The Super Bowl ad against antisemitism pitches a Jewish identity without Israel

Robert Kraft’s Super Bowl ad was meant to fight antisemitism by teaching non-Jews to accept and empathize with Jews, and to encourage broader American audiences to stand up against Jewish hate. However, it landed in a mixed way within the Jewish community, sparking debate not just over how to fight antisemitism, but over whether Jewish life should be oriented around acceptance in the Diaspora.

The ad shows a Jewish high school student, head down and visibly isolated, humiliated by classmates who laugh at him and slap a note reading “dirty Jew” onto his backpack. The resolution comes through a black, non-Jewish ally, who covers the note with a blue square and offers comfort, saying “I know how it feels.” The message of the ad is clear: antisemitism is a social failure that can be solved through empathy, awareness, understanding, and allyship.

That message is what drew criticism. Some argued it portrays Jews as weak, passive, and dependent on the goodwill of others. Others said it ignores the reality that much of today’s antisemitism is ideological, intentional, and Israel-focused, not the result of ignorance. But to simply call the ad misguided misses the point. The ad itself is not a mistake. It is the logical outcome of an understanding of Jewish life that Jews have come to define for themselves, in which Jewish existence is framed as a minority and vulnerable identity whose survival depends on acceptance and protection from the surrounding society.

Robert Kraft himself said the goal of the campaign is to “create a sense of empathy and understanding and get people to stand up.” Adam Katz, the president of the Blue Square Alliance, was even more explicit explaining the ad was never meant to resonate primarily with Jews, saying it was designed for “over 100 million Americans” who are “classified as unengaged and don’t see antisemitism as a significant problem.”

Within that framework, the campaign makes sense. If the ultimate goal of Jewish life is to be Jewish in America, striving to feel comfortable, safe, and accepted in American public schools and civic spaces, then fighting antisemitism naturally becomes a public-relations project. The task is to educate, humanize, and appeal to the moral instincts of the majority.

But that premise is fundamentally unsustainable and ultimately, cannot succeed.

The ad itself ends with a statistic: “two in three Jewish teens have experienced antisemitism.” Blue Square presents this as evidence of a crisis of awareness. But it can just as easily be read as something far more alarming, as evidence that despite the enormous resources poured into fighting antisemitism, and an intensified focus since October 7, the fight against antisemitism has failed to meaningfully change the reality of Jewish students, and has not delivered the safety it promises.

If two-thirds of Jewish children are encountering antisemitism, the problem is not that Jews are insufficiently understood. It is that Jewish difference, in a foreign society, has once again become intolerable, or at least visible enough, to a meaningful segment of society to feel the need to push back. That is not a messaging failure. It is a structural reality.

Jews in America are not at home. That is not an insult to America, nor a moral attack on its citizens. It is simply the reality of a people who enter another society with their own culture and norms, who do not seek full integration. America is not our land. Its culture, norms, and majority identity are not ours. Jews cannot realistically demand that a foreign civilization permanently reshape itself to accommodate Jewish distinctiveness. At the same time, Jews cannot reshape themselves to fully blend in without ceasing to be Jewish, also known as assimilation.

The Robert Kraft approach implicitly chooses the first option: attempting to engineer acceptance through empathy campaigns. But history offers little evidence that this strategy can succeed forever. Jewish survival has never depended on being liked, even in the 21st century. It has depended on strength, cohesion, and the refusal to define Jewish existence by the approval of others.

This is where the absence of Israel in how the ad relates to Judaism becomes impossible to ignore. The ad reflects a Jewish identity detached from the Land of Israel, even for Jews living in America, which represents self-sufficiency, strength, and responsibility for our own survival, values, and mission. Once Jewish life is separated from that anchor, antisemitism is no longer something Jews are expected to confront themselves, but a social problem to be managed through empathy, awareness, and acceptance by others. In Israel, Jews are not guests. They do not ask to be accepted or depend on allyship to justify their existence, but as a people responsible for their own fate.

That does not mean antisemitism disappears in Israel. But it means it is not treated as a public-relations problem to be managed, persuading others to change to accommodate you. It is treated as a threat to be confronted when it starts to have tangible consequences. 

The deeper issue is that “fighting antisemitism” has become an end in itself, rather than a byproduct of cultivating a strong Jewish life. Spending $15 million on a Super Bowl ad to persuade others to see Jews as equals reflects a belief that Jewish security lies primarily in external validation. That belief may feel pragmatic, but it is also fragile, unreliable, and ultimately out of our control.

The sticky note in the ad is meant to be covered up and forgotten. But perhaps it should not be. Perhaps it should serve as a reminder not of Jewish vulnerability, but of Jewish responsibility. The alternative is not indifference to antisemitism, but a reordering of priorities. Jewish life should not be organized primarily around fighting those who hate us, but around strengthening who we are through education, national consciousness, and a connection to Israel expressed through action, not just symbolism. A strong Jewish identity, especially as one people, with God’s help does more to counter antisemitism than any awareness campaign ever could.