A poster of KnowUs
KnowUs, a new, effort to counter misleading, negative portrayals of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, penned an open letter to the Board of the Pulitzer Prize urging it to refrain from granting its award to The New York Times for its deeply offensive and flawed series of articles attacking these thriving communities. Prize winners are scheduled to be announced in May.
Since September 2022, KnowUs has chronicled a Times crusade of one-sided, inaccurate articles mischaracterizing Orthodox Jews. The activist reporting is widely rumored to have set its sights on the journalistic award.
KnowUs mailed the letter to each of the 18 Pulitzer Board members. The 30-page letter includes 70 endnotes, and not only catalogs the offensive tropes irresponsibly amplified by the Times in an environment of rising, dangerous antisemitism, but also demonstrates that the Times knowingly employed sources with extensive conflicts of interest, something it failed to disclose. It also falsely claimed credit for real-world impacts, presented misleading data, misrepresented basic educational funding elements and repeatedly engaged in unwarranted negative associations.
The Pulitzer Prize guidelines contain sparse official requirements for its award. They merely state that "entries must adhere to the highest journalistic principle... that exemplifies the longstanding ethics of the journalistic profession. These include a commitment to honesty with both readers and the subjects of our work. The best journalism is transparent about its sources and methods. The rigor and completeness of sourcing is an important factor in judging the quality of submissions."
KnowUs, which was formed under the auspices of Agudath Israel of America following broad outrage at the articles, felt a critical need for the Pulitzer Prize Board to review, in an informed manner, the articles' adherence to "the highest journalistic principles" the Pulitzer Board values.
KnowUs writes in its letter: "We believe that awarding these articles, in any way, will be seen not only as a tacit approval and furtherance of offensive, antisemitic tropes, but would diminish the standing of the Pulitzer Prize by celebrating articles of demonstrably poor journalistic integrity."
KnowUs is not alone in its critical scrutiny of The New York Times reporting. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), among many others, have decried the coverage.
Any legitimate issues the paper sought to raise or explore were buried by these, and other, serious breaches of journalistic ethics, and by the articles' creation of bigoted caricatures of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, further othering an already marginalized community.
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Protecting Sabbath Observers in the Workplace
Under federal law, an employer is required to reasonably accommodate an employee's religious practice unless that would impose an "undue hardship" on the employer.
The Supreme Court of the United States is considering anew what constitutes an "undue hardship," as the Court heard the case of Groff v. DeJoy. The case involves Gerald Groff, an evangelical Christian mailman, who lost his job for refusing to work on Sunday, the day he observes as his Sabbath. Groff sued USPS for failing to accommodate his sincerely-held religious beliefs. So far he was unsuccessful as both the district court and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against him on the basis that his absence on Sunday did cause "undue hardship" to the USPS.
In an earlier Supreme Court ruling many years ago in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the Court weakly defined "undue hardship" as only "more than de minimis cost," meaning more than a "trivial burden."
Agudath Israel and other Orthodox groups joined a National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA) brief urging the Supreme Court to provide more meaningful accommodation of religious practices — including Sabbath observance — for American workers. The COLPA brief was authored by renowned constitutional attorney Nathan Lewin. Click here to read the brief.
The importance and effect of the Court's receiving the views of Orthodox Jewish groups and other faith communities on the issue was highlighted during the hearing. When Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar claimed that Hardison is effective in protecting the rights of religious employees, Justice Samuel Alito pushed back, stating, "We have amicus briefs here by many representatives of many minority religions — Muslims, Hindus, Orthodox Jews, Seventh-day Adventists — and they all say that that is just not true, and that Hardison has violated their right to religious liberty."
"Agudath Israel receives countless calls from people around the country who have lost their jobs or were unable to take a job because of their Sabbath observance," said Rabbi A.D Motzen, Agudath Israel's national director of government affairs.
"It is gratifying and important that both sides in the Groff case agreed that the Hardison de minimis standard is misleading and unhelpful. It should accordingly not be relied on for future resolution of religious accommodation requests," said Nathan Lewin. "This will be exceedingly important for Sabbath observance and other religious needs of Jewish employees. It will support not only complaints they might file in courts or in the EEOC but in the give-and-take of non-litigated employee requests. It is often the case that an employer's lawyer cites the Hardison standard to reject a reasonable request and the employee fails to challenge that opinion. If the Court now formally discards that test, it will make a big difference."
"The "more than de minimis" standard has proven to be the key obstacle to providing the protection the law offered. The standard is so low that employers don't even bother trying to accommodate the employees, and employees don't bother asserting their rights, knowing that they would suffer aggravation and expense on a losing case. This cannot be what Congress desired or intended when it sought to protect the rights of religiously observant employees. Indeed, because of the "more than de minimis" standard, the law has never lived up to its promise," said Rabbi Abba Cohen, Agudath Israel's vice president for government affairs and Washington director and counsel.
"I hope that a majority of the Court also issues a decision that equates the duty to make a religious accommodation with the legal duty to make accommodations for other situations in which co-workers may be affected, such as accommodations for people with disabilities prescribed by federal law," added Nathan Lewin. "It is time for the Court to recognize that the free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment requires no less. Recent Supreme Court decisions demonstrate that religious exercise of one person may not be rejected because of the now obsolete concern that it might amount to Establishment of Religion."
"The history of American Jewry cannot be told without marking the struggle for Sabbath observance," said Rabbi David Zwiebel, Agudah's executive vice president. "Due to Hardison, countless people have given up or even lost employment opportunities for jobs for which they were eminently qualified. Most of these cases were not even litigated because of the high bar set by Hardison. By hearing this case the Supreme Court has taken one step forward to rectifying this and protecting the religious liberties of Americans in the workforce."
