THE TIMES THEY ARE A’CHANGING: Has ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt been red-pilled?

Since the 1950s, mainstream Jewish organizations have adopted a “community relations” strategy. To oversimplify, this meant allying with liberal groups on public policy matters even when (as in the case of affirmative action, for example) it conflicted with the immediate interests of the Jewish community. The basic idea was that if Jewish organizations supported progressive causes, progressive groups would in turn be sensitive to issues important to the Jewish community.

Under Abe Foxman, the ADL took this position, but would still occasionally dissent from progressive orthodoxy, especially when antisemitism was at play. When Greenblatt took over, however, he announced that the younger ADL donor base was no longer especially interested in antisemitism, and that the ADL would pivot strongly in the social justice activism direction. This led the ADL to go full woke during the Trump years, including endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement, even though it was rife with antisemitism.

With that in mind, check out Greenblatt’s recent statement about combatting antisemitism in the post-Oct. 7 landscape:

I think if you’re not stepping back and rethinking, considering the facts, just the facts — how so many allies fled, or at least didn’t stand by us in the way you would have thought — just the fact that in the younger demographic there’s a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes than in the older segments of the population,” Greenblatt explained. “If you start to think about the fact that the Jewish community has been very supportive of diversity initiatives, and yet these initiatives, which are supposed to promote inclusion, actually result in the exclusion of Jews. So all of this, and the moment we’re in, leads me to say we have to step back and rethink and reconsider and have the humility to acknowledge it all wasn’t working the way that we hoped.

This marks a remarkable shift for both Greenblatt himself and presumably his donor base, who have collectively recognized that putting their eggs in the DEI basket was a huge error. More generally, this may be indicative of a paradigm shift in how mainstream Jewish organizations (and their donors) approach politics. Better late than never.