‘Otherness’ Is Our Sword And Shield
We Jews need to lean into our identity, not run from it.
On International Holocaust Memorial Day 2026, many Jews were shocked that the commemorations seemingly erased the Jewish identity of the millions of lives lost. If, according to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, the failure to “[acknowledge] that 6 million Jews were killed by Hitler and by the Nazis speaks volumes,” then perhaps we should pay attention to what it says about a battle long lost and work on winning back the war for symbolic control. To do so, we need to lean into our identity and claim it on our own terms.
Jews recognize the Holocaust as their particular hell on earth–intended for them alone and accomplished by not only in an industrialized system specifically designed and engineered for their mass murder (the Final Solution to the Jewish Question), but also in the horror (“Holocaust of Bullets”) of neighbors shooting Jews en masse in pits and on river banks. What was done to us was uniquely evil, beyond morality and rational discourse. In the face of calls to “Globalize the Intifada,” many Jews don’t see why it couldn’t happen again.
The world, however, does not view the Holocaust the same way. For them, it was more of a situated historical event that serves as a universal symbol of human suffering and moral evil, coded as “genocide.” When, beginning in April 1945, Americans encountered a torrent of newspaper, radio, and magazine stories reporting the discovery of Nazi concentration camps, they grasped the fate of the Jews as emblematic of the German terror that threatened democratic civilization, which the defeat of Germany promised to leave behind. At the 1946 Nuremberg trials, Nazi leaders were prosecuted for something new, “crimes against humanity.” This, along with the emergence of the “Holocaust” (with a capital “H”) as the dominant representation for the mass murder of European Jews, universalized the Final Solution and transformed its Jewish victims into a bridge metaphor that extended their trauma into a trauma for all humankind. (Hannah Arendt solidified the universalization of Nazi evil following the Eichmann trial, by insisting on recognizing the “banality of evil” and positing him as an “everyman.”)
Western culture subsequently curated and diluted descriptions of the Holocaust to be palatable to a broad audience. The 1947 published version of Anne Frank’s diary was consciously edited to downplay her Jewish identity to promote a more universal message of human suffering. Where Anne Frank wrote that she believed there is goodness in everyone, Christians took this as a teachable moment that the gift of grace and absolution only comes from Jesus.
Today, it seems that all the pages written about and memorials to the Holocaust have become toxic and captured by the demons we sought to drive out. Former moral boundaries of right, wrong, and evil no longer command. Are we surprised that the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam barred a Jewish employee from wearing a kippah at work? The term “genocide” has become nonreferential and redefined as a word meaning merely “a lot of people who’ve been killed.”
Jews have now come full circle to again face the erasure sought by the Nazis and their allies. Where Universalism erased Jews from their victimhood in Europe, anti-Zionism now seeks to erase Judaism altogether by separating the people from their land. Paradoxically, where Jews once stood accused of allowing the Nazis to lead them like lambs to the slaughter, Jew-haters now claim that Israel’s self-defence against genocide is itself genocide. This inversion is a naked exercise in pretense, mendacity, hypocrisy and opportunism. In the face of this hatred, it’s critical to stand up to the demons.
In the aftermath of the 10/7 Hamas pogrom, one thing that clearly failed was the post-Holocaust strategy of American liberal Jews to shield themselves from Jew-hatred by fighting for social justice under the banner of tikkun olam (“a Jewish counterpart to Christian ‘liberation theology,’ albeit without the theology”). In practice, this high-minded noblesse oblige didn’t interpose even a speed bump on the Progressives’ path to blame the Jewish victims for the medieval sadistic evil that consumed about 1,200 lives (the deadliest terrorist attack by the number of fatalities per capita for at least the past 50 years). As a result, American Jews discussed whether tikkun olam has been emphasized over both Jewish peoplehood and support of the state of Israel. According to Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City:
We did not intend that our emphasis on tikkun olam — social repair — would lead some Jews to join anti-Israel demonstrations. We did not intend for Jews to lead Passover Seders in so-called ‘liberated zones.’
