Q&A: Jewish Fellowship Directors on Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism

By Josh Lancman ‘24
Remarks from this question and answer session are edited for clarity, grammar and syntax.

Q: So, firstly, who are both of you and what are your backgrounds in Jewish education?

Linda Scherzer: I am the director of the JCRC, the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest, which is the Government Affairs, Israel Advocacy and Community Relations Wing of the Jewish Federation. I'm also one of the lead professionals at Federation in terms of confronting antisemitism and working to combat antisemitism both reactively and proactively, along with being the director of Teen Israel Leadership Council, which is [the successor program to] Write-On Israel, which Max [Kasler] was a part of back in the day. This is a program that works with top high school students to prepare them to confront antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on college campuses.

Max Kasler: I am the program coordinator for Diller Team Fellows as well as working as Linda's assistant for TILC. I'm an alum of both of those programs, which is a really unique opportunity for me to be involved with both of [them], both as a participant and then again as staff.

Q: So what is the Diller program?
MK: The Diller Teen Fellows program is a teen leadership Israel-diaspora Relations program that exists in 32 communities around the globe. There are 16 in Israel and 16 in the diaspora, each having a partnership with an Israeli cohort. The main focuses of the program are Jewish Identity, leadership, Tikkun Olam and Israel-diaspora Relations.

Q: How do both of your programs operate and what do they focus on specifically?

LS: I think the mission and the focus of Teen Israel Leadership Council is to prepare students for leadership on college campus, to advocate for their positions on Israel, whether they are right, left or center and to confront antisemitism when anti-Israel activity crosses the line, which it often does, and becomes antisemitic on campus. It also helps position students for Jewish leadership in Pro-Israel organizations on campus. It's a program that has evolved over the last 21 years to explore [a lot of] the [same topics as] Diller, but what I think makes it different from Diller is that our primary focus is on the political/security concerns of Israel, rather than on the Jewish Peoplehood issues that Diller focuses on. But Max, please correct me if I'm wrong. 

MK: No, I think that's pretty accurate. I think that Diller does talk a lot about Israel without making any political statements. I would say that Diller is less political than TILC in its nature. That's not to say that it doesn't talk about Israel and the issues concerning it, [especially] because half of our program is based in Israel, [but that] conversations about Israel are more concerning global Jewry, as Linda said, and building those connections between Israeli society and the broader global Jewish community.

The Diller cohorts have a curriculum that broadly every cohort around the world follows. There's a learning trajectory arc that the program follows. But as the educator for my specific community, I have a little bit of creativity and freedom to play with the curriculum, and it's really clear to me that the teens in my current cohort are really interested in talking about Israel and its politics and the topics that we're also discussing in TILC. I've got a few sophomores that I may be sending to TILC next year, so I do have a little bit of wiggle room to bring in some of those topics that maybe Diller isn't as a whole covering, but is of particular interest for teens in Greater MetroWest. I get to bring some of that to the table and include that in our conversations to enrich the dialogue that we're having about Israel and diaspora relations and how those things interact with each other. It's a little less specific in its conversations about antisemitism and Israel politics dialogue [than TILC], but it's still woven through there. 

LS: I would just add onto what Max is saying: I think that Israel is the focus of TILC and the Diller [program] because so much of [Jewish identity is based around] Israel. So much of antisemitism today is framed in criticism, delegitimization and demonization of Israel that is applied to no other country on the face of the earth and stands in for antisemitism directed at Jewish people. It's incumbent on us to be able to identify that and stand up to it. 

MK: Echoing Linda, I recently spent two weeks in Israel for my grad school program and they very intentionally didn't cover the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, which I thought was really interesting. Israel is a society. It's a functioning country that exists outside of the boundaries of conflict and politics, and so to be able to educate about the things outside of that is really important because oftentimes we just look at Israel through the one lens of politics, but there's so much more. I think it's really important that we have these programs that are teaching about the culture and the history outside of the conflict because the Jewish people are deeply rooted in that land, [meaning] it's important to cover all aspects [of Israel], not just the ones that are a little bit more nasty.

Q: Given that, do you think it's important to have a cultural understanding of Israel and the Middle East to really get a deeper understanding of the conflict? 

MK: Absolutely. I think that especially given how a lot of people are getting their information from social media, which isn't gonna give you the full context of what's happening in [Israel], it is really important to get a wider perspective on that area. It’s normally viewed through the Western lens of a dichotomy; one side is right, one side is wrong. There's the oppressed and the oppressor, and no gray area in between. But when you truly look at Israel, both the Israelis and the Palestinians have claims to that land, and have deeply rooted history there. It's not as black and white as it is often portrayed in Western media, so I absolutely think that getting that cultural framing is crucial to understanding the conflict. 

Q: How do your programs teach fellows to combat antisemitism? 

MK: It's not at the forefront [of Diller]. My goal as the educator for the Diller program is to have my teens feel equipped to deal with it [antisemitism]. It'll be a little challenging given the rest of the content that I need to cover in the program, though, so it's definitely not at the forefront and is not a main goal. My hope is to do the education around Israel and antisemitism in a way that is maybe less direct, but gives [the fellows] the foundation to form opinions and thoughts on what's going on and, like Linda was saying earlier, to be able to discern the difference between when anti-Zionism crosses into that antisemitic space.

