What Is the Deal With Those Hot-Pink Antisemitism Billboards?

I’m sure you’ve seen the hot-pink billboards. Failing that, you may have seen the hot-pink Instagram posts.

In case you haven’t: On top of a bright-pink background, white letters spell out phrases like, “This year, we didn’t need the Grinch to steal Christmas. The Hamas kids did that for him.” Or, “When your parents said ‘find yourself’ in college, they didn’t mean to find your inner terrorist.” They range from cliché but harmless—“Anyone who hates Jews clearly hasn’t tried my Bubby’s brisket”—to a bit menacing, with one since-deleted post reading, “Trust Me. If Israel Wanted to Commit Genocide in Gaza, It Could.” When I went to their website for this piece, I was greeted with a pink pop-up with white lettering that said, “We’re just 75 years since the gas chambers. So no, a billboard calling out Jewish hate isn’t an overreaction.” OK!

The Instagram graphics, like their physical billboard counterparts, are the work of JewBelong. The nonprofit—founded by Archie Gottesman and Stacy Stuart, who worked together penning eye-catching ad campaigns for Manhattan Mini Storage—has existed for several years. As Fast Company reported in 2015, the organization hoped it would “take some of the stress and complexity out of Jewish life.” In the article, the two founders called their program Marketing Jewru, but by the next year, it was JewBelong.

“Let’s face it, Judaism can be a little/lot intimidating,” their website reads:

On its face, making Jewish life more accessible and welcoming is fairly unobjectionable (though there are certainly Jewish individuals who would object to the idea). And having a website that simply offers explanations of Jewish holidays isn’t harming anyone, and could even serve as a useful resource. (Other websites like My Jewish Learning do the same thing, albeit with less snark.)

From the start, though, two contradictions were baked into JewBelong’s mission.

The first is the question of why some Jews don’t feel they belong in a broader community of Jews, be it locally or globally. In 2015, Gottesman blamed Judaism’s marketing. Is that the issue? In 2016, writing in Haaretz, Rokhl Kafrissen suggested that the actual issues were the costs of raising children at all and in particular to having Jewish education and experiences (the ninth of JewBelong’s “New Ten Commandments” is to send children to Jewish summer camp and Hebrew school).

Kafrissen also points to Jewish philanthropists’ focus (and money spent) on fighting intermarriage and supporting Jewish continuity—traditionally understood as Jews marrying, giving birth to, and raising other Jews—instead of funding Jewish education. To that group, Kafrissen argues, ignorance about Judaism is all right so long as Jews marry and raise other Jews. (“Jewish grandchildren” is the second of JewBelong’s New Ten Commandments). To this, I would add that I have never interviewed a Jewish person who said they were checked out—excuse me, “disengaged”—because of marketing. But I have spoken to more than I can count who were treated as though they did not, in fact, belong because they were the product of intermarriage, or because they themselves were intermarried. And I doubt any of them would have felt like a bright billboard telling them they belong was an antidote to that.

I have also met and interviewed countless Jews who feel a lack of belonging with other Jews or in other Jewish spaces because of their politics. This is the second of JewBelong’s contradictions, though it became more obvious as time went by: Increasingly, JewBelong has equated participating in Jewish life with fighting antisemitism—which it also equated at least in part with boosting Zionism. As the Forward noted in a report in 2022, “JewBelong’s website, social media accounts and billboard campaigns are a mix of provocative messages about antisemitism and anti-Zionism and reassurances that if you eat a cheeseburger while driving on Shabbat, you’re still a good Jew.” JewBelong may be light on Jewish text or law, but, the Forward pointed out, “it does not stray from politics, particularly around Israel.” Gottesman has framed this as an addition, not a shift. They’re still welcoming Jews, and they’re now also offering their political opinions. But she also told the Forward in 2022 that JewBelong is “not for” people who are “anti-Israel.”

Leaving aside that people have a range of definitions as to what it means to be “anti-Israel,” to argue that there’s no issue with Jewish belonging so long as Jews support Israel (as defined by Gottesman) is to paper over a major issue in American Jewish life today. It’s a bit like saying, “If we ignore the elephant in the room, there are no elephants here!” A national survey of Jewish voters by the Jewish Electorate Institute taken last November found that, while 82 percent of those 36 and older supported President Joe Biden’s handling of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, for those 35 and under, only half did. A 2021 poll, also from the Jewish Electorate Institute, found that 25 percent of American Jews believed “Israel is an apartheid state”; for respondents under 40, more than a third agreed. From the 2020 Pew study of American Jews, we know that older American Jews are likelier to feel attached to Israel or to consider caring about Israel essential to being Jewish than younger American Jews.

Since Oct. 7, JewBelong has erected billboards and Instagram posts declaring “Let’s be clear: Hamas is your problem, too”; “A hill I will die on: Exodus, by Leon Uris, is the seminal book about why Israelis are not going to give up. They are made of better stock”; and “Fellow Jews: clearly we did not tikkun olam our way into the hearts of those we thought were our allies. New plan: put on our own oxygen mask first.” (Tikkun olam is the Jewish concept of repairing the world, though actually it originally referred to ridding the world of or overcoming idolatry.)

Is this meant to be a message representing an inclusive, welcoming Jewish community? Is it meant to welcome Jews back into the fold, so long as they agree with the billboard on Israel’s war? Do the people erecting these signs not expect them to alienate Jews who might otherwise feel like they do belong from feelings of Jewish solidarity? Do they not care? To establish a particular position on Israel as a criterion for belonging in American Jewishness is to attempt to exile a significant percentage of American Jews, which is an organization’s prerogative, but an ironic one if that group is predicated on the idea that a Jew is a Jew, and that all are entitled to this tradition and identity.

All of which is to say that JewBelong is arguably drawing many of the same borders as legacy American Jewish institutions have for decades. JewBelong’s red lines just happen to be hot pink.