A day after JNS reported that Andrea Martin, a new Jewish human relations commissioner in Pennsylvania, hopes that the state will amend its statutes to include the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a measure to that effect.
Judith Schwank, a Democratic Pennsylvania state senator, introduced SB 1489 on Tuesday. The bill drew three Republican and six Democrat cosponsors and was referred to the state Senate’s state government panel. (JNS sought comment from Schwank.)
The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and, more recently, the state attorney general have adopted the IHRA definition, but it has not been codified in state law.
Martin told JNS on Wednesday that she had spoken with two of the bill’s cosponsors, one Democrat and one Republican, about the importance of the definition.
“We are all very excited about this development,” she told JNS.
Steve Rosenberg, regional director of the North American Values Institute in Philadelphia, told JNS that the state “has been trying to address antisemitism through limited legislation since 2014, and 12 years later, Jewish students are still paying the price for our failure to get serious about it.”
The bill would amend Pennsylvania’s consolidated statutes to include the IHRA definition and its contemporary examples of antisemitism. These include comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, applying a double standard to Israel by demanding behavior not expected of other democratic nations and claiming that Israel’s existence is racist.
“Everyone should support adopting the IHRA definition, and we should applaud the bipartisan effort behind this legislation,” Rosenberg told JNS.
“But defining antisemitism is not the same as confronting it,” he said. “We need transparency about what our children are being taught, accountability for the institutions responsible for educating them and real consequences when schools fail to protect Jewish students.”
“You can define a fire 1,000 different ways, but if nobody picks up a hose, the building still burns,” he told JNS.
