It's time for Jewish orgs to put up or shut up.

As antisemitism skyrockets across the West, the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish organizations face an urgent choice: Act boldly, or risk the long-term safety of Jews in the West.

photo: Omar Sotillo Franco/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Benjamin Kerstein, author of the new book, “Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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For quite some time, the Anti-Defamation League, which bills itself as one of America’s oldest civil rights organizations, has been (more or less) a generic “progressive” advocacy group.

The ADL is an international nonprofit, anti-hate organization based in New York, but its origins date back to 1913, when it was founded by B’nai B’rith, another Jewish nonprofit that was once a cultural association for German Jewish immigrants to the United States.

In 1913, Atlanta B’nai B’rith President Leo Frank was convicted of murdering a 13-year-old factory employee — a conviction historians now widely consider wrongful. Jewish leaders saw Frank’s prosecution as driven by local antisemitism and media agitation. The injustice helped inspire the founding of the ADL.

Until after World War II, the ADL had limited impact, particularly less than the American Jewish Committee. Today its budget involves significant spending, with recent figures showing around $163 million in revenue and $130 million in expenses in 2024.

During the rise of recent movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, the ADL sought to largely escape the Jewish label, embracing every aspect of the universalist “progressive” catechism.

The results were not sanguine, at least for the Jewish community. When the October 7th massacre struck, the ADL found that most of its “progressive” allies suddenly took the side (both implicitly and explicitly) of Hamas rapists and murderers. The organization was also defamed and demonized by the Muslim community it had courted and disowned by much of its political base in the Democratic Party.

In other words, the ADL finally learned an ancient lesson: They take our stuff and then spit in our faces. In other words, non-Jews are often perfectly happy to exploit Jewish resources and talents, but refuse to reciprocate or worse.

So, the question is: What will the ADL do now?

A very large number of Jews are asking this question. Beneath the question lies a seething anger: “Where is the ADL?” they ask. “Why aren’t they protecting us? Why aren’t they fighting? Why aren’t they there for us? Where are they?”

These are all reasonable queries. After all, in the end, the ADL has one job, which is to protect American Jews from antisemitism. In this task, it has manifestly failed — and the evidence is everywhere.

The antisemitic Islamist-”progressive” Red-Green Alliance is rising to the heights of national politics. An open antisemite has been elected mayor of New York City. “Protesters” still hold their antisemitic hate rallies on a regular basis, including outside synagogues. Jews continue to be harassed and assaulted. Several murders of both Jews and non-Jews have been committed by progressive and Muslim antisemites. The general atmosphere is one of fear and apprehension.

Quietly, many are beginning to ask the unthinkable: Do the Jews have a future in the United States?

I cannot say with any certainty that they do. I can say with certainty that, if organizations like the ADL don’t get their act together, they almost certainly do not.

Thankfully, however, none of these organizations are irredeemable. They can (like Israel’s security establishment after October 7th) come together, regroup, and mount a ferocious counterattack. But, to do this, they will need to undergo a complete transformation.

On the part of the ADL, this transformation must be both a return to its roots and the adoption of an unprecedented new stridency: The ADL must transform itself into a Jewish civil rights organization. By this, I do not mean a civil rights organization that happens to be Jewish. I mean an organization dedicated absolutely and solely to the protection and expansion of Jewish civil rights.

This must occur because Jewish civil rights are unquestionably in danger. On college campuses and in the streets, Jewish rights to free speech and assembly have been effectively abrogated by terrorism and violence. The right to freedom of worship is being increasingly truncated by the same forces, as seen at the recent siege of the Park East Synagogue by Red-Green Alliance antisemites, met with craven apologetics from New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani. With Mamdani now in power, such attacks will become more frequent and, as a result, Jewish religious life severely restricted.

At the same time, traditional racial and religious discrimination is back in vogue. Jews are being de facto expelled from academic, cultural, professional, and social spaces. Although this is patently illegal, very little has been done about it, and nothing will be done in the absence of substantial agitation.

This is not even to mention the political marginalization that is underway. The Democratic Party is poised to purge all but the most collaborationist Jews, and soon even them. Mamdani is already doing much to curb Zionist and pro-Israel activism in New York City, which could soon include an outright ban. If he succeeds, this will spread to other “progressive” cities. On the Right, a smaller but nonetheless growing campaign to purge Jews from conservative circles and the Republican Party is gaining momentum.

American Jews, in other words, are on the way to becoming second-class citizens. The fight now is not only against antisemitism; it is also against the ghetto.

