Put yourself in the minds of Jew haters. Whether from the left or right, they don’t just hate Jews– they can’t stand them. They can’t stand who Jews are and what they represent. Above all, they can’t stand how Jews keep taking hits and keep succeeding.
I’m generalizing here to make a point: Much of the Jew hatred we’ve experienced throughout the centuries has been rooted in resentment and envy. That’s a lot worse than a problem; it’s a neurosis. A neurosis is not something you can “fix” with a trip to a Holocaust museum or a class on the history of antisemitism. Envy is not ignorance.
But what if Jews take a more aggressive stance and really go after the haters—call them out, condemn them, make some noise, throw the book at them—will that work? Has it worked?
What to do about the bedeviling question of rising Jew hatred was a major theme of Bret Stephens’s “State of World Jewry” address last week, as he challenged the effectiveness of our community’s fight against antisemitism.
That may be one reason why the speech has generated controversy: It questions the very reason-for-being of some organizations.
“What we call the fight against antisemitism consumes tens of millions of dollars every year in Jewish philanthropy and has become an organizing principle across Jewish organizations,” he said. “[It] is a well-meaning but mostly wasted effort. We should spend the money and focus our energy elsewhere.”
This is not the first time we’re hearing about fighting antisemitism with something more positive– what some call “pro-Semitism”– urging us to focus on inspiring Jews rather than fighting haters.
But Stephens stood out because he went further and deeper with his cri de coeur while marshaling some compelling arguments– among them, the idea that “while antisemitism may be history’s most demented hatred, it is also the world’s most unwitting compliment.”
He led his speech with that idea, quoting a poet in the 1860s who was consoling a provocative artist: “It seems you have the honor of inspiring hatred.”
In that sentence, Stephens said, is “the state of world Jewry in 2026– the Jewish people, Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews, observant Jews and secular ones, right-wing Jews and left, all of us together, all of us ultimately in the same boat. Whether we like each other or not, we have the honor of being hated.”
The list of haters is long: “an axis of the perfidious, the despotic, the hypocritical, the cynical, the deranged, and the incurably stupid.”
All of this animosity can throw us off balance. Stephens prefers to remain calm and ask: “What shall we do with all of this hatred other than to take it as a badge of honor and turn it to our advantage?”
Stephens was arguing that there was something empowering hidden in the very darkness of Jew hatred: “They do not hate us because of our faults and failures. They hate us because of our virtues and successes. The more virtuous or successful we are, the more we’ll be hated by those whose animating emotions are resentment and envy.”
That doesn’t mean we should underestimate the threat and not fight back; it means we should fight smart.
“The proper defense against Jew hatred is not to prove the haters wrong by outdoing ourselves in feats of altruism, benevolence, and achievement,” he said. “It is to lean into our Jewishness as far as each of us can, irrespective of what anyone else thinks of it. If the price of being our fullest selves as Jews is to be the perennially unpopular kids, it’s a price well worth paying.”
It’s hard in one column to do justice to a long speech that was full of inspirational gems such as this one: “The goal of Jewish life is Jewish thriving. And by Jewish thriving, I don’t mean thriving Jews individually speaking. I mean a community in which Jewish learning, Jewish culture, Jewish ritual, Jewish concerns, Jewish aspiration and Jewish identification… are central to every member’s sense of him or herself.”
In short, the speech was bold, thought-provoking and eloquent.
In my view, though, it missed two things.
One, on the fight against antisemitism, it painted with too broad a brush, failing to distinguish between loud fighting and quiet fighting. I agree that our traditional approach of making lots of noise about Jew hatred is generally a waste and can even backfire. As I’ve written before (including in my column on the Super Bowl ad against antisemitism), constantly ringing the alarm makes Jews look weak and is more likely to increase hate than lower it. Exhibit A: No matter how much noise we make, the poison only seems to spread and get worse.
But this loud noise is a far cry from the quieter, more targeted approach to fighting antisemitism, one that is hardly a waste and merits continued support.
This quiet but steely approach comprises anything that enforces laws, rules, policies and regulations that protect the rights of Jews. This could be anything from the sophisticated monitoring and reporting of online Jew-hatred that helps enforce policies to lawsuits against discrimination to correcting the lies and libels against Israel. None of this will cure haters of their envy. It just says: You mess with Jews and cross red lines, you’ll pay a price. This approach aims for impact, not noise.
The second thing I found missing is the value of “positive noise.” As much as I agree that our top priority must be to strengthen Jewish identity, part of that identity is the goodness that Jews bring to the world. A campaign to promote that goodness would be the antidote to the millions we spend telling the world that Jews are hated.
If there are Jew haters on one side and Jew lovers on the other, there’s a group of fence sitters in the middle who might resonate with this Jewish goodness. This is a large group. We can’t forget them.
Ironically, one of the strongest parts of the speech was when Stephens looked beyond the confines of our community and spoke of what Jews mean to America.
“America needs Jews,” he said. “America needs us. America needs us as its witty gadfly and loyal critic and skeptical moral conscience, as the keeper of its tolerant and pluralistic flame, as its nosayer in moments of overweening certitude and its yeasayer in moments of crushing self-doubt.”
Yes, America needs Jews. Let’s own that. While we look inward to strengthen Jewish identity and expand Jewish education and other institutions, let’s remember to also look outward. At a time, for example, when the American Dream itself is being erased, who better than the Jews to bring it back to life? That also must be taught in Jewish schools.
And if reviving the American Dream becomes a Jewish dream that helps shape our Jewish identity and our nation’s destiny, why even think of being “perennially unpopular” when we’ve earned the right to be the very opposite? Becoming more popular is one helluva way to embarrass Jew haters.
“Disagreement is in the lifeblood of our Jewishness,” Stephens graciously said at the beginning of his speech. “And I should add, I possess no monopoly on truth.”
He may get some pushback from some circles, but with this wake-up call to American Jewry, Bret Stephens has advanced one truth we can all agree on: Jew hatred or no Jew hatred, building a thriving Jewish future in America is the essential fight we must keep alive for the rest of this century.
