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<\/a><\/p>\nPennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks at a solidarity rally for Israel in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, Oct. 9, 2023. (Office of the Governor of Pennsylvania)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThese questions were classic antisemitism,\u201d Deborah Lipstadt, the former U.S. special envoy on antisemitism, wrote on X, a view shared by, among others, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League; Abraham Foxman, the ADL\u2019s former leader, and Josh Gottheimer, the Democratic congressman from New Jersey. <\/p>\n
These critics agreed that the question put to Shapiro echoed the \u201cdual loyalty\u201d charge: that Jews \u2014 especially those with visible ties to Israel \u2014 have divided allegiances, loyal first to their people and only conditionally to the countries they serve.<\/p>\n
Other Jewish commentators insisted that the questions put to Shapiro by the Harris team were routine, similar to those asked of anyone being vetted for top security clearance. \u201cSo please,\u201d Shaul Magid, visiting professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, wrote on Facebook. \u201cCan we just calm down and stop looking like hysterical conspiracy theorists.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as the reactions rolled in, so did a quieter, more complicated debate \u2014 one that goes to the heart of American Jewish identity. Does the normative American Jewish attachment to Israel \u2014 Israeli flags in synagogues, Zionist education in day and Hebrew schools, pride in the young American Jews who serve in the Israeli military \u2014 invite accusations of dual loyalty? And if so, should Jews do a better job of explaining how their often fierce attachment to Israel does not compromise their loyalty to America? Should they even have to? <\/p>\n
Shapiro, 52, has been open about his connections to Israel, which represent a not unusual arc for a day-school-educated Jew of his generation: a high-school volunteer program affiliated with the IDF, a six-month stint working at the Israeli Embassy in Washington after college, and outspoken views during the Gaza war that combined criticism of Israeli government policy with condemnation of some pro-Palestinian protests.<\/p>\n
Those ties, Jewish leaders argue, are well within the American Jewish mainstream \u2014 and far from evidence of disloyalty. \u201cNo one ever accused Irish Americans of dual loyalty for caring deeply about Ireland,\u201d Foxman wrote. \u201cThis reflects something very troubling about our political culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his memoir, \u201cWhere We Keep the Light,\u201d Shapiro wonders whether he was singled out as \u201cthe only Jewish guy in the running,\u201d and says he told Harris\u2019 team the questions were offensive. After the New York Times reported the exchange this week, Harris\u2019 team sought to control the damage, telling CNN that every finalist was asked whether they had ever acted as an agent of a foreign government \u2014 a standard question on federal vetting forms. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was ultimately chosen, was pressed about his multiple trips to China, where he lived for a year after college, these sources told CNN. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe crux of vetting is asking uncomfortable and even farfetched questions,\u201d one person close to the process said. \u201cThe point isn\u2019t that you believe it \u2014 it\u2019s that it\u2019s on the record.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeffrey Salkin, a rabbi and columnist for Religion News Service, rejects that equivalence. Writing about the episode, he contrasted Walz\u2019s questioning about China with Shapiro\u2019s experience. Walz, Salkin argued, was asked about what he did, writes Salkin. Shapiro was asked about who he is.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Jews, dual loyalty is the oldest antisemitic charge in the book,\u201d Salkin wrote. \u201cThe crime is all within the imagination of the accuser.\u201d<\/p>\n
The charge predates the creation of Israel, going as far back as Exodus<\/em> when the pharaoh warns that the growing number of Israelites in Egypt \u201cmay join our enemies in fighting against us.\u201d<\/p>\n The charge was revived in the modern era, when Jews were gradually granted full citizenship in exchange for renouncing their ties to a Jewish national identity. In 1789, speaking on behalf of Jewish emancipation in the French National Assembly, the Count of Clermont-Tonnerre proclaimed famously that \u201cJe\u200b\u200bws should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals,\u201d warning: \u201cThe existence of a nation within a nation is unacceptable to our country.\u201d <\/p>\n The Alfred Dreyfus Statue in the courtyard of the Jewish Museum in Paris honors the Jewish army officer who was falsely convicted of treason in an ordeal that exposed how antisemitism and accusations of Jewish disloyalty could override evidence, justice and citizenship. (Flickr Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The promises of emancipation were nearly revoked in 19th-century France, when Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of treason amid mass cries of \u201cDeath to the Jews.\u201d Later, Hitler rose to power behind the myth that Germany could have won the First World War if it had not been \u201cstabbed in the back\u201d by disloyal Jews and communists. <\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t need Israel to have the dual loyalty charge,\u201d Pamela Nadell, the American University historian and author of \u201cAntisemitism, an American Tradition,\u201d said in an interview. \u201cThink about the \u2018Protocols of the Elders of Zion\u2019 and the idea that Jews are more loyal to their people than to any state, that they are a kind of fifth column.\u201d<\/p>\n In that light, Nadell said, asking a Jewish governor who has sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania whether he had ever been an Israeli \u201cdouble agent\u201d suggested the vetter is either \u201cutterly clueless\u201d or something worse. <\/p>\n \u201cIt suggests the interviewer either didn\u2019t understand the weight of what she was saying \u2014 or actually believes the dual loyalty charge,\u201d said Nadell.<\/p>\n And yet despite the deep roots of the charge, Zionism and Israel have added new fuel to an old accusation. In the years before Israel\u2019s founding, American Jewish leaders fiercely debated Zionism and whether a Jewish state in Palestine \u201cwould imperil our position here,\u201d as the Reform movement\u2019s Pittsburgh Platform put it in 1885.<\/p>\n Thirty years later, Louis Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice and Zionist leader, sought to quash such doubts by asserting, \u201cMultiple loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent.\u2026 Every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels that neither he nor his descendants will ever live there, will likewise be a better man and a better American for doing so.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n