Given the very broad ways antisemitism is defined these days (virtually any criticism of Israel) this is scary indeed.
What Is the Jewish American Security Act and What Would It Do?

General
A friend of mine send me these videos. I have no idea how they manage to stay on YouTube. If you go to YouTube, type in DuckStreetStudios, and hit return, a playlist should begin playing some of the following, as well as other songs. It may not include all of the songs listed below. A fuller list may be found at duckstreet.uk. Try to download these videos using free or inexpensive video-downloading software such as Video Downloader Ultimate https://www.videodownloaderultimate.com/en/how-to-install/ to preserve copies in case they disappear from YouTube.
Looks like Donald Trump’s become a Jew, featuring Mark Levin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPkZCA7Y-H8&list=RDqzBgV4-GRuI&index=3
BreaktheJew Taboo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4TPGk6Mm-Y&list=RDKHDFYQKlT3A&index=2
It IS about the Jews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipy6qCzjtmU&list=RDk7eiLKyCY2k&index=3
Gospel Truth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7eiLKyCY2k&list=RDk7eiLKyCY2k&index=2
Ever the victim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhaWQVNuWmo&list=RDvhaWQVNuWmo&start_radi o=1
Talkin’ bout the Jewish Question
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MSlRWB81Zo&t=6s
Another soldier’s song (I ain’t gonna kill to please the Jews)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOqkcZs6qL0&list=RDKHDFYQKlT3A&index=4
Good Lord, protect us from the Jews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHDFYQKlT3A&list=RDKHDFYQKlT3A&start_radio=1
For Fear of the Jews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciS16Co93zI
Licence to kill (misspelled on YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE1hhZ_3Liw&list=RDtE1hhZ_3Liw&start_radio=1
Owed to the IDF
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xicZNja3IA&list=RDqzBgV4-GRuI&index=8
The Pornographer of the Year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bajMW_LwX-A
TranslateHategate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf9zY9OLW2A&t=212s
End of an Empire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r6LK6BH7oY&list=RDqzBgV4-GRuI&index=6
The Art of the Deal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGhQzAuPLVo&list=RDKHDFYQKlT3A&index=23
THE DUMBEST OF THE GOYS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey5NthOLOpU
WITKOFF AND KUSHNER BLUES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyN5AV95JWM
The Jews need to get out of Palestine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEd2hneZuRQ&list=RDKHDFYQKlT3A&index=24
My favourite Jews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzBgV4-GRuI&list=RDqzBgV4-GRuI&start_radio=1
An extra video not from DuckStreetStudios:
The Jew Song by Arab Sandler (Parody) (PARODY!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OGcRQtorAM&list=RDKHDFYQKlT3A&index=27
Alex Whyte told GB News she feels “sick, disgusted and completely let down.” Anger, she said, “doesn’t even cover what I feel, and it never will.”
Labour, she added, is “too afraid to admit” what open borders have done to Britain.
Rhiannon Whyte was a 27-year-old mother. Her son was five when she was murdered by a Sudanese migrant being housed at the hotel wage worked in.
Deng Chol Majek stabbed her 23 times with a crosshead screwdriver. Nineteen blows were to the head. Eleven penetrated her skull. One went so deep it pierced her brain stem. She never regained consciousness and died in hospital three days later.
Majek had arrived in Britain on a small boat, and claimed asylum. He had already been refused in Germany and Italy. He lied about his age, claiming to be 19. The court put him between 25 and 28.
After the killing he threw Rhiannon’s phone in the River Tame, bought a beer, changed his clothes and was caught on CCTV dancing and laughing. He showed no remorse, and in January of this year he was given life with a minimum of 29 years.
Alex Whyte now helps raise that little boy. She has described the scream he made when he was told his mother was gone as something that will haunt her for the rest of her life. Rhiannon, she said, “never saw danger.” She “wanted people to be happy and safe. Hence why she worked at the hotel.”
“But we’re not safe. She wasn’t safe,” she urges.
She is among relatives who have now written to Justice Secretary Alex Norris. Reporting has put the group at 11 families, with 18 relatives of victims signing. They want publication of conviction data by nationality for England and Wales from 2018 to 2024 – the dataset the Centre for Migration Control requested under Freedom of Information law.