Fortunately, the cause is by no means lost. With concerted organization and effort, the tsunami can be turned back. It cannot be turned back, however, without a nationwide movement to ensure that Jewish civil rights are honored. The ADL, if only because of its pedigree and mission, is uniquely poised to lead such a movement.

To do so, it will have to give up on its previous tactics of forming useless alliances and adopting counterproductive universalist causes that, at best, gain the Jews nothing. Instead, it will have to adopt an aggressive and proactive strategy, building on the tactics and successes of previous civil rights movements.

As the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights Movement did, the ADL will have to organize for non-violent resistance and direct action. It will have to embrace the tactics of the march, the boycott, the sit-in, the unequivocal denunciation, the constitutional struggle, civil disobedience, and the demand that the United States live up to its commitments to all its citizens. It must, in other words, follow the advice of the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis: Make “good trouble” in order to “redeem the soul of America.”

None of this will be easy. The Jews may have constitutional law on their side, but the antisemites have the mob, much of the media and academia, many politicians and, above all, their absolute willingness to commit nihilistic violence and terrorism in their corner. It is difficult to fight someone who is willing to do literally anything to get what they want.

Against any Jewish civil rights movement, there will be opposition, interdiction, and violence. Politicians like Zohran Mamdani will set their dogs on the Jewish activists and protesters. The large “progressive” and Muslim NGOs will conduct unrelenting lawfare against the movement. A great deal of media outlets will do everything in their power to paint it in the worst possible light. Collaborationist authorities will do nothing when the inevitable antisemitic violence occurs.

There will also be considerable backlash. Jewish acceptance has always been conditional, predicated on the Jewish refusal to “make trouble” and willingness to work “behind the scenes” and within existing institutions. Even many so-called “allies” — those that remain — will be repelled by the spectacle of Jews asserting themselves in the streets, on campus, and in the halls of power, even if non-violently.

Nonetheless, it can be done. Black civil rights activists faced horrific violence in the course of their struggle, and nonetheless succeeded. They did so for two reasons: First, they had constitutional law on their side (as do the Jews) and, second, they did what the Jews have thus far refused to do by making it clear that, if they did not get their rights, the country would be prevented from functioning.

That is, by making “good trouble,” they threw a wrench into the works. They stopped the gears of the machine. They set the price of doing nothing higher than the cost of doing the right thing.

No civil rights movement comes out of nowhere. There can be agitation at the grassroots, but without national organization, it is rarely effective. The Civil Rights Movement required organizations like Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to harness the anger and resentment on the streets and turn them towards effective political action.

It is possible that a new Jewish organization will rise that is willing to do the same, but it is better to use one that already exists. In this case, the ADL is uniquely positioned to become such an organization. It already has a national profile, considerable resources, name recognition, political connections, experienced leaders, and a weighty and still respected presence in the Jewish community.

What is required, however, is for the ADL to move. By this, I do not only mean that it must act. It must also effect a change within itself. It must forgo the old Diaspora mentality of “don’t make trouble” because trouble will “only make things worse.” It must overcome the fear of backlash because the lash is already on our backs. It must understand that, in the face of antisemitism, nihilism, and terror, the only viable response is resistance. Non-violent resistance, perhaps, but resistance all the same.

Should this change occur, the ADL will not be crying into the void. If I have learned anything over the past two years, it is that American Jews are mad as hell and they can’t take it anymore. They want to resist, but have not been given the means to do so. If someone gives them the means, they will seize upon it with everything they have.

Moreover, there is a new generation of Jews out there who, contrary to media hype, are not alienated from their Jewish identity or Zionism. They are young, passionate, dedicated, and painfully aware of how serious the situation actually is. They have been on those campuses and in those streets. They have seen the face of the monster. They know the monster must be destroyed if American Jews are to survive as both Jews and Americans.

There is, in other words, a massive reserve army of American Jews that can be called upon. But they lack the organization and resources to undertake the struggle themselves. It is too large and ominous for any but the largest and most powerful to undertake.

Whether the ADL is the largest or most powerful American Jewish organization is debatable, but it is unquestionably large and powerful, and if it returns to its original mission as the vanguard of Jewish civil rights, it could become larger and more powerful still. It could finally accomplish all it set out to do over a century ago.

As the great sage Rabbi Tarfon said, “The day is short, the work multiplies, the workers are lazy, the reward is great, and the master of the house is impatient.”

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