MADISON – The divisions in 2025 America were on full display on Oct. 22, at the hearing for a bill to define antisemitism.
People spoke with passion, a few minutes at a time, for hours and well through lunchtime on the bill, which is favored by Federations and other mainstream Jewish organizations.
The definition in the bill, which has been approved by dozens of states and foreign governments, includes that criticism of Israel can sometimes be considered antisemitic, depending on “overall context.” Opponents see this as an encroachment on free speech.
But the legislation specifically states that it does not overrule the right to free speech and, regardless, the federal Constitution bars judges from enforcing any state laws as overriding the right to free speech. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land.
The bill supports a definition of antisemitism that is nothing new. It’s a definition that has been promoted by the U.S. State Department. It is approved for government use by the United Kingdom. It has been referenced by United Nations bodies. Many member states of the European Union have approved it for use. A majority of U.S. state governments have approved use of the definition.
The definition in the bill is commonly known as the IHRA definition, a reference to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The bill, if enacted, would require government to “consider” the definition, only when evaluating discriminatory intent or enhanced criminal penalties within laws that already exist, according to Milwaukee Jewish Federation, a key supporter.
“The bill doesn’t create penalties; it doesn’t criminalize speech,” said Rabbi Noah Chertkoff, of Congregation Shalom in Fox Point, when he took the podium before the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on State Affairs, at the public hearing in the state Capitol building.
“It doesn’t silence debate about Israel or any other country,” he said. He added that the definition is “widely recognized” and “helps distinguish between legitimate political critique and language that crosses into age-old antisemitic tropes.”
“This law wouldn’t criminalize speech – period,” said Milwaukee Jewish Federation President and CEO Miryam Rosenzweig. She added that “if people want to say antisemitic things or promote antisemitic symbols or paint antisemitic murals on the side of a Milwaukee building – this law would not prevent that or penalize those actions. If the person with the antisemitic mural vandalizes a synagogue or assaults someone Jewish, the State COULD consider these actions in context of a crime of hate.”
What do we say to the students?
Time and again, supporters of the bill came forward to say that Jews, including college students, are experiencing heightened hate, and that Israel is being conflated with all Jews.
University of Wisconsin-Madison student Jaxon Zemachson said pro-Palestinian activists on campus chanted, on the first anniversary of Oct. 7, “we don’t want two states. We want 48.” This refers to the era before Israel’s existence, he said – a call for the destruction of Israel.
“Last year, at Library Mall, an elderly woman began shouting antisemitic comments. When I told her she was being hateful, she called me ‘a f**ing Jew’ and followed me down the street yelling slurs,” Zemachson said.
He said that when antisemitic incidents happen on campus, “there’s no consistent standard for how they’re understood or handled. This bill ensures Wisconsin schools, agencies and communities are all speaking the same language when it comes to identifying antisemitism.”
Erika Klein, another Madison student, also spoke to legislators at the hearing about her experience on campus: “It started with chalkings. Phrases like ‘Zionists not welcome’ and ‘Free Palestine from the river to the sea,’ may not have seemed alarming to everyone, but to me, many in the Jewish community, and the entire nation of Jewish people living between that river and sea, these messages were extremely threatening.”
“These chalkings soon turned into protests, social media campaigns, graffiti in library bathroom stalls, professors sharing their antisemitic views both in and outside of the classroom, hate speech, and eventually an encampment.”
“These things were inescapable. I couldn’t walk around my campus without seeing Israeli hostage posters ripped down, fliers calling to ‘globalize the intifada,’ or chants equating Jews with Nazis. When I wanted to escape campus on my phone, I saw professors on X demonizing my people ….”
As a New Yorker attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she said this was her first time experiencing antisemitism. She wondered: “Would wearing my Star of David necklace make me a target? Would people judge me or exclude me if they knew I was Jewish?”
She added that the proposed definition “would help our community uphold its commitment to equity and inclusion for all its members, including Jewish students like me.”
