March 2, 2023

In his 2021 book “Jews Don’t Count,” British comedian David Baddiel asks why today’s intersectional ideologues and social justice activists so often leave Jews out of the equation when grinding their trademark axes about equity, inclusivity and representation. 

His point is well made. Indeed, it often feels like the progressive circle of moral concern includes every ethnic, racial and sexual minority under the sun except for Jews. The absence — to those who have such things on their radar — is glaring. 

There is, however, an even more glaring absence. Missing entirely from the agenda are non-human animals, who remain among the most oppressed members of our society.

According to the progressive worldview, every decade should bring more liberties for more people. The arc of history, in other words, is long and ought to bend toward justice. For domesticated farm animals, however, the arc of history is long and bends toward an abyss. With each year, new technologies combine with outrageous market demands to make their lives more cramped, joyless, painful and grotesque. 

Despite this, the progressive vanguard in America has nothing to say on this matter. Factory farming is discussed solely as an environmental issue. In certain rarefied circles, beef has become politically incorrect, but the reasons given have everything to do with continued human thriving on earth, and nothing to do with the well-being of the animals themselves. 

And so it is that those who claim to care about marginalized voices have nothing to say about those who have no voice at all. Those who champion the cause of vulnerable bodies ignore the plight of those whose bodies are bred specifically for a life of torture, sickness and slaughter. Those who speak of intersectionality are uninterested in the way that issues of animal justice, social justice, ecological justice and feminist justice intersect in the plight of female farm animals like dairy cows, for instance, whose suffering is indeed compounded on account of their sex. 

When it comes to animals, the progressive catechism is thrown out the window. Take, for instance, the idea that “silence is violence.” Under this banner, we are enjoined to loudly profess our allegiance to the cause. To do otherwise — refraining from posting the black square on Instagram or placing the “in this house we believe” sign in our yards — is to be somehow complicit with white supremacy, colonialism or the patriarchy.

In the case of animal rights, we are encouraged to keep quiet. After all, nothing is more annoying than a vegan on a soapbox — a point with broad bipartisan support.

In the case of animal rights, however, we are encouraged to keep quiet. After all, nothing is more annoying than a vegan on a soapbox — a point with broad bipartisan support.

A common joke goes like this: How do you know if someone is a vegan? Punchline: Don’t worry, he’ll tell you. In truth, most vegans I know go to lengths not to say anything that would make meat-eaters feel uncomfortable. When asked, as we inevitably are, why we are vegan, we know that the polite response is to say “for health reasons” or “for the environment.” To say the truth — that one is vegan for the animals, is too sanctimonious.

We are told that “injustice anywhere is a threat to injustice everywhere.” Hence, one finds Palestinian flags at BLM protests, the idea being that one fight for justice cannot truly be separated from another because in all cases the oppressor—some manifestation of white supremacy, colonialism or the patriarchy — is the same. 

The rule finds its exception in the case of animals, whose cause is isolated from all others. I personally have been told that raising the matter of animal rights is to unfairly steal the spotlight from more important human causes. Moreover, to draw any comparison between animal suffering and human suffering, as Isaac Bashevis Singer infamously did when he compared factory farms to death camps, is to break an inviolable taboo — not necessarily because the comparison isn’t apt, but rather because it is considered an insult to human dignity to even suggest that animals suffer like we do.

Well, it’s true that humans and animals are different, but not incomparably so. We are smarter and have more complex societies — that’s clear enough. What’s unclear is why that makes us and only us worthy of moral consideration.

As philosopher Jeremy Bentham said in 1789, “The question is not, can they reason? nor, can they talk? but, can they suffer?” 

As philosopher Jeremy Bentham said in 1789, “The question is not, can they reason? nor, can they talk? but, can they suffer?” 

Or, as Maimonides said even before that, in regards to the prohibition of slaughtering a mother cow and its calf on the same day, “there is no difference … between the pain of human beings and the pain of other living beings, since the love and tenderness of the mother for her young ones is not produced by reasoning.”

The Talmud recalls the story of a calf being led to slaughter. As it passed Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi, it hung its head on his leg and wept. Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi said to it, “Go. For this purpose you were created.” At this moment, he was judged by the heavenly court for his lack of compassion (b. Talmud Baba Metzia 85a).

Our tradition does not require us to be vegans. As the story of Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi reveals, however, this does not get us off the hook when it comes to taking the suffering and moral value of animals seriously. 

