A (5:05)
After Edouard Manet caused a firestorm in the 1860s with his politically provocative paintings on the execution of Maximilian, he got a consoling note from his friend, the poet Charles Baudelaire. Monsieur, Baudelaire wrote, it seems you have the honor of inspiring hatred. And that, in a sentence, is also 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, have the honor of being hated. We should take it as a compliment, just as Baudelaire intended. We have the honor of being hated by the people who say Zio when what they mean to say is Jew. We have the honor of being hated by the campus lemmings chanting antisemitic slogans whose meaning most of them aren't bright enough to understand, though some of them understand it perfectly well. We have the honor of being hated by Ali Khamenei, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and other despots whose loathing of Jews is directly proportionate to their crimes against their own people. We have the honor of being hated by Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Alice Walker, Roger Waters, Francesca Albanese, Tucker Carlson, the out and out Jew haters and their sly enablers. We have the honor of being hated by those who think Jesus was a Palestinian. We have the honor of being hated by the so called feminists who downplayed the rape of Israeli women on and after October 7th, and by the so called progressives who denied it. We have the honor of being hated by virtually every political movement, left or right, that also opposes the idea of personal merit as an organizing social principle. We have the honor of being hated by UN mandarins who would like you to know that the preponderance of human rights violations on this earth are committed by one small country, Israel. We have the honor of being hated by queers for Palestine who neglected to notice what happens to queers in Palestine. We have the honor of being hated by the Hamas water carriers masquerading as reporters at the BBC and other news media. We have the honor of being hated by all the Hollywood celebrities who see nothing amiss with demanding boycotts of Israeli artistic institutions, but not of, say, Chinese ones. We have the honor of being hated by our charming new mayor who thinks he can endorse the erasure of one state and one state only, the Jewish state, and still acquit himself of the charge of antisemitism. We have the honor of being hated by people who parade their so called Jewishness only when it serves as a tool to defame and endanger half the Jewish people as if they'll be spared the furies should God forbid Israel someday fall. In short, we have the honor of being hated by an axis of the perfidious, the despotic, the hypocritical, the cynical, the deranged and the incurably stupid. 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? I don't want to sound flip about this or put on airs of false bravery. This is a scary time to be a Jewish. The honor of being hated is also what led to the massacre at Bondi beach in Sydney, the Jew hunt in Amsterdam, the atrocities of October 7, the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh. It is why Israeli writers struggle to find publishers in the United States and why so many Jewish undergrads and Jewish professors feel ostracized on college campuses. It's why we all had to go through metal detectors on the way in and why I had cops staked out in my driveway last fall. It's an honor all of us yearn to do without, but we can't. We can't because for as long as there have been Jews, there have been Jew haters. And for as long as there will be Jews, there will be Jew haters. What's been going on for over 3,000 years is not about to end anytime soon. Tonight I'd like to make four points that might not sit entirely well with everyone in the audience. That's okay, because disagreement is in the lifeblood of our Jewishness. And I should add, I possess no monopoly on truth. The first point is that what we call the fight against antisemitism, which consumes tens of millions of dollars every year in Jewish philanthropy and has become an organizing principle across Jewish organizations, is a well meaning but mostly wasted effort. We should spend the money and focus our energy elsewhere. The same, I might add, goes for efforts to improve the quality of pro Israel advocacy or hasbara. I'll expand on this in a moment. The second point is that while antisemitism may be history's most demented hatred, it is also the world's most unwitting compliment. Here I am going to say something that is probably going to be misconstrued and misused, but needs to be said. The Jew haters have a certain point because Judaism and Jewish values and Jewish habits of mind are are indeed in many ways subversive to many social orders. Again, I'll elaborate shortly. The third point is that the proper defense against Jew hatred is not to prove the haters wrong by outdoing ourselves in feats of altruism, benevolence and achievement. 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. Finally, the fourth point is that what Jews need now is an allyship or sympathy or a seat at the table of the world's victimized groups. What we need is the wisdom of the composer Philip Glass who said, quote, if there's no room at the table, build your own table. So, to my first point, does anyone think the fight against antisemitism is working? I know. I know we all wish it could work. I know we'd like to think that if only we ensured that Holocaust education was part of every public school curriculum, private school curriculum, or universalized the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Or persuaded universities to stop inviting Israel hating speakers. Or got the news media to deliver fairer coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Or alighted on history's most brilliant PR strategy for Israel. Or switched prime ministers to nearly anyone except Bibi. That if we did all this and more, we could turn the tide that's been running so heavily against us in recent years. I also know that now and then we do achieve some victories, particularly when it comes to getting university administrators to crack down on the most overt expressions of antisemitic speech. But here's what I also know. That Tucker Carlson's popularity and influence as a podcaster and political figure has only soared as his bigotry has become more blatant. The journalistic disgraces, such as the fake report about the 500 dead Palestinians at the Ali Hospital in Gaza, did nothing to prevent subsequent fake or grossly sensationalized reporting about the war that perpetuated antisemitic stereotypes. That the Governor of Pennsylvania was asked if he'd ever been a, quote, double agent for Israel while he was being vetted for his party's vice presidential nomination. That the sitting Vice President