This article is part of our morning briefing. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday. Does Germany offer a model — or a warning — for how to fight antisemitism?
Germany has won international praise for reckoning with its Nazi past and aggressively addressing contemporary discrimination against Jews. “Your efforts will help inform ours,” Doug Emhoff, the first gentleman, told German officials as he helped prepare the White House plan to counter antisemitism. But not everyone is pleased with the German approach. Arno Rosenfeld, our enterprise reporter, spent a week in Berlin to see what America should — and should not — learn from the German model.
Robust response: Germany appointed its first federal antisemitism commissioner five years ago, and now has a sprawling bureaucracy with officials across the country trying to root out antisemitism. Though Germany has only 120,000 Jews, compared to some 6 million in the U.S., Berlin was ahead of Washington in releasing a national plan on the problem. |
Protesters march on Nakba Day 2021 in Berlin. Police began banning such demonstrations in recent years, citing the risk of violence and antisemitic outbursts. (Getty) |
Israel implicated: Right-wing extremists account for as much as 90% of antisemitic crimes in Germany, but some synagogue vandalism has been attributed to leftist critics of Israel, and Hamas supporters have chanted “Jews to the gas” at protests. This is known as Israelbezogener Antisemitismus, or antisemitism related to Israel. Agitated activists: Pro-Palestinian activists acknowledge that antisemitism is sometimes a problem in the movement, but say the government has cast too wide a net in its crackdown. Officials now preemptively ban many protests, and political criticism of Israel common in the U.S. is treated like hate speech. |
Hunter Biden at Congregation Etz Chaim in Marietta, Georgia, on Aug. 12, 2023. (Facebook) |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Israeli security forces block a road leading to the site of an attack Monday in the occupied West Bank. (Getty)
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? Terrorists shot and killed an Israeli woman in her car near Hebron on Monday morning. A man was also seriously wounded in the drive-by shooting in the occupied West Bank; a 6-year-old girl in the car was uninjured. (JTA, Haaretz) ? New York City Mayor Eric Adams is arriving in Israel today for a two-day trip. He is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, learn about the tech sector and discuss antisemitism. (Haaretz, Forward) ? An Israeli UFC fighter beat a follower of Nick Fuentes, the notorious white supremacist and Holocaust denier, in a match filmed Thursday. Afterwards, the follower of Fuentes acknowledged on camera that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. (JTA) ? Fighting a trend of Haredi media and some Israeli companies refusing to show photos of religious women, an Israeli Orthodox feminist has created a new photo bank. More than 250 women in the U.S., England, France and Israel volunteered to model for photos of them studying, praying, playing sports and taking business meetings. (Religion News Service) ? An Israeli man was sentenced to two years in prison in Madagascar for attempting to smuggle 59 rare tortoises out of the country in his suitcase. (Times of Israel)
What else we’re reading ➤ Gaza’s first cat cafe offers distraction … The Ripped Bodice, Brooklyn’s new romance-only bookstore, reflects the values of the Jewish sisters who own it … The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie feels surprisingly Jewish. |
On this day in history (1987): Dirty Dancing was released in theaters. Written by Eleanor Bergstein, the 1960’s romance between a Catskills resort guest known as Baby (Jennifer Grey) and dance instructor Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) is also a love letter to a bygone Jewish culture. “It’s a Jewish film,” Bergstein said, “if you know what you’re looking at.” Our resident illustrator puts Bergstein’s Jewish references in context with a comic series about Dirty Dancing and the Yiddish Camelot it captured. |
Israel’s Sagi Muki, in blue competing against Medickson Del Orbe Cortorreal of the Dominican Republic, won the gold medal at the Judo Grand Prix on Saturday in Croatia. — Thanks to Jacob Kornbluh, Arno Rosenfeld, Rebecca Salzhauer and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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