A Holocaust survivor on rising antisemitism in Unitarian Universalism and the far left

An interview with social psychologist Dr. Ronald Friend

May 06, 2025

Introduction

In recent years, I and others have written about growing groupthink, dogmatism, and illiberalism within the Unitarian Universalist Church (Examples are here, here, here, and here). These concerns include the church’s deepening ideological rigidity, increased suppression and demeaning of dissent, and, notably here, its troubling relationship with Jewish identity and perspectives— particularly in its national messaging and public platforms. As many have observed, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) today aligns itself with extreme positions, such as offering platforms to fringe anti-Zionist voices while excluding Jews with mainstream and differing views.

These trends are not only disturbing to many within the UU tradition but have also resonated with others who have experienced or witnessed similar dynamics. Among them is Ronald Friend, a Holocaust survivor and a retired psychology professor living in Portland, Oregon. After reading some of my posts, Dr. Friend reached out to share his reflections on the growing intolerance and imbalance he has observed within the UU world and segments of the political left, particularly regarding Israel and antisemitism.

In our ensuing conversations, he raised numerous concerns: the uncritical embrace by Unitarian Universalist congregations of extreme groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME); the increasing dominance of one-sided literature and programming that excludes diverse Jewish voices; and how antisemitism is often framed as only a right-wing problem, with left-wing antisemitism either downplayed or dismissed altogether.

He harshly criticized the 2024 UUA General Assembly's Action of Immediate Witness (AIW) on the Israel-Gaza war, calling it an “appallingly biased, badly argued, and mostly unsubstantiated statement. The AIW genocide charge is institutional antisemitism as far as I’m concerned.”

Dr. Friend brings a valuable perspective shaped by both personal history and professional expertise in social psychology. Our discussions touched on his concerns about UU leadership’s and congregations’ responses to recent geopolitical conflicts, the platforming of extreme voices and inflammatory rhetoric without meaningful pushback, and his hope for restoring viewpoint diversity and balance in what he calls our increasingly "totalitarian" times.

The following is my interview with Dr. Friend:

Tell me about where you are from, your upbringing, and how you ended up in Portland, Oregon.

I was born in Paris in 1939 to German Jewish parents. My father was a consulting engineer, my mother was a physician. They left Berlin in 1933 because of antisemitism, first to Milan and then to Paris. In 1942 our family was arrested at the French border in an attempt to escape into Switzerland. We were then interned in southern France in the Camp de Rivesaltes. At the time nine convoys were departing for Auschwitz. I was only two and a half but Jews even younger than I were being transported to their ‘final destination.’
After being rescued from Rivesaltes, I remained in France, closeted in a small village until the age of five when I was sent to England where I spent my formative years. I was stateless until eighteen when I became a British national. I married a non-Jewish Canadian who until recently had been a member of the First Unitarian Portland congregation. We have a son who is an internist practicing in Portland.

You mentioned you are a non-religious Jew. Could you share a bit about your background and beliefs as a Jew?

I have been baptized twice, first in the Catholic church in France and secondly in the Church of England at my boarding school in the UK. I was brought up by my Quaker aunt who with her mother are buried next to William Penn in Jordans, Buckinghamshire.
I consider myself an atheist/agnostic. I believe that Jews as ‘a people’ regardless of their religious background have the right to national self-determination in Israel, in a democratic state for all its citizens that has agreed upon secure borders with its neighbors. I suppose that makes me a Zionist. I do not believe— as the UUA’s AIW states— that Israel composed of 21% Arab, 45% Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent, and 35% of European is an apartheid state. I believe that Palestinians also have the right to national self-determination.

What is your educational background—where you went to school, your field, and your academic work?

I graduated from the University of London, Western University in Canada, and the University of Toronto with a PhD in Psychology. I was a professor at Stony Brook University from 1969-2003 where I conducted research in social psychology and behavioral medicine. Since retiring, I have published medical research on the assessment and diagnosis of fibromyalgia and chronic pain, with collaborators at Oregon Health Sciences University and Emory University.

