Articles by Dov Wilker

It has been more than 60 years since the Roman Catholic Church issued “Nostra Aetate,” the groundbreaking document that rejected collective Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus. By dispensing with two millennia of dogma that Jews were Christ-killers, the church ushered in a new era of what Pope Leo XIV has called a “precious dialogue” between the two faiths, one that remains robust to this day. That is especially important for the Jewish people, who cannot have too many allies at a time when a wave of antisemitism shows no sign of easing. American Jewish Committee’s newly released State of Antisemitism in America 2025 Report highlights why that matters more than ever.

Many Jewish people now hide their identity, removing symbols like the Star of David, sometimes because they fear for their safety, other times because they’ve been told it might “offend” someone. We’ve seen vandalism, property destruction, boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses and threats.

When news broke over Labor Day weekend that six of the hostages held in Gaza by Hamas terrorists had been executed by their captors, it was a gut punch, one acutely felt by the Atlanta Jewish community. Among the murdered was American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin. His family would meet at Camp Ramah Darom, about 100 miles north of Atlanta, each Passover to celebrate the holiday. Many in the Atlanta Jewish community are connected to the family, either from this camp or others.

Dov Wilker, Regional Director of AJC Atlanta, joins Atlanta News First to discuss how rising antisemitism impacts the daily lives of Jewish Americans.

Dov Wilker, Regional Director of AJC Atlanta, joins WRAL News in Raleigh, North Carolina to break down AJC's State of Antisemitism in America 2023 Report.

Even though I vividly recall being called antisemitic names in youth sports and the swastikas that vandalized my Jewish primary school, you do not make the leap to a gunman who would massacre Jews in a synagogue simply for being Jewish.

Over the past 12 months in Atlanta, we have seen rising antisemitism on our streets, in our schools and expressed by elected officials across the political spectrum. It has been demonstrated by Holocaust distortion, swastikas scrawled in schools, references to Jewish power and remarks labeling Israel a racist and Nazi-like state. That might help explain why 90% of American Jews believe antisemitism is a problem in the United States and why 82% say it has increased over the past five years, according to the 2021 American Jewish Committee State of Antisemitism in America Report.

Over the past few weeks, we have seen activists, students, celebrities, and politicians perpetrate antisemitism in a variety of forms, with physical assaults, verbal attacks, vandalism, and banners to online comments and videos. Many of these same people decry discrimination against other groups yet seem oblivious to the hatred they are inciting against Jewish people.

Those who defend Farrakhan on the grounds that NOI helps underserved black communities across America and empowers African-Americans should know that one cannot empower one group by denigrating another.

. Arkansas, South Carolina, and Wyoming need to join the other 47 states and distinguish crimes driven by prejudice and charge them as felonies. We must not wait until the next murder.

The brutal killing of Arbery underscores the need for immediate passage of Georgia’s proposed hate crime law (H.B. 426). It also highlights the urgency of the National Opposition to Hate, Assaults, and Threats to Equality (NO HATE) Act.

Violent terrorism, targeting a faith group has struck again, this time in normally placid New Zealand.

In Holocaust education, we use the phrase “Never Forget.” While referring specifically to the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis, Never Forget has a broader meaning — never to allow the abandonment of democratic values, the loss of moral clarity.

Recent upsurges in antisemitic activity on American soil calls for our re-evaluation of the issue itself. Antisemitism is a problem not only for Jews, but rather for all Americans and human beings at large.