​In recent decades, disputes over religious freedom and the treatment of religious minorities in the United States have typically focused on government actions that impose burdens on religious practices. The U.S. Supreme Court has been increasingly clear in its decisions that people of faith must be accorded the respect outlined by the Constitution.

Americans know that there are many parts of the world where religious controversies are far more dangerous and even deadly.

The recent depraved terrorist attacks on Israel have forced us to confront this horrifying reality in the starkest way. Descriptions of the attacks are almost unimaginable, echoing the pogroms and Nazi violence that seemed part of a dark past.

Antisemitic beliefs and practices, though, have not gone away. Antisemitism is “persecuting Jews and denying them the right to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else.” The perpetrators of the recent abhorrent attacks are motivated by the poisonous idea that Jewish people are not deserving of the basic respect and dignity that should be extended to all human beings. As Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks has spoken of and explained, “as antisemitism has mutated, so has its legitimation. Each time, as the persecution descended into barbarity, the persecutors reached for the highest form of justification available.” Where once this abhorrent bigotry would have been justified on religious or racial grounds, recent manifestations invoke anticolonialism.

One of the most heartbreaking aspects of the current war for Americans is to see other Americans, including in our universities, applaud, justify or attempt to provide “context” in ways that minimize moral depravities that can never excused.

This is heartbreaking because it is such a direct repudiation of the aspirations at the core of our nation’s noblest aspirations, including religious freedom.

With the ratification of the new U.S. Constitution in June 1788, elections were scheduled to take place in December 1788 and January 1789. George Washington was elected as the nation’s first president and began his service in March 1789. Just over a year later, in August 1790, Washington traveled to Newport, Rhode Island (the state had only ratified the Constitution a few months before) with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and others. Among the letters of welcome given to the president on his trip was one from Moses Seixas, warden of the Jewish congregation in the city.

Seixas’ inspiring letter included this passage:

Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People — a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance — but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship.

The reference to prior deprivation of rights was not merely a flourish, the city’s synagogue (the oldest in the nation, having been completed in 1763) included a trap door which “represents the Marrano tradition of remembering the perils of Jews living in Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition and having to flee from soldiers of the Holy Office at a moments (sic) notice.”

George Washington’s letter in response is striking in that it borrows Seixas’ characterization to describe the policy of the new nation:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

These principles were codified in the First Amendment ratified the next year.

Utah has been characterized by a “long-standing and historic bond between Judaism and the greater Utah community at-large.” A news report explains, “Jewish settlers came to Utah, or the territory of Deseret, as it was known then, not long after the first pioneers. They came because word had spread as to how friendly pioneer settlers were toward them.” In 1919, Utah elected a Jewish governor, Simon Bamberger (founder of Lagoon). Even here, though thankfully relatively rare, vandalism and other antisemitic incidents occur.

Guarantees of religious freedom and equal treatment in our Constitution and other laws, though, are only as strong as the commitment of most Americans to them. Despite the inspiring words in the exchange between President Washington and Moses Seixas, that commitment has often fallen short of the aspiration. Antisemitism, manifest in attitudes and actions as well as in episodes of horrific violence, has been an ugly feature of our nation’s history.

Rabbi Sacks taught that antisemitism is “the world’s most reliable early warning sign of a major threat to freedom, humanity, and the dignity of difference.” Thankfully, many people of faith in the United States recognize this and reject antisemitism.

The moral virus of antisemitism, though, is still alive. Perhaps some of the surge in antisemitic attitudes in the wake of the attacks on Israel is the unthinking adoption of trendy attitudes current in some academic circles. Some is, unfortunately, more entrenched. Whatever its source, we must recognize it as a great evil to be challenged and, where it may have infected any of our thinking, totally abandoned.

Government policies and foreign relations are appropriate subjects of civil debate, but any tinge of dehumanization or justification of violence against Jews (or any other group) cannot be accepted as a part of those debates. Such beliefs are not just the domain of crank. They lead to atrocities that all are obligated to oppose and prevent where we can.