When Jews Are Told We Don’t Belong

Remember when Jews were excluded from universities, law firms, hospitals, country clubs, neighborhoods, and entire professions? Remember the quotas at Ivy League schools designed specifically to keep Jewish students out? Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and others openly limited Jewish enrollment because there were “too many Jews.” Remember the signs that read “No Jews Allowed” at resorts, hotels, and clubs across America? Remember restrictive housing agreements that prevented Jews from buying homes in entire neighborhoods?

Remember hearing about how Henry Ford published “The International Jew,” helping to legitimize antisemitism in the 1920’s not only in America but abroad, including in Nazi Germany? Remember Father Charles Coughlin, the immensely popular radio priest who spread antisemitic conspiracy theories to millions of Americans in the 1930’s?

Too few people remember this history, but it continues to impact us today. Many Jews changed their last names and hid their identities because they understood how shallow, exclusionary, and prejudiced far too many people were. Jews created their own institutions because doors were closed to them. They founded Brandeis University, Yeshiva University and Touro College because elite schools often excluded them. Jews founded hospitals across America because Jews faced discrimination in other hospitals.  Many medical schools imposed quotas, and many hospitals refused Jewish physicians admitting privileges. Jewish lawyers built their own firms because major firms would not hire them.

Jewish immigrants built Hollywood because other industries shut them out. MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, and Columbia Pictures were founded largely by Jewish immigrants or their children who were excluded elsewhere. They helped create one of America’s greatest industries (which is now largely run by multinational corporations led by people from many different backgrounds).

Jewish comedians transformed American entertainment as well. Jack Benny, Milton Berle, George Burns, Joan Rivers, Mel Brooks, Sid Ceasar, Carl Reiner, Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld and countless others shaped American humor and culture, often beginning in spaces where Jews created opportunities for one another when others would not.

Jews even created their own social institutions because they were unwelcome elsewhere. Country clubs like Hillcrest in Los Angeles, Fresh Meadow in Long Island, Century Country Club in New York, the Standard Club in Chicago, and so many others were founded because Jews were barred from joining many existing clubs.

And after all these decades following the Holocaust, after “Never Again” became the moral promise of the civilized world, are we really heading back toward this kind of discrimination?

That question no longer feels rhetorical.

Today, Jewish students on far too many campuses report being harassed, intimidated, excluded from organizations, shouted down, or treated as morally suspect simply because they are Jewish or express their love for Israel.  Antisemitism is too often rationalized, minimized, or disguised as acceptable political expression. Social media amplifies hatred at lightning speed. A swastika displayed on a campus building is no longer enough to produce universal shock and outrage. The world is becoming dangerously numb to these serious occurrences.

There are troubling signs elsewhere too. Jews in a variety of industries increasingly speak about their discomfort expressing their Jewish identity publicly. Films about Jewish history or Jewish suffering reportedly struggle for support in too many cultural spaces. Jewish voices are too often treated as uniquely suspect when speaking about antisemitism.

So we must ask an uncomfortable question: if this climate continues, will Jews once again need to build separate institutions and industries simply to participate equally in society?

History proves that we can. Jews have done it before. We survived exclusion by building schools, hospitals, businesses, charities, defense organizations, cultural institutions, and networks of mutual support. We succeeded not because we wanted separation, but because exclusion forced us to adapt.

But from our end, we never wanted to shut others out. Quite the opposite. Jews have overwhelmingly believed in and supported integration, pluralism, education, civil rights, and in contributing to the broader society around us. Never forget Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish American Businessman and philanthropist who worked with Booker T Washinton and built nearly 5,000 schools for Black children across the South in the early 20^th century.  American Jews helped build modern America with a full heart precisely because they wanted to participate fully in American life.

That is why this moment feels so heartbreaking and stressful.

Because the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans do not want a segregated future. We do not want separate campuses, separate industries, separate cultural spaces, or separate civic life. We want the same thing every minority has always wanted: equal dignity, equal protection, and equal opportunity.

The question now is whether enough people will see this marginalization of Jewish people and stand up to this ugly, discriminatory hate.

Will university presidents, media leaders, elected officials, educators, and ordinary citizens do the right thing and finally say, “this is wrong. Enough!”  Will they confront antisemitism with the same moral clarity applied to every other form of hatred against other minorities? Will they recognize that silently tolerating antisemitism never ends with the Jews?

Or will deafening silence and rationalization continue until Jews once again conclude that they can rely only on themselves?

I sincerely hope not.

Because history teaches us something else as well: Societies that normalize hatred against Jews do not remain healthy, democratic, tolerant, or thriving for very long.

The question now is: who will be the decent human beings who will stand up and stop this madness before it is too late?

Roz Rothstein is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. She is the CEO and co-founder of StandWithUs, a 25-year-old international organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism through education.