Rep. Robert Wittke, a Republican representing Franklin and northern Racine County, repeatedly asked opponents of the bill: “How can we protect these two students? What would you say to them?” While some opponents changed the subject when asked, state Rep. Ryan Clancy, a Democrat representing a district reaching from Milwaukee’s East Side to Bay View, responded with: “I cannot speak to the lived experience of two individual students. I will say that everything that I saw in those encampments was overwhelmingly positive.”
The Chronicle has previously reported multiple instances of trouble for Jewish students at or near encampments in Madison and Milwaukee. For example, in a June 2024 first person piece in the Chronicle, Rabbi Joshua Herman, the then-Hillel Milwaukee director wrote: “In April, I was with a group of Jewish students and Hillel staff, who gathered to hand out lunch and listen to songs of peace performed by an Israeli singer. We were encircled by protesters calling for ‘intifada’ until we needed police protection to flee campus. Then, an illegal encampment set up by protesters openly calling for Israel’s destruction was not only tolerated by the University, but each time it rained the protesters were given a warm room to ride out the storm before returning to their encampment.”
In fact, the environment for honest discourse related to antisemitism and Israel has become so chilling, that some in favor of the bill chose not to speak or attend, out of fear of being branded as racists, anti-Palestinian or pro-genocide, according to some in the Jewish community.
Opponents and supporters
Opponents of the bill had a strong presence at the hearing. One opponent of the bill, who said she is Jewish and believes Gaza has experienced “genocide,” testified: “I can’t let the idea that the encampment was protesting Jews go unchallenged. It was protesting the State of Israel.” She added that Jewish Federations, a key proponent of the bill, do not represent all Jews despite data from AJC demonstrating that Federations do indeed represent roughly 80% of Jews. Another Jewish opponent of the bill said the issue was that they “value free speech and expression for all.”
Many opponents of the bill wore keffiyehs, a cultural symbol for Palestinians. Wearing a keffiyeh, one man threatened that any representative who voted for the bill would suffer at the ballot box.
But there were also supporters.
Robert L. Habush, the legendary Milwaukee attorney and Jewish community advocate, supports the bill. The 89-year-old joked with the legislators about how much time it would take him to approach or leave the podium, a rare moment of levity in a charged committee hearing.
“For 50 years, I taught at local law schools. I have handled cases involving free speech, so I don’t just talk about free speech,” he said. “I have great faith, and you should have great faith, that there is sufficient protection of people who are protesting.”
In an interview with the Chronicle the day after the hearing, Habush said his response to the Madison students would start with this, after the bill is passed: “If I’m the chancellor, if I’m the dean of a school, I would … refer to the statute to understand what antisemitism is, just so they’re educated.”
Antisemitism is rampant
“We are witnessing historic levels of antisemitism, not just in words, but in action. In Wisconsin, antisemitism has risen by more than 500% in the last decade,” said Alan Klugman, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Madison. Klugman said he was speaking for both the Madison and Milwaukee Jewish federations, because Milwaukee Jewish Federation President and CEO Miryam Rosenzweig was out of the country.
“Many in our community, including myself, challenge individual leaders’ policies and parties in Israel, just as they criticize different leaders and policies in the U.S.,” Klugman said. “In many progressive spaces, the only Jews allowed to participate are anti-Zionist Jews, the roughly 4% of Jews who actively oppose the continued existence and safety of Israel.
“But only engaging with the anti-Zionist Jews is itself a form of tokenization which is itself antisemitic. These opponents, a small minority, worry that this bill would stifle free speech or criticism of Israel. It’s simply not true. The definition that we are talking about has been adopted in 37 states and recognized by the United Nations. It doesn’t punish, it educates. It provides clarity, helping schools, workplaces and courts recognize when hate crosses the line into discrimination.”
Ari Friedman, executive director of the Wisconsin Jewish Security Network, brought an array of disturbing details to the attention of the legislators. “A Madison man threw a dead rabbit at the Jewish Federation in Madison. After being caught, he admitted he did so because it was the closest Jewish location to his home. Jewish students at a Wisconsin high school were threatened online with death threats,” he said.
