Pick One

The more preferable of two goods.  In an electoral world of objectionable choices, this one seemed welcome.  Two invitations arrived by email, one directly with ample notice, the other in a more backhanded way on much shorter notice.  Neither anticipated.

First, a program on addressing anti-Semitism to be held at the Museum of American Jewish History on a Wednesday evening.  The topic interests me, though as an American, my Jewish identity has been mostly secure.  A few snide comments by fellow university classmates along the way, but no personal threats, or even limitations.  Yet, the past several years have added to my exposure.  The physician gunned down at the Tree of Life massacre I knew well in college.  On a trip to Pittsburgh to visit family, I reserved a Saturday morning to worship at the repackaged Tree of Life Congregation.  Four years later, it was no longer the multiplex of several simultaneous services in a single building.  The survivors assembled as a single worshiping community in a rather opulent space, part of a more cathedral-formatted Reform synagogue.  The President introduced himself to me as a visitor.  No one else did.  They still spoke of that fateful day, after four years, during their Dvar Torah discussion.  

The Monsey Hanukkah attack enabled me to generate an essay for our local Jewish magazine.  I knew the geography well.  I kept up with its transition from secular Jewish of my childhood to the Haredi dominance today.  Animosities are understandable.  They seem more generated by the experience of proximity and negative consequences for a secular minority than to scripted anti-Semitism.

I've had minor interactions with Islamic anti-Zionism repackaged as a form of negative transference reaction to American Jews like me committed to a vibrant, secure Israeli nation-state.  There seems little role for education where people are pre-scripted, yet that has remained the focus of our own legacy advocacy agencies.  Protective, enforceable laws and an unequivocal national policy with minimal wiggle room seem a better option for keeping everyone safe.  Some, however, rationalize the compromise of physical safety in the guise of free expression.

While this forum took some planning, and I am grateful for the invitation I received, I never received a formal agenda.  The session had been assembled by an educational institution of Jewish auspices, but I did not know whose presentations I would hear.

On much shorter notice, a brief mention in the weekly OLLI newsletter that arrives by email every Monday morning disclosed that Robert Putnam would be speaking at the University's main campus at a time that largely coincided with the Jewish event.  Like many others, I have held this Harvard professor in high esteem for a long time.  In addition to becoming thoroughly engaged as I read through his landmark book Bowling Alone, I've had occasion to hear him speak.  He came to my town about five years ago.  I paid $30 for seats in the auditorium, along with a minor parking imposition.  He did not speak about Bowling Alone, which I had read maybe three years earlier, but about his latest work focusing on childhood poverty and economic inequality's harmful effects that pass down through generations.  As compelling as his presentation was, the benefit to me came afterward.  The Delaware Community Foundation, which sponsored Prof Putnam's appearance, set up tables in the foyer outside the auditorium.  They had representatives recruit those in attendance for the many ongoing projects that the Foundation oversees.  I expressed interest in reviewing scholarship applications.  Once signed on, I remain active with this project.  Each spring for five years, I review some twenty-five applications.  Some come from high school students seeking assistance with college.  Others originate with people already attending medical and law school, needing some relief from tuition and loans.  Along the way, I've made a couple of friends and offered suggestions that get implemented for subsequent years.

This time Bob, which is what the Professor likes to be called, has a new book and a Netflix movie called Join or Die.  I got to this in a very indirect way.  After supper, I often retreat to My Space, where I watch YouTube videos.  I particularly learn from Rev. Dr. Russell Moore, who produces a new podcast on modern evangelical Christianity each week.  His podcast usually interviews authors of new books with a social message.  While the host is an Evangelical, though one who has kept his distance from the political alliances of the Christian Right, the people he interviews originate in many backgrounds, including Jewish.  He recently interviewed Bob Putnam, a show I had to watch.  When Bob told Russell his brief bio, he noted that as an undergrad he took a liking to a sweet Jewish girl of the opposite political party who sat behind him.  They went on an outing to the Kennedy Inauguration.  After graduation, they married, he converted to Judaism, and more than sixty years together brought them an expanded three generational family and shared professional accomplishments.

