Within the secure confines of a gathering of Jewish fundraising and communal professionals, Sarah Hurwitz’s remarks about antisemitism and Holocaust training earned well mannered applause. By the point they made it to social media, they’d grow to be kindling in a rhetorical firestorm over the Gaza warfare — and the makes use of and abuses of Jewish reminiscence.
Hurwitz — a former speechwriter for each Barack and Michelle Obama who has written two books about her embrace of her Jewish identification as an grownup — was one among three panelists Nov. 16 on the opening plenary of the Common Meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington. They had been requested to deal with antisemitism and Jewish identification at a “crossroads.”
Talking from notes, she started her remarks with the pretty uncontroversial statement that “younger folks” are uncovered to a media weight-reduction plan that amplifies the perimeter, together with antisemitic influencers like Nick Fuentes. She additionally made the considerably extra contentious level that pictures of “carnage” in Gaza are making it arduous for defenders of Israel like her to debate “info and arguments” with youthful Jews.
However then she veered into speaking about Holocaust training, suggesting that the Jewish “wager” on selling Holocaust training had backfired, at the least as a vaccine in opposition to antisemitism.
“Holocaust training is totally important,” she mentioned. “However I feel it could be complicated a few of our younger folks about antisemitism, as a result of they study large, robust Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews, and so they suppose, ‘Oh, antisemitism is like anti-black racism, proper? Highly effective white folks in opposition to powerless black folks.’ So when on Tiktok, all day lengthy, they see highly effective Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not shocking that they suppose, ‘Oh, I do know the lesson of the Holocaust is you combat Israel. You combat the massive, highly effective folks hurting the weak folks.’”
Hurwitz’s framing could possibly be seen as descriptive, explaining how the emotional construction of Holocaust training — emphasizing victimhood, energy imbalance and trauma — leads some college students to align emotionally with Palestinians slightly than with Jews. She went on to recommend that ethical classes from the Shoah are sometimes taught in a method that’s too binary — oppressed vs. oppressor, powerless vs. highly effective — with out serving to college students perceive how antisemitism capabilities in advanced methods, even when Jews have sovereignty and energy.
However past the GA viewers, the backlash was quick and fierce. Instagram and Reddit stuffed up with posts accusing her of claiming, as one submit put it, “that it was a mistake to show Individuals that genocide is unhealthy.”
Jenin Younes, authorized director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, accused Hurwitz of utilizing Holocaust trauma to silence criticism of Israel’s army operations.
“Holocaust training isn’t failing,” she mentioned. “It’s succeeding — as a result of it’s educating younger folks to acknowledge oppression and name it out, even when it doesn’t serve political agendas.”
Progressive Jews additionally objected. “She’s not disagreeing with the ethical lesson that we must always stand in opposition to the highly effective harming the weak,” wrote Rabbi Sandra Lawson on Substack. “She’s upset that persons are making use of it universally. The lesson was supposed to remain contained, meant just for sure victims.”
The level of Holocaust training, wrote journalist Spencer Ackerman, is “[n]ot to exceptionalize Jewish struggling, however to activate solidarity. To acknowledge that there’s a continuum of atrocity perpetrated by dominant lessons in opposition to subjugated ones.”
Hurwitz’s remarks a couple of central pillar of Jewish advocacy could have been tailored for the JFNA crowd, made up of mainstream Jewish professionals uneasy about whether or not present instruments — Holocaust training, Israel journeys, anti-antisemitism coaching by pro-Irael teams — can stack up in opposition to the anti-Israel messages younger folks encounter. JFNA has joined a number of initiatives geared toward presenting a extra “nuanced” view of the warfare in Gaza, with the objective of countering deceptive or anti-Israel narratives within the mainstream and social media.
However Hurwitz additionally entered a decades-old — and, since Oct. 7, more and more fraught — debate over the targets of Holocaust training. Does “by no means once more” imply a common name to guard human rights and stop genocide, or is it a narrower name to verify Jews are by no means once more weak to mass homicide? And if the latter, does that someway inoculate Israel from accusations that it will possibly, within the curiosity of self-defense, oppress a weaker folks?
That debate was on the coronary heart of a dust-up in September, when Los Angeles’ Holocaust museum deleted an Instagram submit that proclaimed, “‘By no means once more’ can’t solely imply by no means once more for Jews.” The graphic confirmed six interlocked arms of various colours, one with an Auschwitz tattoo. One other slide declared: “Jews should not let the trauma of our previous silence our conscience.”