The Information Commissioner ordered the Ministry of Justice to release it. The MoJ’s cost and “identification” arguments were rejected. Then Justice Secretary David Lammy sanctioned an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal. Taxpayers are now funding a legal fight to keep the figures sealed.
The families’ letter put it plainly: “Imagine if someone you loved had been attacked, abused, or killed by a person who had entered Britain from abroad.” They wrote that victims and the public “deserve transparency about the people who enter our country and the crimes they subsequently commit.” Withholding the data, they said, damages trust and blocks “meaningful action.” They urged ministers to “stop spending public money on this attempted cover-up.”
Among them: eight members of Rhiannon’s family; relatives of a 14-year-old girl sexually assaulted by an Ethiopian asylum seeker housed at the Bell Hotel in Epping; Ann Newman, partner of dog walker Wayne Broadhurst, stabbed to death by Afghan national Dawood Safi in Uxbridge; Fiona Goddard, a Bradford grooming gang victim; and Sammy Woodhouse, raped in the Rotherham scandal.
Alex Whyte cannot see why British sex offenders can be checked on a register while foreign offenders are wrapped in official silence.
“If you have a sex offender who’s from this country, you can go on a register and find out who they are. Why is that not for everyone who’s a part of this country? They want to be treated the same as everyone else. They want to be entitled to everything that we are entitled to here. We should know who they are and what they’re doing.”
Asked what her sister would make of the block, she did not hesitate. “She would be outraged. Completely outraged.”
“She no longer has a voice, but I do. And I will never stop until there is real justice.”
“Open your eyes. You are so aware of what is happening, but you are too afraid to admit it. We as a country deserve better. My sister deserved better. Her little boy deserves better, and we will never stop until we’ve got real justice.”
Rhiannon’s mother Siobhan Whyte called the refusal “diabolical.” Labour, she said, is “constantly denying what’s going on.” She pointed to Home Office leaflets telling asylum seekers that rape is illegal and what the age of consent is – documents that exist only because officials already know the risk.
“They know they’re a danger, and that’s the sad reality of it. Instead of stopping, detaining, deporting, they’d rather spend thousands on publishing stupid documents that mean nothing,” she urged.
She aded, “I think our Government should be protecting women and children and the men of this country, and there is definitely something there, definitely something very weird going on that they seem too scared to protect us.”
The MoJ’s stock line is that public protection is “our priority,” that there is a “record £550 million” victim-support package, and that it will not comment on live proceedings. It denies a cover-up. The appeal itself is the comment.
Partial releases and earlier FOI work have already sketched the picture ministers would rather not print in full.
Foreign nationals accounted for 14.1 per cent of sexual offence convictions in 2025, according to Police National Computer figures the MoJ has allowed out. That lump sum does not break out rape, child sexual abuse or grooming.
Earlier analysis comparing prison numbers with census figures found foreigners overall 27 per cent more likely to be imprisoned than British citizens. Albanians sat at 232.33 imprisonments per 10,000 against 14 for Britons. Kosovars, Vietnamese, Algerians, Jamaicans, Eritreans, Iraqis and Somalis all ran well above the British baseline.
On the railways the imbalance is starker. British Transport Police data obtained by the Centre for Migration Control showed foreign nationals made up 79 per cent of theft arrests on trains in 2025, 40 per cent of drug-offence arrests, 37 per cent of sexual-offence arrests and 36 per cent of violent-crime arrests.
Of 9,771 arrests across England, Wales and Scotland, nearly 3,700 were foreign nationals. CMC research director Robert Bates said the government had “made our trains unsafe” and that any sane government would end the inflow and start deportations.
Across England and Wales, foreign nationals were arrested 172,889 times in the year ending March 2025 – one every 183 seconds. That included 51,212 violence arrests and 11,264 sexual-offence arrests.
Separate CMC work using police, Home Office and ONS figures found foreigners 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for sex crimes than British citizens: nearly 165 arrests per 100,000 against 48 per 100,000 for Britons.