“A Milwaukee synagogue was vandalized, sustaining approximately $75,000 in damage, and perhaps really the most upsetting is that families walking to the synagogue on the Sabbath and most recently over the High Holidays, have been harassed …” he continued. “Let me be clear: I do not object to free speech or political opinion, but when that crosses into harassment, intimidation and threats of violence directed at people simply for being Jewish, that is something else entirely.
“The atmosphere we are now living in is toxic and it’s relentless. I’m not here asking for sympathy on behalf of the Jewish community. I’m here because the data and the lived reality of the community shows clearly that something has shifted. When hate becomes routine, when threats become normalized … it creates the conditions where unimaginable tragedy becomes possible. Your jobs, my job, is to make sure we never get there. But if this trajectory continues unchecked, I can’t say with confidence how long it will hold.”
He asked a question at the end of his remarks: “What other faith-based community do you know of that has to pay for armed security guards at every single one of their events just to feel safe to be able to learn and pray?”
He left the question unanswered, and the hearing continued.
Definition is widely accepted, but Rosenthal is opposed
Hannah Rosenthal took to the podium to oppose the bill. The Madison resident once worked for the U.S. State Department as an antisemitism envoy, and then later led Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
Her own office promoted the precursor to the definition while she was the U.S. special envoy to combat antisemitism. In 2010, the State Department released a fact sheet with what later became the definition, under the heading “Defining Anti-Semitism.” Despite her earlier position, she now says she opposes codifying the definition.
Rosenthal has incorrectly and repeatedly claimed that Kenneth S. Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, was the chief author of the IHRA definition, according to Federation. Stern opposes all efforts to codify the definition because of its vagueness, Rosenthal said.
In favor of using the definition was Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of International Jewish Affairs for the American Jewish Committee and now allied with Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s support of the bill. Baker has traveled the world in support of the IHRA definition and was there for its initial development.
“Let me set the record straight,” said the rabbi, during his remarks.
“The true authors were the experts who provided the substance of the definition, people like Yehuda Bauer, Dinah Porat, Irwin Cotier, and Robert Wistritch. Ken focused on combining and circulating multiple drafts of their work until we had a consensus document, and then his part ended. I was left to take this draft to Vienna, to negotiate a final version ….”
He recalled in testimony that when a director “turned to me and asked if I would help her develop a common and comprehensive definition of antisemitism that they could issue. I agreed and turned to my AJC and other professional colleagues in Europe and America to help. One of them, Ken Stern, played a very important but limited role in this process. He is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the ‘author’ of the definition.”
Rosenthal said the bill is connected with “Project Esther,” a Trump-affiliated effort to combat antisemitism for reasons that she feels are insincere. She sees it as an effort at stifling free speech. “When Jews are treated differently than other groups, it is never good for the Jews,” she said.
Despite opponents repeatedly framing the legislation as an attack on free speech, Habush, the legendary attorney, assured the legislators that the bill is not a sword but a shield. It will help people identify hate speech, yet it will not restrict free speech, stating fears may have been fired up because of recent “attacks on free speech” in America. But that is not this.
“I’m here representing myself. I’ve been asked by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation to appear, but I would have come here whether asked or not, because I feel compelled to let you know (from) someone who really knows what they’re talking about.”
Habush and others said, throughout the hearing, that there is no threat to free speech from the bill.
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Proposed definition of antisemitism
The state Legislature is considering a bill to define antisemitism. The definition – known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance or IHRA definition, would be incorporated into a state law that specifically guarantees that free speech comes first.
The definition is one paragraph. It reads: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
Accompanying the IHRA definition are 11 examples that “may serve as illustrations” of how antisemitism manifests contemporaneously, ranging from age-old anti-Jewish tropes, to Holocaust denial, to certain expressions of animus toward the Jewish State of Israel that may at times cross the line into antisemitism.
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Read more
See “Rabbi Noah Chertkoff’s testimony at the antisemitism hearing”
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