26 No. 72 JUSTICE hroughout the history of the United States, there has never been a federal government plan to counter antisemitism. That changed on May 25, 2023, when the White House released the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. The 60-page document included more than 100 calls to action for the executive branch of the U.S. government, and over 100 actions for Congress, state and local government, and civil society.1 Why now? Considering that the U.S. has a long, documented history of antisemitism, why could a national response not have come decades before? Setting the Stage At the time of the founding of the United States of America in 1776, there were approximately 2,000 Jews. Critically, the advancement of religious liberty for Jews following the Revolutionary War helped ensure that government-sponsored antisemitism would not take root in America as it had in Europe. The diversity of American demography also made theologically-based antisemitism not as much of an issue as it was in postReformation Europe. Indeed, Jews have generally thrived in America, enjoying religious freedom as well as widespread inclusion in American society. By and large, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. were, at least initially, sporadic.2 In 1947, American Jewish Committee’s Harry Schneiderman, a Polish-born American-Jewish editor and executive, argued, “For over two and one-half centuries, from 1655, the year in which the first group of Jews arrived in New Amsterdam, to 1920, [sustained] antisemitism did not exist in the United States.” The anti-Jewish hostility that did exist, he argued, was “sporadic, overt manifestations.” There was no agitation to deprive Jews of their rights as citizens; nor was there any attempt by any individual or group to use such antiJewish feeling to secure supporters for any political or economic movement. On the contrary, during this period the trend of public opinion was unmistakably liberal, and such manifestations of anti-Jewish feeling as did crop up from time to time were generally condemned. Although discrimination against Jews existed in business and in social life, Jew-baiting was decidedly not respectable in those days.3 One Year Later: The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism – Legal and Operational Aspects Holly Huffnagle 1. “The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,” THE WHITE HOUSE (May 23, 2023), available at https:// www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/ uploads/2023/05/U.S.-National-Strategy-to-CounterAntisemitism.pdf. Many of the references in this article have been abbreviated or deleted for space. The footnotes in their entirety are available at IJL website: https://bit. ly/Huffnagle 2. For a list of some of these sporadic examples before World War I, see IJL website: https://bit.ly/Huffnagle 3. Harry Schneiderman, “Anti-Jewish Prejudice and Agitation in the United States, 1655-1947,” AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ARCHIVES, Jan. 1, 1947, available at https:// ajcarchives.org/Portal/Default/en-US/RecordView/ Index/4780. Schneiderman was not alone in arguing that antisemitism was sporadic; famed immigration historians Oscar Handlin and John Higham also noted antisemitism had limited significance. Others observed “Jewish exceptionalism in America,” arguing that there were “no organized anti-Jewish persecutions.” However, historians are currently reconsidering framing individual anti-Jewish episodes as “exceptional” before World War I and beginning to think about them as part of a longer history. David Sorkin, Professor of Jewish History at Yale University, for instance, argues that Jews did have an emancipation process — even with the laws on the books. Especially at the state level and local levels, Jews had to negotiate civil and political liberties. Britt Tevis, a historian of U.S. law, American Jewry, and antisemitism, also argues that historians might reconsider framing individual anti-Jewish episodes as “exceptional” and instead understand them as parts of a larger pattern. T
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