They formed 26.1 per cent of sexual-offence arrests while making up around 9 per cent of the population. In the City of London the foreign share of sex-crime arrests hit 66.9 per cent. In Derbyshire it was 44.8 per cent. Nationalities with the highest rates included Afghans, Iraqis, Algerians and Somalis.
CMC’s Robert Bates has called the legal fight “astonishing” and an “attack on transparency and accountability.” If some nationalities offend at far higher rates, visa policy can be tightened and, where needed, whole source countries shut off.
Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick charged that successive Tory and Labour justice secretaries have refused to publish “this basic information.” A Reform government, he said, “would immediately blow the lid on what’s really happening and begin deporting these dangerous criminals.”
Shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy asked the obvious question: “Labour has consistently refused to publish sex crime data by nationality. Why are they trying to appeal against releasing the data? Do Labour just want to cover up the truth about foreign national offenders?”
Reform’s Zia Yusuf stated “It is a cover-up, and let’s call a spade a spade. Tory and Labour Governments now for years have sacrificed their own people, sacrificed their own women and children’s safety.”
Yusuf further charged that they allowed British women and girls “to be raped and murdered by men who should never have been allowed into the country at all because they worship at the altar of diversity.” If Reform wins and Nigel Farage is prime minister, Yusuf said, releasing “all of this data so the British people learn the truth” would be among the first acts of a Reform home secretary.
The same instinct to manage the public rather than inform it runs through the hotel system that employed Rhiannon and housed her killer.
Police Scotland has refused Freedom of Information requests for aggregated call-outs, crimes and arrests at five asylum hotels, including sites in Erskine, Glasgow, Paisley, East Kilbride and Falkirk. The force cited “heightened community tensions” and a risk of physical harm to officers, residents and the public. Even anonymised totals were withheld on the grounds that changing numbers might allow “inferences” about residents, or that incidents might be blamed on protests rather than people living there.
Scottish Conservative shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr called it another case of public bodies following an SNP “culture of secrecy.”
Former Cladhan Hotel occupant Sadeq Nikzad, from Afghanistan, was jailed in June 2025 for raping a 15-year-old local girl. Another resident, Muhammad Sheikhi, 22, later faced sexual-assault charges. Locals who protested have been arrested, and the data stays locked.
In Epping, an Ethiopian small-boat arrival housed at the Bell Hotel sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and a woman who tried to intervene. He received 12 months. Some locals who protested the hotel later drew longer sentences than the attacker.
That is the two-tier reality families in the Norris letter are living with: the state will spend years and legal fees protecting a spreadsheet, then come down hard on the people who object when the spreadsheet’s contents walk out of a hotel and onto a platform.
Siobhan Whyte has said police encouraged the family to soften public remarks after Rhiannon’s life support was withdrawn, with officers talking about avoiding “another Southport.” She has also said the Prime Minister has “blood on his hands.” Majek would have been among the first cohort eligible for Rwanda removals. Labour cancelled the scheme. He stayed. She is dead.
While ministers litigate against sunlight, ordinary Brits have been unwittingly underwriting the activist layer that treats borders as the problem.
A GB News investigation found the National Lottery has channelled more than £140 million toward refugee and migrant projects. A five-year Community Fund audit identified £114.7 million between July 2021 and June 2026 alone, jumping to £43.3 million in 2024/25.
Large recipients included Refugee Action (£3.21 million), the British Refugee Council (£2.97 million) and the Scottish Refugee Council (£1.75 million). Refugee Action has talked of a future “rooted in the fundamental right to move, underpinned by a commitment to anti-racism.”
Commentator Rafe Heydel-Mankoo called it “the capture of these institutions by far-left ideology that should have no place in the charitable world.”
So the public funds the hotels, funds the legal aid, funds the leaflets explaining that rape is illegal, funds the charities campaigning to keep the boats coming – and then funds the lawyers trying to stop anyone seeing the conviction table.
Alex Whyte and those supporting her are asking for the same honesty the state already applies to British sex offenders, and for a government that will say out loud what it already knows. Labour would rather fight the Information Commissioner than fight the people who should never have been here. That is not public protection. It is self-protection.
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Given the very broad ways antisemitism is defined these days (virtually any criticism of Israel) this is scary indeed.

