Why Jews Must Reclaim American Values

When my organization was searching for a new name to reflect a renewed mission — promoting Enlightenment values in K–12 education against a rising tide of radical ideology — I briefly considered calling the nonprofit the “American Values Institute.” Ultimately, we chose the North American Values Institute. But before deciding, I sought the counsel of several trusted advisors, including a politically savvy rabbi. He warned me off the name. “American Values is coded right,” he said. “If your goal is to appeal to mainstream Jews and build a broad coalition against radicalism, that name could backfire. It sounds too MAGA.”

He wasn’t wrong. But the fact that he was right revealed a deeper problem. If the phrase American values — once shorthand for the animating ideals of liberal democracy, a phrase Jewish liberals and conservatives alike once spoke with confidence — had become traif, if even invoking it risked alienating our own community, then we were already on the defensive. The radicals we were up against came armed with destructive but coherent ideologies — ideas like “settler colonialism” and “decolonizing the curriculum,” which recast American history as irredeemably oppressive. And yet we had made even basic affirmations of American civic ideals taboo. If we couldn’t say what this country stands for, how could we resist those determined to tear it down — and bring the American Jewish community down with it?

What Are American Values?

By American values, I don’t mean partisan slogans or nostalgic idealism. I mean the foundational principles that define our liberal democracy: “E pluribus unum,” out of many, one; equality of opportunity; the rule of law as a neutral framework for justice; freedom of thought and expression, even when ideas are unpopular; merit and personal responsibility; and an enduring commitment to civic tolerance. These values once served as common ground for American Jews across the political spectrum — and they are worth reclaiming.

A Source of Dynamism

American values have powered the world’s most dynamic democracy. Unlike nations defined by ethnicity or ideology, the United States has relied on a civic creed — an allegiance to shared principles, not shared blood. These ideals created conditions for innovation, upward mobility, and pluralism. They don’t guarantee perfection, but they enable self-correction. In a world of brittle orthodoxy and tribal division, American values remain uniquely generative — able to foster both dissent and unity, merit and inclusion, loyalty and liberty. Even when we failed to live up to them we were able to fall back on them.

A Shield Against Antisemitism

These values are also a shield. For American Jews, they have provided the framework for safety, dignity, and flourishing. In the early 20th century, as Jews fled persecution in Europe, American principles — constitutional protections, economic mobility, and civic freedom — enabled our integration and success. In contrast, Europe’s blood-and-soil nationalisms cast Jews as outsiders, no matter their contributions.

Yet the values that have protected us are under attack. In “A Paradigm Shift in Countering Antisemitism,” my co-authors Fern Oppenheim, Eran Shayshon and I argued that much of today’s communal response to antisemitism has become ineffective in the face of an ideological shift in numerous institutions, particularly education. When the American value of “E pluribus unum” gives way to tribalism, Jews become easy targets. When the rule of law is dismissed as systemic oppression, Jewish institutions lose their protections. When freedom of expression is sacrificed to ideological conformity, Jewish voices are silenced. When merit is reframed as privilege, Jewish achievement becomes suspect. 

The Jewish community has been asking Americans to take a stand against hostility against Jews when we should be emphasizing the need to stand up for core civic values. Particularistic Jewish concerns just aren’t that relevant to most Americans but growing anti-Americanism is. The vast majority of Americans are proud of these civic values and detest efforts by radical activists to overturn them. What’s needed is an American Jewish civics strategy that reconceives Jewish security in the American idea itself. We should expose the bad actors who are spreading anti-Americanism on both the left and the right and work with others to make the case for a return to American values. This requires us to entirely rethink both our messaging and our alliances.

The Decline of American Values

Somewhere along the way, American values fell out of favor — even among Jews. In the late 1990s, working for the American Jewish Committee in Washington, D.C., I began to notice that the standard rhetoric among civil rights groups started to shift away from one seeking opportunity to one asserting oppression. Gone were the days of Martin Luther King Jr.’s color-blind aspirations for the “content of one’s character” in favor of a more austere condemnation of the system that perpetuated white supremacy. 

