By Rabbi Efrem Goldberg
Dave Portnoy is a successful businessman with a large online following. He sold the company he founded, Barstool Sports, for $500 million, and bought it back a few years later for $1. Millions follow him on social media and watch his daily pizza reviews around the country, including a review of matza pizza right here in Boca Raton.
Portnoy is Jewish, something he doesn’t hide, but also doesn’t regularly reference or promote. He has occasionally displayed his Judaism, such as when he put on tefillin through Chabad, or more recently, when he put on a yarmulke and waved an Israeli flag to celebrate the defeat of an MMA fighter who had praised Hitler.
Soon after October 7, he spoke out in support of Israel and has since publicly defended Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself.
Yet, nothing has made Portnoy as outspoken about his Jewishness or willing to defend the Jewish people as the antisemitic incident that happened at his Philadelphia bar a couple of weeks ago.
Customers who order bottle service are offered customizable letter boards which they can ask staff to arrange with the message of their choice. A student or two from Temple University who visited his bar asked staff members to arrange the letters of their sign into an antisemitic message that included an expletive directed at the Jewish people. The incident exposed a breakdown in the judgement of the staff as well as an ugly expression of hate.
Portnoy took to his social media to communicate his outrage. “I’ve been shaking I’ve been so mad. I’m gonna make it my life’s mission to ruin these people, like I’m coming for your throat.” However, a few hours later, he posted another video saying he reconsidered his approach and would send the young men responsible for the hate speech on a tour of Auschwitz instead to learn about the impact of hate.
He explained: “My initial reaction was like I’m going to burn these people to the ground, their families, everything, and it’s like you know what? Maybe that’s not the best course of action. Maybe I can use this as a teaching moment, and like before, people just are like the Jews or any group, and the hate…let’s try to turn a hideous incident into a learning experience, as cliché and very unlike me. But I talked to both the culprits, who I know are super involved in it, talked to the families, and I’m sending these kids to Auschwitz. They’ve agreed to go, that is, to the Holocaust concentration camps…and hopefully learn something. And maybe like their lives aren’t ruined and maybe they’ll think twice, and more importantly, that other people will see it’s not just words you’re throwing around. So, to me, that’s a fair outcome of this event.”
Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick applauded Portnoy for addressing the “horrific display of hate” and using it as an opportunity to educate about anti-Jewish violence, saying, “Antisemitism needs to be identified, called out, and crushed.”
A few days later, Portnoy gave an update saying he had “revoked” the trip to Poland because at least one of the people involved “is no longer taking responsibility” for the sign.
Though he didn’t end up sending the perpetrators to Auschwitz for an educational tour, the strategy of responding to antisemitism by sending antisemites to a Holocaust memorial is nothing new. In 2006, Mel Gibson spewed antisemitic remarks during a DUI arrest. Though not mandated by the court, Gibson met with Jewish leaders and visited the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. In 2015, two British teenagers vandalized a synagogue with antisemitic graffiti. As part of their community service, they were sent to visit Auschwitz. In 2018, Nick Conrad released a controversial music video titled, “Hang White People,” which contained antisemitic undertones. A French court ordered him to visit the Holocaust Memorial in Paris as part of their ruling.
The examples could go on and on, but the question remains: should they? Certainly, Holocaust education is important. Keeping the legacy of the six million martyrs alive and relevant, teaching the truth about this historically unique genocide matters. But is it the proper or effective response to contemporary antisemitism?
Dara Horn, author of “People Love Dead Jews,” thinks not. In her article, “Is Holocaust Education Making Anti-Semitism Worse? Using dead Jews as symbols isn’t helping living ones,” she writes: “I have come to the disturbing conclusion that Holocaust education is incapable of addressing contemporary anti-Semitism. In fact, in the total absence of any education about Jews alive today, teaching about the Holocaust might even be making anti-Semitism worse.”
She writes: “The Holocaust educators I met across America were all obsessed with building empathy, a quality that relies on finding commonalities between ourselves and others. But I wondered if a more effective way to address anti-Semitism might lie in cultivating a completely different quality, one that happens to be the key to education itself: curiosity. Why use Jews as a means to teach people that we’re all the same, when the demand that Jews be just like their neighbors is exactly what embedded the mental virus of anti-Semitism in the Western mind in the first place? Why not instead encourage inquiry about the diversity, to borrow a de rigueur word, of the human experience?”
Ms. Horn’s article was published in May of 2023, five months before the most murderous day in modern Jewish history since the Holocaust, and I fear her thesis has only been strengthened. Teaching only about the Holocaust without teaching about the Jewish people, Jewish values and ideals, Jewish contributions to the world, and Jewish culture and practice only focuses on Jews as victims. Today’s antisemite learns about the Holocaust and sees the Jewish people as the committer of a current genocide instead of the victim, as perpetrators of a Holocaust instead of the victims of one.
Another famous Jew, Michael Rapaport, has been targeted with hate for his Judaism, but he has responded in a very different way. Rapaport is an award-winning actor, comedian, and podcaster. Since October 7, he has not only visited Israel countless times, he has relentlessly dedicated his online influence to advocating for Israel and the Jewish people. Asked about how October 7 impacted him, he says, “My Judaism has changed 100%. I am more in tune with it. I’m prouder, I’m more aware, I’m more educated. I’m more proactive in every single way possible and I’m really glad about that.”
Asked how his belief in G-d has changed, he answered: “I believe in Hashem in a different way. I celebrate and understand Him in a different way. I think we have nothing but faith. You have to have faith. That’s been one of the good things that has come from this last year for me personally.” Michael Rapaport now wraps tefillin and says about it, “Every single time is a blessing, every single time is a mitzvah.”
Certainly, we must confront antisemites, hold them accountable, throw the book at them and when possible, seek to reform them. Education may be a first step, but it cannot be the whole strategy. The answer is not to focus on their education, like Portnoy tried to do, but to focus on ours, like Rapaport is doing. Our response to acts of antisemitism should be more Jewish pride, more Jewish practice, a stronger Jewish identity, and greater Torah observance.
Rather than reward the hateful hoodlums with a trip to Poland, Portnoy should announce he is going to Israel. He should put on a tallit katan and a yarmulka, hang a mezuzah on his door, and engage his Judaism and Jewish learning in a meaningful way.
When doing one of his famous pizza reviews, before he takes a bite and gives a score, Portnoy proudly announces “one bite, everyone knows the rules.” But the truth is, while everyone may know the rules, he does not follow them: He doesn’t take one bite, he takes several and when the pizza tastes particularly good, he can’t help himself from finishing the whole slice.
Describing a relationship with Hashem, Dovid Hamelech wrote in Tehillim (34:9): “Taamu u’ru ki tovHashem—taste and you will see that Hashem is good.” Why does he employ the word taste, why not just say see that Hashem is good? Faith begins with practice. You can’t just listen, read, or think about Hashem, you must engage and act, then you will see with clarity a life of meaning, purpose, and eternity. It begins with a taste, a little something and you will want more.
We must confront antisemitism, but not just with stories or tours of Jewish victimhood. We must focus instead on educating ourselves, our children, and Jews all around us on how to live a proud, rich, meaningful Jewish life. Start with one thing. Just one bite of a mitzvah and you will want more and more. n
Rabbi Efrem Goldberg is the Senior Rabbi of the Boca Raton Synagogue (BRS), a rapidly-growing congregation of over 850 families and over 1000 children in Boca Raton, Florida
