What Dave Portnoy Gets Wrong about Antisemitism

Dave Portnoy 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.

Portnoy is Jewish and has on occasion displayed his Judaism, like when he celebrated the defeat of an MMA fighter who had praised Hitler by putting on a yarmulka and waving an Israeli flag in the front row of the match.  Soon after October 7, he spoke out in support of Israel and has since then publicly defended Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself.

Nothing has made Portnoy as outspoken about his Jewishness or aggressively stand up for the Jewish people like 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 members to arrange with messages of their choice.  A student or two from Temple University who visited the bar asked staff members to arrange the letters on his sign into an antisemitic message, including an expletive directed at the Jewish people.  The incident was a staff breakdown and, more importantly, an 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 mission to ruin these people, like I’m coming for your throat.”

But a few hours later he posted another video saying he had reconsidered his approach, and instead had decided to send the young men responsible for the hate speech on a tour of Auschwitz 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 like turn a hideous incident into maybe a learning experience, as cliche and very unlike me. But I talked to both the culprits, who I know are super involved in it, talked to the families. I’m sending these kids to Auschwitz. They’ve agreed to go, that’s of course, the Holocaust concentration camps…and hopefully learn something. And maybe like their lives aren’t ruined, and they think twice, and more importantly, other people like see it’s not just like 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 tour Auschwitz, the strategy of responding to antisemitism by sending antisemites for a Holocaust education is nothing new.  In 2006, Mel Gibson spewed antisemitic remarks during a DUI arrest. Gibson met with Jewish leaders and visited the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.  In 2014, 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 a court ruling.

Holocaust education is certainly important. But is it the proper or effective response to contemporary antisemitism?

Jews as Victims

Dara Horn, the author of “People Love Dead Jews,” thinks not.  In her article, “Is Holocaust Education Making Antisemitism 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 antisemitism. In fact, in the total absence of any education about Jews alive today, teaching about the Holocaust might even be making antisemitism 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 antisemitism 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 antisemitism 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?”

This article was published in May of 2023, five months before the most murderous day of Jews 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, Jewish culture and practice only focuses on Jews as victims.  But today’s antisemite learns about the Holocaust and sees the Jewish people as the committer of a current genocide instead of the victim, as perpetrating a Holocaust instead of experiencing one.

Teaching only about the Holocaust without teaching about the Jewish people, Jewish values and ideals, and Jewish contributions to the world only focuses on Jews as victims.

Increased Jewish Education, Pride and Commitment

Another famous Jew has been targeted with hate for his Judaism, but he has responded in a very different way.  Michael 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 said, “My Judaism has changed 100%. I am more in tune with it. I’m more proud, 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 God has changed, he answered: “I believe in God 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 now wraps tefillin and says about it, “Every single time is a blessing, every single time is a mitzvah.”

Our response to acts of antisemitism must be more Jewish pride, more Jewish practice, stronger Jewish identity, increased observance.

Yes, we must confront antisemites, hold them accountable, throw the book at them and, when possible, seek to reform them.  Educating may be a first step, but it cannot be the whole strategy.  The answer is to not focus on their education, like Dave Portnoy did, but to focus on ours, as Michael Rapaport is.  Our response to acts of antisemitism must be more Jewish pride, more Jewish practice, stronger Jewish identity, increased 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 Magen Dovid necklace if not a yarmulka, hang a mezuzah on his home and office, engage his Judaism and Jewish learning in a meaningful way.

Take One Bite

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 he doesn’t take just 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 God, King David (Psalms 34:9) taught, “Taste and you will see that God is good.”  You can’t just listen, read about or think about God, you must engage, taste, act and then you’ll see with clarity a life of meaning, purpose and eternity.

Instead of focusing on educating others, educate yourself, your children and Jews all around us to be living richly proud and practicing Jewish lives.

Start with one thing.  Just one bite of a mitzvah and you will want more and more.

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