After all, they are living beings — heir to all the potential joy and pain inherent therein. That we are gravely mistreating them should thus be a source of outrage. All humans — especially those who claim to be committed to the ideal of justice—should care.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.

With Purim upon us, the lesson of the Jewish community rising up and stopping forces in Persia from slaughtering the community is as salient as ever as many Jews in America are regularly confronting waves of antisemitism around the nation. A week rarely goes by without terror alerts against the Jewish community from the recent so-called “National Day of Hate” to multiple shootings outside synagogues in Los Angeles. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported last year that antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high of seven incidents per day in the United States in 2021, which was the highest number of incidents on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979 and a 34 percent increase year over year. While horrifying, a silver lining emerges: the surge in antisemitism may help engage the fractured Jewish community and encourage it to find a unified voice—not only in responding to the threat, but also in other domains as well.

The data are powerfully clear: antisemitism is rising in the United States and Jews are well aware of it. From a series of conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in the fall of 2022, we learn that more than four in 10 American Jews  felt less secure in 2022 than the year before and almost all (90 percent) of Jews believe that antisemitism is a problem in the nation today. The AJC  describes the rising levels of antisemitism in stark terms: “The antisemitism that we’ve seen has a real and frightening impact on the attitudes of American Jews, on the comfort of American Jews in American society, at their workplace and in their educational institutions.”

The surveys found that 26 percent of Jewish respondents were personally the target of antisemitic incidents in 2022. These include antisemitic physical attacks as well as antisemitic remarks in person or online. Concurrently, 87 percent of Jewish respondents have seen antisemitic content online and another 23 percent are affiliated with an institution that has been targeted by antisemitism in the past five years. Thirty-three percent of respondents said that they have experienced anti-Jewish bias or discomfort in the workplace, while 36 percent of students, recent graduates and their parents said that they had experienced issues on their collegiate campuses.

Moreover, significant numbers of Jews have changed their behaviors out of safety concerns, such as modifying where they go, what they wear or carry or what they post online, and half said that institutions such as synagogues and Jewish Community Centers have increased security in recent years.

These data are not at all comforting, to say the least. But, the fact that there is almost unity among the American Jewish community suggests that there is a strong sense of linked fate now—a helpful sign for the Jewish community today.

While the Jewish community is politically fractured and unorganized, when there is a deep threat to a group, selfish and inward-looking differences often become trivial, and members of a group can become cohesive and organized to promote social change. Ample research has demonstrated that outgroup threats promote the emergence of cohesive groups. Put somewhat differently, as President Reagan noted, unity often emerged in the face of “some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond.”Linked fate has been seen within the African-American, Hispanic, and LGBTQA+ communities and had resulted in powerful social change.

Ample research has demonstrated that outgroup threats promote the emergence of cohesive groups.

Given the near-universal acknowledgment within the Jewish community of the serious antisemitism problem in the United States, various Jewish movements, congregations, and institutions must now organize to assert Jewish peoplehood and more strongly counter so much of the erasure of Jews from American life. The culture wars have placed Jews in a precarious spot when it comes to questions of politics, identity, and questions of equity, but that does not mean Jews should cease to be a real part of social and political life today.  Religious and communal leaders must continue to demand greater government accountability and intervention for the seemingly unending attacks and habitual threats that Jews must manage on a daily basis. Clearly, all Jews have a vested interest in pushing back.

If collective mobilization is one piece of the silver lining of antisemitism, individual mobilizing is the other. Certainly the major national organizations and local institutions have rallied in defense of the Jewish community, and engaged in successful lobbying and advocacy of government, local and national. Yet rabbis, educators, and their backers have so far ignored the potential of antisemitism awareness to ignite individuals’ Jewish passions and feelings of solidarity. The questions we should be asking are not only about how to fight antisemitism, but how to use antisemitism to provoke higher and sustained levels of Jewish engagement. What lessons do we want to teach? Who should teach them – and how? How can we utilize influencers, social media, op-eds, classrooms, culture, mass media, and so forth to stimulate greater Jewish identification and solidarity?

No American should live in fear for the expression of faith or group ties and the American Jews now face antisemitism epidemic. Thus, the Jewish community’s shared fate is in play and this may help it unite and demand an end to this dangerous and destructive phenomenon hitting virtually every Jew in some form now. Sadly, like with Haman, Jews have had to confront calls for their destruction and have risen to the challenge in past and the community – and Jewish individuals — must now do so again. Yes, we are doing a lot; but we can do so much more.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.