The Silver Lining Playbook of Antisemitism

With Purim upon us, the lesson of the Jewish community rising up and stopping forces in Persia from slaughtering the community is as salient as ever as many Jews in America are regularly confronting waves of antisemitism around the nation. A week rarely goes by without terror alerts against the Jewish community from the recent so-called “National Day of Hate” to multiple shootings outside synagogues in Los Angeles. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported last year that antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high of seven incidents per day in the United States in 2021, which was the highest number of incidents on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979 and a 34 percent increase year over year. While horrifying, a silver lining emerges: the surge in antisemitism may help engage the fractured Jewish community and encourage it to find a unified voice—not only in responding to the threat, but also in other domains as well.

The data are powerfully clear: antisemitism is rising in the United States and Jews are well aware of it. From a series of conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in the fall of 2022, we learn that more than four in 10 American Jews  felt less secure in 2022 than the year before and almost all (90 percent) of Jews believe that antisemitism is a problem in the nation today. The AJC  describes the rising levels of antisemitism in stark terms: “The antisemitism that we’ve seen has a real and frightening impact on the attitudes of American Jews, on the comfort of American Jews in American society, at their workplace and in their educational institutions.”

The surveys found that 26 percent of Jewish respondents were personally the target of antisemitic incidents in 2022. These include antisemitic physical attacks as well as antisemitic remarks in person or online. Concurrently, 87 percent of Jewish respondents have seen antisemitic content online and another 23 percent are affiliated with an institution that has been targeted by antisemitism in the past five years. Thirty-three percent of respondents said that they have experienced anti-Jewish bias or discomfort in the workplace, while 36 percent of students, recent graduates and their parents said that they had experienced issues on their collegiate campuses.

Moreover, significant numbers of Jews have changed their behaviors out of safety concerns, such as modifying where they go, what they wear or carry or what they post online, and half said that institutions such as synagogues and Jewish Community Centers have increased security in recent years.

These data are not at all comforting, to say the least. But, the fact that there is almost unity among the American Jewish community suggests that there is a strong sense of linked fate now—a helpful sign for the Jewish community today.

While the Jewish community is politically fractured and unorganized, when there is a deep threat to a group, selfish and inward-looking differences often become trivial, and members of a group can become cohesive and organized to promote social change. Ample research has demonstrated that outgroup threats promote the emergence of cohesive groups. Put somewhat differently, as President Reagan noted, unity often emerged in the face of “some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond.”Linked fate has been seen within the African-American, Hispanic, and LGBTQA+ communities and had resulted in powerful social change.

Ample research has demonstrated that outgroup threats promote the emergence of cohesive groups.

Given the near-universal acknowledgment within the Jewish community of the serious antisemitism problem in the United States, various Jewish movements, congregations, and institutions must now organize to assert Jewish peoplehood and more strongly counter so much of the erasure of Jews from American life. The culture wars have placed Jews in a precarious spot when it comes to questions of politics, identity, and questions of equity, but that does not mean Jews should cease to be a real part of social and political life today.  Religious and communal leaders must continue to demand greater government accountability and intervention for the seemingly unending attacks and habitual threats that Jews must manage on a daily basis. Clearly, all Jews have a vested interest in pushing back.

If collective mobilization is one piece of the silver lining of antisemitism, individual mobilizing is the other. Certainly the major national organizations and local institutions have rallied in defense of the Jewish community, and engaged in successful lobbying and advocacy of government, local and national. Yet rabbis, educators, and their backers have so far ignored the potential of antisemitism awareness to ignite individuals’ Jewish passions and feelings of solidarity. The questions we should be asking are not only about how to fight antisemitism, but how to use antisemitism to provoke higher and sustained levels of Jewish engagement. What lessons do we want to teach? Who should teach them – and how? How can we utilize influencers, social media, op-eds, classrooms, culture, mass media, and so forth to stimulate greater Jewish identification and solidarity?

No American should live in fear for the expression of faith or group ties and the American Jews now face antisemitism epidemic. Thus, the Jewish community’s shared fate is in play and this may help it unite and demand an end to this dangerous and destructive phenomenon hitting virtually every Jew in some form now. Sadly, like with Haman, Jews have had to confront calls for their destruction and have risen to the challenge in past and the community – and Jewish individuals — must now do so again. Yes, we are doing a lot; but we can do so much more.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.