Brought on board were groups like the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, which had long advocated such a measure, first in Congress and then with the White House.
“The president and people in his administration are aggressively working to implement real policies confronting anti-Semitism, whether it is this in the education arena, or I’d say the Justice Department and the F.B.I.,” said Nathan Diament, the center’s executive director.
But uncomfortable tensions have been rising in Jewish communities over Mr. Trump’s embrace of the hard-line policies of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the president’s tolerance of what many see as bigotry in his administration and his political movement.
“It is an administration that regularly winks at white nationalists, and this is a cynical move to pretend that the administration actually cares about Jews when in fact their actions consistently put Jews in more danger,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the executive director of T’ruah, a liberal Jewish group.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said he supported good-faith efforts to curb anti-Semitism on college campuses, but also acknowledged the concern over the order’s potential implications for free speech. “It’s something we’re going to closely monitor,” he said.
Beyond its impact for Jewish Americans, the move was also a political signal to Mr. Trump’s conservative evangelical base that he continues to support its policy priorities regarding Israel. Like Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Trump has courted American evangelicals, often at the expense of more liberal Jewish communities.
Mr. Trump featured conservative evangelical leaders, including Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Dallas, and the Rev. John C. Hagee, a prominent end-times preacher, at the White House’s Hanukkah party after the signing ceremony. Both men have prompted outrage for their previous incendiary comments about Jewish people and prayed at the opening of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem last year. Mr. Jeffress once said that “you can’t be saved being a Jew,” and Mr. Hagee once said that the Holocaust was part of God’s plan to return the Jews to Israel.