Antisemitism Battle Faces Potentially Dangerous Shift

A leading analyst of trends in Jewish life in America warns that antisemitism is taking hold in this country at the same time as the ability of the Jewish community to meet that challenge is undergoing important change.

Dr. Steven Windmueller, who has spent more than 40 years as a Jewish community professional and as a professor at Reform Judaism’s Hebrew Union College, discussed these changes during a four-part lecture series about American Jewish life presented by The Dupree.

“The short, but very essential piece to this,” he told his online lecture audience, “is that there is now a deep ideological split in the American Jewish scene.”

The split, as he described it, has given rise to two approaches to dealing with the rise of anti-Jewish prejudice. On one hand, there are those who argue that we must turn inward, to support established Jewish institutions … what he called a “kind of rejectionist view of the outside world.”

On the other hand, there are others who argue against turning inward and emphasize instead that Jews need to be much more in the public square and engaged. They believe that the Jewish community must work with others outside the Jewish community, building coalitions and seeking allies, for instance, in social justice and community work.

“I am of the mind that we need pieces of both,” he said. “We need to do more in certainly building up a knowledgeable and responsive Jewish communal system. We need to also remodel that system.”

These two approaches to building community are not just a response to recent political and social pressures, nor just a response to the events that occurred in Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks in 2023. Rather, as Windmueller has written, it has been part of a reappraisal of how the Jewish community in America has grappled with changing notions of political power.

In his book, “The Quest For Power,” he noted over a decade ago that building a carefully constructed ideal of consensus, which had occupied Jewish community in the years before World War II, began to come apart after the war. He wrote that the emphasis on Jewish institutional authority has gradually given way to “the rise of personalized and decentralized Jewish identity.”

“National umbrella organizations and large institutions no longer possess the authority they once enjoyed,” he wrote recently. “Power is becoming decentralized with the Jewish marketplace economy.”

In his four-part series of lectures, he outlined the various forces that have helped to shape American Jewish life historically. He commented on how Zionism and what was called the Jewish contract with America has shaped our lives; and how present-day ties to Israel, which have begun to fray among some younger Jews, are changing the communal life, particularly as it relates to how antisemitism is countered.

Earlier this year, in an article for the online publication, “The Times of Israel,” he wrote that in American Jewish life there has been a profound shift away from obligations that once exerted such an important influence. Many younger Jews, he wrote, don’t see notions of peoplehood and divinely inspired obligation to the Covenant as important to creating their identity today. Increasingly, contemporary Jewish identity is being built out of networks, causes, experiences, and values.

“You now see a kind of anti-Zionist voice emerging of Jews who are saying, ‘We need to be all about the diaspora. We need to rebuild the diaspora.’” Windmueller told his Dupree seminar participants. “And there are some extraordinary writers who are taking us on this sort of journey of rejecting Israel and building or rebuilding diaspora culture and community.”

He pointed out that he has genuine concerns that the thinking of some influential young Jewish thinkers and writers may undermine the important ties that bind us to Israel may become undone.

“In my work,” Windmueller emphasizes, “I have pondered and questioned the dilemma of how Jews can recapture their central collective organizing motif of peoplehood.”

This becomes particularly important, in his view, as American Jews confront rising antisemitism, particularly among those of the younger generation. There has been an important shift, he believes, in the growth of antisemitism in America, which once was far more prevalent among older Americans.

“The real challenge is, for the first time in American history, the problem of fighting hate and antisemitism is not something of dealing with an older, established, and invested generation, but dealing with the next generation of power and influence.”

Windmueller has co-edited a new book, “Uncharted: American Jews and Judaism in the 21st Century,” which is due in mid-December to further explore these changes.