(Neither did we expect Jewish voters to check at the door their concern for the Jewish people and cast their ballots for a New York mayor who denies Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state and repeatedly refuses to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada”.) Clearly, what’s needed today is a new approach and perspective, ivrur olam (איוורור עוֹלָם) not tikkun olam.
Today’s war against the Jewish people (עם ישראל) is waged with weaponized symbolism. Antisemitism has been superseded by and camouflaged as anti-Zionism, which is metonymically imputed as a moral crime and provides a permission structure for Jew-hatred. Its false narrative not only identifies evil with the State of Israel, but also serves to pollute all Jews and invite violence against them. The imputed moral crime cannot be defended against by pointing to exculpating circumstances or lack of direct involvement. To disassociate, Jews are expected to engage in performative actions of ritual cleansing and purification.
What can be done to win back symbolic control? We must recognize that the Jew-haters’ prime weapon is a universalization that precludes and annihilates Jewish particularity. Our “otherness”–the moral beauty of an ancient, eternal, and covenantal people that has sustained us–is our sword and our protective shield (Deuteronomy 33:29). We are the original indigenous people who were promised (Genesis 17:8) and purchased our land in Eretz Yisrael both in ancient and modern times, including from the al-Husseini clan of the Nazi-allied Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. The State of Israel was established not by a colonial project, but on the approval of the UN and on the backs of both those who survived the Nazis and had no place to go, and those who were ethnically cleansed from a host of Muslim nations.
In an increasingly post-factual world, we must defend the truth that Israel is a deeply moral and humanitarian enterprise, even if this truth remains hidden for some. This requires fire in the belly (Jeremiah 20:9) and an insistence on consequences for those who inculcate hatred that causes anti-Jew violence in the streets and schools of America, and abroad. For example, investor Bill Ackman, with courage and creativity, waged a high-profile campaign against elite U.S. universities that failed to adequately combat antisemitism on campus. His efforts helped lead to the resignations of Harvard President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill. Similarly, Patriots owner Robert Kraft withdrew financial support from his alma mater, Columbia University, because of rising, unchecked antisemitism and protests on campus. Elite law firms rescinded job offers to pro-Hamas students.
Much more is left to be done. Princeton University, for example, is offering a course on “Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide” in Gaza, taught by an instructor, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who accuses Israel and its supporters of lying about Hamas’s atrocities, including rapes and killing babies. She also says that Israel should be destroyed. Among Princeton’s required readings is an essay titled “Reprocide in Gaza: The Gendered Strategy of Genocide Through Reproductive Violence,” by Hala Shoman. How can a leading elite US university present a course built on a false, extreme, and antisemitic viewpoint calculated to inspire violence against Jews?
Creativity, showmanship, and celebrity is helpful. In 2014, American actress and comedian Joan Rivers struck a tone in adamant defense of Israel in Gaza. After telling the international press that they should be “ashamed” of favoring the Palestinian narrative, she made a colorful point about Hamas and Gaza to bring the conversation back to reality:
“If New Jersey were firing rockets into New York, we would wipe ‘em out. If we heard they were digging tunnels from New Jersey to New York, we would get rid of Jersey!”*
More recently, Jerry Seinfeld compared the overtly racist Ku Klux Klan to the “Free Palestine” movement, observing that at least the Klan was honest about their hatred of Jews:
“Free Palestine is, to me, just — you’re free to say you don’t like Jews. Just say you don’t like Jews”
Forcefully in her defense of the Jewish people, Amy Schumer called out,
‘If you scream “genocide” but were silent about the massacre on October 7, you might hate Jews‘.
A small gesture of loving support (a mitzvah) can also go a long way. It can be as simple as lighting Shabbat candles.
*Her interview is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-5Q7yuaXjM
