Winter 2026

The grim truth about the breadth and depth of American antisemitism crept into our communal consciousness slowly, as if accepting it were simply too alarming to grasp all at once.

Swastikas scrawled on cemetery graves or dorm room doors were passed off as the pranks of drunken youngsters. Attacks on Hasidic men in Brooklyn were blamed on a handful of haters who represented no one but themselves.

After all, the growing spate of hate-filled remarks and minor assaults didn’t so much as merit mention in the news. The murders in Poway and Pittsburgh did, of course, but the blaring alarm died down quickly. The implications were just too grim.

But after October 7, 2023, when crowds openly chanted “Hitler was right,” when Jewish university students were forced to hide at Hillel for safety, synagogues were invaded and a peaceful vigil for the hostages was attacked with a flamethrower, Jew-hatred could no longer be dismissed. Whether it was coming from the right or the left, more than a third of Jewish Americans reported having been personal targets. Three-quarters admitted to feeling increasingly unsafe.

As the American Jewish Committee releases its annual State of Antisemitism in America survey, AJC CEO Ted Deutch joins us to map the geopolitics of today’s anti-Jewish hatred, to discuss the link between antisemitism and social media and to offer his counsel about the importance of fighting antisemitism above partisanship; in conversation with Joshua M. Davidson, Peter and Mary Kalikow Senior Rabbinic Chair at Temple Emanu-El.

Ted Deutch became CEO of AJC in 2022, after serving 12 years in the US House of Representatives, where he chaired the House Ethics Committee and the Middle East, North Africa, and Global Counterterrorism Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He also founded and cochaired the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism.