Rabbi Jill Jacobs' Drashah for Shabbat Pinchas, 2025
“There are many major Jewish leaders and institutions that have muddied the waters by saying that almost any criticism of Israel is antisemitic. And that’s a little bit like like crying wolf. It makes it harder to know when actually we’re stepping into anti semitic territory. Some people have said that even protests of Israeli policy, calling for an end to arms sale, or any other change in American policy, or even the display of Palestinian flags, of kefirs, even watermelons, is anti semitic, and it’s especially dangerous right now when the Trump administration is trying to use Jews and antisemitism to dismantle democracy. We’ve seen antisemitism invoked as a reason to defund universities, to limit free speech, to detain foreign students and professors, supposedly all to protect Jews. None of this is protecting Jews. And in fact, these these moves are likely to spark even more antisemitism if Jews are blamed for cuts in cancer funding, in the detention deportation of foreign students. We also know that at times of economic and political upheaval, there tends to be a rise in antisemitism, because people look around for someone to blame. So because of these dangers, those of us who love and care about Israel have to be really clear in rejecting the misuse of antisemitism to suppress free speech or to destroy democracy and due process.“
Rabbi Jill Jacobs gave this drashah on Friday, July 18 / 23 Tamuz. Watch her full talk above.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs (she/her) is the CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, an organization that trains and mobilizes more than 2,300 rabbis and cantors and their communities to bring a moral voice to protecting and advancing human rights in North America, Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories. She is the author of Where Justice Dwells: A Hands-On Guide to Doing Social Justice in Your Jewish Community and There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition, both published by Jewish Lights.
She has published in The Washington Post, Slate, NBCNews.Com, JTA, The Forward, The Jerusalem Post, and other publications, as well as chapters in more than a dozen edited volumes. She has appeared as a commenter on MSNBC, CNN, CodeSwitch, and other media. She has been named three times to The Forward’s list of 50 influential American Jews and to Newsweek’s list of the 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America. The New York Times featured her as one of “Six New Yorkers Who Made the City a Better, Cooler, Fairer Place in 2023.”
She holds rabbinic ordination and an MA in Talmud from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she was a Wexner Fellow; an MS in Urban Affairs from Hunter College; and a BA from Columbia University. She is also a graduate of the Mandel Institute Jerusalem Fellows Program. She lives in New York with her husband, Rabbi Guy Austrian, and their two daughters.
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