June 17, 2026
As antisemitism has affected schools, places of worship, community institutions, and online spaces, many Americans are asking what government can do to strengthen protections for Jewish communities.
The bipartisan Jewish American Security Act (JASA), recently introduced by Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK) and Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Mike Lawler (R-NY), is bipartisan, bicameral comprehensive legislation designed to strengthen America’s response to antisemitism. The bill addresses antisemitism across multiple sectors of society, including schools, places of worship, community institutions, and online platforms, while strengthening protections for Jewish Americans and improving coordination across the federal government.
The legislation addresses antisemitism across three major areas:
Among its many provisions are important education measures that would help schools better prevent, report, and respond to discrimination prohibited under federal civil rights law.
Federal law already prohibits discrimination based on race, color, and national origin in schools that receive federal funding under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Jewish students are protected under Title VI when they experience discrimination based on their shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.
Yet many students who experience antisemitism never report it. They may not know where to file a complaint, who is responsible for handling it, or believe that their concerns will be taken seriously. Schools, meanwhile, do not always have clear or consistent procedures for responding.
The legislation would improve how schools prevent and respond to discrimination in three key ways.
Every public K–12 school district and every college and university receiving federal funding would designate a staff member responsible for overseeing Title VI compliance. That person would serve as a clear point of contact for students and families experiencing discrimination, including antisemitic harassment.
Schools would be required to create accessible, well-publicized procedures so students and families understand where to report discrimination, how the reporting process works, and what to expect after raising concerns.
When discrimination is reported, schools would be required to investigate concerns, support affected students, keep those who reported informed, and take appropriate corrective action when discrimination is found.
Together, these provisions are intended to make existing civil rights protections easier to access and more effective in practice.
The bill goes beyond education by strengthening the physical security of Jewish communities and improving coordination with law enforcement.
It would significantly expand the Nonprofit Security Grant Program by authorizing up to $1 billion annually, improving grant administration, modernizing eligible security equipment, and providing greater flexibility for nonprofit organizations to hire off-duty law enforcement officers and contracted security personnel based on demonstrated security needs.
The legislation would also authorize Department of Justice grants to help state and local law enforcement increase patrols, training, and other security assistance for at-risk houses of worship and religious communities.
In addition, it directs the FBI to conduct regular assessments of domestic and transnational antisemitic threats and publicly release declassified findings to improve transparency, preparedness, and public awareness.
Recognizing that antisemitism increasingly spreads online, the legislation includes new transparency and reporting requirements for large online platforms.
Social media companies with at least 50 million monthly U.S. users would be required to publish public reports every six months describing how they identify, review, and remove antisemitic content; how their algorithms may amplify such content; how enforcement changes affect the amount of antisemitic content that remains online; and how they work with law enforcement to address online hate.
The legislation would also require an annual federal report examining the relationship between online antisemitic content and real-world violence while recommending ways to improve transparency and accountability across the technology sector.
Although the legislation responds directly to the alarming rise in antisemitism, many of its provisions strengthen systems that benefit broader communities.
All students would gain clearer reporting procedures and stronger civil rights protections. Houses of worship of all faiths and nonprofit organizations eligible for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program would receive additional security support. Law enforcement would receive additional resources to protect at-risk communities. Greater transparency from online platforms could lead to safer online environments for all users
The Jewish American Security Act demonstrates a growing bipartisan recognition that combating antisemitism requires practical, coordinated solutions across government, education, and civil society.
Many of the bill’s provisions reflect recommendations outlined in AJC’s Combating Antisemitism Playbook, a first-of-its-kind roadmap that provides practical strategies for leaders across 13 sectors of society, including education, government, business, technology, law enforcement, and civil society, to prevent and respond to antisemitism. The Playbook emphasizes that addressing antisemitism requires a whole-of-society approach built on shared responsibility and coordinated action.
For example, one of AJC Playbook’s recommendations for Congress is strengthening security for synagogues, Jewish schools, and other Jewish institutions by fully funding and expanding the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. Another recommendation is to strengthen accountability and transparency for technology platforms. The Jewish American Security Act advances both of these recommendations.
