Interview | Ira M. Sheskin Surveys Jewish Voters

Ira M. Sheskin is a professor of geography at the University of Miami and the director of its Jewish Demography Project. He has authored more than 50 studies of Jewish communities across the country. The latest, “Antisemitism in the United States: The Impact of October 7,” was conducted between August 12 and September 3, 2024, and asked 1,075 Jewish Americans about their experiences with antisemitism over the past year. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: One set of questions in your latest survey of Jewish Americans found that:

• 39% saw anti-Jewish graffiti or vandalism in their local community. (Extrapolates to 2.3 million people)
• 39% heard colleagues or neighbors make slurs or jokes about Jews. (2.3 million)
• 26% have been made to feel unwelcome because they are Jewish. (1.5 million)
• 21% have been called offensive names because they are Jewish. (1.2 million)
• 16% have been harassed online because they are Jewish. (928K)
• 14% have been snubbed in a social setting or left out of social activities because they are Jewish. (812K)
• 7% have been physically threatened or attacked because they are Jewish (406K)

This hierarchy was the same in 2020 when Pew Research asked similar questions, but all the numbers have increased. How does the growth in reports of these incidents compare with other current research, say the figures put out by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) , which reported a 140 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in the last year?

Ira M. Sheskin

A: The ADL numbers and data are important. It’s also true that only a very small minority of people actually report their antisemitic incidents. When people are physically threatened, chances are pretty good they’re going to report that to the police and it’ll get reported to the ADL, but lots of people will see anti-Jewish graffiti, or they’ll hear a joke that they consider to be antisemitic or they’re made to feel unwelcome, and no one reports those things to the ADL. And so, we need to look at impacts rather than number of incidents.

Last year the ADL also started to count certain things as antisemitic that before they would not have. Under the IHRA definition of antisemitism, certain anti-Zionist positions are considered antisemitic. Not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic—if it were, then you’re looking at an antisemite. But take the treatment of the Uyghurs in China. No one suggests boycotting, divesting and sanctioning China over that, right? Or the Rohingya in Burma. You don’t have the level of criticism that’s leveled at Israel. And so, some anti-Zionist statements can be viewed as antisemitic.

On the question of the types of antisemitic tropes respondents have experienced since October 7, 2023, the canards about caring too much about money and about Jews controlling global events, the media, and so on still rank highest. The dual loyalty trope and other antisemitic ideas linked to protests of the Israel-Hamas war (for example, “The use of Zionist in a negative way when someone means Jews,” and blaming Jews in America “for genocide in Gaza because of their support for Israel”) rank lower. Is this surprising to you, given how much coverage these forms of antisemitism have gotten?

In 2020, Pew Research looked at the perception of antisemitism in the United States compared to five years prior, and 75 percent of those surveyed felt it had increased. In other words, antisemitism today is not just the result of Gaza; it started to increase in about 2015. Starting with that fact, we asked, is it because more people hold antisemitic views? Just 5 percent selected that, while 35 percent said it was rather because people with antisemitic views felt more free to express them. And then another 33 percent said it was both.

This coincides with the rise of Donald Trump. He didn’t invent antisemitism—antisemitism has been around for millennia—but Trump made it possible for many people who held antisemitic views to come forward and do it in a public way, sometimes even in polite society.

In your survey you asked if antisemitism would impact the way people usually vote—43 percent said it would. Of that segment, referring to the upcoming election, 17 percent said “I usually vote Democratic, but will now vote Republican” and 9 percent said “I usually vote Republican but will now vote Democratic.”

The 17 and 9 percent are from the 43 percent. In terms of all Jewish adults, it’s 7.3 and 3.9 percent, respectively. You have some Democratic Jews who are going to vote for Trump because of antisemitism, you have some Republicans who are going to vote for Harris because of antisemitism. This is less than a 4-point difference, so I wouldn’t make a big deal over this.

But there’s a narrative out now that Jewish voters in Pennsylvania could actually have a substantial effect on the outcome of the election.

There are about 350,000 Jews in Pennsylvania, which is 2.7 percent of the population. If a state is going to be won by 10,000 votes, and there are 350,000 Jews in the state, yes, convincing X number of Jews to switch from Democrat to Republican could have a significant effect.

The Republican Jewish Committee recently put out an ad in which three Jewish women sitting in a deli booth say they usually vote Democratic but are voting for Trump because “he’ll keep us safe.” Looking at your survey, these voters clearly exist—as do the fears about antisemitism the ad is tapping into. Is it fair to say the fears about antisemitism far exceed the experiences of antisemitism (not to downplay the experiences)?

Like many, I went to my synagogue on the High Holidays. And you’re sitting there seeing that they’ve doubled the guard duty. Yes, there is a lot of fear out there. I do wonder though how these Jews think that voting for the person who emboldened the antisemites is going to bring down the level of antisemitism. Boggles the imagination. It took Trump two years to fill the position of special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism that Deborah Lipstadt now holds. Basically, his attitude was, we don’t need this. Trump was the first to issue a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day that didn’t have the word Jew in it. (Of course, Jews weren’t the only victims of the Holocaust, but it was aimed at the Jews in particular, right?) Don’t [those voters] realize that the Biden administration is the one that has, in fact, dealt seriously with this issue? That, with Doug Emhoff, it launched a National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism? What Trump did was simply let people who have antisemitic feelings come forward and express them, and some of them have done so violently.

I’ve heard from some Jewish people, Democrats, who think the ad is antisemitic. How so?  

I think it’s the stereotypes they’re using. The older women in that ad sound like my grandmother, who’s been dead for forty years. They sound like Eastern European Yiddish speaking Jews. I think they did that on purpose, but that’s not the way most Jews outside of the ultra-Orthodox talk.