---
title: "Op/Ed: What America, and Its President, Don’t Get About Anti-Semitism"
date: 2018-10-29T08:00:00-04:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/oped-what-america-and-its-president-dont-get-about-anti-semitism-81a4fe6b-7756-4252-8988-46a129ffcf85"
section: Articles
---
# Op/Ed: What America, and Its President, Don’t Get About Anti-Semitism

*October 29, 2018* — by [Jeffrey Herf](/author/jeffrey-herf)


> Historian Links Pittsburgh Shooter, Political Rhetoric to Millennia of Conspiracy Allegations Against Jews

*AP 18301095238646 1920x1080 — A crowd on the stairs of Sixth Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh spills up the hill and down the street for a vigil blocks from where a man shot 17 people at Tree of Life Congregation synagogue on Saturday.*

A gunman opening fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, killing 11 and wounding six, was the deadliest mass shooting of Jews in America. But the anti-Semitism it represented wasn't new at all, Jeffrey Herf, distinguished university professor of history, said in The Washington Post yesterday. In an op/ed, he laments the ignorance of President Donald Trump and the nation about how anti-Semitism works.

On the evening after the deadliest act of violence against American Jews, President Trump said that Jews had “endured terrible persecution” for centuries: “You know that. We have all read it. We have studied it.”

But his response to the horrific news that a gunman had killed 11 people and wounded six at Shabbat services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh made it clear that Trump doesn’t actually understand the nature of anti-Semitism at all.

Read the full op/ed here.


**Topics:** [People](https://today.umd.edu/tags/people)


**Tags:** [History](https://today.umd.edu/topic/history)


**Units:** [College of Arts and Humanities](https://today.umd.edu/topic/college-arts-and-humanities)