On its Fb web page, Jewish Federations of North American highlighted an excerpt from feedback Sarah Hurwitz made on the group’ s annual gathering in Washington on Nov. 16, 2025. (By way of Fb)
The museum defined that it deleted the submit as a result of it was “simply open to misinterpretation by some to be a political assertion reflecting the continued scenario within the Center East.” Certainly, appreciative supporters of Palestine and indignant supporters of Israel learn the unique submit as an announcement in regards to the demise toll and starvation disaster in Gaza.
Ben Ratskoff, an assistant professor at Occidental Faculty in Los Angeles, wrote that the museum’s retraction “displays a deeper flip away from the universalist strategy that has been on the coronary heart of institutional Holocaust reminiscence tradition because the Nineties.” Elie Wiesel, he famous, framed the Holocaust as “a Jewish tragedy with common implications and functions.” In 2000, the Stockholm Declaration, which based the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, additionally declared that “the Holocaust will at all times maintain common which means.”
“Instructing in regards to the Holocaust,” the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum explains on its web page, “can encourage college students to suppose critically in regards to the previous and their very own roles and obligations immediately.”
Israeli historian Amos Goldberg famous in July that Holocaust reminiscence within the West offers with a deep pressure between two sentiments. Within the first, “human rights-oriented” model, “the world pledged itself to human rights, to curbing nationalism, and to strengthening democracy as a lesson from the Holocaust.” The second sentiment, he writes, “was empathy towards the Jews as the first victims of Nazism, and their notion as Europe’s final ‘Different.’”
With Israel going through accusations of genocide in Gaza — together with from Israeli students like Goldberg, the Worldwide Affiliation of Genocide Students and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — these divergent classes of the Holocaust have been fiercely debated, and generally weaponized.
After the bloodbath of Oct. 7, supporters of Israel invoked the Holocaust to precise their emotions of vulnerability. “The murderers of Hamas are guided by the very same objective” because the Nazis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared at Israel’s official Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration in 2024. Many identified that Oct. 7 was the deadliest day for Jews because the Holocaust, implying a parallel of impact if not scope.
Palestinians and their supporters additionally invoked the Holocaust, a comparability that intensified because the warfare floor on and accusations of “genocide” made the comparability at the least implicit.
Jewish teams not solely denied the accusation of genocide, however rejected the comparability, whether or not made by Hamas or the United Nations particular rapporteur on Palestine.
“These comparisons aren’t merely misguided or exaggerated; they’ve a double-edged impact,” wrote Simone Roadan-Benzaquen, managing director of the American Jewish Committee’s Europe workplace, in January. “On one hand, they trivialize the Nazi atrocities by equating them with a up to date battle, tragic as it could be, that differs basically in goal and scope. On the opposite, they invert historic roles, casting Jews — victims of an unparalleled genocide — as immediately’s oppressors….
“The result’s an assault on reminiscence itself.”
Hurwitz served as chief speechwriter for Hillary Clinton in the course of the 2008 presidential marketing campaign, later as senior speechwriter to Barack Obama, and, from 2010 to 2017, as head speechwriter for Michelle Obama. After leaving authorities, Hurwitz wrote about her private journey from “lapsed” or “cultural” Jew to 1 extra deeply engaged with its core texts, rituals and historical past. Her two books on that journey have made her a well-liked draw on the Jewish lecture and podcast circuit.
It’s on no account clear if Hurwitz meant to say, as critics cost, that Holocaust training was a mistake as a result of it fostered sympathy for the Palestinians. She didn’t reply to a request for an interview.
However in her newest guide, “As a Jew,” printed in September, she does argue that Holocaust training fails if it doesn’t discover the complete historic scope of antisemitism, or, taking inspiration from the author Dara Horn, if it doesn’t present how Jews lived along with how they died.
“If the primary factor you already know about antisemitism is the Holocaust, it’s straightforward to get the impression that antisemitism originated someday within the twentieth century, and the Holocaust was a one-off — that out of nowhere, after just some a long time of hating Jews, the civilized world misplaced its thoughts and began killing them,” she writes.
Her guide additionally features a spirited protection of Israel, which places her within the crosshairs of anti-Zionists and different harsh critics of Israel. On the GA, Hurwitz could have been describing the restrictions of Holocaust training in educating about antisemitism, however she waded straight right into a combat about making use of the teachings of the previous to the crises of immediately.
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