The legislation also comes amid growing concern about antisemitism in the United States. According to AJC’s State of Antisemitism in America 2025 Report, 91% of American Jews said they felt less safe as a Jewish person in the United States following antisemitic incidents over the previous year, and more than half reported changing their behavior out of concern for their safety.
The report also concerns levels of antisemitism on campus, online and at Jewish institutions. The State of Antisemitism in America Report found that 42% of American Jewish college students report experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus, and that 73% of American Jews, say they have experienced antisemitism online—either by seeing or hearing it or by being personally targeted. Additionally, over one in four American Jews (28%) say the Jewish institutions with which they are affiliated—including synagogues, Jewish schools, JCCs, Jewish Federations, or any other organizations—were the target of antisemitism in the past five years, including antisemitic threats (18%), graffiti (16%), and antisemitic attacks (4%).
The legislation complements the work of AJC’s Center for Education Advocacy, which partners with school leaders, students, parents, and higher education institutions to strengthen educational environments where Jewish students can thrive. By improving reporting procedures, clarifying schools’ responsibilities under Title VI, and strengthening accountability, the bill would help schools better support students experiencing antisemitism and other forms of unlawful discrimination.
Combating antisemitism requires action across every sector of society, from schools and campuses to government and civil society.
The Jewish American Security Act is one example of how policymakers can strengthen protections for Jewish communities and make technology platforms safer for users, while improving existing systems that benefit all students and help institutions respond more effectively to discrimination.
You can support these efforts by encouraging leaders at the local, state, and federal levels to advance policies that combat antisemitism, strengthen the safety and security of Jewish communities, and ensure Jewish Americans can live, learn, and participate openly in public life. Please share this information about the Jewish American Security Act with your U.S. Senator and Representative, and tell them why their support matters to you.

Assuming the ridiculous gushing over a Cambridge conman was not a national Monty Python sketch arranged for tourists, the Jason Arday affair reminded me of one of the most peculiar things about Britain: They’re more woke than the U.S. Which is weird, because the Mother Country still has a monarchy that rules over tens of millions of white subjects. The closest we have to that in America is the NAACP.
According to the 2021 census, the U.K. is 2.5% Black, but more than half of all its TV advertisements feature black people. (That’s even more lopsided than their representation in the country’s homicide statistics, where Black Britons make up 24% of all convicted killers.)
You’d never know Britain was the first nation in the world to abolish slavery, then proceeded to use the most powerful navy in the world to end the global slave trade. Black lives mattered to them way before Michael Brown got himself killed in Ferguson, Missouri.
At a cost of thousands of sailors’ lives and billions of dollars ($170 billion relative to GDP at the time) British ships patrolled the African coast for 50 years, intercepting more than 1,000 slave ships, and freeing 150,000 humans. British taxpayers finally finished paying off that bill in 2015.
So obviously, Britain has a lot to atone for.
The study of TV ads, undertaken by the U.K.’s left-wing Channel 4 last year, also found that “[m]ulti-ethnic families with young multi-ethnic children continue to be the go-to for family representation,” constituting 47% of all ads with families. Interracial couples in the U.K. are like gay wedding planners in the U.S. Nobody has ever met one, but they seem to be everywhere.
For extra “diversity,” Asians (mostly Indians and Pakistanis), who make up 9.3% of the population, are featured in 28% of ads. To be fair, Pakistanis are also wildly over-represented among leaders of white slavery rape gangs.
The census numbers don’t quite add up, but 81.7% of Britons identified their ethnic group as “white.” At most, 12% of TV ads show White people. On the bright side, gay people in ads were 33% more likely to be White.
London is gorgeous, has more shops than New York City, and fewer muggers, homeless people and pot-smokers than in many American cities. But in some ways, it’s insane.
Plastic is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. More than half a century ago, the civilized world dispensed with rotting fruit and carcinogen-laden paper containers, and embraced the bright new future of plastic bags, cups, and straws that were lighter, stronger and a whole lot more sanitary. Life was better.
But since this is Britain, and Britain is insane, plastic is virtually banned. You have to drink your Starbucks quickly or start eating cardboard. Useless paper straws dissolve in about two minutes. Grocery store paper bags are capable of holding roughly 8 ounces without breaking. I assume dry cleaning is returned to you wrapped in corn husks.
