Anti-Semitism bill supports neither Jews nor Christians

Last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis signaled that during his trip to Israel later this month, he will sign the recently passed “anti-Semitism bill,” which both prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion in the Florida public education system, and mandates that schools and colleges treat anti-Semitic actions in the same way that they treat racist actions.

Much of the discussion of the bill has centered on its consequences for speech on campus about the state of Israel. However, it seems to me that there is something far more obviously disturbing about the bill that has not yet surfaced in public discussion: how the bill’s definition of anti-Semitism paints Florida’s Christians.

The bill contains a long definition of anti-Semitism that closely follows one developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016. It includes as examples of anti-Semitism any “dehumanizing, demonizing … allegations about Jews as such.” Yet in the New Testament, when Jesus tells a group of Jews who do not believe in him “you are from your father the devil” (John 8:44), is this not dehumanizing and demonizing?

The bill names “accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoings … even for acts committed by non-Jews” as a kind of anti-Semitism. Yet in the New Testament, when the apostle Paul claims that “the Jews killed the Lord Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 2:14–15), is this not the very kind of accusation that the bill outlaws in Florida’s educational institutions?

The bill thus calls out Florida’s Christians as anti-Semites. Well-meaning Christians should be aghast. Jewish Floridians should also be worried. Since the bill makes religion a protected class in Florida’s educational system, one could reasonably interpret the bill to say that it protects a certain kind of anti-Semitic speech in schools: speech that quotes the verses cited above, or even perhaps any speech that affirms the sacredness of the entirety of the New Testament.

This is hardly an act of support for the state’s Jews. The Florida Senate passed its version of the bill only two days after the shooting in a synagogue in Poway, California, which killed one person. Several state senators explicitly spoke of that shooting when they passed the bill.

However, as a recent article in the

Washington Post has detailed, the shooter went into the synagogue with the intent to kill in part because of what the New Testament says about Jews’ guilt for having killed Jesus of Nazareth. The shooter in a Pittsburgh synagogue last October expressed similar sentiments on social media.

The bill’s sponsors say they care about Jews’ safety, yet they do not seem to be particularly interested in protecting

Jews from a kind of speech that has motivated their killers.

All religious traditions have their troubling texts. Figuring out how to minimize their negative consequences is the responsibility of religious communities, not the government. If DeSantis really wants to express solidarity with Florida’s Jews, and with its Christians who nobly struggle with how to read the New Testament as a loving text, he will not sign the bill on his trip to Israel.

All religious traditions have their troubling texts. Figuring out how to minimize their negative consequences is the responsibility of religious communities, not the government.