After the interview, I watched the Netflix movie, taking three sessions to match my limited attention span.  Only after seeing the movie, did I notice the OLLI announcement of his visit.  I contacted the University sponsor, which offered seats in the rather limited auditorium for my wife and me.

Which to attend?  From a content perspective, I think my prior fondness for Bob Putnam's insight and my appreciation to the Delaware Community Foundation for welcoming me as a participant gave them an advantage.  So did my wife's interest in accompanying me to that event.  Logistics cannot be discounted either.  I've been to both the National Museum of American Jewish History and the University's Trabant Center in the past.  The University placed its parking garage adjacent to this student union where Bob would speak.  Some traffic anticipated, minor annoyance registering my car and paying the fee at the garage kiosks, but just a minor stroll from my car to the event.

Philadelphia requires more planning.  I have an unlimited transit pass and the event planners made provisions for use of a garage a block or two from the museum.  To get there and back by public transit, I would have to take light rail from a station near my home, sit on the local train for multiple stops comprising a little under an hour, then transfer to either the city subway or bus to the Museum.  The driving option would require me to deal with some city traffic and with a significant diversion from the interstate to city streets before accessing the garage, then walking as darkness approaches going and fully established on the return.  The light rail schedule would leave me with either slack time with an earlier train or a rush with a later one, then return well into the evening.

Both content and logistics favored Prof. Putnam.  That's where I went.  He gave a suitable presentation.  At the end, I got to ask him a question.  I also got to greet the CEO of the Delaware Community Foundation to remind him that Bob's previous presentation connected me to his agency.  Some light snacks at the end with small talk with a contemporary who I had not met previously.  Then uneventful drive home.

I made the right choice.

Studying Anti-Semitism

An extensive article by staff writers at the JewishTelegraphic Agency profiled a fairly recent project sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League to study the efficacy of different approaches to combating anti-Semitism. 

https://www.jta.org/2025/01/06/united-states/everyone-has-a-plan-to-fight-antisemitism-few-have-studied-what-actually-works

Some brief background.  Anti-Semitism, either hatred of Jews or resentment of Jews, has been around since antiquity.  Assigning definitions remains unsettled, but like Justice Stewart's assessment of pornography, you know it when you see it.  Through history, it has had overt, even deadly expressions.  In America, this has been mostly subtle.  Our Founding Fathers created a policy of tolerance, continued by our immigration processes which at one time did not restrict entry of healthy Jews, mostly from central and Eastern Europe, arriving at a few ports in massive numbers.  While American anti-Semitism has never been deadly, with a few isolated exceptions, America has had its pockets of anti-Jewish sentiment.  Some displayed a public face with Klansmen and American Nazis carrying placards or hotels posting signs indicating that Jews could not obtain rooms there.  Titans of capitalism sometimes operated under conspiracy theories of Jews having surreptitious methods for controlling the world.  Others set quotas for access to elite schools or prime employment, though almost never zero representation.  Amid overt or tacit hostility, episodes of welcome appeared, some more sincere than others.  Tammany Hall in the early twentieth century solicited votes from newly franchised Jewish citizens, often asking them to identify their Rabbi who could help with organizing them.  As growing American industry, financial markets, and professions expanded at about mid-century, college educated Jews had acquired valuable talent and energy to propel these enterprises forward.  At the same era, the face of anti-Semitism shifted.  The Dixie bigots never disappeared.  But there arrived a new presence in America.  An Islamic element, wealthy and influential by control of essential oil markets, took the position that dhimis like Jews should never have sovereignty.  Anti-Israel became the marker of Anti-Semitism, an intersectionality that once again threatens Jews physically, not just in America but everywhere from Munich to Israeli buses to American public places.  In the past year, as Israel tries to contain very real threats and American Jews in alliance with most of our national elected officials  decry this return of animosity, that previously contained Anti-Semitism has gained popular support among American progressives and minorities.  The Internet has offered everyone parity of expression on their preferred platform with little prospect of negative consequences such as loss of employment.  Even when adverse consequences can be applied, leaders of our great Universities have been reticent to enforce protection to Jewish students and other members of the visibly Jewish public.

