An optimist’s outlook is tested

Abraham Foxman of Bergen County has always been an optimist, and he almost always makes sure to say so in an interview.

His eternal optimism is particularly striking because it’s hard-earned. He was born into the Holocaust in 1940; grew up as a devout Catholic in his nanny’s home as her son; was recovered as a 5-year-old by his parents, who miraculously both survived the war; was the subject of a sad legal battle his parents eventually won; came to the United States, spent a few years with his family as unhappy South Jersey chicken farmers, and then went to law school and on to head the Anti-Defamation League. His 50 years at that institution gave him a close look at the antisemitism and racism that was endemic to American society, even in the halcyon period for Jews that followed the Shoah.

So it’s hard not to notice that his optimism is fading now, even as he valiantly tries to retain it.

This particular failure of optimism is in response to the revelations in “Where We Keep the Light,” Josh Shapiro’s new memoir. Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president in 2024, considered Mr. Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, as a possible running mate. Ever since then, reports that the two were not particularly compatible have surfaced, but in his book, Mr. Shapiro, who is Jewish, reports that he was asked jaw-droppingly offensive questions by Ms. Harris’s team as they vetted him.

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According to the New York Times, one of the questions posed to Mr. Shapiro was “Have I been a double agent for Israel?” When he answered that the question was offensive, the response was “Well, we have to ask.”

The next question, the Times reported, was “Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?”

“If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?” Mr. Shapiro answered, according to the Times.

Mr. Shapiro also described how Ms. Harris asked him to take back his strong criticism of the anti-Israel encampments at the University of Pennsylvania, which were at the very least antisemitism-adjacent and often overtly antisemitic. “He said no,” Mr. Foxman said.

These two incidents “shook me up,” Mr. Foxman said, although “it’s not that I wasn’t aware of how deep the problem is.”

The problem, he continued, “is the concern about Jews not being loyal to America.”

The charge is inherently ironic, Mr. Foxman said. “It’s not a charge that we’re disloyal because we support Russia or China or Iran,” all enemies of the United States. “No. We’re charged with being disloyal to America because we support and embrace America’s most constant ally. That is very scary.

“American Jews continue to be in trauma since October 7, trying to understand and cope with the rise of antisemitism” that illogically but unmistakably followed the massacre in Israel, even before the war in Gaza began, he said. “Governor Shapiro’s disclosure fed into that anxiety.

“What I find very distressing is that American Jews more and more are looking for an alternative to America. More and more people are talking about aliyah, which I guess is positive, but they’re also talking about getting citizenship in Poland or Germany,” which they can do if they’re descended from Jews from those countries who were murdered during the Holocaust or managed barely to escape.

“America the goldene medina” — the Golden Land — “is now a place where Jews are looking for alternatives to, because of antisemitism here.

“This is so unreal, so unbelievable, to those of us for whom America was the refuge, even before the State of Israel existed.

“Jews now are learning to shoot, to fire guns, to protect themselves, as we try to figure out who threatens us more, the right or the left.

“I think that Governor Shapiro did the American Jewish community a service by going public with his story. It was classic, crude antisemitism, questioning the governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania about whether he’s a double agent. And the questioning wasn’t from bigots or extremists, but from decent Americans, like the people who live next door.

“And this is the tip of the iceberg.”

Mr. Foxman has been paying attention to American antisemitism for a long time, “and the idea of Jews having a double loyalty, to the United States and to Israel, has permeated American political culture all that time,” he said. “The ADL’s statistics show that one in three Americans believe in the classic antisemitic canard that Jews are loyal first to themselves and then to Israel.”

Not to America. In other words, “Jews are disloyal.”

He talked about Jonathan Pollard, the American intelligence analyst who was convicted of selling U.S. state secrets to other countries, including Israel. It was an ugly case, “and it sent shock waves through the American Jewish community, fearing that it would fuel the canard the Jews are disloyal.

“In the 50 years that I was with the ADL, I came across several dozen cases of American Jews who felt that they were being discriminated against for jobs, especially in the State Department, the FBI, and the CIA. But few of them were willing to file complaints, for fear that they would be blackballed from any government service. But they came to us because they wanted us to know about it, even though they didn’t want to risk their careers.

“I remember the case of one young man who applied for a job at the CIA. He was asked about his trips to Israel, his family in Israel, his having gone to Hebrew school. He was really offended, and he filed a complaint.

“I didn’t want this to become a big deal, so I reached out to George Tenent,” who headed the CIA from 1996 to 2004. “I shared what I’d heard, he investigated, and he came back to me and said that the young man was right. He apologized and set a change in CIA procedures in motion.”

