April 18, 2024

Never did we think that in the year 2024, we would have to write an op-ed defending the right of people to read. Yet, here we are.

At the Academy Awards last month, one of the five productions nominated for an Oscar in the Documentary Short Film category was “The ABCs of Book Banning,” which featured school-aged children discussing books that have been challenged, restricted or banned in their schools. Two of the books were “Maus,” a graphic novel featuring cartoon mice reflecting on the Holocaust, and “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation.”

Indeed, many targeted books center the stories of individuals representing already-marginalized communities, like LGBTQ+, Black and Jewish characters. As The Forward reported last September, “Three Jewish writers of young-adult fiction are among the 10 most-banned authors … in the U.S.” Stories like “Purim Superhero,” about a Jewish child with two fathers, and “Chik Chak Shabbat,” about a diverse group of neighbors who help a Jewish woman prepare food when she is feeling ill, have been attacked.

While much of the national attention on book ban efforts have focused on more politically conservative states like Florida and Texas, such efforts have been occurring even in states with more liberal reputations, like our own Massachusetts, with greater frequency (perhaps shockingly, Massachusetts had the 4th highest number of attempts to remove books from shelves in the entire country in 2022). The plague of book bans can happen anywhere in the United States—and is happening.

We have seen what happens throughout history when such anti-free-speech, anti-education efforts are permitted to flourish. From the beginning, book bans have been used as a tool to control public beliefs and perceptions, as well as extinguish critical ideas and diversity of thought. The very first book ban in early colonial America occurred in 1637 in what is now Quincy, Massachusetts. Author Thomas Morton’s work, “New English Canaan,” was critical of Puritan customs. Because he dared to challenge existing power structures, Morton was labeled “Lord of Misrule” by Plymouth colony Governor William Bradford, and “New English Canaan” was banned by the Puritan government.

In the Jewish community, many of us have a visceral reaction when we hear about book bans.

As a 2022 column in Publishers Weekly boldly declared: “Book Bans and Antisemitism Go Hand in Hand.” Such efforts evoke in many of us recollections of the notorious Nazi book burning campaigns in May 1933 that included the destruction of works by everyone from Helen Keller to Albert Einstein. There is a direct through-line from that authoritarian regime to ongoing efforts today. Ultimately, book bans not only suppress information and art from public access. They undermine democracy and corrode our very humanity.

Particularly as challenges overwhelmingly focus on works that center marginalized voices, we see two related outcomes: authors representing marginalized communities are more readily silenced; and readers have fewer opportunities to hear about and learn from those with different life experiences, reducing the opportunity for understanding and empathy. In aggregate, book bans are tactics designed to control what ideas people can be exposed to, and to manipulate our understanding of history in order to whitewash it. Topics like slavery and the Holocaust become subject to interpretation at the whim of current political agendas.

Combatting book banning is how we stand up to authoritarians, antisemites, white nationalists and others who would use division as a political tactic to keep us from coming together in a thriving democracy rooted in equity, empathy, and opportunity for all. Last year, Illinois enacted a new law, to become the first state to effectively outlaw book bans. New legislation to combat book banning here in Massachusetts would require libraries to create clear guidelines for how to approach a book challenge, establishing guardrails against insidious efforts to unduly remove books from public access and silence marginalized voices.

In addition to legislation, we can demonstrate support for literary works that have faced challenges, restrictions and bans.

In addition to legislation, we can demonstrate support for literary works that have faced challenges, restrictions and bans. Buy these books from your local bookstore or borrow them from your local library. If they aren’t available, urge your local institutions to carry them as a demonstration of opposition to book bans.

The Jewish community nationally needs to join with our allies and have a much louder voice in the efforts to combat book bans. The Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA) started a Book Ban Action Team last year to monitor book challenges. This year, we started a virtual Banned Book Club over Zoom, where we select, read and discuss banned books and relate the selected book’s themes to issues on our public policy agenda. Further, JALSA is working with a community organization in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to provide them with copies of banned books that they can use to develop their own collection and share them with students who can no longer access these books in their school libraries. If you would like to join in any of these efforts, just contact us!

In 2022, requests to ban books in American schools and libraries “surged” to a 21-year high. Those who employ the authoritarian tactics of book challenges and bans are relentless and vocal, making it appear that they are much more than their actual numbers. We must be just as tenacious in combating this scourge. We cannot take free speech and free expression for granted. Our multicultural, pluralistic democracy depends on it.

Larry Bailis is the Chair and Cindy Rowe is the President and CEO of the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA), which puts our Jewish values into action by engaging the community in promoting civil rights, protecting civil liberties, and passionately pursuing social, economic, environmental, and racial justice.

Passover has long been a favorite holiday of mine; it offers a moment to pause daily life, gather with friends and family around a festive Seder meal, celebrate freedom, and share and teach values learned from Jewish history. This year, just six months after the brutal terrorist attack on October 7th, the Passover holiday is more important than ever for promoting the survival of the Jewish people.

