Congressman Brad Sherman

Brad Sherman was born and raised in Southern California, the product of a Jewish family in the San Gabriel Valley who took their heritage seriously. He attended Hebrew school twice a week as a child, and grew up understanding that being Jewish is a responsibility. He graduated from UCLA summa cum laude and Harvard Law magna cum laude, and has represented the San Fernando Valley in Congress since 1997, now in his fifteenth term. Throughout that career, he has made the fight against antisemitism. 

Sherman sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and has spent nearly three decades using that platform to fight antisemitism in all its forms and at every level: on university campuses, in foreign policy, in social media algorithms, and in the streets. He was among the earliest members of Congress to push the Department of Education to classify antisemitism as a civil rights violation under Title VI, writing to dozens of major universities including UCLA urging them toadopwt the State Department’s definition of antisemitism for enforcement purposes. He reintroduced the Antisemitism Awareness Act with bipartisan support. He wrote legislation targeting antisemitic content in educational curricula. He requested millions in federal funds to protect Jewish institutions in Southern California after antisemitic incidents in his district surged. 

And he has paid a price for it. In 2025, the Anti-Defamation League identified Sherman as the single most targeted member of the entire House of Representatives for antisemitic abuse on social media, subjected to more Jew-hatred in his Facebook comments than any other elected official in Congress. His response was immediate and unequivocal. 

Sherman has named the incidents in his own backyard with a clarity that elected officials too often avoid: two Jewish men shot leaving synagogue in Pico-Robertson; a Jewish couple assaulted outside their Beverly Hills synagogue; the antisemitic riot outside Adas Torah on Pico Boulevard; the killing of Paul Kessler in Thousand Oaks. He does not abstract these events into policy language. He names them and demands a legislative response. In a Congress often paralyzed by polarization, Sherman’s work on antisemitism has been consistently bipartisan, because Jew-hatred is not a partisan issue. It is an American one. 

““I will not be intimidated. I will not be silenced. I’ve spent my career standing up to extremism and antisemitism, and defending the right of all marginalized groups — including American Jews — to live in peace. That commitment only deepens in the face of these attacks.” — Congressman Brad Sherman, May 2025 ”

What sets Sherman apart is not only his record but his refusal to treat that record as politically inconvenient. In an era when many elected officials calibrate their statements on Jewish issues to minimize back lash, Sherman has consistently chosen the harder path: naming the perpetrators, demanding accountability, and refusing to allow antisemitism to be normalized. He has refused to let those experiences be abstracted into talking points. He has insisted they be treated as the emergencies they are. 

He has spent five terms making the argument that protecting Jewish Americans is not a Jewish issue. It is a constitutional one. It is a human one. He does not make this argument for applause. He makes it because he believes it is true, because the evidence in his own district demands it, and because he will not stop.