For those who believe that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” as Jonathan Greenblatt, the A.D.L.’s national director, has argued, including these kinds of incidents is clearly warranted. The A.D.L. and its supporters have raised alarms about Jewish students who identify as Zionists being vilified on college campuses, and about protests against Israel’s occupation of Gaza that include chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—a slogan that many hear as a call for Israel’s destruction.
At the Beth El event, which was titled “Wading Into the Gray: Understanding and Disentangling Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism,” a different perspective was presented. After the room filled, the moderators, both of whom belonged to the WhatsApp group, passed out copies of a document called “The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.” Published in 2021 by a team of scholars in such fields as Jewish studies and Holocaust history, it was created to help distinguish hatred of Jews from criticism of Israel. This distinction was missing both from popular discourse, the academics felt, and from an influential definition of antisemitism associated with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which lists numerous examples of antisemitism related to criticism of Israel. (Among them are “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards” to Israel that were not expected of other states.) In recent years, many countries have adopted the I.H.R.A. definition, including the U.S. An executive order signed by President Donald Trump mandated that federal agencies consult the I.H.R.A. definition when investigating complaints about discrimination toward Jews; at many colleges, this has emboldened efforts to punish pro-Palestinian speech.
The Jerusalem Declaration attempts to be more nuanced. Applying classical anti-Jewish stereotypes to Israel—such as suggesting that its leaders control the banking system with a hidden hand—is clearly antisemitic, it says, but other criticisms, including “opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism” and holding Israel to moral standards not demanded of other countries, might not be. “Hostility to Israel could be an expression of antisemitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a human-rights violation, or it could be the emotion that a Palestinian person feels on account of their experience,” its authors observe.
At the Beth El event, the moderators asked the attendees to signal whether they considered certain expressions to be antisemitic. Among them was “From the river to the sea,” which, according to the Jerusalem Declaration, can be used to express support for a binational state where Jews and Palestinians are accorded equal rights. The meeting broke into discussion groups—and soon erupted in anger. An older man stood up and told the moderators that they should be ashamed for having planned such an event on a Jewish holiday. A woman had walked out, informing the moderators that she found the discussion offensive. “It was very tense,” Avi Smolen, one of the moderators, acknowledged. In his view, the awkwardness underscored the value of having such a session; several people “came out of the woodwork” to thank him afterward, he said. David Mallach, a Beth El member who participated in the event, was more critical. Sharing the Jerusalem Declaration but not the I.H.R.A. definition “created a stilted conversation,” he told me. But Mallach did not disagree that the event had usefully exposed a rift in the community. “It made it very clear how deep the divisions within the synagogue were,” he said.
Mallach has been a Beth El member for thirty-seven years. Before retiring, he worked at United Israel Appeal, a subsidiary of the Jewish Federations of North America, which forges ties among synagogues and other Jewish groups. Over coffee one day in Maplewood, he recounted a split within the congregation sixteen years ago that had been sparked by a personality clash between the senior rabbi at the time, a woman, and the cantor, an older man. After the synagogue’s board voted to dismiss the cantor, scores of families who were loyal to him left. Mallach referred to this event as “the great schism.” Since the exodus, Beth El’s membership had recovered and indeed grown, he said, but now another schism had formed.
