[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.
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