Four Shocks, Four Responses

Since October 7, 2023, American Jews have experienced four devastating shocks.

The first was October 7 itself. Hamas easily breached Israel’s border with Gaza and set about torturing, maiming, raping, and murdering Jews (and non-Jews in the area as well), killing around 1200 and taking 250 hostages while gleefully disseminating videos of their attack to loved ones in Gaza, victims’ families, and the world at large. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were nowhere to be found. It was terrifying.

The second shock – appalling hatred – began the next day. Expressions of sympathy for Israel were met with praise for Hamas. Over 30 Harvard University student groups blamed Israel for the violence, a Columbia University professor called the attack “awesome,” and hundreds of demonstrators burned the Israeli flag in Times Square. Since then, anti-Israel protesters have blocked highways, vandalized Jewish and public institutions, assaulted Jews, turned colleges and universities into centers of antisemitic agitation, and demanded that businesses, universities, and governments boycott Israel. Antisemitism has manifested itself in city council hearings, teachers unions, K-12 classrooms, social service organizations, medical facilities, arts organizations, professional associations, and DEI offices.

Attacks are sometimes said to be directed only at Israel – they are not antisemitic, merely “anti-Zionist” – but the substance and tenor of the attacks have convinced most Jews that what they’re seeing is antisemitism –the “kill the Jews” posters are very convincing. The armed guards at synagogues and at Jewish schools, preschools, community centers, and gatherings of many kinds show how threatened Jews feel. Sometimes antisemitism seems to be everywhere.

The third shock is a shock of recognition. Long before Israel existed, Jews believed that the US was the best country in the world for them, and many still think so – there’s so little discrimination relative to anywhere else, and so many opportunities. After World War II, antisemitism declined dramatically, and it was possible to believe that, except for fringe movements on the political right, antisemitism was a thing of the past. Now it has burst forth with an intensity not seen since the 1930s, and many Jews are just stunned. How can so many people hate Jews for no rational reason? Then they realize: vast numbers of people hating Jews for no reason? That’s what antisemitism is; that’s what our ancestors experienced.

The fourth shock is being abandoned by many of those that Jews thought they could count on. In city after city, interfaith and interracial alliances seemingly just evaporated, while many liberal organizations that Jews had worked with for years responded to October 7 and to blatant antisemitism with silence, or worse, with attacks on Israel and Jews.

All too often, the justice system responded to disruptions targeting Israel and Jews with–nothing. When anti-Israel protesters blocked major highways, took over campuses, vandalized Jewish organizations, assaulted Jews on the street, and called for killing Jews, there were few arrests; when people were arrested, charges were often dropped; when charges were pressed, the cases seemed to have vanished.

DEI offices and other organizations supposedly committed to equal treatment have proven to have double standards that leave Jews, and Jews alone, exposed to expressions of hate.

Jews are finding themselves abandoned by friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Jewish college students have been ghosted by former friends. Jewish parents of schoolchildren find themselves ostracized by parents of their children’s classmates. Jewish faculty have found their workplaces increasingly toxic. Jewish homeowners have met hostility from neighbors. The sense of isolation can be terrible.

And many Jews feel abandoned by other Jews. Jewish Voice for Peace and other Jewish organizations call for the destruction of Israel. Some Jewish university presidents – including those at the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Northwestern University, and NYU – have shamefully failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism. Jewish student protesters are regularly described as idealists, perhaps a bit misguided; but how many chants of “from the river to the sea” under signs reading “kill the Jews” should it take for them to realize what they are supporting?

These shocks have been devastating, and responses to them ineffectual. But there can be better ways to respond. Some are already being tried; others should be. Here are some ideas.

First, don’t let antisemites frame the issues. They love making outrageous claims – that Zionism is racism, Israel is a settler colonial state, anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, Jews are white oppressors, and so on. How do Jews tend to respond? By arguing. No, they say, Zionism is not racism, and we can prove it. Israel is not a settler colonial state, it’s the rebirth of Jews’ ancient homeland. Anti-Zionism is antisemitism–the IHRA definition of antisemitism says so. Jews all too often act as though they are in a debate rather than a fight for survival.

How might Jews reframe how they present themselves? They could stop focusing on the negative – their victimization, their sad demands that DEI offices view Jews the same way they view African Americans, their tendency to act as supplicants asking to be treated like everyone else. Instead, they could accentuate the positive – developing and disseminating ideas about what is most positive about Judaism and Jewish life (and yes, arguing about it), and demanding to be treated with respect on their own, not as part of some imagined coalition of minorities.

Second, Jews need new self-defense organizations. As of 2020, the few organizations whose primary goal was fighting antisemitism received an infinitesimal percentage of funds raised for Jewish communal purposes, and just two – the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League – got three quarters of that. Fortunately, the past few years have seen the founding of new national organizations–for example, StandWithUs, focusing on education; the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, pursuing new legal strategies; and the Community Security Service, helping Jewish organizations with security. Since October 7, new local and national organizations have sprung up, such as the American Jewish Medical Association and Artists against Antisemitism. Some will fail, but the ferment they create will be good for the American Jewish community.

Third, Jewish organizations must rethink their longstanding views on which organizations may be trustworthy allies. Jewish organizations have long instinctively allied with seemingly liberal organizations. But recently this has led to some terrible mistakes – supporting the Black Lives Matter movement even as its antisemitism became more obvious, the ACLU as it targets Jews as enemies of freedom of speech, gay and feminist organizations that call for the destruction of Israel, etc. No longer can can Jewish organizations assume that liberal organizations are natural allies, or that conservative organizations are not.

Fourth, more effort must be devoted to addressing divisions within the Jewish community. For a variety of reasons, many Jews have long thought that the core of Judaism is the pursuit of social justice for everyone. That may be fine, up to a point–but not when Jewish protesters on campuses claim that their devotion to social justice requires them to join those calling for the destruction of Israel.

There is no easy way to confront these views, especially, perhaps, for parents whose children are among the protesters. But it would be a good idea to say unequivocally that calling for the destruction of Israel is beyond the pale. No group can afford to call for its own destruction. And it would be worthwhile to get away from framing Judaism as support for anything someone claims is “social justice.”

For American Jews, the months since October 7 have brought one shock after another.  How might Jews respond? They can hide. They can let themselves be persuaded that Zionism is racism. Or they can use the occasion to rethink their views of Jewish life in America, whom they can count on, and how to unify their own community. If they succeed, perhaps this period will be seen as a transient though very scary nightmare, rather than as the beginning of a permanent diminution of Jewish life in the United States.