September 12, 2025
Last week, I was welcomed into Worthington Kilbourne High School to present to the American Thought and Political Radicalism Course. It is a semester course elective for seniors and has been taught in Worthington Schools since the 1970s. The course is an important opportunity for students to learn and understand how political thought and radical ideas have developed in this country. Students are exposed to speakers who present ideas that are extremely radical. Such ideas have included flat earthers, neo-Nazis, members of the KKK, among others. To be included as one of the speakers feels interesting because I don’t consider myself a “radical.” It is an honor that the instructor feels confident in me to present to his students. (I will also present to the Thomas Worthington students in October.)
I am invited each semester to teach about the development of antisemitism. When I began presenting on this subject three years ago, it was in the aftermath of the infamous Kanye West X post in which he claimed he was going to go “death con 3” on the Jews because of our “agenda”. It was a classic form of antisemitism, depicting both a threat to Jewish well-being and also reflecting an age-old notion of a Jewish agenda that would threaten existing power structures. When I present, I teach about classic antisemitic tropes and myths. I discuss the Tree of Life shooting and the factors that motivated Robert Bowers that dark Shabbat morning in October 2018. I also discuss our security needs.
Now, in recent years, I have added an in-depth look at antisemitism on the left as it pertains to Israel. I have modified my presentation to reflect the symbolism that indicates antisemitism. Yossi Klein HaLevi offers the idea that the Jew is the symbol of everything evil in society. In pre-Holocaust Europe, the Jew was a Christ killer. In Nazi Germany, the Jew was the ultimate race polluter. In the former Soviet Union, the Jew was the capitalist. Now, in the age of universal human rights, the Jew is a White Settler Colonialist and racist. Antisemitism is the ultimate chameleon, changing its color and form to depict anything that is evil in a given moment.
As I enter these classrooms, I know that most of our young people get their news on Instagram and TikTok; often taking form as a series of short memes or videos. I am fearful that their minds are already pre-disposed to radical ideas that have grown on social media. I was comforted to know that many of these young people had never heard of the phrase “Globalize the Intifada” – because they had not seen it on social media – and I had the opportunity to share with them what it means and why it was problematic. As I have collaborated with many of our congregants to do the sacred work of partnering with our schools, I have found that this kind of learning is missing from most curricula; there just isn’t time. I wish I had the time and capacity to present in every high school; I also wish I was given an invitation. Most young people living near us do not know many Jews. It is just the nature of living in the community that we do. Last year, I modified my presentation to also give a brief overview of who Jews are and explain our core beliefs. I feel that this is important to help show that we are not evil people that we are sometimes made out to be. Having the opportunity to teach about antisemitism gives me hope that these young people will take these ideas and help shape a better future.
The Talmud offers a principle called mipnei darchei shalom – for the sake of peace. I enter these classrooms with the hope that through knowledge, education, and truth, we will build a pathway to peace and a better future for us all.
With that in mind, I want to express my sadness over the continued political violence that is festering in this country. We could list countless acts of violence that have targeted elected leaders, political activists, business leaders and others. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is another example – in a long list of political violence – of the radicalization of our actions. David Graham wrote in the Atlantic in the aftermath of yesterday’s assassination: Scholars have noted that assassinations occur most frequently in countries with “strong polarization and fragmentation” that “lack consensual political ethos and homogeneous populations (in terms of the national and ethnic landscape).”
That’s an accurate description of this moment. American politics today are dangerous not merely because they are polarized, but also because they are so widely divided. No party or side is able to win an enduring political advantage, which produces a constant back-and-forth—what the scholars John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck have called “calcification.” Partisans on both sides believe that the stakes of each election are existential—for their way of life and perhaps even for their actual life. Conspiracy theories, including claims of election fraud, are common.
People who have concluded that they are powerless to stop politicians and policies they oppose are killing, trying to kill, or threatening to kill CEOs, Supreme Court justices, judges, members of Congress, Jewish people. Although political violence and support for it have been a larger problem on the right for the past few decades, in recent years, there have been a number of prominent acts of left-wing violence.
As a society, we must find other ways to respond to disagreement. We need to seek a path that promotes the virtues of listening, education, and problem solving rather than vilification and the pursuit of power. It is my hope that opportunities like the course taught in Worthington Schools will help promote opportunities for discussion rather than violence.
As Shabbat arrives in the world this evening, may the vision and taste of The World to Come help us nurture the values in ourselves that can build this sacred vision.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rick Kellner