Answering Antisemitism

“I thought I overheard the word ‘Nazi’” Julia Jassey recalled from the basement of a Student Hall at the University of Chicago. It was her first week on campus and she had decided to join the French Club. “I turned around and asked why Nazis were being discussed. And I mentioned that my great-grandparents’ families were killed during the Holocaust.” 

Then a German student responded. “Back in Germany, we don’t say your great-grandparents died in the Holocaust. We say they took an extended vacation to Germany and never came back.” 

“I was frozen,” Julia recalled. “Uncomfortable laughter filled the room. I sort of joined in. I wanted to speak up, but I felt paralyzed. I had no idea what to say. I felt too ashamed to report the incident, too afraid to draw attention to myself so early in my college career.” Julia concluded: “I learned then that fear is not the most demoralizing response to antisemitism. Silence is.”

How to respond? We’re almost never prepared to seize the moment. To say exactly what’s called for, how it needs to be said. And yet, if current trends continue, we’re going to need to get better and better at this. 

This week’s portion of Torah is riddled with loss. The deaths of Miriam and Aaron. A fatal punishment for Moses which will prevent his entry into the Promised Land. Along with an unnerving supply of short-spirited complaining (Num. 21:4). Yet, somehow the Children of Israel find their way forward, all the way to the hills overlooking the Land, on the other side of today’s Dead Sea region. 

How’d they do it? As Rabbi David Wolpe recently wrote about struggles to attain spiritual-might in the Warsaw Ghetto: they found, through pain, a path back to our people and our traditions. 

The Sages make an observation about shortcuts and long roads. “A shortcut that becomes a long way around becomes a lot more difficult, than a long road that ends up short” (Talmud Eruvin 53b). 

Today’s road offers us no shortcut. Online life has coarsened discourse, decimated trust, and supercharged antisemitism. Still, if we can seek fresh-fed insights and stay alert to unimagined perspectives, then our responses will indeed get better and better.  Just like Julia who, having graduated in 2023, became the Co-Founder and CEO of the terrific,100,000-strong organization Jewish on Campus.

May we come to know what Tal Becker, architect of the Abraham Accords, has taught about change: before it happens it seems impossible, after it does, it seems inevitable. Am Yisrael Chai.