I have watched antisemitism enter my TikTok Live panels like smoke beneath a locked door. I have seen it arrive during Torah studies, book readings and conversations built to lift Jewish memory into the light. It does not come with curiosity. It does not come with dignity. It comes with venom. It comes with usernames and profile pictures. It comes with the old hatred dressed in the clothing of the new age.
They call us baby killers and genocidal Jews. They tell us Hitler should have finished the job. They do not whisper it from the shadows. They write it openly, almost proudly, as though the machinery of history has given them permission to return—not with torches in the street, but with comments on a screen.
And when we report it—when we do exactly what TikTok tells decent people to do, when we mark the hate speech, the antisemitism, the praise of Jewish annihilation—the verdict returns with the coldness of metal.
No violation.
That phrase has become a tombstone for moral clarity. No violation, after Jews are told the murderer of 6 million should have completed his work. No violation, after Jewish creators are abused for speaking about Torah, Jewish history, Israel, Oct. 7 or the simple right of the Jewish people to live without being hunted by the oldest hatred on earth.
This is why I wrote When Truth Is Shadow Banned: Buried in the Algorithm. I wrote it because antisemitism on TikTok is not abstract to me. It is not theory. It is not a distant headline. It enters the room where I teach. It crawls across the screen while Jews are trying to learn, remember, speak and breathe. It appears in the comments and in the reports that vanish into silence, and in the maddening ritual of watching hatred reviewed and returned untouched.
I even emailed Larry Ellison—the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, one of the world’s most powerful database and cloud technology companies. He is Jewish by heritage. Oracle became connected to TikTok through its role in storing and securing U.S. user data, placing Ellison near the center of ongoing concerns about TikTok’s future, oversight and accountability in the United States.
I offered him a free copy of the book. I wanted someone with power over the future of this platform to see what Jewish creators are living through, not as a public-relations inconvenience but as a moral emergency. He has not responded.
That silence matters. Silence has always been part of the machinery of antisemitism. The mob needs the shouter, but it also needs the bystander. It needs the one who says nothing. It needs the institution that looks away. It needs a polished system that receives the report, weighs the hatred and sends back a verdict that tells Jews their humiliation does not rise to the level of concern.
There are many ways to bury truth. Tyrants once burned books, smashed presses and marched through streets beneath banners of hatred. Today, truth can be buried with cleaner hands. It can be throttled, hidden, drowned, deprioritized or surrounded by so much distortion that the average person no longer knows what is real. Jewish testimony does not have to be refuted if it can be made invisible. Jewish pain does not have to be denied if it can be diluted. Jewish memory does not have to be burned if it can be buried in the algorithm.
The events of Oct. 7, 2023, revealed how dangerous this has become. The dead had barely been named before the inversion began. The massacre was minimized, mocked, justified, memed, doubted and turned into ideological theater. The second assault was not only against Jewish bodies but memory itself.
TikTok did not invent antisemitism; it gave it speed. It gave ancient hatred a stage small enough to fit in a hand and large enough to shape a generation.
That is the danger. A generation is learning about Jews from people who hate Jews. It is learning about Israel from those who would see it erased. It is learning about Oct. 7 from the very perpetrators themselves, as well as those who treat Jewish death as a debate topic. It is learning that Jewish fear is dramatic, Jewish grief is suspicious, Jewish self-defense is monstrous, and Jewish survival must always be cross-examined before it is believed.
I refuse that burial. I refuse to make Jewish memory small enough for an algorithm to manage. I refuse to accept a world where praise for Hitler can be treated as harmless, while Jewish testimony is treated as inconvenient. I refuse to teach Torah with one eye on the sacred text and one eye on the comment section, wondering which serpent will crawl in next.
Jewish memory is not content. Jewish pain is not engagement. Jewish survival is not a trend to be boosted or buried according to the appetite of a machine. Our dead are not data. Our history is not a hashtag. Our dignity is not subject to platform review.
So we will write. We will teach. We will publish. We will go live. We will read the books. We will speak the names. We will refuse the curated abyss.
If the algorithm tries to bury Jewish truth, then we will become louder than the machine, steadier than the mob and more enduring than the shadow that seeks to swallow us.
The Jewish people have survived Pharaoh, Haman, Rome, exile, pogroms and the furnaces of Europe. We will not be defeated by a comment section. We will not be buried in the algorithm.