California isn’t this ridiculous, and their state symbol is a passed-out homeless guy in buttless chaps.
Continuing the kookiness: After the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (completely justified according to both the grand jury and the Obama administration’s Department of Justice), idiot British protesters marched through London, chanting “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!”
London bobbies don’t carry guns. In fact, this is a chronic plot hole in British television dramas: You see an officer chasing a suspect and wonder, what’s he going to do when he catches him? Ask about his tweets?
The country is so gun-phobic that a few years back a farmer was sentenced to life in prison for shooting criminals breaking into his home. But wokeness struck back! His sentence was reduced to three years based on his lawyers’
claim that he was neurodivergent: “paranoid personality disorder.” Yes, he paranoidly thought burglars were burgling him.
As the Arday episode demonstrates, the British aren’t sold on free speech either. To hide their embarrassment over the Cambridge fraud, an army of DEI mediocrities exploded in a murderous rage at Professor Nathan Cofnas for his Substack post pointing out Arday’s plagiarism.
Liberals in the U.S. aren’t this demented. A number of black professors have been fired for academic scams far less egregious than Arday’s — and the liberal newspaper of record, The New York Times, didn’t run interference for them. The paper mostly reported those cases honestly, as it did with Arday’s. (The Times’ approach to censorship is simply not to report news that would confuse its readers.)
Meanwhile, the BBC belched out 11 radio shows, four news articles, and two TV interviews fawning over Arday and lustily repeated his preposterous lies — until the truth emerged (thanks to Cofnas).
It’s amazing that Americans got both our First and Second Amendment rights from the British. Their 1689 Bill of Rights gave the king’s subjects the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” and his Protestant subjects the right to “have arms for their defense.” Now, you can’t even defend your home or speak the truth in Britain if it could hurt someone’s feelings.
These are the same Britons who get snippy about the U.S. — our patriotism, our guns, our directness and (at least when a Reagan, Bush or Trump is in the White House) our Nazi-ness.
Okay, fine. You have more beautiful buildings, accents, traditions, and castles, etc. We’re vulgar arrivistes who eat Texas chili out of a Frito bag. Then why, Britain, do you slavishly imitate the worst woke nonsense America has to offer?
My rewrite of John of Gaunt’s deathbed speech from Richard II:
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for her self
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Notice that Jews who oppose it note that it will “flatten” Jewish identity, implying that they like identity flexibility–ethnicity at times and religious at other times depending on what is advantageous. The article notes that there are “fiscal” implications but doesn’t elaborate. This is what I got from a search: The fiscal implications of California’s bill SB 1387, which designates Jewish identity as an ethnicity, include potential costs associated with implementing new data collection processes across various state agencies. Additionally, it may lead to better allocation of resources for programs addressing issues specific to the Jewish community, such as hate crime tracking and public health initiatives. The bill is expected to enhance demographic data collection, which could improve funding and support for relevant services.
A bill would allow Jews to identify themselves as an ethnic group on state forms. Supporters argue it’s a step toward acknowledging the complex nature of Jewish identity.
A bill that passed a crucial committee vote on Thursday would require state agencies to include an optional box for Jewish ethnicity on all demographic data forms, from college applications to public assistance programs. Its passage would make California the first state to officially treat Jewishness as something more than a religion in this fashion — a shift more significant than it might seem.
Scholars of Jewish identity say that it has long posed challenges to American law and public discourse, because Jews have never fit into contemporary conceptual categories. In fact, the challenges — and misconceptions — go back centuries.
“When Jews received the rights of citizenship in European nation states, Jews were forced to think of themselves as a religion,” said Leora Batnitzky, professor of religion at Princeton University and author of “How Judaism Became a Religion.” “But this was always contested from an internal Jewish point of view.”
For its proponents in California, the bill, S.B. 1387, is an attempt to counter this confusion by making clear that “Jewish” means more than religion. Practically speaking, the bill aims to help the state quantify its Jewish population and to enable better data collection for hate crimes tracking and public health purposes — for example, by determining where to promote genetic screenings for diseases common in Jewish communities, or ensuring that antisemitic attacks are not misclassified on reporting forms.
