Disqualifying a Jewish DA in a Case to Pursue Antisemitism Echoes Dreyfus Affair

I traveled to Sacramento last week with several dozen congregants to participate in Jewish California’s Capitol Summit. During two impactful days, we advocated for bubble zones around schools and houses of worship, security grants and social services for all Californians.

While there, I heard disturbing stories about vile antisemitism in our public schools, which I expected. Students described firsthand accounts of their own horrifying experiences. After all, we were in the capital to advocate for the Jewish community in the Golden State.

I didn’t expect one of the stories shared by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman. He relayed the struggle of a colleague, Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen, who pursued a case against those who spray-painted anti-Jewish messages in public.

Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Kelley Paul decided that Rosen’s Jewish identity precluded him from fairly prosecuting this case. The judge’s stated rationale: Rosen’s campaign materials and a speech at a local Hillel framing the prosecution as a fight against antisemitism created an appearance of bias. This was sweeping enough to disqualify him and his entire office from the case.

I was dismayed because the Jewish community relies on the legal system to uphold our American standards, not renew old European dangerous tropes of the past.

At the end of the 19th century, a kangaroo court in Paris found a French military officer named Alfred Dreyfus guilty of treason because he was a Jew. The Parisian court’s working assumption was that Dreyfus could not be both loyal to France and maintain his loyalty to his Judaism. Rosen’s disqualification feels like history repeating itself. In the 21st century, we have encountered the new Dreyfus.

I wrote the book, The Case for Dual Loyalty: Healing the Divided Soul of American Jews, because the Jewish community can no longer accept the premise of the dual-loyalty charge. Jews can—and should—remain loyal to America and loyal to our Jewish peoplehood.

As a matter of fact, I cannot imagine a more loyal minority group with a proud history of patriotism than Jewish Americans. In 1915, one year before being nominated to the Supreme Court by President Woodrow Wilson, Jewish attorney Louis Brandeis wrote the following: “There is no inconsistency between loyalty to America and loyalty to Jewry. The Jewish spirit, the product of our religion and experiences, is essentially modern and essentially American.”

If the trust between the judicial system and the American Jewish community were to erode, it would represent the most alarming breach by current society in its new posture toward the social acceptance of Jew-hatred. Why have I not received a petition about supporting Rosen? Why is he not featured on national cable-news programming? Why is his case not being discussed on podcasts, in op-eds and other articles?

Perhaps it’s too late to reverse the judge’s decision and allow Rosen once again to pursue the case. Or perhaps this is the moment for the Jews in the United States to stand up and proudly accept dual loyalty.

Upholding our American principles of freedom and individual rights while also embracing the Jewish values of dignity and justice that have shaped our founding documents provides us with a robust moral compass. In the case of these two value sets, dual loyalty is not a vice but a virtue.

It is incumbent upon us as a community to speak up when fellow American Jews fall under the old charge of dual loyalty. Every American maintains multiple layers to their identity—gender, religious, political, sexual, racial, sports teams—and Jews are no different. We will not accept or succumb to different standards than our fellow citizens and peers.

In fact, it is incumbent upon all Americans to speak up when American Jews fall prey to old Jew hating tropes. The fate of the Jewish community, and America as a whole, depends on it.

Originally published at: https://www.jns.org/opinion/rabbi-nolan-lebovitz/disqualifying-a-jewish-da-in-a-case-to-pursue-antisemitism-echoes-the-dreyfus-affair