At the end of May, the Biden administration released the first ever U.S. national strategy to counter anti-Semitism.

It outlines the administration's strategic approach, looks at the role of education in understanding what anti-Semitism is,

and the threats it poses to America. It outlines ways that the federal government can improve

the safety and security of Jewish communities. The report offers plans for countering

anti-Semitic discrimination online, in media, and in schools, and it describes the administration's vision

for partnering with various religious and civic groups to address anti-Semitic threats.

A great many Jewish organizations in the United States praised the effort, if not the strategy

itself, considering it entirely praiseworthy for the President of the United States to put

the weight of his office behind an integrated national strategy to restrict and roll back

the hatred of Jews in America. So often it has not been that way. So often, in history,

it has been the very governments to which Jews were subject that were themselves fueling or even carrying

out anti-Semitic attacks. Now it's the government that is trying to prevent anti-Semitic

attacks. In that general and historic sense, the existence of this report is yet another

example of why America has been such an exceptional home for its Jewish citizens.

But consider, too, the fact that such a strategy is now needed. Surely that's a sign and signal

of some very worrying trends in American culture and American public life. And however praiseworthy

the impulse behind this strategy might be, we might wonder whether the federal government

has the wherewithal to do any good

here, even if it has the best of intentions. Then, looking a little more deeply into the report,

yet other questions begin to emerge, questions having to do with the definition of anti-Semitism,

the strategic conception deployed to fight against it, the partners that have been enlisted to help implement

these initiatives, and suddenly, looking at all of this together, a considerably more complex and

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