In March 2001, I wrote a memo headed “Immigration and American Values,” in which I argued that these ideological trends might acculturate a generation of immigrants into a hostile interpretation of American values. I shared the memo with my colleagues. “In its more radical form, multiculturalism is not merely neutral toward American values, it is openly hostile,” I stated. “Some ideologues go beyond claims of discrimination and make the case that racism is deeply embedded in the American value system itself … echoes of this can, unfortunately, be heard even among some of our partners in the civil rights community.

As Nathan Glazer observed in “We Are All Multiculturalists Now,” “the melting pot is no more.” Where Americans once sought assimilation, we began pursuing multiculturalism. Multiculturalism, he warned, emerged from the failure to fully integrate Black Americans — ultimately becoming “the price America is paying” for that failure. In schools and institutions, this shift prioritized difference over unity, elevating ethnic identity and grievance over common civic ideals.

After Vietnam and Iraq, and amid growing distrust of national institutions, words like liberty and merit came to sound outmoded — or partisan. Many Jewish leaders, eager to show solidarity with other marginalized groups, shed the language of classical liberalism for a newer, grievance-based vocabulary. The old Jewish strategy — fighting antisemitism by appealing to universal principles — gave way to advocacy centered on identity and vulnerability.

But this pivot came at a cost. When institutions define legitimacy by identity and grievance, Jews are put in an impossible bind: too successful to be victims, too distinct to be insiders. By aligning with ideological frameworks that treat merit and civic identity as forms of oppression, we ceded the moral high ground.

Efforts to recognize historic exclusion and affirm cultural identity are not inherently at odds with American values. But when those efforts morph into rigid ideological frameworks that view merit, national identity, and free expression as forms of oppression, they stop promoting justice and start undermining liberal democracy itself.

Of course, efforts to recognize historic exclusion and affirm cultural identity are not inherently at odds with American values. But when those efforts morph into rigid ideological frameworks that view merit, national identity and free expression as forms of oppression, they stop promoting justice and start undermining liberal democracy itself. That is the trap too many American Jews fell into.

How the Vacuum Was Filled

This vacuum created by the declining salience of American values was quickly filled by radical activists who had long accused America of being a force for evil in the world and Israel of colonialism and apartheid. Until recently, however, they had made little progress. What changed was the cultural framework. Once elite institutions adopted binaries of oppressor and oppressed, DEI programs and activist coalitions amplified anti-Zionist narratives as righteous causes. Israel became not just a controversial state but a symbol of Western sin. Jews, by extension, became suspect once more.

Young Americans today are more likely to believe antisemitic tropes than any previous generation. Support for Israel has declined. The “swayable middle” has shrunk. Jewish students are being pushed out of progressive spaces not despite their values, but because they still believe in things like open dialogue, shared national identity, and coexistence.

Where We Go from Here

The response cannot be to double down on grievance-based advocacy. We don’t need a new place in the pyramid of victimhood — we need a renewed commitment to American Values. If our opponents organize around shared resentment, we must create our own “intersectional framework” around shared values. That means:

1. Build Coalitions Around Shared Civic Values

Rather than seeking safety through shifting identity hierarchies, Jews must partner with people — of all races, faiths, and backgrounds — who still believe in pluralism, debate, individual rights, and the Constitution. In the mid-20th century, Jewish civil rights leaders achieved exactly that by appealing to American ideals — not only as victims of injustice, but as defenders of the liberal order. That strategy worked. We should revive it to advance a society based on the principles of the early civil rights movement. Jewish parents should join forces, for example, with Hindu, Chinese and Black parents, among others, who are concerned about the degradation of the schools by radical activists. 

