Antisemitism is Not a Jewish Problem—It’s an American One
A plea from an American Jew to allies and friends.
This message is principally directed to my fellow non-Jewish Americans. It is a request that comes after the latest terrible antisemitic attack in Sydney—which claimed the lives of 15 Jews and injured many more—as we enter the tenuous waiting period until the inevitable next one.
It is reasonable that when these things happen to Jews, you might consider it wise to start keeping your distance. If Jews are being targeted for a mass shooting on the beach because they stand out while celebrating a holiday, I totally understand if you prefer to hang out farther away on the beach. I even understand the social stigma that might be attached to Jews because of our chronic victimhood. I understand, though I find it despicable, that one way to solve for the cognitive dissonance that you may experience about the persistence of this otherness is by attributing malicious cause to the Jews who bring it on themselves: it must be because of something that Jews do: their heresy, or their antisocial behavior; their hats and their beards and their public display of their religion on the beach and in other public places; or the actions of the Jewish state, and their support for that state. I get why people have historically kept their distance from Jews, either because they believe the slanders against the Jews or they just don’t want to get caught up in the violence against them.
This is why I so deeply appreciate gestures otherwise, when people come closer. Like when my neighbor, the week after October 7, told us she was worried about our kids walking to school and asked if she could start driving them (we said no, but with some tears); or why the condolence visits and texts mean so much to us especially when the attacks against Jews are particularly far away, because they signal to us that you understand that Jewish peoplehood creates bonds among Jews the world over in ways that don’t quite line up with how the billions of adherents to other faiths relate to their co-religionists. Within hours of the Bondi attack I learned of my proximity to several of the victims. That’s peoplehood—we know it when we feel it, and it is meaningful when others make the effort to try to understand it. When you stand close to us, you signal that you see our moments of victimization not just as a thing that happens to us but as something that happens to you as well. There is no more profound way for the Jew to feel a member of the societies in which the Jew lives than for the society itself to recognize the Jew as a legitimate member, and that is unfortunately best tested when there are consequences for making that declaration.
But in these uncertain days, we need a lot more.
As an American Jew, as a fourth-generation American, as the grandson of a GI and the son of a proud public servant, I believe it is scandalous that the safety and protection of Jews here is still first and foremost seen as a Jewish concern, a problem meant primarily for Jews to solve. I watch as Jewish organizations pivot their fundraising to protecting Jews and to “fighting antisemitism,” a problem we did not create, a problem that can only be addressed by other stakeholders in the society, by leaders of other communities, by law enforcement, and by local/state/federal authorities. Of course we can protect ourselves, even if in so doing we can further enclave ourselves in ways that reinforce our otherness towards that vicious cycle in which we will be mocked, and worse, for that very otherness that has been imposed upon us. But we cannot really “fight antisemitism” in my view without losing some measure of self-respect, and without the leadership in that fight coming from the people from whose communities the antisemites emerge.
The cost of the fight against antisemitism, when it is imposed on the Jewish community, is immense to the point of being unfathomable. (Current estimates are that the Jewish community spends nearly $800M annually on securing our institutions.) We siphon away resources from educating our children towards protecting them from harm. We are forced to repeat mantras to our children about the inevitability of the hate that will be directed against them in the societies into which we nudge them to participate. We are asked, implicitly, to perform our loyalty to these societies and their values in the faint hope that one day that loyalty will be rewarded. We become totemized in the eyes of others because of this chronic victimhood, as we become the recipients of a condescending “you poor thing” form of crisis-moment allyship.
Meanwhile, because we are scared and because we need to make hard choices, I am watching with sadness as some sectors of my American Jewish community’s institutions are deprioritizing our deeply rooted commitments to civil rights for all and focusing primarily on our defense. I value the short term work of setting up more guards in front of our institutions. I understand the sentiment leading these institutions down this path. If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us? But it is criminal for America to leave this responsibility to us, and it is un-American.
Ultimately, the one thing that will ultimately make conditions safer for American Jews, and for other vulnerable minorities, at scale, is a stronger shared American commitment to the values, norms, ideals, and institutions of American democracy - far more than through government apparatuses and stunts that protect us while making light of those norms, or while making others more vulnerable.
Antisemitism takes root in polarized societies and in moments of uncertainty, when conspiracy theories gain purchase and as Jews are forced to one side of dangerous political divides (or as now, set against each other.) We are witnessing a deterioration of political norms, a collapse of bipartisan commitment to Jewish interests, and growing hostility from the right and the left towards pluralism and other key elements of the framework of liberal democracy that helped American Jews thrive in the 2nd half of the 20th century.
This requires a shared enterprise, and a division of responsibilities. I can work on my own community. I can insist that we remember that we must similarly be active in advocating for democracy and justice for all, as so many of my American Jewish ancestors did - Louis Brandeis as the architect of freedom of speech, Horace Kallen as the originator of the vision for American cultural pluralism, Emma Lazarus as the poet of America’s orientation towards the immigrant. I can encourage our community to make sure that our agenda of self-protection can be complemented by a commitment to the welfare of all.
But I need a lot more from you as well, and there are a lot more of you. It starts with you taking responsibility for the antisemitism that continues to plague this society, your signaling to us that the new/old “Jewish problem” is not a problem that Jews are meant to solve, and that it cannot metastasize again — as it did in the middle of the 20th century — into something far worse for our people. I need you to lead this effort, and not just for us — but for all of us.
I would state this in broader terms. The evil of antisemitism is not a Jewish problem, but an international problem not confined to any one country. European countries, Canada and Australia have this problem to an even larger degree than is the case in America.
I have been reading your posts and listening to your podcasts and your thoughts have recently become a powerful resource in my life, because you regularly visit the hard questions around pluralism, within Judaism itself and in the diaspora we inhabit. I have been wrestling with these questions all my life as a liberal Jew in the US whose Jewish values don't fit neatly into any one movement, but derive tremendous benefits from engaging with all of them. Growing up on one of those NY suburb streets with spanking new houses that were all the same but the people in them were the Chins who lived next to the Giardinas who lived next to the Czeunzekofskis and more, where my best friend had an Italian father and a Finnish mother, I have long wrestled with how to integrate instead of assimilate, and rightfully claim belonging at the same time while valuing what it meant to be "other" nonetheless. I have come to understand that victimhood makes us "other" in ways that diminishes this sense of belonging. That heightened sensitivity about anti-semitism can enable the kind of tribal protectiveness that becomes not only less productive but can become self-perpetuating. That if we can only figure out how to leverage our differences in ways that enrich our communities without diminishing our strengths.
Thank you so much for your voice and Im so grateful to finally have found your substack.
Cantor Amy Brenner Mitz