In times like these: I go to Tenebrae and reflect on anti-Semitism

I had this narrative about the direction of the increasingly pro-choice country. I feared that one day we would be targeted and imprisoned for our views.

Apr 21, 2025

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This piece is part of a series addressed to family and friends, looking at current political and social issues from the perspective of my studies and experiences. You can read the last part of this series here.

Dear Family and Friends,

On Friday, I attended Tenebrae at the Catholic Basilica in downtown Minneapolis. As has been tradition, one part featured a local Rabbi reflecting on Catholic-Jewish relations and the significance of the Triduum. She shared how her mother-in-law was protected and kept alive by a group of Catholic nuns during Nazi rule. During a time of extreme persecution, she noted the ways in which Catholics lived up to the teachings of Christ in protecting their Jewish neighbors.

This has not always been the case, she further shared. For the Jewish people throughout history, Good Friday has at times been a day of fear. During the Middle Ages, Christians in some communities would riot against Jewish communities, blaming them for the death of Christ. At times, this would include murder of innocent Jewish people. In some Christian nations, she told us, Jews would stay in their homes and lock their doors on Good Friday, afraid that they may be targeted.

Christianity and change

But, she continued, the world has changed. In 1965, twenty years after the Holocaust, Pope Paul VI released Nostra Aetate. He addressed historic Christian animus against the Jews by writing:

"True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures... Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone."

At the Tenebrae service, the Rabbi shared with us how anti-Semitism is not simply a remnant of the past. It endures today. In 2018, the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh was targeted in a mass shooting. Just before his attack, the shooter posted on Gab, a social media network. In his post he wrote about HIAS, a Jewish nonprofit supporting refugees. The post included: "HIAS likes to bring invaders that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered."

The rhetoric of the shooter at Tree of Life was not unique. A year later, a man would open gunfire in an El Paso Walmart. Shortly before doing so, the man posted on social media that the United States was experiencing a "Hispanic invasion." Like the Tree of Life shooter, that man was seeking to "protect" this country from "outsiders." The rhetoric was the same. But Hispanic people had been substituted for Jews.

At Tenebrae, the Rabbi spoke of dark times. But she insisted we not despair. Today, she said, Christians and Jews can work together. We can seek healing from past harms. We can recognize that historic Christian persecution of the Jews was a misuse of Christian teachings. The Jewish people have been a scapegoat throughout history. But Christians and Jews can come together to right these wrongs. She spoke of a council of leaders of religious communities in downtown Minneapolis, a space where Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others can come together, even in hard times, and be at one table, seeking ways to do good.

Scapegoating

Sitting in the pew at the Basilica, I thought about her words. She reflected on how Jews have been scapegoats, how anti-Semitism was and is an injustice, how Christians have played a central role in this scapegoating and injustice, but also how Christians in recent years have acknowledged these harms and worked with Jews towards healing. Then she mentioned the "Gaza War," and I anticipated where she was going next.

I thought that perhaps she would discuss the dynamics of Christian-Jewish relations, and then connect them to today's relationship between Israel and Palestine. I thought that she would connect the misuse of Christian teaching furthering anti-Semitism to the misuse today of anti-Semitism to attack so many in society.

She mentioned October 7, a horrible day of terrorist attacks on innocent men, women, and children in Israel, many of whom, even infants, were abducted. I wonder about the hatred that would look into the faces of innocent adolescents at a music festival and shoot them dead, that would do the same to women begging to spare their children in their homes, that would rip children away from their families and abduct them into underground tunnels, where many of them would die. It's not hard for Christians today to empathize with the grief of the Israeli people, as well as Jewish people around the world, in the wake of the October 7 attack.

At Tenebrae, the Rabbi helped us to make many connections across injustices. I anticipated next she would say that, just as the Jews were used as scapegoats and targeted for destruction, there was now a sort of twisting of anti-Semitism and anti-terrorism. I thought she would argue that today the Prime Minister of Israel seems to be using Hamas's status as a terrorist organization as a sort of scapegoat to justify the killing of more than 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza. “More women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades.” In the "Gaza War," Israel has killed Gaza children at a rate of one child every 45 minutes. Nearly two million innocent people in Gaza have suffered displacement, and they continue to lack clarity on where they can safely go. And Israel is blocking humanitarian aid. In order to block terrorists from getting food, Israel is also blocking millions of innocent Gazans from getting food. If not genocide in intent, this appears to be genocide in practice.