Now, though, “many see support for Israel as an act of disloyalty, and social media makes it legitimate to challenge people’s loyalty.” And there is an added ugly irony — Israel is a loyal ally of the United States, so not only are American Jews not loyal to Israel over the United States — a growing number of Jews, particularly younger ones, describe themselves as anti-Zionists — but there is no disloyalty to the United States inherent in also being loyal to Israel.

Mr. Foxman is struggling with another concern as well, he said. “Why has support for Israel become such a major political issue in New York? Why was the campaign for mayor of New York so much about Israel? What does the mayor of New York have to do with Israel?

“What about housing problems? Healthcare problems? Poverty problems? Why was Israel an issue in New York City? And even if it is an issue in New York, and maybe in Michigan, why is it an issue in Indiana? In Utah?”

Mr. Foxman does understand why Israel is an issue for New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani; his parent are fervent and influential anti-Zionists, and Mr. Mamdani’s been an outspoken Israel-hater throughout his career. But he does not understand why that hatred has resonated with voters who do not share the new mayor’s background.

“The last time we experienced this canard about dual loyalty in this country was with the Japanese during World War II,” but although that was a disgraceful episode in our history, “it was different,” Mr. Foxman said. The United States and Japan were at war, and the war was sparked by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That does not excuse our treatment of Japanese-Americans, but it does make the situation not analogous to what’s going on with American Jews.

“Loyalty also was an issue with Catholic candidates — the fear was that they’d be more loyal to the Vatican than to the Constitution — but President Kennedy’s election ended that fear,” he said. “Support for Israel used to be the most bipartisan issue in America, but today, you have both parties vying for which one thinks that Jews are less loyal.”

President Donald J. Trump is not helping. “He totally distorts the whole issue,” Mr. Foxman said. “He has said that American Jews who support Israel are disloyal to America.”

Mr. Trump has made such comments throughout his campaigns and his presidencies. In 2024, for example, the New York Times reported that he was on a podcast with the right-wing figure Sebastian Gorka when he said “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion…. They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”

“President Trump is supposedly Israel’s best friend, but he is reinforcing the canard that Jews are more loyal to Israel, and that those Jews who support Democrats are not loyal enough to Israel,” Mr. Foxman said.

“Every time that President Trump criticizes the Jews for voting for Democrats, he promotes the idea that Jews are more about supporting Israel, that Jews should vote as Jews and not Americans.” (That argument makes sense if you start with the belief that voting as an American means voting for Republicans.)

There are two major canards — that is, widely believed lies — about Israel, Mr. Foxman continued. “One is about money and power, and the other is about loyalty.”

Now, because those canards have resurfaced so virulently, “being Jewish has negative consequences — on college campuses, for journalists, for actors, for politicians. A telling sign is that growing numbers of Jewish politicians are disengaging from support for Israel to prove that they are Americans first.

“That says to me that there is a stigma to being Jewish. If you are Jewish and you support Israel, that will have political repercussions.

“This is a phenomenon that I never thought I would witness. I have never been naïve about antisemitism.”

For years, Mr. Foxman has been saying that antisemitism has run belowground in the United States, like sewage, but like sewage it has been contained by the manhole covers that cap it. But since the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, with its tiki-torch-carrying marchers shouting “Jews will not replace us,” it increasingly has breached those covers. Now, increasingly, those covers are being pried off and thrown away.

So although he was not naïve, he never expected to see antisemitism “at this level,” Mr. Foxman said. “At this level!”

Another irony — there are some Jews being talked about seriously as presidential contenders. That list includes Mr. Shapiro, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, who became the mayor of Chicago and then the U.S. ambassador to Japan.

“What do we do?” Mr. Foxman asked. “We have to continue to expose and to challenge. There have to be consequences to antisemitism. We need to know what’s going on. People shouldn’t hide it. Then it grows faster and faster.

“I thank Governor Shapiro. It hasn’t been easy for him. During Pesach last year, the governor’s mansion was set on fire; he and his family escaped, but it was terrifying, and there was a great deal of damage done to the building. “He did not call that attack antisemitic,” Mr. Foxman said. “He was cautious. So for him to go public with this — I think we should say thank you to him because this was a service to the Jews, and to all Americans.

“We have to expose the hatred that still is here, and the antisemitism that still lurks here. But I’m still an optimist. I think it may get worse before it gets better, but I do think that America will come to its senses and embrace democracy again. Within that democracy, these things will not be acceptable. They will go back down into the sewers, and we will return to our basic values —civility and truth, decency and respect.