I felt optimistic as I walked into the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., to attend the Religious Liberty Commission hearing earlier this month. The topic—religious liberty in an era of rising antisemitism—was urgent. And I was eager to hear from the respected leaders from various faith communities who make up the commission, including Dr. Phil McGraw, Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik, Rev. Franklin Graham and others appointed to serve under U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
One commissioner I did not recognize was Carrie Prejean Boller. I always welcome strong female voices in conversations about religious liberty and was eager to hear her perspective.
The hearing began with a thoughtful discussion of constitutional protections, protected speech, unlawful harassment, the First Amendment and Title VI in relation to Jewish students facing discrimination. Dr. Phil validated what he had personally witnessed on college campuses. Graham asked probing questions about the cultural roots of rising antisemitism, prompting discussion about the oppressor versus oppressed framework increasingly embedded in Gen Z discourse, one that often recasts Jews as powerful and therefore unworthy of protection.
About 90 minutes in, Boller addressed Rabbi Yitzchok Frankel, a young Orthodox rabbi, the grandson of Holocaust survivors and himself a victim of antisemitic harassment at the University of California, Los Angeles. In doing so, she introduced Gaza and genocide into the conversation.
At first, I assumed she was setting up an opportunity for panelists to explain how modern anti-Zionism often functions as contemporary antisemitism. Instead, her tone shifted. She asked, “Are you an antisemite if you are not a Zionist?” Rather than approaching this topic with curiosity, it was asked with an accusatory tone.
Watching that exchange, I felt the air change. She then turned to Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, and declared, “As you know, I am a Catholic. Catholics do not embrace Zionism. Are all Catholics antisemites?” She went further, stating she does not believe that the modern-day State of Israel has biblical significance and asserting that opposing Zionism should not be conflated with antisemitism.
In that moment, the theological framing mattered.
For centuries, Jews were persecuted under the charge of deicide—the false accusation that the Jews killed Jesus. That doctrine fueled pogroms, expulsions and forced conversions, and it laid the groundwork for centuries of marginalization in Christian Europe. Only after the Holocaust did the Catholic Church, through Nostra Aetate at Vatican II, formally reject collective Jewish guilt.
But the theological delegitimization of Jews did not end with the rejection of deicide. Historically, denying Jewish spiritual legitimacy often evolved into denying Jewish national legitimacy. If Jews were framed as spiritually displaced, wandering or rejected, then the idea of Jewish sovereignty in their ancestral homeland could be dismissed as unnecessary or even improper.
Today, when someone argues that Jews may practice their religion but have no legitimate connection or right to the modern State of Israel, it echoes that older pattern. It separates Judaism from Jewish peoplehood. It reframes a 3,000-year connection to the land of Israel as political opportunism rather than historical continuity. And it subtly revives the idea that Jewish identity must remain confined to private faith rather than recognized as a living civilization with national expression.
When those theological fault lines are casually reopened, particularly in a hearing on religious liberty, the historical weight is visceral. And it is a reminder that when religious narratives intersect with civil-rights protections, history matters.
I looked at rabbis Soloveichik and Berman, two men I deeply respect. I could see on their faces a feeling Jews know all too well: the moment you realize that you are no longer engaged in policy debate but are instead defending your legitimacy.
Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, engaged forcefully when the accusations resurfaced, explaining that slurs like “dirty Jew” are used to portray Jews as other, and such rhetoric is on the same level as Christians see taking the Lord’s name in vain. Christian leaders referenced Vatican II, quoted recent popes affirming the Catholic Church’s rejection of anti-Jewish theology and underscored the shared Judeo-Christian foundation of American values. Commissioners and panelists alike rejected the idea that anti-Zionism exists in a vacuum divorced from antisemitism.
It mattered that the narrative did not go unanswered, particularly by Christians and other allies, because history teaches us what happens when it does.
In Germany, Jews were integrated professionals, lawyers, doctors, accountants and business owners with deep friendships among their Christian neighbors. The shift did not begin with violence. It began with rhetoric and intellectual arguments that normalized antisemitism.
Antisemitism does not always arrive draped in swastikas or keffiyehs. It can—and does—happen anywhere. But that made the moment particularly unsettling and unexpected was the setting.
This was not a fringe rally. It was a federal commission hearing on religious liberty in Washington, D.C., in 2026. What unsettled me most was not volume or theatrics. It was the sense that Boller was not there to listen, learn, grapple with history or understand Jewish vulnerability.
When someone is uninterested in truth, when persuasion is no longer the goal, debate becomes a performance. My concerns were validated when, two days later, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chairs the commission, removed her. He made clear that hijacking a religious liberty hearing to advance a personal agenda was unacceptable.
While I am relieved at this result, constitutional protections are not self-executing. Title VI must be enforced, and the First Amendment must be properly understood. Religious liberty must apply to Jews as fully as it applies to anyone else. And when antisemitism surfaces, especially in polite, intellectual or theological form, it must be confronted calmly, factually and firmly. We must refuse to normalize ideas that history has shown can metastasize when left unchallenged.
I walked into the Museum of the Bible expecting a policy discussion. I left reminded that religious liberty is preserved not by rhetoric alone, but by courage, accountability and the steady insistence that Jews, too, are entitled to equal protection under the law.
