New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Grammy-nominated rapper Meek Mill on Sunday appeared before the NAACP’s 114th National Convention, which is taking place in Boston through Aug. 1, in an hour-long discussion of racism and anti-Semitism and how to stop them, titled, “Hate Has No Home Here.” NAACP President Derrick Johnson and Prof. Henry Louis Gates joined the forum.
“People are trying to put boulders between the Black community and the Jewish community. And we’ve always been uniquely tied together,” Kraft said. “And I want us to continue to build those ties.”
Mill described how he and Kraft visited Poland earlier this year and participated in the March of the Living at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex.
“We got a tour in Poland about what they did to Jewish people … They tattooed numbers on them and called them by numbers,” Mill recalled. “It was so humiliating to them that it made them not value themselves.”
It reminded Mill of his experience in prison: “They was calling us by numbers, you know, when they could have called us by our names,” he said.
Prof. Gates said that anti-Black racism was the “twin side” of antisemitism, asserting that someone who hates Black people will also hate Jews, both forms of hate being deeply rooted in Western culture. Predictably, Gates blamed the recent rise in hate in the US on former President Donald J. Trump.
As we all recall, there was no antisemitism in America before November 2016.
In March, Kraft launched a $25 million campaign under the slogan, “Stand Up to Jewish Hate,” through the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism that he established in 2019. Pointing to the violence against Jews in recent years, including the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018, Kraft said, “We need people not to be silent when they see hate against any minority, whether they be Jewish, Black, gay, Asian, Muslim — whatever it may be — we have to push back to keep the values of this country strong.”
Robert Kraft, 82, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, to modern Orthodox parents. His father was a lay leader at Congregation Kehillath Israel in Brookline and wanted his son to become a rabbi. As a child, Robert sold newspapers outside of Braves Field in Boston. During high school, he couldn’t participate in most sports because it interfered with his after-school Hebrew studies and his Shabbat observance. Still, in 1974, Kraft purchased the Boston Lobsters professional tennis team.
In 2000, Kraft donated $11.5 million to construct the Columbia Hillel which is made of Jerusalem stone. In 2017, Kraft contributed $6 million to build the first regulation-size American football field in Israel. He, along with several NFL Hall of Famers, traveled to Israel for the grand opening of the new Kraft Family Sports Campus. He has since led several “Touchdown in Israel” trips with Patriots and Hall of Famers.
In October 2022, Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism sponsored an ad encouraging people to denounce hate against Jews. The ad aired during NFL games with the slogan, “Stand Up to Jewish Hate.” It was in response to antisemitic comments made by Kanye West and Kyrie Irving. Kraft invested $25 million in the “Stand Up to Jewish Hate” campaign whose ads are being aired during the NFL draft, NBA, and NHL playoffs as well as by social media influencers.
