Executive Summary
The Shofar Report is a call to defend both democracy and Jewish safety. It is the Nexus Project’s answer to Project Esther, which is the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for using weaponized claims of antisemitism to undermine democratic institutions.
We reject that vision. For Nexus, democracy and Jewish safety are inseparable, and protecting democracy is a foundational strategy for combating antisemitism.
The Shofar Report offers recommendations to strengthen protections for civil rights and democratic institutions, invest in education, and build cross-community alliances, including tangible steps that policymakers and community leaders can and should take to achieve these goals, including:
- Fully fund comprehensive education initiatives — including Holocaust education, media literacy, and programming that teach about diverse Jewish contributions to American society, as well as the history of antisemitism alongside other communities’ histories.
- Ensure vigorous enforcement of existing civil rights laws by providing adequate funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the Department of Justice’s civil rights programs, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s activities.
- Focus enforcement on clear cases of discrimination and harassment while protecting political expression and academic freedom.
- Secure funding for nonprofit security grants and ensure that grantees and sub-grantees are not beholden to an administration’s ideological whims on issues like diversity or immigration.
Implementing these recommendations requires sustained commitment to democratic values and rejection of authoritarian shortcuts that leave communities more vulnerable. Success means fewer antisemitic incidents and hate crimes; a society more knowledgeable about Jewish history and antisemitism; stronger interfaith and intercultural relationships; and communities more resilient against extremist recruitment. In short, success looks like democracy.
These recommendations are followed by essays addressing urgent challenges: Rabbi Seth Limmer on ensuring Jewish safety; Amy Spitalnick on rejecting the false choice between protecting Jews and protecting democracy; Hannah Rosenthal on the links between antisemitism and xenophobia; David N. Myers on defending academic independence; Eric Ward on how attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion fracture pro-democracy coalitions; Judith Lichtman on resisting cynical claims of antisemitism used to weaken civil society; and Dov Waxman and Jeremy Ben-Ami on how US foreign policy hinders efforts to combat antisemitism.
Finally, the Shofar Report turns to a series of in-depth essays that trace the forces shaping this moment. Lila Corwin Berman examines how the historical narrative of American exceptionalism for Jews obscure antisemitism’s ties to other hatreds. Itamar Mann and Lihi Yona explore how policing criticism of Israel risks placing Jewish identity in the hands of courts. Joshua Shanes traces the persistence and manipulation of antisemitic tropes, including their use to deflect criticism. And Irwin Kula reflects on why younger Jews are challenging the architectures of safety and power embraced by older generations. Together, these essays deepen our understanding of the past and present — and give us language for imagining a better future.
This is the Shofar Report. Now is the time to heed its call.
Table of Contents
Policy Recommendations: Fighting Antisemitism by Protecting Democracy
Antisemitism and Jewish Safety
Antisemitism and the Attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Antisemitism and the Attack on Civil Society
Antisemitism and US Foreign Policy
A Language for and From Here: Introducing the Shofar Report, Part II
Antisemitism in the “Golden Land”?
Governing Jews: Antisemitism, Pluralism, and the Role of Law in the Trump Era
© 2025 The Nexus Project
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Introduction
Jonathan Jacoby
Jonathan Jacoby is National Director of the Nexus Project
Every Jewish New Year, the blows of the shofar are meant to be a wake-up call — a summons to our conscience, a reminder of what has been, and of the work still to be done.
It is in that spirit that the Nexus Project presents the Shofar Report: an assessment of what is happening to this country; how Jews, antisemitism, and its trivialization and weaponization shape this moment; and what must be done to confront antisemitism and reverse America’s democratic descent — intertwined challenges we can no longer ignore.
On October 7, 2024 — one year after Hamas attacked Israel, killing over 1,000 Israelis, taking over 200 hostages into Gaza, and reigniting global fears of antisemitism — the Heritage Foundation unveiled Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.
Despite its name, Project Esther is not a strategy for confronting rising anti-Jewish prejudice, discrimination, or violence. Rather, it is a blueprint for weaponizing the politicized charge of antisemitism to advance the goals of its ideological forebear at the Heritage Foundation: Project 2025. Project Esther and Project 2025 share a single goal: dismantling liberal democratic institutions in favor of reactionary authoritarian control. The Trump administration appears to be using both.
Though framed as a national strategy, Project Esther is little more than a partisan manifesto. It is a blunt instrument intended to advance a reactionary agenda by conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, equating pro-Palestinian advocacy with support for terrorism, and portraying progressive institutions as hotbeds of Jew-hatred. Rather than offering real solutions to rising antisemitism, it repurposes Jewish safety as a political weapon aimed squarely at dissent, diversity, and democratic norms.
On October 7, 2024 — one year after Hamas attacked Israel, killing over 1,000 Israelis, taking over 200 hostages into Gaza, and reigniting global fears of antisemitism — the Heritage Foundation unveiled Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.
Despite its name, Project Esther is not a strategy for confronting rising anti-Jewish prejudice, discrimination, or violence. Rather, it is a blueprint for weaponizing the politicized charge of antisemitism to advance the goals of its ideological forebear at the Heritage Foundation: Project 2025. Project Esther and Project 2025 share a single goal: dismantling liberal democratic institutions in favor of reactionary authoritarian control. The Trump administration appears to be using both.
Though framed as a national strategy, Project Esther is little more than a partisan manifesto. It is a blunt instrument intended to advance a reactionary agenda by conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, equating pro-Palestinian advocacy with support for terrorism, and portraying progressive institutions as hotbeds of Jew-hatred. Rather than offering real solutions to rising antisemitism, it repurposes Jewish safety as a political weapon aimed squarely at dissent, diversity, and democratic norms.
Project Esther’s goal is not to make American Jews safer. It is to dismantle American democracy.
Under the banner of fighting antisemitism, the Trump administration rejected the Biden administration’s landmark National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which reflected extensive input from Jewish institutions and individuals across the political spectrum. Instead, it deployed Project Esther’s framework to bolster its broader anti-democratic agenda. (Project Esther, incidentally, had almost no input from American Jewish groups.)
The Department of Education has launched investigations into universities not to protect Jewish students, but to suppress pro-Palestinian advocacy and dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The administration has also pressured law firms, businesses, and corporations to abandon DEI policies. In both cases, accusations of antisemitism serve as a pretext to reshape internal practices and enforce ideological conformity.
History demonstrates that civil liberties, equal protection under the law, and open political expression are among the most effective safeguards for Jewish communities.
Even if Project Esther sincerely aimed to fight antisemitism, its strategy would still be funda- mentally flawed. Abandoning democratic norms does not protect Jews; it endangers them. History demonstrates that civil liberties, equal protection under the law, and open political expression are among the most effective safeguards for Jewish communities. Undermining those foundations in the name of Jewish safety ultimately leaves all minorities — including Jews themselves — more vulnerable.
In the pages that follow, we outline a strategy for combating antisemitism by protecting democracy. We begin with recommendations for policymakers and community leaders, followed by essays examining how charges of antisemitism are being used to weaken democratic institutions and civil society — and how real, lasting Jewish safety depends on defending democratic values. These are followed by analytical essays on Jewish American history and politics, each seeking to help the reader understand how we got here and how we might find our way forward.
We hope these essays offer guidance for community leaders and policymakers as we confront these challenges in the New Year — and that they empower us, as individuals and as a collective, to answer the shofar’s call.