Our sages taught: “Nowadays, when a stranger comes seeking to convert, they say to him: ‘What have you seen to make you want to convert? Don’t you know that in these times the people of Israel are afflicted, outcast, downtrodden, and wandering, and sufferings are visited upon them?’ If he says: ‘I know, and I’m not worthy,’ they accept him immediately.” (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 47a)
At bedtime the other day, I received two pieces of news almost simultaneously.
First, I learned that one of my children’s schools had been visited by the bomb squad earlier that day after an unattended, suspicious object was found, which the security guard believed could pose a threat to the children. The police raced over and, acting exactly as they should, promptly detonated the unclaimed backpack, raining popcorn, ramen noodles, and homework all over the street. As I was struggling to wrap my head around this anecdote and mount an appropriate response as a parent, I was forwarded an email reporting that a car sporting a Palestinian flag had attempted to run down two visibly Jewish children in my former hometown in the United States. As far as I am aware, the driver remains at large.
The convergence of these two stories is important because it highlights that while it has become fashionable to write about rifts between American Jewry and Israel, there is an inextricable link between these two communities – my two communities. They are both facing a common threat, though I fear that they both gravely misunderstand its nature.
I’ll start closer to home, where it has become current to talk about the “day after” Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas. A “day after” implies a crisis that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I will admit that I bristle at this framing because of the bias that it reveals.
Talking about a “day after” presupposes that politicians and diplomats will be able to bring about a resolution to this waking nightmare. But that’s not the case here. While we all understand that there’s going to be a point at which the reservists are cleared to go on vacation, those who are internally displaced will leave the hotels to go back home, and so on, talk of a “day after” misunderstands the nature of our crisis.
There can be no post-traumatic stress when the precipitating trauma is ongoing
October 7 involved political and military failures and resulted in severe economic, humanitarian, and social consequences. The murderers should be sent straight to hell. The leaders on whose watch this occurred must be held accountable. We should build better sensors and taller fences. We should do a lot of things to improve our lot and to make it harder for our enemies to kill us. But none of these steps will actually solve anything. Take all these steps, and then watch as November 8 unfolds; followed by December 9.
And this is the point, October 7 isn’t a bug, a deviation from history, or even a discrete historical event, it is history itself. Read Jeremiah. Read Josephus. Read the Talmud. Our fate is a permanent struggle against enemies who seek to obliterate us. “In every generation, they rise against us to destroy us.” (Passover Haggadah)
See pharaonic Egypt; the Neo-Assyrian Empire; the Babylonian Empire; the Achaemenid Empire; the Seleucids; the Flavian Dynasty; the Crusaders; the Spanish Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella; the Cossacks; the Nazis; the Soviets; the Baathists; the Salafis. The names and the technology may change – but it’s really all the same. It is the virus of antisemitism, a cosmic evil that haunts us all.
This is not a problem to solve or a storm that will pass. Rather, it is the essential Israeli – and Jewish – condition. This is our fate. This is our reality, not just in Israel but across the world. This is the real story of October 7 and there is no “day after” in this context. We will win this battle, yes, but there is no diplomatic, philanthropic, or political solution to the war in which we find ourselves.
I see a similar misunderstanding with respect to the discourse surrounding antisemitism abroad. I am appalled – but not surprised – to see the paroxysms of violence unfolding across the US, especially on college campuses (with my alma mater at the epicenter of the cataclysm). I am inspired by the committed and passionate Jewish students who are bravely facing down bigoted peers and violent mobs. And I am moved by the outpouring of energy from leaders across sectors who are motivated to try and do something about this eruption of antisemitism.
But, and I say this with love, we’re going about this all wrong.
We are turning to the politicians to demand safety. We are asking bureaucrats and university administrators to grant protection. We are imploring those with funding to write checks to stop antisemitism. All this talk of safety and security betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the Jewish condition, Jewish history, and Jewish destiny (and really, that of humanity itself).
The Jewish condition is to live with a mountain dangling over our heads and with our enemies arrayed about us. There is no place, none, where Jews are safe. Safety is an illusion. It is a pipe dream. It is a lie — perhaps even a noble one — that we tell our children to help them (and ourselves) sleep better at night. There is safety in the grave. Everything that precedes it is characterized by risk, uncertainty, and danger.
It makes sense that we might have allowed ourselves to think otherwise. Many Jews (particularly those of us who spent our formative years in the US) until recently enjoyed a “vacation from history,” fostering the belief that safety was possible, that it couldn’t happen here, that maybe all of this was finally over.
Whatever is left of that illusion has long since been shattered. It is happening in the US. American Jews are in danger. This is our essential condition. This is the water in which we swim.
Some of us are angry about this. Others are depressed. Some of us are in denial. Others are bargaining. But we’re all grieving. And at the end of the day, the unavoidable and inescapable truth that we must accept boils down to this:
Your children are not safe. Neither are mine. Now what?
Scientific problems demand scientific solutions. Theological problems demand theological solutions. Political problems demand political solutions. And things tend to go awry if we expect science to solve political problems, music to solve environmental problems, or human resources to solve a religious problem. And yet we continue to treat antisemitism as if it were susceptible to a political or philanthropic solution, rather than understanding this disease for what it actually is:
Antisemitism predates the rise of critical theory, post-structuralism, post-colonial studies, Marxism, nationalism, Zionism, and liberalism itself. It predates the Westphalian political order, the Enlightenment, and the building of colleges and universities. It predates Islam and Christianity. It is naïve at best, delusional at worst, to think that a congressional committee, a university president, or a charitable foundation can ensure safety. Who exactly do we think we are to think that we can actually “stop” antisemitism?