I anticipated that this Rabbi would argue that a sort of reverse scapegoating was occurring. "Fighting terrorists" in the form of Hamas is being used as an excuse for Israel to terrorize millions of Gazans, killing tens of thousands of civilians, destroying their homes, schools, and hospitals, displacing them over and over again, and blocking humanitarian organizations from bringing them food, water, and medication.

And I anticipated this Rabbi would argue that, in our country, "anti-Semitism" was being used as a sort of reverse scapegoat to attack immigrants and exert governmental control.

Pro-Life Chris

Before I get into that, what comes to mind next is my own pro-life activism and my time at Notre Dame. When I was applying for colleges, at first I told my parents there was no way I was going to Notre Dame. I had read the Newman Guide on Catholic colleges, and I wanted a school that was serious about its Catholic identity. For some reason I did end up applying, but I was dismayed when I found out Notre Dame had invited President Obama to give the 2009 commencement address. I could hardly believe it.

I was pro-life. And by pro-life, I mean I was pro-life. I believed (and still do) that human life begins at conception. I believed (and still do) that all human life has an inherent dignity and that we all have a responsibility to respect and promote that dignity.

I was always a kid who wanted to put principles into practice. I believed that abortion was the killing of a human life. I also believed that most women seeking abortion thought they didn’t have a choice, and that they might choose differently if they thought they had resources and support. When I was sixteen, I signed up to be trained as a Sidewalk Counselor.

The Planned Parenthood in my hometown is the Planned Parenthood, the one that made national news after its director suddenly became pro-life in a dramatic story, wrote a book, and then gained a sort of pro-life celebrity status. College Station is a place of pro-life happenings. In addition to the conversion of Abby Johnson, it was also the birthplace of 40 Days for Life.

In her book Unplanned, Johnson writes about the fanatics who had protested in front of her clinic. One often showed up as the grim reaper. Others had posters accusing those entering of being murderers. It was a dark accusatory crowd opposite Planned Parenthood.

The Sidewalk Counselor program sought something different. We were taught to be gentle in approach. Our role was not to shame people entering Planned Parenthood, but to approachably initiate conversations about other options. They taught me things like the value of removing your sunglasses for more human eye-to-eye interactions. (Even today, I find myself taking off my sunglasses sometimes when I meet people out on a sunny day.) We wanted to distinguish ourselves from the Grim Reaper, even if we had the shared goal of ending abortion. But to the Planned Parenthood staff, we were probably all just protesters harassing their clients and staff. Other abortion providers had been murdered by pro-life activists, and abortion clinics had been vandalized. We were probably seen as people whose views incited such violence.

By the time I was entering college, I was appalled that a Catholic university would invite the most pro-choice president in history to speak at commencement. When I entered Notre Dame, I made my adamant opposition to the President and his policies clear. I saw democrats as engaging in a sort of genocide against the unborn.

In 2012, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria gave a homily about those he saw as attacking the Church. He said,

"Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care. In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path."

I wrote a letter into Notre Dame's campus paper responding to the homily. I wrote of Bishop Jenky: "He has reminded us every tyrant was once a beloved leader, every policy of persecution was once seen as sensible legislation, violence is always preceded by a feigned peace." Like Jenky, I believed that Obama would usher in a wave of tyranny against Catholic institutions and the killing of the unborn at unforeseen scale. Like Jenky, I was deeply opposed to Obama's agenda when it came to abortion, contraception, and religious freedom.

I submitted many pieces into the campus paper. I was writing for the unborn, for the Church, and for my own sense of integrity. But I felt I was taking some risk in writing into the student paper. In my mind, I had this narrative about the direction of the increasingly pro-choice country. I feared that one day we would be targeted and imprisoned for our views, regardless of whether or not we had actually done anything violent or illegal. I now know that I was right to have those fears, but I was wrong about the subject of them. This year those fears became a reality, but not in the way I expected.

Free speech and pro-life President

Rümeysa Öztürk is a PhD student at Tufts University. She had received a Master’s degree from Columbia and was a Fulbright scholar. She has no criminal record, and Tufts has not alleged that she has taken part in any student protests that violate the law or University policy. Though a Turkish citizen, Öztürk had applied for and received a visa to pursue studies in the United States.

On March 28 of this year, individuals dressed in plainclothes approached Öztürk while she was on her way to dinner with some friends. As she screamed, a bystander asked if this was a kidnapping, and one of the individuals said they were the police.

Öztürk hadn't been notified that, days before, her student visa had been revoked by the U.S. State Department. Shortly after her arrest, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson stated that Öztürk's visa termination was because investigations had found she had engaged in activities in support of the terrorist group Hamas. But a DHS memo leaked to the Washington Post stated that the federal government didn't have enough evidence to actually support such links; it stated that there was not enough evidence of either pro-Hamas or anti-Semitic behavior from Öztürk.

