“People reach out to me when they’re already on medication to manage the emotional toll,” Deedee Bitran, of StandWithUs, told JNS.
Vita Fellig | Jewish News Syndicate | June 6, 2025
The Saidoff Legal Department at StandWithUs typically handled about 270 annual requests for legal assistance before the Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That number has routinely leapt to some 150 requests monthly, Deedee Bitran, senior counsel and director of the pro bono network at the department, told JNS.
Bitran’s department has settled 10 employment discrimination cases involving Jew-hatred in the past year.
“I think that there are a lot of people in workplaces who feel emboldened by what happened on Oct. 7,” she told JNS. “Social activism is being used as a shield, and people think that they can say whatever they want about Jewish people in the Diaspora, specifically in the workplace, because of the current conflict.”
“People think they have an excuse to use antisemitic tropes that they might not have used beforehand,” she said.
Bitran estimates that 30% of those seeking legal consultations from StandWithUs work in academia, although workplace discrimination has become widespread across industries, including medicine and the service sector, she said.
“Jews are being held accountable for Israel’s actions in the workplace, with cases of multiple coworkers and supervisors yelling at their Jewish employees, saying, ‘Why is Israel doing this?’ And ‘how could you guys bomb Gaza?’” she said. “What does a Jew in the Diaspora have to do with whether or not there’s a bomb in Gaza? It’s absurd.”
Employers often look the other way and dismiss Jew-hatred in the workplace as merely “a political issue,” according to Bitran.
“A lot of employers have seemed to bury their heads in the sand and refuse to recognize when there’s a big problem with antisemitism in the workplace,” she told JNS. “I think employers need to invest in education training, whether that’s with StandwithUS or any other organization, so they can learn the difference between what is criticism of Israel’s policies and what crosses the line to plain antisemitism.”
‘My pretty Miami office’
As the Oct. 7 attacks unfolded, Bitran was a business litigator at Shutts & Bowen, a major Miami law firm, where she is now of counsel. She began to question her response to rising Jew-hatred in the United States as her relatives in Israel were called to the front lines.
“My first cousin was throwing on his Israel Defense Forces uniform to go run into battle and kissing his four children and wife goodbye,” she told JNS. “I remember feeling so useless sitting in my pretty Miami office in Big Law.”
After she connected with the StandWithUs office and took on a pro bono case for an Israeli professor facing discrimination at a U.S. university, Bitran told JNS that it became clear that the nonprofit needed her help full-time. She joined the team and helped launch a new division within the legal department focused on employment discrimination.
“My full-time job is handling employment discrimination cases,” she said. “It’s been infuriating and heartbreaking, but also really empowering, because I get to see the wins when we can help hold an employer accountable for Jew-hatred.”
A crucial part of pursuing discrimination cases is ensuring they move beyond the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which can pave the way for broader legal precedent, according to Bitran.
“I want decisions from courts holding employers accountable for Jew-hatred in the workplace,” she said.
In one case, a court found that calling a Jew a “Jewish American princess” and referencing “Jewish money” in the workplace was sufficient to get past a motion to dismiss, Bitran told JNS.
“That’s great, because the next time someone calls me and says they are being called something similar, I can say, ‘Alright. We have a chance at building a case because of this previous precedent,’” she said.
Many people don’t realize that StandWithUs offers pro bono legal services for employment discrimination, and that many Jewish professionals endure work hostility quietly.
“People reach out to me when they’re already on medication to manage the emotional toll, which they weren’t taking before,” she said. “Going to work has become miserable because they’re being targeted solely for being Jewish. That shouldn’t have to be the case in America.”
“We have laws that prohibit discrimination and protect us,” she told JNS. “It’s time we start utilizing that because if we don’t advocate for us, nobody’s going to do it for us.”
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