Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem.
That’s the clearest warning about tackling Jew-hating issued by David Harris, longtime CEO of the American Jewish Committee, the “foreign minister of the Jewish people,” as late Israeli President Shimon Peres called him.
“We neither created nor can solve it,” he says
Does that mean we are going about the fight all wrong? How might we change the narrative to face the current global epidemic of anti-Jewish hate crimes?
In his new book, Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know, Harris provides critical insight into those questions by parsing out how antisemitism hides behind more “acceptable” language, by examining Jew hatred as a racial phenomenon and the lessons we can draw from its manifestations across time and space.
The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Cultural Center is proud to welcome back David Harris to speak about what antisemitism is and is not and, above all, how it must be treated as a human rights issue rather than solely as a parochial Jewish concern.
Moderated by Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson, Temple Emanu-El’s Peter and Mary Kalikow Senior Rabbinic Chair
David Harris has not only led the American Jewish Committee but served as a Senior Associate at Oxford University and a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins. He is currently the Executive Vice Chair at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.