What is your connection to or interest in Unitarian Universalism?

My experience is limited mostly to my spouse who until recently was a member for several decades here in Portland. An uncle, who was imprisoned in Buchenwald, was also a UU member for several years.
When I give talks about my holocaust experience in Southern France, I mention the work of Dr. Rene Zimmer, a physician who worked for the Unitarian Service Committee (USC) in the two camps where my family were detained. He published an article which documented the famine and starvation in our camps.
I am familiar with Susan Subak’s excellent book on the Unitarians WW2 relief work (Rescue and Flight: American Relief Workers who defied the Nazis, 2010), and whose Jewish father received help from the USC. Noel Field was a talented Harvard educated Unitarian relief worker who headed the USC operation in France. He organized doctors and dentists to serve the refugees. His wife Herta also set up the kindergarten school at Camp de Rivesaltes. Hailing from a Quaker family, Field was “a sensitive, self-absorbed idealist and dreamer” who supported the Stalinist regime. Despite his good humanitarian work in Spain and France, he is a good, precautionary example of how misplaced idealism laced with moral fervor can go awry when driven by ideological fanaticism (see “True Believer, Stalin’s Last American Spy,” Kati Maton; 2016).

You criticized the UUA’s 2024 General Assembly Action of Immediate Witness, “Solidarity with Palestine.”

The UUA/AIW presents a one-sided narrative that portrays Palestinians as victims of Israeli criminality that downplays Hamas’ barbarism. They declare their “moral outrage” at the “horrors of Israel’s massacre,” enumerating a litany of Israeli crimes that include “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “collective punishment,” “massacres,” “apartheid,” “poisoning,” “colonialism,” “torture,” and more.
By contrast, a cryptic 7-word summary glosses over Hamas’s barbarism: “we decry all the violence of October 7” they write, neglecting the murderous specifics, such as rape, torture, abductions, slaughtering of hundreds of young music lovers, burning of parents and children. Hamas is not even named; their barbarism is mere “violence.”
A post by one prominent member of the UUA/UUJME Portland even disputes sexual violence! In this intersectional reckoning Jewish-Israeli women supposedly do not count or are not to be believed!
There are probably sociopolitical and psychological processes underlying the UUA/AIW obsessive enumeration of Israeli crimes but not Palestinian (Hamas). How is one to respond to the dissonance when you or the group you support commit unbelievably evil and genocidal crimes? (e.g., slaughtering 1200 defenseless young music lovers and obliterating kibbutzim communities.)
Cognitive dissonance theory is a useful explanatory tool. Two important aspects of cognitive dissonance theory which are largely ignored are that a) Perceptions that are inconsistent with one’s self concept or social identity will be experienced particularly with strong dissonance and b) Individuals or groups will largely resist changing their self-conceptions or social identity to fit the perceptions triggering the dissonance. Reducing dissonance will likely employ defense mechanisms such as denial, rationalization, and defensive projection.
Outright denial of evil acts is difficult in the face of objective reality. Nevertheless, one form of denial is minimization by referring to barbarous acts as merely “violent crimes” committed anonymously and impersonally (“October 7”) as if an FBI report.
A second form of outright denial as noted above is rape denial (see Atlantic article below for refutation).
Defensive projection is a more useful political tool because the genocide and crimes can be projected consciously (dissonance theory) or unconsciously (Freudian theory) on to Israel: It is not Hamas or Gazans who attempted genocide but the Jewish state (thus the long list of Israeli crimes in the AIW, but none explicitly to Hamas sadism).
The invocation of genocide, especially for Shoah survivors like me and for most Jews, evokes memories of the Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews. My father was among the two thousand men sent to their death as a reprisal for the assassination of two Luftwaffe officers by the French resistance in Paris in December 1942. (an authentic case of ‘collective punishment’). My father was exterminated at Majdanek in March 4, 1943. The UAI accusation of genocide is particularly galling since the UIW provides no evidence that Israeli policy is intentional in part or in whole to eliminate the Palestinian people. So eager and desperate is the anti-Israel coalition to attach the genocide label to the Jewish state, the Irish government has even proposed to weaken the definition so that the alleged Israeli crimes will fit the genocide label so that Israel is more likely to be found guilty. That they feel the need to change the definition speaks volumes.
Nor is there evidence for genocide provided. The Arab population in Israel proper has dramatically increased concomitantly with each decade; from 156,000 in 1948 to 2,037,000 in 2022, constituting 21.1% of Israel’s population (Jewish Virtual Library). Similarly with the Arab population of Jerusalem: it is 40%, compared 60% Jewish (down from 72% in 1980). The birth rate of the Arab population is higher than the Jewish one. The genocide charge is a cudgel used against the Jewish people by anti-Israel activists who seem to derive pleasure from calling Israel the new Nazis (Eve Garrard, see below).
The noncombatant deaths and destruction in Gaza are indeed appalling. But Israeli citizens did not start this war. To the contrary they have endured constant rocket attacks, torching of their farmland, and poisoning the air with burning tires, since Israel voluntarily left Gaza in 2005 hoping for a better future.

