Gratz College offers doctoral degree in antisemitism studies

In her training to be a rabbi, Maya Glasser said, the subject of antisemitism never really came up — and that didn’t bother her.

“As a rabbi, I never thought I would need to know how to handle antisemitism,“ she said.

But in the aftermath of Hamas’ 2023 attack on Israel, she said, more and more of her congregants were seeking guidance on how to deal with antisemitic behavior that they and their children were experiencing.

That’s what prompted Glasser, 35, who leads a large Reform synagogue in Jacksonville, Fla., to enroll in a master’s degree program in antisemitism studies at Gratz College, which has long specialized in Jewish studies. Officials at Gratz, based in Montgomery County, billed the program launched last fall as the first of its kind in the United States.

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The college this summer also started a doctoral program in antisemitism studies, which it touts as the world’s first, and Glasser intends to move into that program.

Though the programs were in planning stages before the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the need for them has never been greater, said Ayal Feinberg, director of Gratz’s Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights and an associate professor of political science and antisemitism studies.

Organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League have been focused on quantifying and calling attention to what has been widely reported by the ADL and others as a rise in antisemitism, he said, and that is important.

“But what we need now is … somebody who has the capacity to solve it,” he said.

Very few people — he estimated fewer than 100 worldwide — are truly qualified to build an intervention system to combat antisemitism, Feinberg said.

“People long assumed that the Jewish studies discipline would be focused on issues related to antisemitism,” he said. “But in reality, Jewish studies as a discipline focuses on almost every other subject but antisemitism.

“That’s because of a concept known as ‘American Jewish exceptionalism,’” he said. “The idea is that the Jewish experience in the United States has been so much more positive than in other diaspora communities. As a result, Jewish contributions to politics, education, culture, and society have been emphasized, and Jewish studies in America has largely focused on celebrating that, unfortunately at the expense of a necessary expertise in antisemitism.”

Gratz was founded 130 years ago as the first independent college of Jewish studies in North America. It primarily offers online classes in graduate and doctoral studies and certificate programs.

Its signature program is Holocaust and genocide studies, which enrolls about 170 students and is the largest of its kind worldwide, said Lori Cohen, director of marketing. But the school also has secular programs in education, and just over half its student body is not Jewish, Cohen said.

The college’s offices were based in Melrose Park for years but recently relocated to Jenkintown. The school had an enrollment of 488 students in 2024-25, Cohen said.

Both the master’s and doctoral programs in antisemitism studies enroll about 35 students, including Bobbi Bittker, 51, a civil rights policy attorney and town council member from Bedford, N.Y.

She said the program already has given her insightful internship experiences, including serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism and helping to develop a K-12 curriculum on antisemitism with a group called Parents for Peace.

“That is why we are in this program, because we want to do meaningful work, and this is what’s happening right now,” Bittker said.

Bittker has a transgender child who just finished their master’s at Columbia University, which has faced criticism for failing to protect students from antisemitism and was the scene of large pro-Palestinian protests on campus over the last couple of years, resulting in arrests and scrutiny by President Donald Trump’s administration.

“I was more concerned about my child being out as a Jew rather than out as a transgender person,” Bittker said. “That says a lot of how things have been changing in the state of the world for Jews.”

Gratz’s antisemitism program is aimed at training people for professions in which combating antisemitism is critical, Feinberg said.

Rabbis, social workers, psychologists, medical professionals, lawyers, and educators are among the students. They are primarily from the United States but also Israel and the United Kingdom.

Liz Berger, 49, an antisemitism scholar with a background in social work and psychology who lives in Wayne, is in the doctoral program. She was raised Catholic but married a Jewish man, went to Israel for the first time in 2010, and converted to Judaism in 2018.

Over the years, she has had rising concerns about antisemitism and how it would affect her children. Hamas’ attack took her concern to a new level.

“The entire thing threw me off-kilter to such a degree I had a feeling that there was a lot more information, a lot more to be learned, to be studied, but didn’t know where to find it,” said Berger, who is a research consultant for the Anti-Defamation League.

Then she saw an ad in the Jewish Exponent for the Gratz program.

“Every class I’ve taken has promoted so much growth in me personally and professionally,” said Berger, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from American University and a master’s in social work from the University of Pennsylvania.

Because students are coming from different time zones, classes are asynchronous, meaning students can watch at their convenience and participate through discussion boards. But synchronous sessions are offered, too, Feinberg said.

Rachel Singer, who is enrolled in the master’s program, just completed her third year as director of the Klehr Center for Jewish Life at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster.

College campuses became ground zero for pro-Palestinian protests and encampments following Hamas’ attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent military response in Gaza. F&M didn’t have encampments or heated protests, she said, but she wanted to be better prepared to guide students and colleagues in coping with the controversy enveloping higher education and what she saw as antisemitism coming from both the political left and the political right.

“You’re getting almost punched from both sides,” Singer, 43, said. “It left me feeling like I personally wanted to be more of an educational resource to the college and an advocate on behalf of my students and understand what this turning tide of … antisemitism … actually means and how we can understand those frameworks and still be proponents of freedom of speech and freedom of expression on campus.”

The issue of what constitutes antisemitism on college campuses has been much debated, with some contending it is unfairly conflated with criticism of the state of Israel. But others have argued that Jewish students have been targeted and harassed by protesters, so much so that they have felt unsafe publicly identifying themselves as Jews.

Feinberg said he lectures on the “disaster” that has developed over trying to define antisemitism.

“Hate isn’t only dictated by intent, but also consequence,” he said. “And I think unfortunately, with antisemitism, unlike any other form of prejudice, our focus has been primarily on intent.”

It should be focusing on consequence, he said.

“At the end of the day, whether someone calls it antisemitism or tries to distinguish it from anti-Zionism, the core issue remains: If students don’t feel safe, protected, or comfortable enough to engage in their classroom, then something is seriously wrong — regardless of what we call it, we know that’s unacceptable.”