I do not say this lightly. The tragedy that unfolded in Gaza unleashed a global wave of antisemitism. In the United States, hatred against Jews is omnipresent; it can be found on college campuses, in popular culture, in town squares, and in the halls of Congress. And in the face of vitriolic hatred, the Jewish community is deeply fractured, cannot reasonably push back against the hate, and appears to have forgotten the very history that is central to the Passover holiday.

In response to the Hamas attack, Israel has every moral right to defend itself and rid the world of a terror organization that threatens its safety. Far too few Jews recognize that the Hamas Charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel and the annihilation of Jews. Yet, many American Jews—particularly the younger, not traditionally engaged, or with shallow backgrounds in politics and history—have turned on Israel, contributing to an emboldened Hamas and antisemitism worldwide.

The Jewish People are blessed with a wide variety of pro-Israel groups and public figures ranging across a broad spectrum—most notably, the American Jewish Committee, AIPAC, J Street, ZOA, Stand With Us, the New Israel Fund, and many others. That said, there are many vocal anti-Zionist Jewish groups as well. Numerous public figures claim to support Israel with a wide variety of stances—both President Biden and former President Trump claim to be pro-Israel, as do Senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer, who called for Israelis to oust Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Add to the mix a host of commentators with diverse views from Peter Beinart on the left, Tom Friedman and Bret Stephens somewhere in the center, and Hillel Fuld on the right and we are seeing a sharply divided Jewish community with little tolerance for variations left and right.

David Bernstein astutely observed that there is a growing disconnect between American Jews and mainstream Jewish organizations because “Jewish organizations are reluctant to confront radical trends on the left because the progressive activists they’ve long allied themselves with leave little room for differences of opinion.” The American Jewish community is in conflict between individual organizations and congregations are paralyzed with their constituencies divided and holding vastly divergent views, even as antisemitism and attacks on Israel grow.

This is why Passover this year is so critical for the Jewish community. Passover and the Seder represent one of the few Jewish cultural moments when significant numbers of Jews gather together outside of an explicitly religious context. While Pew has found that only one in five American Jews attend religious services in some form at least once or twice a month, a solid majority of Jews report participating in a Seder, making it the most widely cultural event of the Jewish year.

I hope that as different generations of Jews with sharply contrasting viewpoints gather to retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt there will be a chance to talk about the ties that bind Jews together, the need to protect and support our community, the centrality of freedom for all, and the fact that Israel is the Jewish homeland and has a right to defend itself. The Jewish community must reaffirm its core values, and sadly continue to defend its right to exist—an occurrence far too common in history. But to do this effectively, Jews must sit down and listen to each other, debate, and work together; and all Jews, whatever their points of view, should be at the Seder table.

The Passover Seder is explicitly designed for Jews to engage with difference and disagreement. In fact, a centerpiece of the Seder meal is the Four Sons parable, four types of guests at the holiday dinner who have notably different outlooks: the wise, wicked, simple, and one who doesn’t know how to ask questions. The parable teaches the idea that people understandably approach the world through vastly different lenses and ask questions about understanding the Exodus with varied dispositions.

The Passover Seder is explicitly designed for Jews to engage with difference and disagreement.

For instance, the so-called “wise child” inquires about the specific meaning of the laws of Passover observance: “What are the testimonies, the statutes, and laws which Adonai our God has commanded you?” We then respond with a summary of the very specific laws of the Passover Seder. For the “simple child” who asks a far broader question about the evening and queries “What does this mean?” we give a straightforward summary of the story: “It was with a mighty hand that God brought us out from Egypt, the house of bondage” (Ex 13:14).

While the Seder tradition does not expand beyond providing these short answers to the questions of the Four Sons parable, the exercise explicitly demonstrates that the Seder ritual is about embracing and promoting a multitude of views and disagreements about how to make sense of the world. The Four Sons come to the Passover story with vastly different views and understandings about faith, religious traditions, and how do manage differences with others. The Seder participants are taught not to reject or condemn those who hold views that are aggressively hostile to or uninterested in understanding the Passover story. Rather, participants are shown that we should engage with all types of Jews and embrace viewpoint diversity. The Four Sons teach us that we cannot be dogmatic or narrow about ideas; instead, we must welcome varied views about faith and the world and, like the Seder itself, be open to teaching all at their respective levels and needs.

As Passover is only weeks away, those hosting Seders need to be as inclusive as possible and make a special effort to invite those thirty percent or so of Jews who typically do not attend the Seder. Jews need to talk, argue, reconnect and come to an understanding of what Jews need globally. Social media, polarized politics, extremist politicians and rhetoric designed to divide rather than unite are making connecting harder than ever. But the Seder is designed to address these issues and can help Jews realize that we are in this together, our fate is linked, and we must speak out more strongly and collectively against this hate and the calls for our destruction. This Passover may be the moment to start this crucial process.

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