Photos: Darrell Owens Photography

By JCRC Staff
June 19, 2026

At JCRC, the heart of our work is something simple but powerful: telling the Jewish story. 

For decades, JCRC has brought that story directly to thousands of people in schools, workplaces, houses of worship, and communities throughout our region – helping others understand who we are, what we believe, and how our stories connect us to one another. 

In the wake of October 7, we rose to meet a pressing need: empowering our young people to find their voice and deepen their understanding of the peoplehood to which they belong. 

Our conversation with Sarah Hurwitz at the 2026 JCRC Annual Event affirmed for us how vital this work is, especially now. At a time of rising hatred and misunderstanding of Jews and Israel, we are continually investing your support into rising to this moment. Sarah’s message was incredibly clear, when Jews know their story, they cannot be diminished by hatred. 

Reclaiming our story 

Sarah is an extraordinarily gifted communicator. She served as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama and as Chief Speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama, helping shape some of the most memorable public conversations of our time. 

In her thirties Sarah began a journey of Jewish discovery. She shares this journey in her book Here All Along, which introduced her readers to the wisdom, depth, and enduring relevance of Jewish tradition. In the years since, she has become a powerful and compelling voice helping Jews reconnect with their heritage and helping others better understand Jewish life. 

Seated on stage of our Annual Event in the keynote conversation with our Deputy Executive Director Ethan Roberts, Sarah explained that her second book, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us was an exploration of “how infiltrated and warped my Jewish identity and many of ours has been by centuries worth of antisemitism anti-Judaism and by centuries of Jews in an understandable and well-intentioned effort to escape this hatred by erasing ourselves, trying to fit in and be accepted and safe… The book looks at my effort to strip away those layers of internalized antisemitism and hatred and embrace Judaism with awe and reverence and gratitude.” 

Defining what we’re facing 

In much of our work supporting community members in their personal, professional and educational spaces we continue to encounter instances of assault on the Jewish story. In our keynote conversation with Sarah, she implored that many people mistake antisemitism as a social prejudice. This was a common experience for many in our community, recalling a time when they, or their parents or grandparents, were excluded from practicing at hospitals, studying at universities, or joining country clubs. Today, Sarah described, we are seeing a recurrence of a political type of Jew hatred steeped in conspiracy theories. Sarah defined this by saying, “on the right you have… the great replacement conspiracy that says we white Christian Americans are bringing back white Christian civilization to America who is stopping us? These globalists who are importing black and brown immigrants to take the place of white people…on the left you have we who care about social justice are doing the grand royal project of anti-racism and anti-colonialism, the only thing stopping us are these racist colonialist Zionists. It is the same stuff [from history] and the heartbreaking thing is that many people who say this stuff, this political antisemitism, they have Jewish friends. They have no personal prejudices against Jews and even more heartbreaking, some of them are Jews themselves and it’s still antisemitism.”  

Understanding these patterns of antisemitism which have morphed in each generation according to the values to which society adheres and portraying the Jews as the greatest obstacle to achieving those ideals is part of our educational speaking engagements we deliver. 

Reshaping antisemitism education 

We know that teaching about the Holocaust warns of the horrors that can happen when hatred is left unchecked. At the Annual Event Sarah Hurwitz described an important distinction: “Holocaust education is critical… but when we substitute it for antisemitism education, we’re teaching our kids that antisemitism is Nazi racial antisemitism. They [students] show up at campus. Not a lot of Nazis on campuses it turns out. What you see on campus is a combination of Soviet antizionism and of Islamist Jew hatred.” Hurwitz continued that if, for example, we “teach our young people that for decades the Soviet Union brutally persecuted millions of Jews but they didn’t call them Jews, God forbid, they called them Zionists and in their effort to stamp out Zionism they fired Jews from jobs, murdered them such that 2 million Jews eventually fled the Soviet Union, I think when they showed up at campus and saw and heard their classmates screaming KGB slogans like Zionism equals racism/Nazism/genocide I don’t think they’d be so charmed.”  

Hearing the audience applaud Sarah’s remarks gave us pride that our education team has been sought after by Jewish thought leaders with this vision, including Dara Horn. Last summer we were honored to be at Dara’s table alongside a select group of education leaders from across North America at The Tell Institute’s inaugural gathering, a bold new initiative to reframe what people learn about Jews in a way that recognizes the 2,500-year pattern of Jew hatred that not only shadows the Jewish people but corrodes and destabilizes the very societies that embrace it.  

Dara Horn called on our staff because for decades we have been teaching the Jewish story in middle and high schools, not just through tragedy but through joy, introducing students to the Jewish people through our values, traditions, heritage and history. This past school year we have piloted Dara’s framework in a professional development for Holocaust Educators called Rethinking Holocaust Education which stresses that the Holocaust cannot be the only way in which students are encountering the Jewish story. In our own educational outreach, we have broadened our Holocaust education to include pre-lessons on who the Jews are and our Judaism education to include the foundations that Jews brought to the world which are today the pillars of free civilizations. We are proud that as a legacy organization our team is nimble and constantly updating best practices. 

Leading with hope 

Sarah joined us throughout the entire evening, signing books, meeting and mingling with the large crowd present. From the stage she commented “I have to say I was talking to someone and I said you know I’m looking you’ve got your senator here, you have Congress people here, you’ve got your mayor, you’ve got state elected officials and leaders, you’ve got leaders of the National Guard, and I said so how big is the Jewish community here like 200,250 thousand? and she said it’s 60,000. I said you’ve got to be kidding me; this is really impressive.” 

At JCRC we invest in long term relationship building recognizing that proximity builds allyship. Senator Amy Klobuchar spoke at our Annual Event delivering a strong message against antisemitism and BDS and thanking JCRC for its leadership in bringing so many democratic and republican leaders together. We extend our condolences to Speaker Lisa Demuth who was also scheduled to speak but lost her father just prior to the event. 

Against the backdrop of a darkening world around us, Sarah Hurwitz ended the night addressing the many allies of our community in the room: “ We as Jews often talk about how we’re part of this long train of tradition from generation to generation going back thousands of years and I want you to know that you too [allies] are actually a part of this tradition, and it’s a tradition of a small number of people in each generation who saw the hatred of Jews, and just said no – that’s not true, I know that’s not true, and I’m going to stand with my Jewish neighbors because I see clearly. It’s what Jews call ‘b’tzelem Elohim’, in the image of God. [Jews] believe every human being is created in God’s image and throughout history there have been so many people who have managed to see us in God’s image at times when that really wasn’t the majority perspective. Meeting so many of you tonight and seeing you here, gives me a tremendous amount of hope.” 

On behalf of JCRC we want to thank Sarah Hurwitz, our allies, our community and all who’ve supported our mission to safeguard, educate and advocate for the Jewish community.  

It’s not too late to give or deepen your support for this work.  

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View 2026 Annual Event photo album

This blog post was the featured staff column for the June 2026 Gesher (‘Bridge’ in Hebrew) – JCRC’s monthly email newsletter.
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