In response to a deadly anti-Semitic event, the kangaroo trial followed by the lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta in 1913, a group of philanthropists banded together to found what became a legacy Jewish agency, now known as the Anti-Defamation League.  At the time, and today, public unflattering stereotypes of Jewish people in public forums abounded.  This era also brought into existence many public service agencies, Jewish, secular, sectarian, economic.  Unions gained prominence.  The Scouts, NAACP, our Federation system for pooling and distributing donations, Lions Clubs, and many other sources of philanthropy and advocacy trace their origins to that era.  As we advanced forty years, Jewish acceptance in America had become established, though African-Americans and other minorities had not done as well.  Advocacy through the ADL expanded for all groups that had been treated poorly, a source of core values, but later a source of friction as allies with more success found areas of divergent interests.  And that is a quick summary of a hundred years of advocacy.

Next an anecdote.  My state university offers courses to seniors through its Osher Institute affiliation.  During the pandemic, I enrolled in a Zoom series on contemporary issues.  Each week, the three organizers would invite somebody of personal or organizational prominence to present their activities for about an hour, then open Zoom to questions. Among those presenting was a representative of the local ADL chapter, either the director or assistant to the director.  She focused on her organization's educational efforts that spanned over a hundred years, a source of great pride to her. Two questions came from the audience that stayed with me, as the presentation took place just after the pandemic's peak but before the October 7 massacre with its outpouring of Anti-Zionist public canards.  One question went something like, if you are so experienced at this and doing the same for a hundred years, why do we still have Pittsburgh and Charlottesville?  Do you have alternative activities that may be more effective?  The other question came from somebody more familiar with the ADL and how it has engages in its advocacy mission.  How has the agency's directions changed as leadership passed from Abe to Jonathan?  Both very legitimate questions.  And she groped for answers that a group of highly educated seniors retired from some very upper-tier professions realized she did not have.

While educated people have an advantage over the ignorant, the most educated around attend universities whose admissions offices turned me down.  There are imprints, scripting, opportunism,  In other spheres we have warning labels on tobacco and alcohol products, public service announcements, and people collecting outcome data.  Education did not reduce smoking and smoking-related illness in America.  Taxation and restriction of opportunities to smoke in public places did.  A good law will outperform good intentions every time.  Drunk driving injuries have declined because of enforcement of laws, not because people with DUI were forced to attend classes.  It is likely the same with prejudice.  It was OK to deny black people restaurant seating in Alabama when the law permitted it, taboo when there are real penalties for people who try.  And with the change in mandated behavior comes an acceptance of the new behavior as the right path.  Smoking bad, drink judiciously, everyone gets seated at every restaurant in America.  Sometimes it is best to force people to do what they should be doing without being compelled by laws and penalties.

The JTA article, reprinted in The Forward where I read it, poses a similar question to those at the Zoom ADL seminar.  How effective is education as a tactic to deter anti-Semitism?  Do some agency heads like Jonathan at ADL or Ted at AJC, both with extensive political backgrounds in the Democratic Party, come to their current responsibilities with imprints that Abe and David, their predecessors of very long-standing tenure did not have?

That becomes the heart and soul of the extensive JTA analysis.  ADL, for all the sacred cows that it has protected from its shechita knife, engaged somebody who asked the same question that the person at the Zoom seminar asked.  If we are so good at this, why can't we avert the cycles of anti-Semitism in whatever form we find them?  Maybe the focus on public education has become that beaten dead horse.  If it needs replacement, what should the more efficacious approach be?

While headquartered at the ADL, something like this requires a wide net of collaboration with independent thinkers whose careers do not depend on saluting the sponsor.  Across America and beyond, there are institutes, universities, publications, and other organizations that conduct objective research on anti-Semitism.  Findings can be a great resource, the justification for changing direction.  Or when legacy organizations have been around forever, inconvenient discoveries can be resisted with the full structure and force of the agency.  The ADL VP profiled had begun assembling this network, though the role of the ADL, or AJC as a parallel advocate with comparable vast resources, seemed a bit amorphous given the scale of the project.  Some institutions were mentioned.  One that was not is one to which I donate, Indiana University's Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism.  These scholarly enclaves have existed for a considerable time.  Their faculty, as most are university subdivisions, have bibliographies, tenure, and grants.  However, any alternatives to mass public educational efforts have not been very well publicized, let alone adopted in a coordinated way by our legacy advocacy agencies.

