The Slow Normalization of the Unthinkable
We are all busy living our lives—busy with our parenting, communal, and everyday obligations, absorbed by everything around us. So busy, perhaps, that we don’t fully see the reality closing in—not only in New York but worldwide. What we’re seeing isn’t isolated anymore.
New York, the melting pot where immigrants of all backgrounds coexisted, is now where many Jews face something unthinkable: intimidation disguised as activism and antisemitism dressed in modern language. This is no longer just politics.
When people surround Jewish spaces—under whatever banner—Jewish families feel it as intimidation. What’s worse is the normalization.
When leaders excuse or explain instead of calling it out, it’s like saying hostility is acceptable if dressed up.
This is what people call “polite antisemitism”—it doesn’t always show up with an ugly face, but rather wearing a tie. Beneath the discourse, it’s the same old hate.
And this isn’t isolated.
We are seeing incidents across Europe, across the United States, and in Argentina, where antisemitism has also risen sharply. In England, there have been stabbings and attacks near synagogues. In America, there have been multiple failed attempts and threats directed at Jewish institutions, schools, synagogues, and community centers. Even Jewish daycare centers now require levels of security that once would have sounded unimaginable in the modern Western world. It paints a disturbing global picture, where this is no longer a matter of perception, but fact.
At some point, we have to stop pretending these are disconnected events.
In La Plata, a city in the province of Buenos Aires where my father’s side resides, one attack was on the Max Nordau cultural institution—cultural Jews tied to progressive, left-leaning ideals. Nonetheless, a second attack was on the Beit Chabad of La Plata—religious Jews. It’s not ideology; it’s targeting Jews, period.
People will argue that Israel’s military activity creates reactions abroad. But honestly, I think that misses something deeper. If anything, those events are often being used as justification—or excuse—for hostility that already existed toward Jewish communities around the world.
A Jewish library in Argentina is not making military decisions. Jewish students in New York are not directing wars. Jewish families in Brooklyn are not foreign policy instruments. And yet they increasingly become the recipients of intimidation, harassment, rage, and violence.
In this week’s Parsha, we read about laws tied to the Land of Israel and also about responsibility toward one another—specifically helping people before they collapse under hardship. There is also the idea that when Am Yisrael remains spiritually grounded and connected, there is blessing and protection.
At the same time, the world around us feels increasingly unstable.
Even for people who are not deeply religious, moments like this force difficult questions: Are these random events, or warning signs? Are we witnessing isolated political tensions, or something deeper happening socially, morally, and spiritually?
I do not pretend to have all the answers.
But perhaps the first step is admitting honestly what many people already feel: something has shifted.
And whether people are comfortable saying it or not, Jewish communities around the world are feeling that shift very deeply right now.
