For many Jews right now, fear and frustration are accompanied by something else: a heightened awareness that safety cannot be assumed and must be built intentionally.
In the wake of rising antisemitism — on campuses, online, and in public spaces — many Jewish individuals have experienced moments of isolation or uncertainty, particularly when trusted friends and support networks have remained silent . For some, those moments feel deeply personal; for others, they reflect broader communal concerns about belonging and security in an increasingly polarized environment.
According to 2024-2025 findings from the Anti-Defamation League, more than half of respondents said they believed “most non-Jewish Americans would not stand with Jews if antisemitic violence were to occur.” That perception underscores the urgency of strengthening relationships before crisis moments, not retreating from them.
That urgency is shaping the work of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s Center to Combat Antisemitism, where interfaith partnerships are not viewed as symbolic gestures, but as core strategy for communal safety.
“There’s a narrative in our community right now that we’ve been abandoned,” said Jason Holtzman, chief of the Jewish Federation’s Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC). “That feeling is real, and it deserves to be acknowledged. At the same time, professionally, I’ve also seen something else - years of relationship-building showing up in meaningful ways. ”
Holtzman recalled that in the days following Oct. 7, calls came not only from Jewish leaders, but also from other faith leaders and elected officials asking how they could support the Jewish community. Those responses, he emphasized, were not spontaneous. They were the result of sustained, intentional interfaith relationship-building — work now understood as essential infrastructure for Jewish safety.
For Holtzman, effective interfaith work begins with honesty and consistency. One of the Center to Combat Antisemitism’s upcoming initiatives is an interfaith mission to Israel and the West Bank, bringing together more than a dozen rabbis and Christian clergy.
“The goal isn’t agreement, it’s relationship” Holtzman said about the mission, which included pre-mission learning sessions for the participants to build trust and shared language before traveling. “So when the next crisis hits — and it will — rabbis will have pastors they can call and vice versa. People they’ve walked through Israel with, wrestled with hard questions alongside.”
That emphasis on relationship as protection is echoed by Co-Director Majid Alsayegh of the Office of Religious and Ethnic Interests at the University of Pennsylvania and the chair of the board of the Dialogue Institute.
“We are living in an era where everyone is a publisher on social media,” Alsayegh said. “Too often, misinformation is weaponized by digital algorithms in ways that reinforce fear, hatred and division.”
Alsayegh asserted, dialogue is not a feel-good exercise, but a leadership skill — one that must be practiced intentionally across differences. Alsayegh and his colleagues have partnered with Holtzman and the Jewish Federation’s JCRC in schools and organizations throughout the region, modeling how person-to-person engagement can counter bias and hate.
“We show how important it is to humanize and respect each other first,” he said. “We may not agree on certain issues, but we often discover how much common ground actually exists.”
For Executive Director Reverend Todd Stavrakos of Pathways for Middle East Peace, the work of interfaith partnership is now more important than ever.
“Over the last decade, we’ve seen an exponential increase in division,” Stavrakos said. “We talk about silos and echo chambers, but what’s really happening is that we no longer know one another. Instead, we project who we think the other is.”
That breakdown, he said, has had a particularly damaging impact on the Jewish community, as stereotypes and conspiracy theories fill the void left by lost relationships.
Pathways has partnered with the JCRC to renew and reestablish relationships between local Protestant clergy and rabbis — not by avoiding difficult conversations, but by engaging them directly.
“This is life-giving work,” Stavrakos said. “We are not shying away from conflict. We’re seeing each other as human beings, created with dignity and complexity.” Stavrakos will help lead the upcoming interfaith trip to Israel in February, an experience he described as only the beginning. "The real work happens after,” he said. “When communities come home, study together, learn together, and show up for one another.”
Across these leaders, a shared message emerges: Jewish safety cannot rely on isolation, or any single strategy alone. Leaders at the Jewish Federation emphasize that safety is layered. Safety training and protocols can deter immediate harm, but the conditions that allow antisemitism to spread in the first place must also be addressed. “Most moments of harm don’t start with violence,” Holtzman said. “They start with rhetoric, misinformation, and dehumanization.”
This is where interfaith partnerships can matter the most, as they often serve as an early line of defense by noticing troubling language, interrupting false narratives, and speaking up in spaces where Jewish voices may not be present. In a media-driven environment which often rewards outrage, Alsayegh noted, those personal connections become even more important: “That human connection is what interrupts the cycle.”
For faith leaders like Stavrakos, that shared responsibility is both practical and moral. "When we show up for one another, we are quite literally looking out for each other,” said Stavrakos. “Not just after something happens, but before.”
In practice, that can mean clergy checking in during moments of tension, congregations offering visible solidarity when incidents occur, or partners challenging antisemitism within their own spaces.
“We don’t need everyone to agree with us on everything,” Holtzman noted, “But we do need people to know who we are, what we stand for, and to reject extremism and hate.”
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To learn more about the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s Center to Combat Antisemitism, visit jewishphilly.org/center. To report antisemitism, visit jewishphilly.org/report.