To date, the only apparent evidence of such behavior is a letter to the campus paper that Öztürk had co-written with three other students supporting a resolution that had been passed by the Tufts Community Union Senate. The resolution had demanded "that the University acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar’s statements, disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel." In effect, the federal government had decided that students could be detained and prosecuted for writing into the campus paper against Israel's military activity in Gaza.

It's wild to see my past fears as a pro-life advocate come to fruition, but from today's self-proclaimed pro-life president. I can only imagine the outrage from pro-lifers were President Obama to have used his executive power to detain and deport pro-life activists from other countries because of editorials they wrote against abortion. But this is the precedent being set if Trump's administration succeeds in his aims here.

It is important to note the significant strides made by the pro-life movement due to the Trump presidency. When I was in college, I could barely dream of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The holdings in that case had been established precedent for decades. Republican nominees had held majorities in the Supreme Court before but had failed to overturn the case. But President Trump's pro-life agenda had prioritized Supreme Court nominees he felt could secure this moment. This moment came with the Dobbs decision in 2022.

But the integrity of the Trump position on unborn life can be questioned in his second term. (And the impact of Dobbs is yet to be seen; the number of abortions in the United States rose 9% the year after Roe was overturned.)

While campaigning, Trump promised that, as President, he would either have the government cover the cost of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) or have insurance cover the cost of it for Americans. IVF is a medical procedure where eggs are harvested from a woman and then fertilized in a laboratory. One of those embryos is then implanted into the woman, with the hopes that she will carry to term.

The number of embryos created from each round of IVF can vary significantly, but very conservative estimates suggest an average of at least four per round. Leaning on the higher side, an estimated 55% of IVF rounds will result in live births. The remaining embryos from each round will either die during or after implantation, be destroyed, or remain frozen for an indefinite amount of time. Some researchers suggest that Trump's proposal to cover the cost of IVF could result in 150,500 additional births, meaning the creation of more than 1.09 million embryos, and almost 1 million embryos will either die or be destroyed.

The pro-life position is that human life begins at conception. Therefore, all of these dead or destroyed embryos would be dead or destroyed human lives. Those dead or destroyed human lives as a result of IVF would roughly equal the number of deaths due to abortion in the United States annually. Ironically, the most conservative estimates suggest this pro-life President's agenda would double the medical ending of unborn human life in the United States.

The Trojan horse and the scapegoat

Evil is typically very good at constructing Trojan horses. Assuming the pro-life position is true, then the Trump regime is ushering in a "pro-life" agenda against abortion that has another agenda within it that would drastically increase unborn human deaths. Trump has not really thought through his position on the unborn. And his Catholic Vice President JD Vance does not seem interested in thinking through this either. For both, "pro-life" seems to be a political position on abortion, rather than a principled protection of unborn human life.

Columbia University recently received its own Trumpian Trojan horse. Citing the University's handling of anti-Semitism, the Trump administration recently cancelled $400M in funding to the University. Columbia quickly agreed to the administration’s conditions for receiving the funding--including changing its disciplinary procedures, placing an academic department under "academic receivership", and forbidding protesters from wearing masks. But rather than reinstating funding, the Trump administration came back with additional demands and is reportedly seeking federal oversight of the University.

Like the case of the graduate student detained and having her visa revoked over an article in her campus paper, the actions of the Trump administration towards Columbia are unprecedented in U.S. history in multiple ways. In one way, never before has a President negotiated in such bad faith, coming to a settlement after revoking funding, and then failing to reinstate funds after demands are met, and instead returning with more demands. In my area of business where I am regularly engaged in negotiations, we would consider parties doing this to be unreliable, untrustworthy, and unethical.

The academic receivership is also unprecedented. An academic receivership is an internal process leveraged by universities when a department has ongoing extreme dysfunction and is incapable of managing itself. A number of scholars have noted that this level of government intervention in an academic department at a private university is "unparalleled" in the modern history of U.S. higher education, and that it can best be compared "the Turkish government's centralized control of higher education during its 'hard authoritarian turn' in the 2010s."

In essence, the Trump administration seems to be attempting to leverage concerns about anti-Semitism as an opportunity to gain federal control over private institutions. Observing this, Harvard outright rejected similar demands laid out for it in a letter from the Trump administration. It later came to light that the Trump administration's demands were sent to Harvard by mistake. Not knowing this, Harvard publicly stated it would not concede to its demands. Rather than admitting its mistake when it became known, the Trump administration froze $2 billion in funding to the University.

