It didn’t begin on Oct. 7, 2023. And it won’t end after Oct. 27, 2026, even if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defeated for re-election. The change in attitudes toward Jews in recent years can be measured in a thousand different ways. And there are those, particularly on the left, who think they are escaping this trend or believe they can use it to advance their political agenda. But what is happening is something that can be neither ignored nor credibly denied.
The most important question about this is the extent to which Jew-haters who already are beginning to dominate the left—and who may eventually make inroads on the right—can achieve political power.
Equally important is the dilemma faced by the objects of all this antagonism, expressed not just on social media and in political campaigns, but in methods, both subtle and unsubtle, in which society expresses its dislike of various groups. It’s how American Jewry, a population that achieved almost complete acceptance in virtually every sector of society and business, will react to a shift in which they are now starting to be treated with the disdain, suspicion and hostility in the same way their great-grandparents and every generation of Jews for 2,000 years had taken as the normal state of affairs.
Don’t give up
To acknowledge the change in temperature for Jews in American society is not to concede that the United States will turn out to be just one more temporary way station in the history of the Diaspora.
American exceptionalism is under siege from progressives at war with Western civilization and who seek to break down the cultural and philosophical sources of liberty that are its foundation. Yet it has not yet been completely defeated. Most Americans still reject the demonization of Jews and Israel, even as they are deluged with such messages by biased media that have normalized blood libels about “genocide” in Gaza. Add that to their social-media feeds, which are flooded with conspiracy theories about Jews being responsible for all the ills of the world.
Even as we grow used to pop stars and celebrities spewing those blood libels and being echoed by politicians like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democratic Senatorial candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, it isn’t time for Jews to pack their bags. As discouraging as recent events have been, abandoning a ship that has taken on water but is not yet sinking—let alone become the death trap that those who make wildly inaccurate analogies to Germany in the 1930s speak of—would be a disservice to the community as well as to the 250-year-old traditions of American liberty.
Captured institutions
Still, it would be foolish not to acknowledge that the post-Second World War reality in which American Jewry flourished as antisemitism was relegated to the margins of society is changing for the worse.
The progressives and Marxists who make up a bizarre red-green alliance with Islamists, along with their apologists, have captured the institutions of American education—both K-12 schools and the elite universities that became bastions of hostility to Israel and Jews, where calls for Jewish genocide and terrorism against Jews everywhere rang out—as well as the arts and pop culture.
These institutions have become places where the toxic ideas of the left—critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism—pose a danger to the entire country. And these ideologies and their adherents have exacerbated race relations, which had improved enormously in the past half-century.
They divide the world into two permanently warring factions of “white oppressors” and “people of color” who are their victims. But since they falsely brand Jews—the most persecuted minority in history—as members of the former, the consequences for this minority are more immediate and far-reaching. Activists have used the escalation in the war being waged against the Jewish state in the past three years not merely to stigmatize, shun and intimidate Jews, but also to begin to largely erase them from sectors of society like higher education, publishing and other cultural pursuits where they had flourished.
It’s also necessary to realize that a different threat is coming from the far right.
Right-wing antisemites have not achieved political power the way their counterparts in “horseshoe politics” on the left have done. But their loud voices, amplified by podcasters like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, conspiracy theorist Candace Owens and neo-Nazi groyper Nick Fuentes, have had an outsized impact on young people. And if Carlson’s close friend, Vice President JD Vance, becomes the presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 2028 (the most likely outcome at the moment), the peril from the right will endanger the U.S.-Israel alliance. And that’s just the start.
American exceptionalism under siege
The global surge in antisemitism is hitting different countries in different ways. But in the United States, it is particularly unsettling. It is one thing for European nations to turn on the Jews; almost all countries on that continent have at various times in their histories expelled or persecuted Jewish people. So, for them to use the war against Israel that was launched by the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023 as the excuse for tolerating or even encouraging Jew-hatred is dismaying, though not all that surprising.
The same can be said for Muslim-majority nations elsewhere where Jews and other religious minorities were long treated as dhimmi, or second-class citizens, and a barely tolerated minority subject to official discrimination.
But the United States has always been different. There are many ways in which American exceptionalism has manifested itself. But not the least of them was the fact that it has always been a place where Jews have almost never experienced official discrimination or persecution, and where they were, from the very inception of the republic, equal partners.
That is as good a reason as any to refuse to flee and instead to fight via defiance in the streets and public discourse, as well as legal and political action to preserve this country as a safe place for Jews and non-Jews alike from the dangerous lunacy of the left and far right.
More and more American Jews—particularly among the majority who identify as political liberals and loyal Democrats—are realizing that they cannot count on their former allies on the left or in other minority groups to stand in solidarity with them. They know that the current situation in which the demonization of Jews and lies about Israel have become ubiquitous in mainstream media like The New York Times and throughout popular culture requires them to seek new allies among conservative Christians and Republicans, who are their faithful friends. And they should not lose faith in the American tradition of liberty, which has withstood many challenges, both foreign and domestic, and withstood them in the past.
Yet even if that is true, there is no avoiding the fact that Jewish life in the United States is undergoing a transition that is leaving behind the post-Holocaust honeymoon in which Jews were popular and universally accepted. The armed security guards and other methods by which they are turning their synagogues, schools and community centers into fortresses—in marked distinction from the way other ethnic and religious groups live—are just the most visible evidence of this. The way many non-Orthodox Jews are no longer wearing distinctive jewelry that marks them as Jewish—something the Orthodox who wear kippahs or the Haredim with their distinctive clothes cannot do—is another sign of the problem.
