Author of "Embracing Auschwitz" and "Mensch•Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi - Wisdom for Untethered Times." Winner of the Rockower Award, the highest honor in Jewish journalism and 2019 Religion News Association Award for Excellence in Commentary. Musings of a rabbi, journalist, father, husband, poodle-owner, Red Sox fan and self-proclaimed mensch, taken from essays, columns, sermons and thin air. Writes regularly in the New York Jewish Week and Times of Israel.
Saturday, October 18, 2025
Antifa” is just another word for "Let's just blame the Jews"
I wish scapegoating were as amusing as this meme implies.
It’s not, unfortunately. And as the Trumpian Media Industrial Complex directs its full attention toward demonizing the peaceful, determined, overwhelming, and joyous protests of No Kings Day, they are trying to convince the world that it is all the work of their anti-fascist arch enemies. Led by, of course, George Soros. A Jew.
Just today on Fox News, the stench of another antisemitic, anti-Soros, anti-antifa crusade:
It always comes back to the Jews. It’s the Orban playbook. According to the BBC, the Hungarian illiberal leader was advised to make Soros into a hate figure for political gain by a Jewish American political consultant. Those accusations were denied by the Hungarian government. But whoever proposed it, Orban went all-in. And Trump dutifully followed.
The demonization of George Soros is classic antisemitism. Trump promotes it openly. According to Vox, the constant attacks on Soros have turned him into a “stand-in for a certain kind of Jewish ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ that allows politicians to appeal to antisemitism without having to do so explicitly.”
I’ve been fortunate to experience very little antisemitism first-hand in my life, but one such time was when our 2017 Europe group crossed the bridge from Slovakia to Hungary, and what greeted us was this sign.
It did not say, “Welcome to Hungary, Jews.” We had literally just come from Auschwitz and before our wheels even set down on Hungarian soil, we see a sign stating, “We can’t let Soros get the last laugh.”
Well, we all need to dedicate our lives to getting the last laugh against those who traffic in antisemitic tropes and strike fear in the hearts of Jews and others, against those who scapegoat.
That’s why I’ll be out there at a No Kings protest this weekend, fighting all hate, including the hate that hits closest to home.
Admittedly, it’s hard to be a Jew these days. At the same time Republican staffers are openly sharing their admiration for Hitler, a mayoral candidate for New York City is refusing to completely disavow the most notorious, murderous group of this generation, Hamas, who on Oct. 7 targeted Jews for annihilation.
The far left considers me a genocidal fascist and the far right wants to send me “back” to the gas chambers. No wonder a poll this week indicates that most American Jews prefer to hide who they are and fewer than 1 in 5 feel very safe.
There’s not much that I can do to influence the far right. Their entire raison d’être is to divide and conquer. They live for scapegoats. But those who will be protesting at the No Kings rallies need to rise above the hate. Resist the temptation to scapegoat groups. As an aside, no matter what your feelings about Israel, if the name of any group from that region comes up at those rallies, it will not further the ends of weakening Trumpism’s grip on our nation. It will only serve the Divider-in-Chief.
We Jews can tell you all about scapegoating. We prompted the term, from the goat in Leviticus who was allowed to escape with the sins of the nation attached (the word was actually coined by a Protestant minister, William Tyndale, in 1530, when translating the Bible into English). And we’ve been scapegoated more than anyone else.2
Instead of blaming groups, let’s target policies - along with those individuals who would presume to be our kings.
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