T

he American Jewish 
Committee (AJC) 
announced in August a 
“Disrupt antisemitism” initia-
tive offering funding “for new 
ideas to combat antisemitism, 
locally, nationally or virtually.” 
 The initiative 
is to be com-
mended both 
because it may 
produce new 
approaches and 
in launching this 
effort, the AJC is 
acknowledging 
that existing strategies may not 
be able to reverse the alarm-
ing increase of antisemitism 
underway. The rabbinic sage 
Rav Nachman is oft quoted: 
“The endpoint of knowledge is 
to know that we don’t know.” 
Fighting antisemitism is now 
one of the highest priorities of 
virtually every North American 
Jewish federation and many 
national Jewish organizations. 
Community security systems 
are being strengthened and 
there are continuous calls for 
bold new initiatives to combat 
antisemitism. Determining the 
most effective strategies for the 
North American Jewish com-
munity to respond to increased 
antisemitism requires clarify-
ing our understanding of what 
is taking place, assessing what 
has and is being done, and 
developing strategies for the 
most effective ways to move 
forward. 
“Naming and shaming” has 
been the Jewish community’s 
primary strategy to combat 
antisemitism for decades. 
Acknowledging that hate, racial 

stereotyping and antisemitism 
are part of the human con-
dition, multiple efforts were 
forged including litigation, 
legislation and arguably most 
important, successfully creat-
ing a broad public consensus 
— among elites and the media 
— that expressions of antisemi-
tism were simply unacceptable. 
When we read or heard of an 
antisemitic speech, statement, 
article or book, Jewish leaders 
called it out and pressed politi-
cal, cultural and religious lead-
ers and the media to denounce 
those responsible and insist 
they be shamed, censured 
or removed from leadership 
positions. These efforts were, 
and remain, impactful and 
no doubt deterred unknown 
numbers of purveyors of hate 
from expressing their antise-
mitic views. That said, “naming 
and shaming” is clearly not 
sufficient on its own to halt, 
let alone reverse, the growth of 
antisemitism.
Local and national Jewish 
organizations have also long 
sponsored dialogues with lead-
ers of other ethnic, racial and 
religious groups. These efforts 

created valuable relationships 
essential when crises occur, 
strengthened partnerships to 
advocate for Israel, and enabled 
collaborative endeavors to work 
on a range of issues nationally 
and locally. That said, such dia-
logues have been almost always 
limited to relatively small elite/
leadership groups.
As a community, we instinc-
tively understand reports of 
attacks on Jews as being part 
of the centuries-long history of 
Jew hatred that led to attacks 
on Jews and Jewish commu-
nities, pogroms and, ulti-
mately, the Holocaust. While 
understandable, we might 
ask whether this is the wisest, 
most strategic way to frame 
our collective response. As but 
one example, in 2018 when 
the horrendous attack took 
place at Tree of Life synagogue 
in Pittsburgh, there were over 
320 mass killings in America 
defined by four or more people 
being killed. After most mass 
killings, media and public 
officials primarily focused on 
the promiscuous availability of 
guns and mental illness. After 
Tree of Life, the public focus 

— with the active participation 
of Jewish leadership — was 
overwhelmingly on combating 
antisemitism. And we ought 
to note while the murderer 
uttered vile antisemitic state-
ments, he focused on the role 
of Jewish organizations, HIAS 
in particular, for sponsoring its 
Refugee Shabbat program and 
related work.

JEWISH WORLD DIALOGUE
The Jewish People Policy 
Institute (JPPI) conducts annual 
dialogues of community leader-
ship in the Jewish world. JPPI’s 
eighth Jewish World Dialogue, 
in 2020, focused on the rise 
of antisemitism and how it is 
understood principally by Jews 
in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Eleven 
dialogue sessions were conduct-
ed by my colleague Dr. Shlomo 
Fischer and me, nine in North 
America and two in Israel, with 
154 participants. 
While we ought to be cau-
tious generalizing from the 
limited number of Dialogue 
participants, what emerged 
from JPPI’s 2020 Dialogue 
may be helpful. “Most partici-
pants attributed the increase of 
antisemitic views and acts to 
the increase of racism broadly 
and pointed to the growing 
role of social media” in dis-
seminating hate, racism and 
antisemitism. 
In terms of how to respond 
most effectively, “most believe 
the Jewish community should 
develop coalitions with other 
racial and ethnic groups to 
combat racism broadly — even 
with groups that hold views on 
Israel and other issues (such 

John Ruskay, 
Ph.D.

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