Best practices research, now a pillar in my own medical profession, has produced copious guidelines for how to manage a wide variety of medical challenges.  They are presented with a scoring system that includes the quality of the data that generates the recommendations and the strength of expert consensus.  I think that would also be the model for social policy, whether creating best practices for policing to avoid some of the unfortunate incidents and for assessing the impact of interventions to mitigate anti-Semitism.  It is not likely that blaming Jews for the woes of other populations will disappear, but they can be marginalized from the public sphere in a better way than what we experience now.  I think enough evidence has accumulated that defaulting resources to public education has not brought the desired outcome.  What might replace this, with a better outcome as the end in mind, remains uncertain.  The research already exists, both in how to recognize best practices and how to assess alternatives in an objective way.  Coordinating this effort seems more nascent.

Fewer Hechshers

Seasonal Holiday Shopping.  After decades of doing this, a pattern has emerged.  Wife gets eight gifts, each of three children four.  To make shopping smoother, particularly for my wife, I've created categories.  Each person gets an edible.  It must be in a box that can be wrapped and mailed, though I have wrapped circular jars.  And it must be Kosher.  While the kids may have departed from this, any food that I give must be acceptable to me.

Gift treats come in a lot of forms.  Candy, jellies, sauces, coffee, tea, pastries with long shelf life.  National brands, those from the mega corporations, invariably carry a Kosher certification with a symbol that I recognize.  Smaller producers are less consistent, but kosher options are readily available, though less so this year and perhaps last.

My usual source has been Marshall's which buys overruns and a nearby farmer's market.  Marshall's across from an even larger Costco has an enormous seasonal selection.  I have found many products where I used to expect that Kosher mark no longer have one.  Truly seasonal items like those potpourri of sweets in big container rarely do.  Neither do the regional hot sauces or some of the specialty candies that appear only for the Christmas season.  But what I have found this shopping interval has been the absence of certification from many items I had purchased in prior years.  If it is manufactured in Turkey, the Kosher ID has disappeared in the last year or two.  Belgian chocolates or other sweets sourced in Europe no longer carry an imprint on their box.  Italian edibles, once a sure thing, have become inconsistent.  The Far Eastern seasonal items no longer seem to carry certification. However, for year-round dietary staples, the Rabbi from the Orthodox Union still travels far and wide to inspect facilities.  Down Under maintains their certifications, often regional to New Zealand and Australia.  While there aren't specific African products, they would not be able to sell their chocolate, vanilla, or related commodities to the international conglomerates without attention to Kosher.

So why the paucity?  Over the years, from international sources, I've noticed that products that have Arabic ingredient lists often do not have the certification that the same product from the same manufacturer would have with English ingredient lists.  I often encounter those products in Dollar Stores.  But more recent decisions by the manufacturers to forgo a Rabbi's approval seems more questionable.  I understand smaller producers not wanting to pay inspection fees that international conglomerates would judge nominal, particularly when the Kosher market for those products is small.  The disappearance of what was from the European sweets strikes me as perhaps more a political statement.  

As I shopped, Marshall's had Baklava, Halvah, and Turkish Delight.  Jews happen to like these, as they are sweet and usually dairy-free.  I had never seen Halvah that was not Kosher before.  All products of Turkey or Greece, some of which I've purchased as gifts in previous years.  Same with the Belgian chocolates.  Shells or shapes usually makes a suitable gift for somebody on my list.  Always been kosher until this year.  

Perhaps I am too cynical.  Mass manufacturing processes change as factories become automated.  Maybe the production requires oils or greases or preservatives of animal sources.  But the regional nature of what used to announce itself as Kosher but no longer does, makes me wonder if this is one more global anti-Semitic expression.  Don't sell to observant Jews who are nearly all Zionists.  Or don't antagonize a much larger Anti-Zionist market throughout Europe, the Middle East, and beyond.

Perhaps somebody knows for sure if Kosher has been politically weaponized.