2. Embrace a Civics-Based Power Politics 

There has been a radical progressive takeover of numerous city governments, especially in already blue areas where Jews have congregated. The policies embraced by these ideological mayors and prosecutors not only marginalize Jews, but invariably generate higher crime rates and economic decline. Jews need to form coalitions of the civically minded to win elections and wrestle away power from the extremists. 

A prime example of this approach is the Chicago Jewish community’s response to the 2023 election of Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former Chicago Teachers Union organizer backed by its most radical faction. Once in office, Johnson pushed an ideologically driven plan to borrow funds for teacher raises — prompting the mass resignation of the Chicago Board of Education and the dismissal of the school CEO. In early 2024, Johnson cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of a one-sided city council resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, a move condemned by the Jewish United Fund as deeply disrespectful to Jewish Chicagoans still reeling from Oct. 7.

Rather than fall back on traditional community-relations tactics and special pleading, Chicago Jewish leaders recognized that the city’s power structures had been ideologically captured and  that they had lost their sense of place in their own city. In response, they convened a diverse coalition of civic leaders to launch the Common Ground Collective (cgcollective.org), a political initiative designed to restore balance and common sense to city governance.

The initiative has raised millions of dollars. By organizing voters and supporting alternatives to extremist officials, it marks a strategic pivot: not pleading for inclusion, but building political capacity to replace those who endanger the city’s — and the Jewish community’s—future. In the wake of recent mayoral primaries, the New York Jewish community should take heed.

3. Confront Ideological Capture in Institutions

We must stop pretending all diversity initiatives are benign. Too many now embed ideologies that breed ideological conformity, engender anti-American sentiment, marginalize Jews, and rewrite history. Jewish organizations should stop enabling these frameworks and start demanding transparency, especially in schools: What is being taught? What do terms like “equity” or “oppression” mean in practice?

Silence in the face of institutional capture is not neutrality — it’s complicity. Reform means rejecting any initiative that traffics in identity reductionism or enforces ideological conformity.

4. Reframe Antisemitism as a Civic Crisis

Antisemitism is not a parochial grievance — it’s a societal warning sign and a civic emergency. It signals a breakdown of pluralism, law, and tolerance. Jewish advocacy should start reminding America that attacks on Jews are attacks on the very principles that protect everyone. When Jews are singled out, whether in radical DEI programs, academic boycotts, or threats on campuses and in the streets, it constitutes a broader assault on pluralism, civil society, and the rule of law—one that demands a collective response.

Antisemitism is not a parochial grievance — it’s a societal warning sign and a civic emergency. It signals a breakdown of pluralism, law and tolerance. Jewish advocacy should start reminding America that attacks on Jews are attacks on the very principles that protect everyone.

5. Reinvest in Civics Education

Jewish institutions must be leading voices in restoring civic literacy. We should start with ourselves. Young Jews need to know not just the traumas of our past, but the ideals that allowed our families to flourish here. We are raising a generation afraid to say who they are — not in Tehran, but on Ivy League campuses. That is a sign of civic collapse. We must model civic renewal and lead the way in  bringing back civics education to our schools.

6. Model Communal Confidence and Leadership

Jews are not interlopers in this country. We helped build it. If we act like outsiders begging for protection, we’ll be treated as such. If we stand confidently for our values, we’ll find allies we never knew we had.

Too many Jewish leaders fear that speaking the language of liberty, merit and civic unity will sound politically charged. But retreating from these values only cedes moral ground to those who want to redefine America — and exclude Jews in the process.

Too many Jewish leaders fear that speaking the language of liberty, merit and civic unity will sound politically charged. But retreating from these values only cedes moral ground to those who want to redefine America — and exclude Jews in the process. We must stop asking where we fit within others’ ideological movements and start articulating a civic vision of our own.

That is how we replant the flag. That is how we build a secure and thriving future for Jews and for all Americans.

David Bernstein is the Founder and CEO of the North American Values Institute (NAVI).