“Interfaith work is at the center of the work to save this country,” Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum told a summit on religious freedom in public schools Sept. 15.
Kleinbaum, senior rabbi emerita at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City, joined Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, for the opening keynote address at the Dallas event organized by Interfaith Alliance.
Citing the writing of Will Herberg from the 1960s, Kleinbaum said religion in America previously operated in silos of Protestants, Catholics and Jews. “That was the definition of American religious life back then, and it was how Protestants, Catholics and Jews lived in very siloed worlds — from schools to neighborhoods to social communities.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum (right) with Paul Raushenbush of Interfaith Alliance. (Photo by Mitch Randall/Good Faith Media)
“Now we know, of course, that was an extremely narrow and ridiculous perspective on religion, but I would argue that today the vertical lines that divide religions have been replaced by horizontal lines. And on one side are the progressive forces, the liberal forces, the forward-thinking forces within each religious tradition. And on the other side of that line are the reactionary forces of those religious traditions.
“So in many ways I share more right now with progressive Baptists or Methodists or Muslims or Sikhs than I do sometimes with my own Jewish co-religionists on the other side of that line,” she said.
Religious people on one side of that line today “are joining forces in ways that are creating a tsunami of hate around this world,” the rabbi said. “In some places it’s Christian nationalism; in some places it’s Jewish supremacy; in other places Muslim supremacy.”
A better way to see the world is not by exclusion of others but through inclusion of diverse beliefs, she said. “One of the deepest messages we have to offer is that religion strengthens each other. There can’t be a supremacy in this. That’s not what God has called us to do.”
Jewish inclusion
Jews in the United States ought to understand this, she said. “For us as Jews, as one of the minority religions in America, the separation of church and state has been at the center of the strength of the Jewish experience. Before the Constitution was passed in the late 1700s, there had never been an experience of Jews in any country in which we were considered first-class citizens where we were the minority religion.”
“As one of the minority religions in America, the separation of church and state has been at the center of the strength of the Jewish experience.”
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave Jews in America unprecedented rights, Kleinbaum said. “That gave Judaism a sense of safety here in America that we as Jews have never experienced before in human history. It’s not been perfect. There’s been a lot of social discrimination. But the vision of the Constitution is that incredible protection of minority religions. That is such a profoundly radical thing.”
Yet today, conservative forces in America are attempting to deny or destroy the wall of separation between church and state, she commented. “First and foremost, the idea that the elimination of the separation of church and state will benefit religion is an illusion … and nowhere is that more visible than in the public school system.”
America’s vision for public education is “of creating a space for the education of all children no matter who they are, no matter what their backgrounds are.”
She noted many Jewish families in America have chosen private schools for their children in order to get religious education in the mix. “They have that right to do it. But the separation of church and state has up until this moment made it very clear that tax dollars can’t support that kind of religious education and that has protected us as Jews.”
Randi Weingarten
Weingarten agreed, citing the importance of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed segregated public schools.
“It was the first time we really said in this country, starting with Brown v. Board of Education and then afterward, that everyone in this country deserves the right to learn, including undocumented children,” she said. “Everyone has equal opportunity, that the corollary has to be that we create schools that are safe and welcoming for everyone.”
This has religious implications as well, Weingarten said. “You can imagine if a school is completely focused on one particular religion how uncomfortable that would make other children.”
The AFT leader distinguished between teaching about religion versus teaching one religion is superior to others. The Supreme Court has ruled that teaching objectively about religious belief is allowed, while indoctrinating students into any particular religious belief is not.
“We have to find ways to make all children safe and welcome,” she said. “And that requires us to not have schools that have one religion over another. The Founders made that clear in terms of the separation of church and state. And so when you have a Ten Commandments (posting), whether you say that’s Judeo Christian or not, what does it say for somebody who is of another religion? If you have the Bible as Bible study, what does that say for people who are of another religion or who decide not to practice a religion? It creates a discomfort, the same kind of discomfort as could be created in any number of other discriminatory practices.”
School vouchers
Another way evangelicals have fought to fund their desired sectarian education is by pushing for school vouchers that divert taxpayer funds to pay for private-school tuition. Weingarten noted rural Republicans in Texas had stopped school voucher legislation five times until they were bullied by Donald Trump.
“The Republican rural officials and the Democratic urban officials worked and stopped vouchers five times before the president got on the phone and basically threatened them this time,” she said. Trump reportedly called Texas legislators personally and threatened to unseat them if they voted against vouchers this year.
Antisemitism
The two Jewish speakers also addressed confusion today over what is antisemitism.
“What we do see is that antisemitism is being weaponized by this current administration and their surrogates in order to advance an agenda, which has nothing to do with Jews,” Kleinbaum said. “A very close friend of mine gave a sermon recently that said, ‘Stop using us as your pawns.’
“Most of the antisemitism we really worry about in this country is coming from the right wing.”
“Antisemitism is real, and real antisemitism must be fought. However, most of the antisemitism we really worry about in this country is coming from the right wing. That’s the antisemitism that has killed Jews in Pittsburgh, the shooter that went into a synagogue on a Sabbath morning, some of you might remember in Pittsburgh a few years ago, he chose that synagogue. He drove hours and hours. He chose that synagogue because he saw that synagogue as being aligned with the movement to protect refugees and immigrants. And he was deeply antisemitic, and he said Jews are allowing immigrants into this country without limit.
“That’s the antisemitism. I worry about the debate about Israel. There’s a very easy way to distinguish between criticizing Israel and Israel in state policies, like any state should be open to criticism of policies and apply it to every Jew that exists in the world. That’s ridiculous. But the dangerous antisemitism that threatens Jewish lives right now is overwhelmingly from the right wing, often Christian nationalist white supremacists who see Jews as being a threat to a white Christian America.”
Weingarten recounted her recent experience testifying before a House committee where the chair accused her of never saying a word to address antisemitism.
That accusation “was so patently false that what we just decided to do … is we just did a tweet thread of, I don’t know, 10 of the times I had talked about and addressed antisemitism.”
She and her staff advised the House member to “go back to Grok,” the AI platform of Elon Musk. “When you ask Grok whether or not I’ve addressed antisemitism, even Grok … would tell you I had.”
What the House committee chair was doing was using accusations about antisemitism — against a Jew, no less — as propaganda and “smearing to create fear,” she said.
Weingarten talks about this and related issues in her brand-new book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers.
Teachers face similar false accusations all the time, she said. “What do teachers do to address it? We have to not hide and we have to not pretend or get fearful. We have to just be the antidote to it.”
Her own tweet thread rebutting the congressman was not to threaten him, she explained. “I did it for all those Jews and for all those others who felt, oh, maybe he’s right. No, of course he’s wrong, but we have to make sure we meet people where they are and make sure we try to address the misuse and not let the propaganda get the best of us.”