The debate over when anti-Zionism is the polite face of good old-fashioned Jew-hate looked set to run forever. But now we have the definitive answer, issued by one of America’s leading Jewish authorities. There is no chief rabbi here. We have no need of one. We have Barbra Streisand.

“When does anti-Zionism bleed into broad antisemitism?” Streisand asked on Twitter. She gave the answer by linking to a Jewish Journal op-ed, headlined Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones.

Berkeley is across the bay from San Francisco, America’s capital of mental illness, and has long cultivated a reputation for radical delusions.

The adornments of the Berkeley campus include Judith Butler, the gender-theory nut who theorised that Hamas and Hezbollah are “social movements that are progressive, on the left, the global left”. We should not be surprised that the students are deluded. That is the point of their education, at least as the activist educators see it.

Student groups at Berkeley’s School of Law have amended its bylaws to ensure that the school never invites speakers who support “Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine”.

The campaign was organised by the Law Students for Justice in Palestine, and endorsed by groups including the Womxn of Color Collective, the Women of Berkeley Law, the Muslim Law Student Association, the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, the Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, the Law Students of African Descent, and the Queer Caucus.

“It is now a century since Jewish-free zones first spread to the San Francisco Bay Area,” wrote Kenneth Marcus, a Berkeley Law graduate who chairs the Louis D Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and served as the 11th Assistant US Secretary for Civil Rights.

Marcus argues that American law protects discriminatory speech, but not discriminatory legislation or actions. These “exclusionary bylaws”, Marcus wrote, “operate like racially restrictive covenants, precluding minority participation into perpetuity”.

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law, admitted that the bylaw discriminates against the “90 percent or more of our Jewish students” who believe Israel should exist as a Jewish state.

He wrote a letter to the student groups, telling them that “excluding speakers on the basis of their viewpoint is inconsistent with our commitment to free speech and condemning the existence of Israel is a form of antisemitism”.

But he also defended the students’ right to free speech and denied that “any discrimination against Jews” had occurred.

Chemerinsky calls himself a “progressive Zionist”. The only thing he is progressing towards is absurdity and ignominy. There can be no doubt on this, now Barbra Streisand has ruled. Case closed.

Meanwhile on Broadway, Funny Girl has got funnier. Before it became a 1968 film starring Streisand, Funny Girl was a Broadway hit. In April, the musical was revived on Broadway for the first time.

The critics carped that Beanie Feldstein was unable to step out of the titanic shadows of both Fanny Brice and Barbra Streisand role. Not-so-funny girl.
The show has been saved by Lea Michele as Fanny Brice. Taking no chances, the producers have brought in Tovah Feldshuh. I saw Feldshuh’s one-woman Golda Meir show on

Broadway in the Nineties. I am confident that she will rise to the challenge of playing an even tougher character, Mrs Brice, the ultimate stage mother.

Lea Michele is best known for the TV series Glee, which is about a preternaturally talented and self-absorbed group of high-school theatre kids. The critics are impressed. Most impressive of all is that Michele’s sudden rise to the Great White Way echoes the plot of Glee.

The middle name of Michele’s character, Rachel Berry, is Fanny, for Fanny Brice. Berry dreams of Broadway. She sings Don’t Rain On My Parade, a tune from Funny Girl, in the key of Barbra Streisand.

I don’t know what Babs thinks of this. One of her finer hours is being revived, but without her.

Michele is a next-generation Fanny Brice. The annals of showbiz show that it’s only a short roller-skate from fame to obscurity. History also shows it’s also a short skate downhill from acceptance to exclusion. There was a time when Jews thought law school was a better option than show business. Better get your skates on.

Dominic Green is a Wall Street Journal contributor, a Washington Examiner columnist and a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute