By Gretchen Webster
WESTPORT — Antisemitism and its impact on the community were scrutinized at Thursday morning’s meeting of TEAM Westport, the town’s multi-cultural and equity advocacy committee, as hate-speech allegations swirl around the appearance by singer, writer and artist Patti Smith at the Westport Library’s keynote VersoFest program Thursday night.
Smith, a National Book Award winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, is scheduled to appear at the kickoff for VersoFest ’25 in conversation with journalist and Westport resident Alisyn Camerota. The program, the first of the library’s four-day cultural celebration, is set to get underway at 7 p.m. Thursday in the library, 20 Jesup Road.
Smith has previously been hosted at the library as the honored guest at the 2011 “Booked for the Evening” event.
A rally protesting what organizers call Smith’s antisemitic comments regarding the Israel/Hamas war in Gaza is scheduled at 5:45 p.m. Thursday outside the library, according to an announcement by a group called #EndJewHatred.
Local criticism of Smith’s invitation to appear at VersoFest has been raised in recent days.
“There’s a lot of pain in the Jewish community,” Jill Nadel, a board member of the Anti-Defamation League, said at the TEAM meeting. She urged people to “be understanding of the pain,” especially since some of the more than 250 hostages taken during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel that day are still being held. About 1,200 people were also killed that day, according to the ADL.
Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice also addressed the issue, saying he recently spoke with Weston Supt. Lisa Barbiero after several recent antisemitic incidents in that town’s schools. The offensive incidents include swastikas drawn on a locker and a student’s desk. He said he also met with several rabbis from Westport congregations to discuss how to combat hateful incidents in schools.
Stepped-up efforts that may be taken to help combat the problem, Scarice added, which include working with parents discussing hate speech with their children.
Westport and Weston are linked in efforts to curtail antisemitism, he said, especially because so many Weston residents are members of synagogues in Westport. And despite everything schools and town officials do to combat bias and hate speech, he added, the problems spring up periodically.
“It permeates the schools like outdoor air,” the superintendent said.
Westport public schools’ participation in the ADL’s “No Place for Hate” project was debated at a recent TEAM meeting.
Antisemitic incidents have also occurred in many other Fairfield County communities, including New Canaan, Redding and Easton, Harold Bailey Jr., the chair of TEAM Westport, told the meeting.
TEAM member Phillip Gallo asked Scarice if antisemitic incidents had spiked since the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
“It’s been happening for centuries,” Scarice said of anti-Jewish bias and persecution.
Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.
This is fatuous and has nothing to do with “antisemitism.”
This is about people who want to portray any opposition to the tactics of the Netanyahu administration as antisemitism. Antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and pro-Hamas sentiments are three completely different things.
If there is a “lot of pain in the Jewish community” maybe Ms Nadel can explain why the ADL didn’t criticize Elon Musk for throwing a Nazi salute at the president’s inauguration?
Probably because Elon Musk did not do a “Nazi salute”. Because of Musk’s association with the Trump administration, he of course, must be referred to as a Nazi. Apparently this is the only arrow in the leftists quiver. Give it up and stop making fools of yourselves.
The salute is on videotape, sure, but there’s no fact Wylie can’t ignore, no history she can’t rewrite, no cruelty she can’t endorse. You’ve got to admire the slavish cult devotion. You can always count on Wylie to rise in the west and set in the east. It’s a gift. And she’s got it.
Such a nasty man talking about my “cruelty” because I disagree that Musk did a Nazi salute. Is it cruel to refer to people as Nazis despite no evidence that they have ever espoused Nazism. I remember when Elon Musk was very positively regarded by the left. Are we to believe he was able to hide his Nazi past until he went to work for the Trump administration. What history have I rewritten and what cruelty have I endorsed? You need to look in the mirror and reassess yourself, Prince.
Tom doesn’t need me to speak for him, but Elon Musk campaigned for the far-right AfD party and said in a video appearance for them, two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, “children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents… There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that.”
I presume Musk was the source of Trump’s idea that, even though he doesn’t like immigration waivers for the beleaguered, we should provide them to white South Africans because of discrimination against them. (That seems akin to suggesting reparations to slaveholders because they lost their “property” as a result of the Civil War!)
Then, of course, the salute at the inauguration ball.
The decision of the VersoFest Board to honor Patti Smith at the Westport Library is a huge slap in the face to every Jewish person in Fairfield County. While the Board may not have thought of the consequences of their actions when choosing Patti Smith for this honor, this has everything to do with anti-Semitism and the double standard that the Jewish community is forced to endure. No individual who promotes hatred toward other races or groups of people would ever be considered for this honor. So, why is it that when it comes to Jewish hatred, this standard does not apply? Patti Smith’s social media espouses hatred and disrespect to Jewish people. The information she has posted on her Instagram account is inciteful and lacks all sensitivity to the struggles that Israeli and American men and women faced on October 7th and have faced since at the hands of the very group that she defends. How dare Patti Smith call herself a peace activist and a feminist when her social media content promotes a violent culture and shows a complete disregard for the atrocities, including rape, murder, mutilation, and burning of women in Israel on October 7th? You either stand for all women or you stand for no women at all. All Westport Jews, and quite frankly anyone who supports the Jewish community here, is owed a huge apology from the VersoFest Board and from the Westport Library. It is clear to me that this apology is not forthcoming, but I truly hope that the Board will act with much more sensitivity in the future, because if it doesn’t, the “Hatred has no home in Westport” signs have no meaning and don’t belong here.
The ADL hardly speaks for “all Westport Jews.” It is a nonsensical claim.
But not a peep out of those who make such nonsensical claims about 40,000 dead in Gaza. Where is the outrage about this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/world/middleeast/gaza-paramedics-video.html?unlocked_article_code=1.904.A5Fc._9h4xfdF71B0&smid=url-share
And while we’re at it, has the ADL commented on Trump’s comments from Monday?:
“I said to them, was there any sign of love?” Trump said, recounting his conversation with released hostages, as reported by The New Republic (https://newrepublic.com/post/193725/donald-trump-israel-hostages-nazis-jewish-prisoners-love).
“Did the, Hamas, show any signs of like, help? Or liking you? Did they wink? Did they give you a piece of bread extra? Did they give you a meal on the side? … Like, you know, what happened in Germany?”
Shiri – I would love to know your take on Trump’s comments suggesting the Nazis treated Jewish prisoners “with love.” How does that compare with Patti Smith’s comments, to you?
Stop attacking anyone who disagrees with the horrific tactics of the Netanyahu regime, as “anti-semitic”.
Where was your outrage at the decades of illegal and immoral actions against innocent residents of Gaza by Israel?
Jolyn OConnor