President Trump is proposing an executive order to limit anti-Semitic speech on college campuses. The New York Times comments: “The order will effectively interpret Judaism as a race or nationality, not just a religion, to prompt a federal law penalizing colleges and universities deemed to be shirking their responsibility to foster an open climate for minority students.” Judaism is neither a race (race is a false concept) nor a nationality.
Israeli is a nationality. In order to enforce this, the U.S. government will have to define Judaism as a race or nationality. “Title VI does not protect students from religious discrimination,” according to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ ocr/docs/know-rights-201701-religious-disc.pdf).
This new policy is desired by some to combat the already failed BDS Movement. Certainly we are not a race. One cannot convert into or out of a race. The false concept of race is a permanent marker of a person: black, Asian, Caucasian, etc.
Jews have no such permanent markers, and members of any race can become Jews. Defining Jews as a nationality leaves the Jewish community of the U.S. open to the anti-Semitic canard of “dual loyalty,” a loyalty to more than one nation — viz: the U.S. and the Jewish nation. This false accusation will likely only be furthered by our national government officially defining Jews as a separate nation. Trump’s proposal, at the very least, is an extraordinarily bad idea, and at the worst is a veiled attempt to “other” America’s Jews. This idea will ultimately not protect Jews, and we do not need such protection.
The problem on college campuses must be fought with ideas, by faculty teaching, by the university administration making clear that anti-Semitism will not be tolerated among the student body or faculty. The president’s order may be used to stifle speech. But more dangerously, it opens the Jewish community to a government definition of Jews within the U.S. as a separate category than American, and thus may further the “othering” of the American Jewish community.
Rabbi Mark H. Levin, DHL
Founding rabbi, Congregation Beth Torah
