At U.N., second gentleman Doug Emhoff warns resurgent antisemitism is a danger to all Americans

NEW YORK — In an atrium in the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan stands a display holding the Book of Names, a haunting reminder about the past that raises troubling questions about the present. Six feet tall and 26 feet wide, the Book of Names is at once an archive and a work of art, containing the names of 4.8 million of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Usually housed at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, the Book of Names went on exhibit at the U.N. earlier this year, arriving in New York at a time when antisemitism is recrudescent both in the United States and abroad.

Fighting what has been called “the oldest hatred” has become the recent mission of second gentleman Doug Emhoff, the first Jew married to a president or vice president. Vice President Kamala Harris is his wife; his children from a previous marriage call her “mamaleh,” a Yiddish term.

“There must be consequences for those who engage in antisemitism. There must be accountability,” Emhoff said. Present were high-level officials including Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Deborah Lipstadt, the renowned Holocaust scholar and current State Department ambassador to combat antisemitism; and dignitaries from Canada, Mexico and other nations.

Emhoff recently returned from Europe, where he toured the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp and other Holocaust-related sites. “The trip was intense. It was emotional. It was somber,” Emhoff said — in a frank aside that had not been in his prepared remarks — of his journey through Europe’s so-called bloodlands, which his ancestors escaped for the United States.

But as terrifying as history may be, his focus is on the present.

“We must all speak out against antisemitism and call out those who don’t,” Emhoff said. He praised the Biden administration for providing synagogues and other religious institutions with more funds for security measures — and for elevating hatred of Jews, people of color, the LGBTQ community and Native Americans to a national emergency that transcends the usual divisions of American society.

“It’s not just about Jews. It’s about all of us,” Emhoff said. “Antisemitism is often accompanied by other forms of hatred.”

Jews have frequently been scapegoated for social and economic changes, whether in medieval Spain or modern Germany. The forces relentlessly remaking society today — globalization, automation, the isolation fostered by digital technology — have left many looking for someone to blame for lost jobs, eroded cultures and frayed social bonds.

The day before the U.N. summit, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins charged an area man who had shot blank rounds inside a synagogue with having committed a hate crime.

Several days before, a man was charged with trying to firebomb a synagogue in New Jersey.

There were antisemitic flyers distributed in suburban Maryland, and also in Vero Beach, Fla., as well as in Rochester, N.Y.

Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster, revived the ugly trope of Jewish greed. Allie Drake, the new Miss Texas USA, joked about Anne Frank.

As she introduced Emhoff, who was paying his first trip to the U.N. in an official capacity, Thomas-Greenfield noted that in December, President Biden asked his administration to come up with a “national strategy” to combat antisemitism. (Biden is Catholic, but his three children married Jews; many of his top advisers, including former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, are also Jewish.)

“We see this as an immediate security imperative,” Thomas-Greenfield said, “and also as a long-term investment in promoting love, compassion, tolerance and the primacy of human rights.”

A century ago, disaffected Germans — including many veterans of World War I — tapped into latent antisemitism, which they turned into a movement that blamed Jews for all of their nation’s ills. Initially, though the movement was violent, it was small enough that most Germans did not take the Nazis seriously until their sudden emergence as a political force in the early 1930s.

Emhoff’s trip to Europe was a reminder of how easily hatred metastasizes. Antisemitism, in particular, is a classic symptom of social decay. Other varieties of hatred — anti-Blackness, homophobia — are almost certain to follow. So while antisemitism tends to be first, it is rarely last.

The trip also took place as a new right-wing government came to power in Israel and clashes with Palestinians began almost immediately. The relationship between American Jews and Israel has always been complicated, and perhaps never more so than today, as antisemitism rises at the same time that the Palestinian cause becomes ever more prominent in progressive movements around the world.

Thomas-Greenfield has denounced the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which seeks to discourage corporations and institutions from working in or with Israel, arguing that it “verges on antisemitism,” but BDS has been increasingly embraced by American college students, as have more confrontational pro-Palestinian movements.

At the University of Michigan, pro-Palestinian students recently marched through campus chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!,” a call to eliminate Israel altogether.

Many Jewish college students say they no longer feel safe on campus.

“This moment requires bold collective action and urgency, not just concepts,” Emhoff said. But he did not outline what that action might look like. For now, it seems to involve raising awareness about the fact that the oldest hatred shows little sign of going away.

“Silence is not an option,” he said.