LS: What we want students to understand, first of all, is their own Jewish narrative of history, their own connection to the state of Israel, to have an understanding of the geography, the religious forces, the historical forces, everything that drives the conflict but also is a part of their history. In [the current] TILC class, there are maybe five or six out of 19 students who go to Jewish day schools. The majority of students are either in [secular] public or private schools, so their understanding and deep knowledge of Jewish history is more limited.

Q: So how much overlap do you think there is between anti-Zionism and antisemitism? 

MK: Wow, that's the question of the year, isn't it? In my personal opinion, I think there’s a very fine line between criticizing the country and just outright saying it doesn't deserve to exist, [which constitutes antisemitism]. Naton Sharansky had the three Ds of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. It is antisemitic if it demonizes Israel, de-legitimizes it and applies double standards, and in a lot of the anti-Zionist rhetoric that I see, there's at least one, if not all three of those things happening. My biggest concern right now with anti-Zionism is that I'm not finding a lot of anti-Zionism that is purely criticism of the country. It's often coupled with, ‘and this is why we need to get rid of the Jews and occupied Palestinian Territories,’ or something like that. I think it's possible, but I unfortunately am seeing less and less mutually exclusive examples of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Often what I see is a combination of both.

LS: I might have missed this, but criticism of Israeli government policy is perfectly acceptable [without being antisemitic]. Israelis themselves are the harshest critics of their own government, and so particularly, over the last 20 years, what I've tried to do is teach about Israel through the lens of journalism, and by that I mean we try to apply [in TILC] the standards of journalism, of asking tough questions, using intellectual honesty and critical thinking [to issues relating Israel]. I don't come at this story as if Israel can do no wrong at all. 

MK: The current government is doing a lot of wrong!

LS: Well, that's a whole other can of worms, but I think when we approach any problem, especially one that is as vexing as this one [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict], we can apply kind of an intellectual integrity whereby we ask those tough questions and apply critical thinking. We should admit when Israel is doing something that doesn't agree with our values, be honest about that and gain currency with our detractors. 

MK: There are ways to criticize a government without saying that it should be dissolved or that it shouldn't exist, or that the government doesn't represent the entire country and the entire people. Our government [at the time of speaking] currently doesn’t have a speaker of the house and they've gone through 13 votes now. Does that mean that our democracy shouldn't exist anymore? No. [Maybe it raises] questions about how our democracy is functioning, but democracy is messy, and I think I see a lot of the double standard come out when we talk about democracy relating to Israel. Israel is held to a different standard, and why are we criticizing one government not at the same level as we're criticizing all of the other governments that are in the neighboring area that are not democracies and have their own sets of issues and problems? 
Criticism [of the Israeli government] is totally valid, but in my opinion is not grounds for the dissolution of an entire sovereign state, especially the only Jewish one.

Q: So given that there's a lot of overlap between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, do you think the Diller program helps fellows deal with antisemitism through combating anti-Zionism?

MK: Again, I would say combating antisemitism is less of a focus in the Diller program. It's more about expanding knowledge about Zionism and Israel-diaspora relations. I think that that passively will give a deeper knowledge for the Diller teen fellows to be able to have conversations about antisemitism, especially because it feels like a lot of the antisemitism in the world right now is stemming from anti-Israel activity.
My hope is that by educating around Israel, its story and its people, my fellows will have the knowledge bank [to combat antisemitism]. I feel like when I was a teen, I didn't know how to talk about Israel. I didn't know how to have those conversations. And then when I did Diller and started my education around Israel, I began to build my toolbox for how to have those conversations. I want to be able to build that toolbox for the Diller teen fellows by giving them that cultural education, the broader picture of how the government [and nation] functions. I think TILC is more focused on strategy and how do we combat [antisemitism], whereas I feel like I'm helping my teens [in Diller] develop resources to use and facts they can draw upon to have those conversations [regarding Israel and antisemitism].

Q: So going further into that, you were a Write-On Israel participant yourself. How do you think you use your experience with that program in how you're structuring Diller?
MK: I'm still only four and a half months into this role, and so there's a lot of this job that I'm still figuring out for myself and how I wanna build out the rest of the year. I think all of my former experiences are playing a role in how I lead as an educator like this. The only reason I'm here in this role right now is because of programs like Diller and Write-On Israel, and if I didn't have that education, I wouldn't have the confidence to then want to inspire the next generation.

Q: What sort of responsibility do you think that Jewish youth and fellowship programs have to educate their fellows on issues relating to Israel, along with anti-Zionism and antisemitism in general?

MK: I think it is the responsibility of these programs, especially when it comes to antisemitism, because that's what we're experiencing here right now. For example, I used to work for Hillel at Ithaca College, and we had swastikas drawn on our campus. In that case, it was absolutely my responsibility to work with my students, to process and figure out how to combat it, and I feel that same sense of responsibility in my role as the Diller coordinator at Greater MetroWest. But it's not the sole responsibility [of Jewish youth and fellowship programs]. I think part of it is instilling a love for Jewish life because I think that that is the most important aspect to being Jewish, is having that pride, as it is the only thing that has kept our people alive for this many years.

That really is priority number one for me: making sure that my fellows love being Jewish, even if it's a challenge, even if there are things that challenge them about being Jewish and being associated with the state of Israel. Priority number one for me is a love for Jewish life. Priority number two is how do we deal with how the outside world is treating our people?