Beyond Fear: Why Lasting Change Requires A Different Approach
In recent years, antisemitism has reached a historically alarming level in the United States. Jewish communities are grappling not only with harassment or vandalism, but with rising physical assaults and loss of life. It is frightening and naming that reality matters.
And yet, if fear becomes the primary frame for how we respond, we risk allowing antisemitism to shape us more than our response to it.
Recent studies reinforce what many Jews already know about their daily experience: antisemitism is influencing behavior. Thirty-seven percent of Jewish adults reported having changed behaviors because of concerns about personal safety, according to Boston’s most recent Jewish Community Study. These shifts do not come from panic, but from adaptation. Still, adaptation has a cost. Over time, it can quietly narrow presence, leadership, and belonging. This kind of adaptation doesn’t just change individual behavior; it reduces participation in civic life itself.
Fear can create urgency. It can unlock attention and resources. It can even produce short-term wins. But experience has taught me something essential: fear is not an organizing strategy. Fear does not cultivate leadership. It does not create lasting civic or cultural change. And it is not responsive to the scale or complexity of the challenge we face.
Combating antisemitism therefore requires more than a reactive response. It requires a purposeful, affirmative vision. If our goal is not only to respond when antisemitism surfaces, but to reduce its power and legitimacy over time, then we need a different orientation – one grounded in a strong sense of identity, relationship, and leadership.
I come to this work after years of leading immigrant rights campaigns at the local, state, and federal levels, where I learned the power of narratives shaped by those most directly impacted and of movements built through relationships and shared purpose. This shift is not abstract for me. Like many Jews, I learned early how to read a room – to decide which parts of my identity felt safe to carry openly and which were better contained. But leadership asks something different. It requires not the erosion of self, but the confidence to bring it forward.
Across the Jewish community, leaders are already modeling this shift. Quietly and deliberately, they are asking a different set of questions. Not only about how we respond when antisemitism appears, but also how do we build the kind of community that prevents it from taking hold?
This framing moves us away from constant reactivity and toward proactive movement building that changes the conditions inside institutions and communities.
The risk of not taking this approach is that our responses remain short-sighted, focused on getting through the moment rather than strengthening the systems that will be tested again. When we organize only in reaction, we may manage immediate harm, but we miss the opportunity to ensure that our institutions, leaders and communities are better prepared the next time antisemitism surfaces.
That understanding shapes the work of CJP’s Center for Combating Antisemitism. Alongside essential investments in security and incident response, we focus on strengthening the civic environment around Jewish life. This includes supporting Jewish leaders and allies stepping into public and institutional roles with confidence; increasing education, empathy, and curiosity in civic spaces; working with employers and universities to establish clear responsibility and norms; and cultivating allies through sustained relationships rather than transactional solidarity.
As a result, we see more civic leaders bringing programs and trainings on Jewish identity and antisemitism to their institutions, more Jewish employees organizing within their workplaces, and more Jewish community leaders and allies taking on leadership and setting the tone for safety and inclusion in their communities.
Cultural change does not happen through outrage or information alone. It happens through relationships, organizing, and networks. People take cues from leaders they trust, peers they respect, and institutions that model values clearly. When leadership is visible and consistent, when community members are grounded in a clear sense of what we are trying to build and not just what we are working against, and when we invest in building relationships across differences, we create conditions in which antisemitism becomes plainly incompatible with civic values. This is what movement building asks of us: not just response, but participation in shaping the discourse and conditions that determine what is tolerated and what is not.
Fear may explain this moment, but it should not define our response. This is not a time to retreat. It is a time to contribute fully and visibly, to invest in who we are becoming, and to build the institutions and communities where Jewish life is visible, confident, and fully belonging in civic life.
A strong, thriving Jewish future is the North Star guiding us. And it is one worth moving toward together.
