How Antisemitism Signals Broader Intolerance and Hatred Webinar

Dr. Rachel Fish is a celebrated academic with 20 years of experience in the fields of Israeli history, Zionist thought, and Middle Eastern Studies. Recognized for her teaching prowess and pedagogical approaches, Dr. Fish has published extensively and is frequently called upon to advise on community interventions to reclaim an Israel discourse that is nuanced and complex while remaining accessible to a broad audience.

Most recently, Dr. Fish was the founding executive director of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, which was established to catalyze dynamic new solutions to stop the age-old hatred advanced by those who seek the elimination of Judaism and the Jewish people and the modern movement to destroy the world’s only Jewish State. Dr. Fish was previously Senior Advisor and Resident Scholar of Jewish/Israel Philanthropy at the Paul E. Singer Foundation in New York City. She worked closely with grantees to support them and provided framing around their educational content and programming. Dr. Fish served as the executive director for the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University where she trained the next generation of scholars and Jewish communal professionals in Israel Studies.

Professor Judaken’s research focuses on representations of Jews and Judaism, race and racism, critical theory, existentialism, and post-Holocaust French Jewish thought. His latest monograph, Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism, came out in Columbia University Press’ “New Directions in Critical Theory” series in June 2024. It offers a comparative history of major theories of Judeophobia in the work of Sartre, Hannah Arendt, members of the Frankfurt School, Talcott Parsons, Zygmunt Baumann, Jean-François Lyotard, and in the work of two extraordinary historians, Léon Poliakov, and George Mosse, while seeking to challenge the conventions and narratives within the field of anti-Semitism studies based on their work.

A founding member of the International Consortium for Research on Racism and Antisemitism, Judaken serves as the U.S. Consulting Editor for Patterns of Prejudice, on the Editorial Board for Jewish Historical Studies, on the Associate Editorial Board for Critical Philosophy of Race, on the Advisory Board for H-Antisemitism, as Past President of the North American Sartre Society, and on the International Board of Scholars for Facing History & Ourselves.

Elisha’s words and actions mark him as an emerging fighter against poverty, advocate for opportunity, and student of Jewish continuity. 

Elisha is a recovering Wall Street executive. After retiring from a twenty-five year financial markets career at Goldman Sachs at the end of 2019, he served in 2020 as one of the lead technologists in Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign. In his most recent board position at Good Shepherd Services, Elisha raised millions of dollars for New York’s neediest by convening “Midnight Madness”, where hundreds of finance professionals stayed up all night solving elaborate puzzles on the city streets.

When his father Elie Wiesel passed, Elisha realized how many others missed his voice––and so, when opportunities for impact arise, Elisha shares his father’s message and continues his legacy by standing up for persecuted communities. In the last few years, Elisha has spoken at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about the need to protect the LGBTQ+ community; shone a light while speaking at Auschwitz on the plight of Syrian refugees being denied Western asylum; written for the Financial Times about the urgency of upholding DACA; and taken his son to peacefully march for Black Lives.