Opinion | Do We Still Need an Arbiter of Anti-Semitism?

By Sarah Posner The time has passed when one person can speak for the entire community. When Abraham Foxman, the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League, announced he would retire in 2015, the inevitable speculation about who might succeed him quickly yielded to consensus: Foxman, who has served the ADL for 50 years, more than half of them as national director, is irreplaceable. That conclusion is spot-on, and not just because Foxman is a one-of-a-kind personality, one who cemented the ADL’s reputation as a leader fighting for civil rights and religious tolerance and against bigotry and hate. The ADL shouldn’t try to replace Foxman because the role he created for himself has failed to keep up with fundamental changes in American Jewish attitudes, particularly with increasingly diverse views on what it means to be “pro-Israel.” Foxman has long been...

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