Could you share more about your thoughts on that, as well as your perspective on broader trends related to antisemitism or Jewish concerns within Unitarian Universalism and the UUA? Many UU activists and leaders are closely aligned with groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East. What are your views on those organizations and the support they receive within the UU community?

I have only anecdotal information since neither the UUA nor JVP provide numbers so this is difficult to assess. The First Universalist Portland congregation appears to promote membership to JVP. At a discussion session to bring UU Jews and UU non-Jews together, an ‘antiracism/antifascism’ book co-authored by a JVP member was assigned (no other ‘contrary’ material). One author had been a national JVP campus organizer. The book was virulently anti-Israel/anti-Zionist/anti-mainstream Jewish organizations. The “genocide” label was invoked repeatedly to describe Israel throughout the book and in a lecture by the other author. In both, “genocide” charge was invoked without comment; it appeared so acceptable or normalized that no justification was thought to be needed. In another presentation a prominent UUJME member invited listeners to join JVP explaining that you did not have to be Jewish to belong to JVP.

What are your thoughts on antisemitism within the political far left today?

I believe that far left antisemitism and its virulent hostility to Israel will further drive Jews from the ranks of the liberal/left despite their historical overrepresentation in progressive movements and civil rights.
The progressive left ascribes to an anti-imperialist worldview of oppressors and oppressed, in which the colonialist west (or ‘global north” in some designations) are responsible for the major evils of the world. In this world view the Unitarian Universalist Association represents itself the bearer of universal human rights and world liberation while the Jewish state is represented as an exemplar as singularly wicked because of its alleged colonialism, and its apartheid and racist oppression. As a poster on a shop door near where I live claims: “A call for a FREE PALESTINE is a call for FREEDOM everywhere.”

References provided by Ronald Friend:

Michael A Cohen (2024). The Rape Denialists: Why has it proved so hard for many on the left to acknowledge what happened on October 7? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/october-7-hamas-sexual-assault/678091/

Eve Garrard (2015). Anti-Judaism, anti-Zionism, antisemitism. https://fathomjournal.org/anti-judaism-anti-zionism-antisemitism/

Jeremy Sharon (2025). Hamas fatality figures for Gaza are ‘clear misinformation,’ according to new study. https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-fatality-figures-for-gaza-war-are-clear-disinformation-according-to-new-study/

Eve Garrard (2024). ’Eat Their Skulls’: The Pleasures of antisemitism, revisited after 7 October. https://fathomjournal.org/eat-their-skulls-the-pleasures-of-antisemitism-updated-after-7-october/?highlight=Eat%20their%20skulls

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