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From One Voice to Many: Countering Antisemitism in a Pennsylvania Community

From One Voice to Many: Countering Antisemitism in a Pennsylvania Community

Chris Brown, Daniel Burke Photo & Video, LLC.

The ADL Philadelphia Annual Youth Leadership Conference, December 2024.

When signs of antisemitism began to emerge in her community, a mother reached out to ADL, having learned the power of community activism and ADL’s impact from her father.

On his first day of tennis practice, a freshman Jewish student at a high school in the suburbs of Philadelphia heard antisemitic “jokes” from the court next to him. He told his teammate, also Jewish, to knock it off, and that his words were antisemitic.   

Dorothy Potash, mom of the freshman and a resident of a town on the Main Line, learned of the incident when the tennis coach called to ask why her son left practice early. After hanging up, she approached her son, surprised he hadn’t brought it up.

“Mom, this is no big deal. This happens every day. Kids are always making antisemitic and racist jokes.”

Dorothy asked for other examples and her son told her about the day a student asked how he did on a paper assigned by a Jewish English teacher. When he replied that he received an A, his peer accused him of benefiting from a “Jewish curve.” During a fire drill, her son heard a student say to him that this is for the Jews who should be burning. There were group texts among sports teams with antisemitic messages and the Jewish students in the group seemed too afraid to speak up.

A few months earlier, there had been swastikas spraypainted on local signs in a neighboring Pennsylvania town. Dorothy learned that middle school students were also part of group texts with antisemitic imagery and language. She assumed that the school administrators may not be aware of what was going on.

In the spring of 2023, Dorothy decided she wanted to do something about this increase of antisemitism in a way that could make an impact.

She turned to ADL.

She reached out to a friend on the ADL Philadelphia Regional Board and asked how she could get involved. He helped initiate the process for her to join the board.  In the interim, Dorothy reached out to several organizations that fight antisemitism for resources on how to counter this hate. Everything she read spoke to the necessity of bringing multiple stakeholders from a community together in order to effectively fight antisemitism.

She relied on resources and data from ADL to guide her approach. She reviewed materials from AJC with sample language for municipal proclamations against antisemitism. Along with the support of a local Township Commissioner, she made a public statement at a commissioner’s meeting asking that her township pass a formal resolution against antisemitism and hate, as well as adopt the IHRA definition of Antisemitism. On July 17, 2023, her township issued a proclamation condemning antisemitism and all forms of hate. Both the regional directors of ADL and of AJC were present.

This was just the beginning. 

Carrying on multi-generational engagement with ADL

ADL and its work fighting antisemitism was not new to Dorothy. Nearly 30 years ago, her father, who was the solicitor for many school districts, faced a situation where a school board president made antisemitic and inflammatory remarks at a board meeting.  Her father called for an independent investigation into the incident. The then-chair of the ADL Philadelphia Regional Board made one of the first calls of support her father received. Dorothy’s father later joined the board and Dorothy, as a young adult, joined one of the meetings. She never forgot the impactful support of the ADL.

She has since followed in her father’s footsteps and officially joined the ADL Philadelphia Regional Board in the spring of 2023.

Addressing the high school climate

After Dorothy learned about the prevalence of antisemitism in the middle and high schools, she reported the incidents to the ADL Philadelphia Regional Office, reaching out for resources and support.

Dorothy felt she wouldn’t be able to accomplish as much without “an organization with established credibility, trusted resources and people who know what they are doing.”

Dorothy shared with the high school administration ADL resources on countering antisemitism, such as information on Echoes and Reflections, a Holocaust education program led by ADL, the USC Shoah Foundation and Yad Vashem, ADL’s Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, which provides statistics on antisemitic incidents across the country, including in K-12 schools, and ADL’s A Guide for Responding to School Sports-Related Bias Incidents.

After attending meetings with members of the ADL Philadelphia office, Dorothy said she “soon realized the power of a quiet dialogue and the sharing of resources and facts, rather than raising voices and havoc on a soap box when it comes to dealing with complex issues and community leaders who represent many and multiple constituencies.”

The ADL Philadelphia office has seen increased engagement by the high school in activities to fight antisemitism. For example, they attended the ADL Philadelphia Annual Youth Leadership Conference on December 11, which brought together in an educational forum 400 Jewish and non-Jewish students and 75 educators in-person and an additional 700 participants virtually from nearly 40 schools.

Raising community awareness

This was only the start of critically needed broader community efforts.

Soon after making her public statement, Dorothy found allies among the township commissioners and the Superintendent of Police, who offered to help bring additional community stakeholders together for further engagement.

Dorothy met with ADL staff and  school leadership, law enforcement, members of the interfaith community and other regional Jewish organizations. Together with a fellow ADL Philadelphia Regional Board member,  they co-founded the ADL Community Action Group Committee. The Main Line Community Action Group (MLCAG), along with three other ADL community action groups, exist to create a community of neighbors to support one another, share resources and join in advocacy, and report local hate incidents to ADL.

The inaugural meeting of the ADL Main Line Community Action Committee, May 2024.

The inaugural meeting of the ADL Main Line Community Action Group, May 2024.

At a regional board meeting, an ADL speaker talked about the importance of making a difference in local neighborhoods or communities in order to further ADL’s mission: "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all." This resonated with Dorothy.

“The current state of antisemitism across the world and across our country is both astounding and overwhelming.  [It’s] too much for one person or a small group of people to make an impact.  However, that one person or small group of people can certainly have an impact on their block, in their neighborhood, in their town, in their larger community…that is the power of the ADL Community Action Groups.”

Finding allies on-the-ground and online

Since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Dorothy has noticed antisemitism manifesting in different ways, including the prevalence of misinformation and disinformation online. On December 11, she volunteered at the youth leadership conference, which addressed the spread of this false information.   

“We need to reengage with our allies, and we need to find new allies.”

Dorothy said there just doesn’t seem to be any empathy or understanding and the best way to address this is through education which she says ADL has historically done incredibly well.