[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 198 (Friday, December 1, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H6065-H6066]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1130
                   COMBATING ANTI-SEMITISM IN AMERICA

  (Ms. FOXX asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head on our

[[Page H6066]]

very shores. It should be extinguished entirely.
  Over the past few weeks, we have seen anti-Semitic demonstrations 
take place across the country. Turn on the television, open a 
newspaper, or go online and you will find a litany of examples. As 
Rabbi Moshe Hauer mentioned in his testimony before the Subcommittee on 
Higher Education and Workforce Development recently, the plague of 
anti-Semitism has afflicted the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, I agree with Rabbi Hauer's assessment, and it is 
incumbent upon us all to stand with the Jewish community, push back on 
anti-Semitism wherever and whenever it crops up, and rid our country of 
this scourge.
  Anti-Semitism has no place in any civil society, especially the 
United States--not now, not ever. I include in the Record a letter of 
November 14, 2023, from Rabbi Moshe Hauer.

                                               Orthodox Union,

                                   New York, NY, November 14, 2023

    Rabbi Moshe Hauer Testimony--House Education and the Workforce 
 Committee Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development 
         ``Confronting the Scourge of Antisemitism on Campus''

       Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the 
     Subcommittee: My name is Rabbi Moshe Hauer. You have heard 
     and will hear individual stories of what life has been like 
     for Jewish students on America's university campuses. I would 
     like to share with you the bigger picture. While I come to 
     you today as the Executive Vice President of the Union of 
     Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, also known as the 
     Orthodox Union, the largest organization serving Orthodox 
     Jews in the world, in this testimony I hope to represent the 
     entire Jewish community, every Jew and every Jewish student 
     on a university campus. Across the entire Jewish communal and 
     religious spectrum, my colleagues and I work together daily 
     to address the plague of antisemitism that has struck us all, 
     a plague that is afflicting our beloved United States and 
     that is firmly centered in its institutions of higher 
     learning.
       I want to share with this committee three points.
       1. The Orthodox Union, along with Hillel, Chabad, and 
     others, directs significant resources and attention to our 
     future, to our youth and students. Each of us places full-
     time educators on university campuses who seek to provide a 
     Jewish home for those students on campus, creating a place 
     where they can come to connect warmly to their faith 
     community, to celebrate the Sabbath and holidays, to 
     socialize, study, eat, and pray together with their religious 
     peers, and to be supported and guided by nurturing mentors.
       Today, this entire community is in crisis. Jewish students 
     on campus no longer need a home; they need a fortress. 
     Religious educators who have dedicated their lives to 
     providing students with warmth, nurturing, and a stronger 
     Jewish identity find themselves thrust into the role of 
     trauma counselors and security advocates, even as they 
     experience their own trauma and fear. On too many campuses, 
     everywhere they go the students and their mentors encounter 
     protests, chants, and signs that express the goals of 
     eliminating the world's one Jewish state and killing Jews and 
     that baselessly accuse Jews of unspeakable crimes. These 
     messages of hate and intimidation come from students and from 
     professors, and they are tolerated if not encouraged by many 
     university administrators.
       Decades ago, Jews were not admitted to these universities. 
     Now they let us in and expose us to hostility and 
     intimidation. Which situation is better?
       Every person in this country should have access to the 
     resources that the federal government provides. Title VI of 
     the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination 
     based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, applies 
     to all programs and activities supported by federal financial 
     assistance, including--of course--both public and private 
     universities. Those universities are tolerating and often 
     supporting faculty and student groups whose vocal and 
     virulent antisemitism create discriminatory environments 
     inhospitable to Jews.
       The Jewish experience on campus is a case study in Title VI 
     non-compliance. This hearing you are holding today gives us 
     hope that the fundamental right to religious liberty 
     enshrined in the Bill of Rights will be honored and enforced 
     on these campuses.
       2. This intimidation and hostility are experienced by every 
     Jewish student, Orthodox, Reform, or unaffiliated, whether 
     identifiably Jewish or not. The 17,000 non-Orthodox teens 
     that we serve in American public schools through our Jewish 
     Student Union clubs experience it as well, as the plague of 
     brazen and appalling antisemitism has spread from higher 
     education to public middle and high schools. It is, however, 
     important to highlight for a moment the specific experience 
     of Orthodox students on campus.
       The Orthodox Jewish students on close to 100 campuses. 
     Orthodox Jews are usually very visibly Jewish, identifiable 
     by religious symbols and recognizable modes of dress, and 
     have not surprisingly been the victims of a significant share 
     of the antisemitic hate crimes. This makes life very 
     difficult in the university environment where the term 
     ``Jew'' is an epithet, where anger and hate are a constant, 
     and where protection and support from the administration are 
     absent. Our kids cannot circulate anonymously on campus and 
     cannot go undercover by tucking the star of David necklace 
     into the shirt or by removing the kippah. Their strictly 
     kosher diet and their desire to practice their faith mean 
     that if they want to eat or pray--which they do daily--thev 
     need to go to the center for Jewish life on campus. The 
     Orthodox Jewish student on campus is a walking billboard: it 
     is me, the Jew, the one you harass, demonize, and intimidate. 
     I can neither run nor hide.
       3. Finally, it is critical that you understand how what is 
     happening in our universities is being experienced by the 
     broader Jewish community. The Jewish people are the people of 
     the book, and that book teaches us both our values and our 
     story. We know our history, and it goes like this: For more 
     than three thousand years we have lived in a great many 
     places, where we thrived and contributed to the host country, 
     and then we had to leave. Sometimes we were expelled by laws 
     and sometimes by fear, by the sheer danger of the hate 
     that grew towards us. That is our story. We always end up 
     having to leave.
       We all believed that the United States was different.
       The current tsunami of antisemitism that has surged in the 
     United States and that is centered in its universities has 
     shaken us. And now, as of October 7th, I do not know if there 
     is a Jew that has not said to themselves, ``here we go 
     again.''
       We never imagined it. Five years ago, one year ago, if 
     someone would tell you or me that we would be sitting in this 
     room discussing this kind of open, blatant, and vile 
     antisemitism in the United States of America, we would have 
     thought they were crazy. America is different. America was 
     supposed to be different. We were sure that this land of 
     liberty and civil rights would be the exception to the rule. 
     Jews would never be chased from here, neither by law nor by 
     fear. That is what we thought.
       We are less convinced of that now. We are shaken, we are 
     doubting, and we are wondering, ``here we go again.'' We are 
     worried for the present, for the safety of our kids on 
     campus. And we are worried for our future in this country 
     and--quite frankly--for the future of a country whose 
     institutions of ``higher learning'' appear utterly incapable 
     of teaching basic values, right from wrong.
       You are our elected leaders.
       It is in your hands to restore our faith that America will 
     be the exception to the rule of our history.
       It is in your hands to clarify that the true blessing of 
     free speech does not include speakers who ``direct a threat 
     to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing 
     the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.''
       It is in your hands to ensure that Title VI is respected 
     and enforced, as those same hateful words that may be chanted 
     in our streets may not be part of the government funded 
     environments of our educational institutions that have 
     tragically become discriminatory environments inhospitable to 
     Jews.
       It is in your hands to take a step back and to consider the 
     big and frightening picture of what this country is starting 
     to look like. For us in the Jewish community, America is 
     feeling a lot less free and a lot less safe. We need you to 
     restore our sense of freedom and safety in this blessed land.
       Thank you for your attention today and for your actions 
     tomorrow and in the future.
                                                Rabbi Moshe Hauer,
     Executive Vice President, Orthodox Union.

                          ____________________