Jewish Heritage Month
In a classroom during Jewish American Heritage Month, a contradiction played out that says more about our moment than any headline.
On one side sat a student organizing a protest against Israel—coordinating boycotts, building campaigns, mobilizing through social media. On the other sat a student immersed in a corner of right-wing politics where suspicion of Jews had hardened into something more explicit—broadcasting messages about “influence” and exclusion to a growing online audience.
They believed they had little in common.
They were wrong.
Both depended—completely—on the very contributions they were, in different ways, dismissing or attacking.
The platforms they used to organize, post, and amplify? Built on technologies shaped in part by Israeli engineers and Jewish innovators. Cybersecurity systems developed in Israel protect their data. Communication infrastructure, navigation tools, and even the hardware in their hands trace back to breakthroughs driven by Jewish scientists and entrepreneurs.
And that’s just technology.
Modern medicine—from vaccines to cancer therapies—has been profoundly shaped by Jewish researchers. Agriculture in water-scarce regions has been transformed by Israeli drip irrigation. Our understanding of physics itself was revolutionized by figures like Albert Einstein.
These are not marginal contributions. They are foundational.
Which makes the contradiction unavoidable: you cannot meaningfully participate in the modern world while dismissing or targeting an entire people and their contributions.
When rhetoric shifts from policies to people—when “influence” becomes accusation and Jews, as a group, become the focus—the line has already been crossed.
And it is happening—from more than one direction.
The uncomfortable truth is this: the world is interconnected in ways ideology cannot untangle. The same individuals who reject, vilify, or attempt to erase Jews are often—knowingly or not—relying on their contributions every single day.
You can argue about the world as you wish.
You cannot rewrite who helped build it.
There is no room for hate in that equation. None. And that includes Jews.
If Jewish American Heritage Month is meant to be more than symbolic, it should force a reckoning with that reality: that Jewish history is not only a story of survival, but of enduring, global contribution—across science, medicine, technology, and beyond.
Ignoring that doesn’t make it disappear.
It only reveals how disconnected rhetoric has become from reality.