This atmosphere isn’t experienced the same way around the nation. In flyover country or other non-urban areas where left-wing intellectual fashion isn’t dominant, Jews may not be as fearful. But in places where the majority of Jews live—cities and suburbs on the coasts, and around major urban enclaves—there’s no evading it or the constant threat of antisemitic violence that is no longer seen as a remote possibility. That goes double for colleges and the areas surrounding them.
Yet the real change is not the presence of armed security for religious services or the hiding of Jewish star necklaces. Rather, it’s the feeling that Jews are perceived with hostility by much of the culture.
That is a radical shift in lived experience both for the aging cadre of baby boomers and millennials alike who, despite the organized Jewish world’s constant talk of antisemitism, never really felt it in their everyday lives.
Will Jews still be proud?
The 2013 Pew Research Center publication of their Portrait of Jewish Americans was a ground-breaking survey that gave the country the first in-depth and authoritative look at the community. Jewish institutions were most interested in its findings about intermarriage, affiliation and assimilation, which confirmed the data previous studies had produced about demographic decline.
Among the most remarkable of its findings was the one that showed that even as the fastest-growing demographic group among Jews was that of “Jews of no religion,” who were not particularly interested in the elements of Jewish peoplehood that are the foundation of communal life, there was one other data point. It reported that 94% of American Jews were “proud” to be Jewish.
That number was a marked contrast to the era before World War II, when Jewish affiliation was greater and intermarriage rare, yet many Jews were ashamed to be members of a disliked minority group, with many changing their names (as Dara Horn wrote in her essential book, People Love Dead Jews, the notion that most such name changes were made by ignorant or prejudiced immigration officers on Ellis Island is a myth).
That had changed by the early 21st century: Being Jewish was, whether observant or Zionist, a connection to something exotic, tragic and praiseworthy. This was a reflection of the same truth that had made assimilation and intermarriage so prevalent, especially among the overwhelming majority who were not religiously Orthodox. Antisemitism notwithstanding, Jews were admired and liked by most Americans. Unlike in other times and places, they were not under attack. Instead, they were loved and welcomed.
This universal philosemitism was a product of a culture that treated Jews as an exemplary minority group and among the best expressions of a population that had embraced and lived “the American dream,” whereby immigrants could better themselves with hard work and education.
Can they praise Jewish heroes?
But in a culture where Jews are “white” oppressors or practitioners or apologists of a fake “genocide” in Gaza, which growing numbers of Americans believe, that cannot persist.
The fact that most liberal media were slow to praise the Israeli passengers who prevented the hijacking and deadly crash this week of a flydubai airliner, with many of their compatriots as heroes, or to acknowledge that it was a terrorist incident was telling. And it stands in strong contrast to the way the same media sources had lionized the Entebbe rescue mission carried out by Israel (a mission led by Netanyahu’s older brother Yonatan, who was killed in the successful effort to save hijacked passengers held in Uganda by Palestinian and European terrorists) on none other than July 4, 1976, America’s bicentennial year.
In the long run, how will U.S. Jewry react to the sea change in their treatment within society? It’s impossible to know.
Many have not yet come to terms with the shock of the post-Oct. 7 surge of antisemitism and how it has turned places where they once felt at home into hostile environments. Many can and will remain in denial about it or look for scapegoats in convenient places, such as the attempt to blame President Donald Trump, who, his flaws notwithstanding, has done more to fight antisemitism in education than any of his predecessors. Indeed, he has been the most pro-Israel resident of the White House in the modern-day Jewish state’s history.
Similarly, some foolishly believe the unpleasantness will all fade away if Netanyahu is replaced by a rival that will bend to the demands of Israel’s critics, something that is highly unlikely even if a new government is elected.
We shouldn’t be surprised if the number of American Jews proud of their heritage starts to decline, perhaps precipitously. Some will seek to escape from their connection to the “bad” Jews that the media and pop culture are attacking by embracing blood libels about them or by simply hiding their Jewish identity, as victims of past eras of discrimination often did.
Others will see the contrast between the passivity of their leaders and largest organizations, and the way their Israeli counterparts are willing to stand up for themselves and fight for their homes, families and existence. That won’t lead most who fit into this category to make aliyah and move to Israel. Instead, they will start battling to preserve their place in America with all the tools that democracy provides them, even as groups like the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC are demonized by antisemites.
We will learn a great deal about the character and the intestinal fortitude of the generation of American Jews who will face this new hostility in the coming years.
A return to courage and faith
Those who seek safety as the primary value will likely fail and fall away in one way or another. But Jews who realize that what their tradition impels them toward is something else that is even more precious—liberty and the imperative to stand apart from the non-Jewish world in many respects—will prosper.
The essence of being Jewish has always been a refusal to bow down to the idols of popular culture, whether it was Hellenism, the Roman Empire, the universal church, Marxism, Islamism and the current popular cult of “wokeism.”
Above all, it will force Jews to fall back upon their own resources and realize, like their ancestors, that the factors that will preserve their peoplehood don’t come from the acceptance of non-Jews, but from their own traditions and beliefs. Faith, Jewish texts and loyalty to their brethren will sustain them, just as did their predecessors who survived more formidable challenges and foes than Mamdani, El-Sayed and their allies on the far right like Carlson.
The post-Holocaust vacation from Jewish history may be over, but the Jewish story is still unfolding. And those who have the courage to stand up and stay strong, rather than to join their enemies or to hide, will ride out this dismal chapter of the saga of their people with the same honor and ultimate success as those who went before them.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
