This Is Not the 1930s. But Ask Yourself How the 1930s Began.

Seven men wearing swastika armbands stood near the World Trade Center on September 11, 2026, twenty-five years to the day after nearly three thousand Americans were murdered there. They raised their arms in Nazi salutes. They identified themselves as Nazis. They distributed antisemitic material. And then, in what journalists described as an unusual move even for self-identifying Nazis, they chanted: “Free, free Palestine.”

I keep coming back to the image of the swastika.

Not because I believe America in 2026 is Germany in 1933. It is not. Historical comparisons like that should never be made casually, particularly by those of us whose families know where that history ultimately led.

But perhaps we have been asking the wrong historical question. Instead of asking “Is this the 1930s?” perhaps we should ask a harder one: How did the 1930s become the 1930s? The Holocaust did not begin with Auschwitz. It did not begin with gas chambers. It began years earlier, as Jews were increasingly portrayed as responsible for society’s problems. Propaganda amplified antisemitic ideas that had existed for centuries. Jews were gradually pushed out of professions and institutions. Public humiliation became more acceptable. Violence became easier to tolerate. And perhaps most consequentially, millions of ordinary people learned to look away.

That history should make us uncomfortable today, not because history is repeating itself exactly, but because human behavior has not changed nearly as much as we would like to believe. And that brings me to a question I think the Jewish community urgently needs to ask itself: what is our responsibility at this moment?

We Are Good at Counting. Are We Good at Responding?

For the last several years, Jews have become very good at documenting antisemitism. We count incidents. We publish reports. We circulate videos. We call one another, horrified. But are we equally good at explaining what is happening? Are we talking to our children? Are we talking to our neighbors? Are we talking to people who do not already agree with us? And perhaps most importantly, are we still talking to one another?

Because something else has happened to the Jewish people at precisely the moment when antisemitism is rising around us. We have become deeply divided. Left and right. Religious and secular. American and Israeli. Progressive and conservative. Diaspora and Israel. We argue about governments, politicians, settlements, Gaza, judicial reform, religion, war, and peace. Those arguments are legitimate. Jews have been arguing with one another for thousands of years, and I have no interest in changing that. But there must be something underneath our disagreements that remains non-negotiable.

We are one people. When someone paints a swastika on a synagogue, he does not ask how its members voted. When a Jewish student is targeted on campus, the person confronting her does not first inquire whether she supports the current Israeli government. And when a man puts on a swastika armband and declares he wants Jews out of government, our internal disagreements suddenly become very small.

Jewish unity does not mean agreeing. It means understanding that there are moments when we must stand together despite everything that divides us. This may be one of those moments. But unity alone is not enough.

What We Owe Our Children

We also need to think seriously about what we are teaching the next generation.

Many young Jews today encounter the words Zionism, Israel, Gaza, occupation, genocide, and apartheid online long before their families have given them the historical knowledge or confidence to understand what they are hearing. We cannot respond by telling them simply that everyone criticizing Israel is wrong. They will not believe us, and they should not.

Israel, like every democracy, can be criticized. Israeli governments can make mistakes. Palestinians have legitimate experiences, suffering, and aspirations that our children should understand. They need to understand radical Islam and its roots within Palestinian society. But understanding complexity cannot mean abandoning history.

Our children should know what antisemitism is, how it changes its vocabulary across generations, and why Jews have repeatedly discovered that acceptance can be more fragile than it appears. They should understand why Israel exists, and what happened to Jewish communities when there was no Jewish state. They should be able to distinguish between criticizing the policies of a government and denying the Jewish people the legitimacy routinely afforded to every other people on earth. This is not indoctrination. It is education. And it is among the most important investments we can make in the Jewish future.

The Conversation We Need to Have With Our Neighbors

Then we need to step outside our own community. Not with accusations, and not with lectures. With genuine conversation. Invite people into our homes. Explain why certain words frighten Jewish grandparents even when younger people using those words intend something entirely different. Explain why October 7 changed something fundamental for so many Jews, not just the attack itself, but what it revealed about how quickly the world moved to context and qualification before the bodies had been identified.

And listen when our Muslim and Palestinian neighbors tell us what frightens and hurts them too. We do not have to surrender our story in order to hear someone else’s. In fact, perhaps that is precisely what a confident Jewish community should be capable of doing, holding our own history firmly while making room for someone else’s pain.

The Lesson of the Neighbor

There is a lesson from the 1930s that deserves far more attention than comparisons between political leaders or governments. It is the lesson of the neighbor. History remembers the perpetrators and the victims. But between them were millions of ordinary people, coworkers, teachers, business owners, clergy, friends, neighbors. Some participated. Some resisted. Many simply continued with their lives. That may be the question history is placing before us again, not only for Jews, but for everyone: what kind of neighbor will you be when another group becomes socially acceptable to hate?

And Jews should ask ourselves the corresponding question: what kind of Jewish community will we be when we see the warning signs? Will we retreat into fear? Will we turn every disagreement into antisemitism until the word loses its meaning? Will we allow our political divisions to fracture us at the very moment we most need each other? Or will we become more educated, more connected, more willing to speak, more willing to listen, and more determined to stand together?

What I Want to Teach My Grandchildren

I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. For people like me, the 1930s are not ancient history. They are family history. But I do not want to teach my grandchildren to be afraid because of what happened to their great-grandparents. I want to teach them something more useful. Pay attention. Know your history. Know who you are. Ask questions. Speak when something is wrong. Stand beside another Jew even when you disagree with them. Stand beside your neighbor when hatred comes for them. And never assume that because something terrible has not happened yet, it cannot happen.

Seven men wearing swastikas in New York do not mean America has become Nazi Germany. But seven men comfortable enough to put on swastikas, raise their arms in Nazi salutes, and publicly declare their hatred of Jews on the most sacred ground in American public life, on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack this country has ever suffered, should not mean nothing either. The work of building a Jewish future, educated, connected, confident, and unafraid, is not separate from the work of responding to this moment. It is the response to this moment. It is the answer that outlasts the outrage. History does not only ask us to remember what happened. History asks whether we learned anything from how it began.