But beyond these concrete impacts, the bill’s backers intend it to accomplish something less tangible: a first step toward acknowledging and demystifying the multifaceted nature of Jewish identity. The purpose of adding the Jewish ethnicity checkbox, they argue, is to break Jews out of the box.
The bill, which heads next to the State Assembly for a vote, is a proposed — and disputed — solution to a very real problem. The complex nature of Jewishness has perplexed the courts, the culture and even the White House. In 2022, Whoopi Goldberg was suspended for two weeks as host of ABC’s “The View” and apologized after she said that the Holocaust was “not about race.” Her statement reflected a popular misconception that Jews have been persecuted in purely religious terms, when in fact, antisemites have long painted Jews as an inferior race.
And it’s not just celebrities who have been flummoxed by Jewish identity. It took until 1987 for American law to determine that Jews might be attacked on nonreligious grounds.
In 1982, a Maryland synagogue was vandalized by white supremacists. In response, the congregation sued the perpetrators under federal civil rights law. Its claims were initially dismissed by the lower courts. But in 1987, in Shaare Tefila v. Cobb, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed those decisions and ruled that Jewish people had the right to sue on grounds of racial discrimination.
Recent presidential administrations have also attempted to thread this needle. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws discrimination in federally funded programs on the basis of race, color or national origin — but not religion.
In 2010, however, the Obama administration interpreted the law as applying to discrimination against Jews and members of other religious groups such as Muslims and Sikhs “when that discrimination is based on the group’s actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, rather than its members’ religious practice.” In other words, what matters for the purposes of protection is not just how the victims see themselves but how a bigot sees them.
“You don’t have to prove that you look fundamentally different or have some fundamentally different physical characteristic in order to establish that you were subjected to racial discrimination,” explained Matthew Segal, a political science professor at Tufts University.
“It is enough — whether you’re Jewish or Arab or anything else — to show that you were treated differently because someone looked at you that way.”
The California bill was conceived in response to this turbulent context. The bill’s author, State Senator Henry Stern, a Democrat, was motivated by personal experience. He grew up in an engaged Jewish home, but one that was not particularly religious. His father, the actor Daniel Stern, added the improvised line, “Happy Hanukkah, Marv,” in the otherwise Christmas-themed hit “Home Alone 2.”
Later in life, the younger Mr. Stern adopted more traditional Jewish practices, including wearing a yarmulke and observing the sabbath. As he tells it, he knows firsthand that Jewishness is more than religious observance.
“I got picked on in school as a Jew even though I didn’t wear a kipa, I didn’t have a Star of David. But they figured out I was a Jew and they wrote a swastika on the back of my backpack,” he recalled. “I wasn’t a white guy to them. I was a Jew to them.”
The bill has the backing of Jewish California, a large coalition of Jewish groups, as well as the California Federation of Teachers. But not everyone is on board; some progressive Jewish organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, have opposed it on various fiscal and ideological grounds.
“Many American Jews, and probably even more in California, are mostly secular, not religiously observant,” the Sacramento chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace wrote in a statement. “If asked offhand, many of us might say we identify as culturally and/or ethnically Jewish. But we vehemently oppose SB 1387 for its wrong-headed oversimplification of identity, one that could well exacerbate antisemitism, among other unintended consequences.”
The bill, the group contends, risks flattening rather than broadening public understanding of Jewishness by compressing Jews into a single ethnicity. (Supporters counter that the box is voluntary and can be checked in conjunction with any other identity boxes.)
“I consider myself a Jew ethnically, but there are many different ethnicities,” David Mandel of Jewish Voice for Peace told the California assembly’s judiciary committee on June 9. “This ill-considered bill, very expensive bill, will not add any useful information for the state and would end up costing millions.”
Mr. Stern is comfortable with the opposition. “That’s what it is to be a Jew, in some ways,” he said. “Being really comfortable with tension, and being comfortable with paradoxes, and understanding that we’re a people, we’re a nation, we’re an ethnicity, we are a religion, too. We don’t fit naturally. And that’s why we’re such a pain.”
Laughing, he added: “It’ll give a lot of grist for people to argue at over kitchen tables, as we have been doing for over 3,000 years.”
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