ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt discusses Jewish life in America

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt faced a palpably apprehensive audience on Wednesday when he introduced former White House adviser Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump.

The ADL awarded Kushner at its conference for his work in orchestrating the Abraham Accords during the Trump administration. Greenblatt began his introduction with a disclaimer: his relationship with Kushner has been disagreeable, and the administration in which he served was disagreeable.

Attendees shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Some left the room; others rose to receive Kushner with a standing ovation. People bristled as three protestors stood up at different points, but Kushner carried on with his prepared remarks. Some loudly booed when Kushner spoke directly about his father-in-law when he stated that Donald Trump is not an antisemite. 

The Jerusalem Post sat down with Greenblatt on Wednesday after Kushner's keynote address. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

The interview:

Do you agree with your choice to have Jared Kushner here today?

We've always sought to bring a range of speakers to our events, certainly across the spectrum. But we also bring people who are in political roles. So this year, for example, Attorney General Merrick Garland is speaking. Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, a special envoy for global antisemitism, also spoke earlier [Tuesday]. And indeed, we had former White House adviser Jared Kushner.

Now, I stand by that decision for a few reasons. First, Jared has been explicit. He has no role in the current campaign. He has said publicly that he will not serve in a future White House, and he is very focused on his business. So he has made the right statements in terms of not being a political actor in the current season. Did he used to be on the campaign and even the White House role, yes. Same with me. But that doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't do other things. And very specifically, this award was about the Abraham Accords. And it is indisputable, in my opinion, the Abraham Accords were super positive. Positive in terms of demonstrating the possibilities for peace in the region, positive in terms of enabling the sort of people-to-people connections that we didn't see after the Camp David Accords or even the Israeli-Jordan peace agreement. Particularly most positive because they've allowed Israel to maintain sort of open channels of communication with other countries i the region despite the hot conflict happening right now, post October 7.

So for all these reasons, I felt good about bringing Jared here. Now, I want to be clear: that because he spoke today doesn't absolve the prior administration for issues that we had with it and it doesn't preclude us from taking positions with a future administration. Merrick Garland and Deborah Lipstadt, both are working for President Biden. Jared is not working for former President Trump. President Biden is running again. We need to have both sides. That's the kind of unity I think that we need to model here that we won't allow those political differences from getting in the way of seeing the bigger picture

What does that unity look like if there are very real differences politically when it comes to the United States' involvement with the future of Israel?

Number one, recognizing that the fight against prejudice shouldn't be political, recognize that the push against antisemitism shouldn't be somehow anchored to your partisan leanings. That, to me, seems like a simple statement of fact. Number two, we can have a kind of unity among the Jewish people that doesn't mean we have to have unanimous opinions on everything. So you can have different views about a future Middle East peace arrangement.

By the way, you can have different views about domestic policies here. That shouldn't preclude us or prevent us from finding ways to work together now. And again, I want to be clear, that doesn't prevent us from having strong points of view. And having Jared here to speak about the Abraham Accords courts, which again, I think both the Trump administration and the Biden administration support. Who doesn't? Find me  a fact base that would prompt you not to support it. It's nonsensical to me. I think the Iranians don't support it.

I spoke with someone who questioned your decision to come out and say off the bat, I don't agree with Jared Kushner at all - but here he is. She said if you're having somebody you're giving an award to, then you should come out and unabashedly proclaim, here is the winner of this award.

I opened my talk by saying many people have asked me why, and then many people in the audience said yes, why? So I think it was clear, almost in a funny way, that people wanted to understand the logic. The real issue is well, why did you get so many questions in the first place? Because our country, generally, and the Jewish community, in particular, have been very divided in recent years.

Now, irrespective of voting patterns, I travel all the time. I go synagogue to synagogue, community to community, and I hear people tell me, 'Oh, I no longer see those friends. We go out to dinner, but we don't talk politics. I no longer talk to that member of my family.' I hear this everywhere I go. Again, voting patterns aside, I have observed enough that it's not anecdotal. There are deep divisions in our community. I am not someone who hesitates to call out President Trump when he does things with which I disagree. By the way, I worked in the Obama White House and l called out President Obama.

My job at ADL, and our role at ADL, is not to play for the red team or the blue team. It's to call balls and strikes. That's material to this line of conversation. Again, I didn't agree with many things that President Trump did, but I thought he did some things with which I agreed. But I want to make sure when I talk about the importance of unity and getting past these political issues that I am modeling that I value myself and that we're modeling that value as an enterprise. So I felt the need to explain to make sure people understand this is the logic, and to speak to this bigger issue which is, if you talk about the importance of community, what are you actually doing to build it?

You're in a position of leadership and power to make a bold gesture of unity and togetherness. We hear those words all the time, they feel almost meaningless to a point because what action can tangibly be met with that by your average person who just can't invite Jared Kushner to speak at their event?

It's a good question. I think it behooves all of us to try to reach across the divide. I was sharing with you the stories I hear everywhere I go about the family member people don't want to talk to, the other couple they don't have dinner with. You know what, how do you do this as an ordinary person? You need to see that guy for dinner. You need to talk about that.

We all need to do our part to reach out. I think all of us can find ways to reach across the divide. You don't need to be running a 4,000 person conference and inviting former White House advisors to be part of your program. You can do it at the Kiddush table, you can do it over a Shabbat meal. You can do it with your family members and friends. It doesn't necessitate some grand gesture. In fact, sometimes the most meaningful things are not the grand gestures. It's the small micro-interactions, if you will.

Another way that you can sharpen that skill: read something new, watch something different. Flip the channel. Open a different media outlet. It's not hard to get exposure in the kind of kaleidoscopic information environment we live in to other sources.

In conversations you have across the country, do you find that this is work people want to do? It's not easy work to challenge yourself to sit with those uncomfortable emotions and experience discomfort at that visceral level. That's something I'd assume that most people, if having the choice, would choose not to experience. The skill set to bridge a divide is complex. 

I think it's up to those of us in leadership roles at whatever station you are to find ways, whether you're modeling for your kids, your constituents, your supporters. I think it's super reasonable for you to point out, well, this stuff is hard for people to want to do. And I'm acknowledging I don't know that this is a first order of priority for everyone. But I deeply worry about division in our community. But I also think that it's easier than we might suppose. There's some degree of specialization around people who do this sort of cross-community, inter or intra-communal work for sure. But at the same time, this is stuff you learned in kindergarten: how to get along with people who are different from you, how to share in the sandbox, right?

Well, I think the biggest challenge is possessing the ability to listen and talk about something with such high emotion, process and make sense of your own emotions, and then be able to hold space for somebody else's equally challenging emotions. 

We have to figure that out. I think, and maybe I'm overstating it, but I just think we're Jewish - and our entire tradition is based on dissent. And look, it's certainly true. They're very intense feelings. But it's certainly true that over the course of centuries, there were different schools of thought, different followers of different rebbes who shared strong opinions, but they always knew they were Jews. And so I think we can come back to some of that, which is simpler than we make it out to be. And I hope that our rabbis and our chazanim and our synagogue presidents can model some of that behavior for those of us who are adults.

I hope that Hillel directors and the Chabad emissaries on campuses can model that for some of our younger people or the BBYO executives. I think it's not as hard as we might think, but it does take practice. And so we can start young. I think we can build this kind of muscle memory so we understand how to deal with people who are different from us. It turns out that it's not just a good skill to be present as a fully developed Jewish citizen; it's a good skill to have as a fully developed person in American society. I think these are skills that require practice, but with some degree of refinement, I think they have to have application inside our Jewish community and extensibility beyond.