Trying to make sense of what appears to be the shifting role of the government in the United States, I spoke with a constitutional law professor, a friend of mine with conservative philosophical leanings. I told him, "It must be nice to have a longer view of history. So that the present moment isn't as jarring, and you can see it within the larger picture of this country's history." He told me, "No, Chris. What we're experiencing is not something this country has seen before. Nixon is nothing compared to what's happening now."

A number of situations should give us pause when considering the seriousness of Trump's agenda against anti-Semitism. On January 29, President Trump issued an executive order (EO) on "additional measures to combat anti-Semitism." The concerns about a rise in ant-Semitism in the United States are well-grounded. Studies have found a striking increase in ant-Semitic incidents in the United States since the October 7 Hamas attack.

But the EO seemed to be lacking in executive sincerity. For example, it stated, "The Attorney General is encouraged to employ appropriate civil-rights enforcement authorities, such as 18 U.S.C. 241, to combat anti-Semitism." But the week before the EO was issued, the Justice Department ordered a freeze on all civil rights litigation, including filing any new complaints. That freeze made much of the EO just words without meaning.

Missed connections

It is very important to acknowledge the suffering of the Israeli and Jewish people as a result of October 7. It is very important to acknowledge the historic and present anti-Semitism throughout the world. It is very important to acknowledge the rise in anti-Semitism over the last couple of years in this country. And it is important to know what is anti-Semitism and what it is not.

As I sat at Tenebrae, listening to the Rabbi's words, reflecting on the misuse of Christian doctrine to unjustly oppress Jews, I anticipated where she would go next. I anticipated that she would argue there is something very similar today, a twisting of the idea of "combating anti-Semitism" in a way that actually leads to the oppression of people.

I think of an amicus brief filed by more than two-dozen Jewish groups in support of Rümeysa Öztürk. The brief stated: "The government… appears to be exploiting Jewish Americans' legitimate concerns about antisemitism as pretext for undermining core pillars of American democracy, the rule of law, and the fundamental rights of free speech and academic debate on which this nation was built." Ryan Bauer, a senior rabbi in San Francisco told the New York Times, "I don't like her statements [in the op-ed]--I think they're wrong... but the beauty of America is that we don't all agree with each other."

Likewise, Oscar Wolfe, a Jewish student at Columbia wrote an uncharacteristic op-ed into the campus paper shortly after President Trump made his demands of the University. It included:

"As a Jewish student at Columbia—one of the most Jewish schools in the Ivy League—I feel an obligation to point out that we are not exempted from the president’s attacks on the institution we attend. His maximalist approach hurts all students at Columbia, whether they spent last spring in the encampment or at the library. I am not claiming that Columbia doesn’t have an antisemitism problem—it does—but I do not believe that the Trump administration’s actions are motivated by a genuine desire to combat hatred of Jews. I believe that President Trump is using Columbia as a proxy for that enemy which he needs to justify his consolidation of power."

In his letter, Wolfe shared that many others--especially international students--are afraid to speak out against the Trump administration, because they worry they will be targeted by it next.

The Rabbi at Tenebrae never made these connections. She spoke. We clapped. I was glad to have heard her. But these things all echoed in my mind. Missed connections, gaps in the story of what is happening today. So often, we feel that we must choose between the Jews and the Palestinians, between Jewish students being harassed at college and Muslim children being starved to death in Gaza, between those grieving due to the events of October 7 in Israel and those grieving due to the events happening today in Gaza. Just as much of the world once thought they had to choose between the Jews and the Christians.

But we do not have to choose. We can see it all for what it is. And we can see the authoritarian leaders who will use whatever crisis they can to gain power.

In his final Urbi et Orbi address before his death this morning, Pope Francis shared:

“I express my closeness to the sufferings of Christians in Palestine and Israel, and to all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. The growing climate of anti-Semitism throughout the world is worrisome. Yet at the same time, I think of the people of Gaza, and its Christian community in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation. I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace!”

Even if I saw missed connections and gaps in the story of what we were told at Tenebrae, I do believe in the calling this rabbi presented to us: to see what is happening around us, to come to the table together, and even--or especially--in the darkest times, to persevere.

And this rabbi reminded us that Good Friday throughout history has been a time of darkness, both for Christians who remembered the death of Christ, and also for Jews who feared being blamed and persecuted because of this death. But Good Friday is not the end, she insisted. Easter Sunday comes, and a new day can come with it, for all of us. We must persevere in this darkness, and work towards a new day, even if we cannot yet see its light.

With Love,

Chris

Chris Damian writes

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