When Antisemitism Is Everywhere, Where To Run To?
History’s oldest hatred has taken new forms, yet the Jewish story teaches a timeless truth: darkness never has the final word.
Once, antisemitism was local. Jews were blamed for the Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe, for heresy in the Middle Ages, for capitalism and communism in the nineteenth century. It appeared in different guises but in limited places.
Today it is global. A decision of the Israeli government sparks fires in synagogues in Australia. In America, Jewish students face intimidation on university campuses. In London, families hesitate before wearing a kippah. A conflict in the Middle East has become a pretext for targeting Jews in every corner of the world.
This feels new, but our ancient books spoke about a time like this. Here are some fascinating sources.
The Talmud (Sotah 49b, c. 500 CE) describes the age before redemption: a time when truth would be despised, moral authority rejected, and society fractured. It concludes with haunting words: “On whom can we rely? Only on our Father in Heaven.”
The Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni on Isaiah 60, 9th century) speaks of an age when “darkness will cover the nations, and they will rise against Israel, but upon you the light of God will shine.”
The Zohar (thirteenth-century Spain) goes further, foreseeing a moment when the nations would unite against the Jewish people, just before the dawn of redemption.
And the Maharal of Prague (1520–1609) explained why: the Jewish people embody eternity. Our survival, against all the odds, testifies that history has meaning, that morality is real, that there is a God who guides destiny. That reminder, he said, is profoundly uncomfortable. It provokes hostility, especially at history’s turning points.
So where do we run to when antisemitism is everywhere?
The Jewish answer is: we don’t run away. We run towards. Towards our faith, our people, our values, our God. For thousands of years we survived not by hiding, but by holding fast to who we are. And we believed, against all odds, that one day the world would see in the Jewish people not a threat, but a source of light.
There is a light at the end of this tunnel. The prophet Isaiah foresaw it: “Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”
Even in the twelfth century, Maimonides (1138–1204) offered a line that feels astonishingly relevant today:
“Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.”
Jews have carried that truth through centuries of exile, persecution, and hate. And still we are here. Antisemitism is not the end of the Jewish story. The end of the story is that truth outlives lies, freedom outlives fear, and light outlives darkness.