Seems like everyone’s mad at Chuck Schumer. That’s bad for Jews (including the ones who are mad at Chuck Schumer)
Jews are being caught in the middle of forces beyond our control. It’s unlikely to turn out well
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on March 14. Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
My synagogue, New York City’s Temple Emanu-El, was scheduled to host Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last week to talk about his new book Antisemitism in America: A Warning. We have regularly hosted politicians through our history, occasionally attracting a smattering of protesters. But never before has the threat of demonstrations resulted in an event’s cancellation.
Welcome to 2025. Sadly, out of concern for the Senator’s security, we were compelled to postpone his program.
But it wasn’t just because of left-wing protesters, who have made waves in the last week with their fury over Schumer voting with Republicans to pass a spending bill and keep the government open. (Schumer’s justification for his vote — that shutting down the government would only further enable draconian cuts — has fallen on deaf ears.) It was because Schumer is now a favorite target of groups across the political spectrum, a caught-in-the-middle position that should be a dire warning to all American Jews.
The left was joined by right-wing Jews angry that, in their view, Schumer has not done enough to fight antisemitism. They are upset he did not secure congressional passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act. They are frustrated that he questioned the legality of efforts to deport former Columbia graduate student and pro-Palestinian protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, although Schumer did roundly condemn Khalil’s rhetoric. They are incensed that he has openly criticized the current Israeli government, despite his deep commitment to Israel.
And so, they helped successfully undermine an important conversation on the evolving threat of antisemitism between Schumer and Rep. Richie Torres, one of the Jewish community’s most ardent supporters and one of Israel’s staunchest defenders in the Democratic Party, let alone Congress at large. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Schumer is not the only Jew caught in the middle right now. In some ways, the whole Jewish community is right there with him, as a result of the drama unfolding at Columbia University: Khalil’s arrest and detainment by ICE agents; President Donald Trump’s proposed cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants; ongoing demonstrations against both these government actions; and the university’s decision to suspend, expel, and revoke degrees of students who last spring occupied its Hamilton Hall.
This situation has left the Jewish community caught in the pincers of an increasingly heated standoff, with Jewish security trumpeted as justification for scrutinizing and punishing free speech; green-card holders being threatened with deportation; and elite universities facing the devastating loss of federal funding.
We must not allow the Jewish community to be squeezed: denigrated by the left when we elevate serious concerns for the security of our students, or used by the right to advance its political agenda.
There is no question that a frightening number of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia — and on other campuses — descended into antisemitic hate-fests that university administrators should never have allowed. And there are those within the Jewish community who argue that the Trump administration’s suspension of aid to Columbia and its arrest of student activists are both warranted, and send the necessary message that the United States government will no longer tolerate antisemitism at colleges and universities it in any way helps to fund.
Others caution that the detainment of demonstrators without criminal charges or due process is an assault on free speech, which is protected no matter how hateful, and undermines the First Amendment liberties on which Jews, as a religious minority, depend. Furthermore, they add, withholding funding from worthy university research benefits no one.
Both sides make a reasonable claim to the moral high ground. I both share the civil rights concerns of the latter, and whole-heartedly embrace the goal of the former — to compel colleges and universities to protect Jewish students.
I thank Trump for expanding Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include antisemitism among prohibited forms of harassment and discrimination. The Executive Branch should pursue vigorously any Title VI cases in the courts. (According to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, 60 more schools are under investigation.) But if the administration continues to act unilaterally — without respecting enshrined democratic processes — I cannot help fearing that Jews will somehow be blamed for jeopardizing the “essential liberty” of others for our own “temporary safety,” an exchange that, as Benjamin Franklin famously warned, risks both liberty and safety.
We Jews cannot fight antisemitism on our own, and we should be grateful that others, especially those in government, are speaking out for us. But we must affirm that no one else can or should speak for us. As the community most impacted by antisemitism, we should establish the parameters for fighting it.
The fury at Schumer demonstrates how difficult that may be. The American Jewish community has never been of one mind. But to a degree not witnessed in decades, Americans, including Jews, have become entrenched and divided in their political beliefs, with nuanced conversations increasingly rare.
It is crucial to our safety and liberty that we find a way to unite around both our fundamental need for security and the fundamental value of liberty. And even when these two rights appear in tension, we should nonetheless be able to affirm both as necessary to our survival as a minority community in America.
And we need to declare that we stand for both, and not be afraid to speak up for fear of ridicule by those who do not want to hear arguments that sound, to their ears, equivocal. Many in the political center — those who might have counterprotested in favor of Schumer’s appearance at my synagogue — now feel intimidated by the fervor of both the left and the right.
But nuance is not weakness. I would have liked to hear Schumer — who has committed himself to nuance, as a lawmaker and a Jew, at a time when such commitment is particularly difficult — make that argument. What a shame that extremists on the left and the right conspired to make that impossible.
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