I’m emphatically not suggesting that we renounce politics or philanthropy. I’m truly not advocating for fatalism or nihilism. To the contrary, we should be working as hard as we can: Enforce Title VI. Fight for the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. Target Qatari and Chinese propaganda. Arrest those who are breaking the law. Disrupt networks of terror finance. Dismantle Palestinian terrorist organizations and Iran’s violent proxies. These are important and moral and necessary steps, because we should make it a lot harder for bad people to do bad things.
But we need to be clear-eyed about what politicians and philanthropists can do in the face of what is neither a political nor a philanthropic problem: All these things may make us safer, but they surely will not make us safe.
I once heard that the answer to anxiety is not certainty [one cannot ever completely eliminate uncertainty] but rather, bravery. In like fashion, the answer to antisemitism is not safety [again, that’s unattainable] but bravery.
To internalize and accept this is a radical act, with profound implications for how we organize our lives and communities.
Embracing bravery means letting go of anti-antisemitism as the organizing principle for Jewishness and instead seeking affirmative reasons to live as Jews. Bravery means letting go of “safetyism” and accepting the radical uncertainty which characterizes Jewish existence. Bravery means abandoning quixotic efforts to make the Ivy League live up to its stated ideals and instead focusing on whether or not we — as Jews — are living up to ours. Bravery means ceasing to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into safety-mongering institutions and instead funding the brilliant and passionate innovators who are doing the hard work of cultivating Jewish identity. It means turning an expectant gaze away from politicians and university administrators – and instead looking towards one another. Are we brave enough to teach Jewish kids about their heritage? Shabbat dinner is a far more effective response to antisemitism than anything else that we’re doing; do we have the courage to act on that?
And likewise, in the context of Israel, bravery starts by purging safetyism from our self-conception and how we let others talk about us.
Here, for example, is former President Barack Obama during remarks at Cairo University in 2009: "America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied."
Here’s Benny Morris, making a similar point in a New York Times op-ed, earlier this year:
"Zionism came into this world some 140 years ago to end the 2,000 years of Jewish humiliation and oppression at gentile hands and to provide the Jews, at last, with a haven."
I couldn’t disagree more strongly with both of them. Yes, the importance of a Jewish State is confirmed and reconfirmed on a daily basis by the abysmal and unconscionable failure of the international community to value and protect the lives of its Jewish citizens [point in fact: although I’m not safe, I feel safer here than I do elsewhere]. But the end-all-be-all of Zionism or the State of Israel is not safety – and if that proves to be our organizing principle, then we set ourselves up for continued disappointment and utter disillusionment.
The point of Jewish statehood and sovereignty is so Jews can live a fully realized Jewish existence… to own our heritage proudly and say what we have to say… to engage fully amongst ourselves as Jews and amongst our neighbors as Jews.
Bravery here means letting go of the fantasy that we might be called to produce cuckoo clocks, and accepting that this is not our fate. Bravery means letting go of the belief that if we just explain ourselves a bit more loudly and a bit more slowly, maybe they’ll appreciate that we’re not the bad guys and maybe they’ll leave us alone. Bravery means risking international disapproval – not for the sake of our safety and security, but for the sake of our values. The world keeps trying to make and remake Israel in its own image — the neoconservatives, the national conservatives, the socialists, the social democrats, and everyone in between. And bravery means we ought to stop trying to adopt someone else’s story and instead start writing our own.
I opened this piece with an epigraph taken from the Talmud. As I far as I know, the rabbis still ask this question of aspiring converts notwithstanding the fact that we — the Jewish people — have been restored to our land, that we enjoy sovereignty, and that we are safer today than we have ever been at any other point in history.
… And that’s precisely the point:
Your children are not safe. Neither are mine.
We can and must work to keep them safer. But really, the best thing we can do for them is teach them to be brave.
Because whether or not one is born into this covenantal reality, whether one lives in Morningside Heights or in Jerusalem, Jewishness requires bravery — then as now. It takes courage to stand with a people that has been singularly despised, oppressed, downtrodden, and hated — then as now. The Jewish journey begins always with a willingness to risk popular condemnation, to be on the “wrong side” of cultural consensus, and to speak truth to power. And so while we work always for safer, our goal is bravery — not safety.
We recently marked Yom HaShoah v'Ha'Gevura — the day that Israelis and Jews have set aside to commemorate the Holocaust. This year, we mourn our murdered millions it the shadow of the worst atrocities visited upon the Jewish people since Europe 1945. We observed it even as powerful and educated elites cheered on the ongoing rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder of Jewish men, women, and children as justified and legitimate “resistance.” We observed it knowing that ancient blood libels and charges of deicide will be published uncritically on the front page of the New York Times. We mourn a crime that feels less like an historical memory rather than an essential condition.
We are reminded time and again that safety is impossible and that bravery is necessary.
And so you might ask: “What have you seen that makes you want to be a part of all of this?”
Oh, my friends; I wish that you could see the smile on my face…
The writer, who made aliyah during COVID, is originally from Boston and now lives in Jerusalem with his wife and three young children.