of the United States dismissed the idea that anti Semitism was widespread and rising, and instead pointed the finger at people by which, of course, he meant Jews who, quote, want to avoid having a foreign policy conversation about America's relationship with Israel. That in New York State, with its abundance of Jewish cultural institutions open to the public, one in five millennials and Gen Zs believe the Jews caused the Holocaust. All of this is happening at a moment when the Jewish community has never been more alarmed, more engaged, more well resourced, more eager, more courageous, and more willing to do something. What is it that those of us who are in this fight against antisemitism are missing? The mistake I think that we make is this. We think that antisemitism stems fundamentally from missing or inaccurate information. We think that if people only had greater knowledge of the history of Jewish persecution, a fuller grasp of the facts of the Israeli Arab conflict, a finer understanding of all the ways antisemitism manifests itself, a deeper appreciation of the Jewish contribution to America's success and to human flourishing worldwide, that the hatred of us might dissipate or never start in the first place. That thesis is wrong. Jew hatred is not the result of a defect in education. From Martin Luther to T.S. eliot to Sally Rooney, the world has never suffered a shortage of educated antisemites. Jew hatred is the product of a psychological reflex and that kind of reflex can never be educated out of existence, even if for a time it may be sublimated or shamed into quiescence. Antisemitism, in other words, isn't a prejudice, or just a prejudice and a belief. It's a neurosis. This brings me to the second point we must examine, not least because so many of the usual answers are so superficial. What is it about Jews that has, over the centuries aroused so much venom and violence? Are Jews hated because of Israel's alleged misdeeds? That's a common view these days, but it fails to explain the thousands of years of antisemitism that preceded the creation of Israel, or account for why hatred of Israel mimics classic anti Semitic tropes of insatiable Jewish bloodlust and secret manipulation of global affairs. Are Jews hated because we represent the eternal Other? This too is often said, and of course there is some truth to it. But there are many others in every human society, yet none that are so persistently subjected to such lurid conspiracy theories, such murderous designs, such blatant double standards. Why has nobody written the book called the Protocols of the Elders of the Amish or the International Quaker? Are Jews hated because we refuse to accept Christ as Messiah or Mohammed as prophet? Yes, sort of. But again, how do we account for the centuries of Jew hatred before the births of Christ or Mohammed? Or for the persecution of Jews whose families converted to Christianity and Islamic? All these explanations fail for the same reason that our attempts to educate people out of their antisemitism, latent or blatant, fail. They do not account for the psychological basis of the prejudice. That basis has a name resentment marinated in envy. So, resentment of what exactly? The Jewish people are a countercultural nation. To make matters even worse, our countercultural convictions have generally helped us to flourish. Nearly everywhere we have put down roots. What are some of those convictions? We believe there is one God, not many, not none, and therefore a common moral universe with a common moral code that applies to all people everywhere. We believe that human beings are made in the image of God, and therefore that human life is inherently precious and that the lowest among us is equal in basic dignity to the highest. We believe in freedom and the quest for freedom, and therefore we pose fundamental challenges to every tyrant who would deny that freedom. We believe the Messiah has not come, and therefore we are not beguiled by any self declared redeemer. We believe in the Word and in the text, and therefore in literacy as a foundation for faith, not a threat to faith. We believe that questions are of equal, if not greater importance than answers, and therefore that curiosity, second guessing and the quest for knowledge are social goods. We believe in argument for the sake of heaven and therefore in disagreement. That is not impudence and heterodoxy. That isn't heresy. Above all, we believe in the word no. No to the sun gods and graven images and child sacrifice. No to Pharaoh and Caesar, the Inquisition and the Reformation, the Czar and the Commissar. No to emancipation from our peoplehood by the French Revolution, or to the erasure of our faith by the Russian Revolution, or to the destruction of our statehood through the siren song of binationalism. No to the erasure of God by reason or of moral judgment by moral relativism. No to the seductive offer of eternal salvation at the cost of our covenant with God. I don't mean to suggest by any of this that Jews are incapable of making our peace with our political and cultural surroundings. Obviously we can, we have, and we do. But our yeses to our surroundings have always been predicated on our nos. And what we affirm also requires that we maintain the courage to reject. It is this courage that is the central source of our inner strength as people and our endurance as a people? We must never let go of it. But no is also an infuriating word, however gently and quietly it may be uttered, and that makes it a dangerous word. Ask anyone who has been turned down by a college, an employer, or a love interest. The normal, ordinary reaction to rejection is rage. That rage only grows when it is suffused by the sense that, like Cain's offering in Genesis, one's offering was not good enough, that it was rejected from a place of judgment and therefore a position of superiority. That is a basis for toxic rage. Conversely, the reason people quote love dead Jews, to borrow Dara Horn's memorable phrase, is because it replaces that gnawing sense of inferiority with the pleasure of feeling pity. It should go without saying that there is nothing Jews can do to cure the Jew haters of their hate. They can hire their own psychiatrists, and there is nothing that we should want to do either. Which brings me to my third point. If it's impossible to cure an antisemite, it is almost impossible to cure Jews of the delusion that we can cure antisemites. You're familiar with the sound and the words of this delusion. You've probably heard it from your uncle. It goes something like this. Don't they notice the names on the hospital wings and the new campus centers? Aren't they impressed by all the Jewish noblesse in medicine and physics and chemistry and even economics? What about the fact that Israel is the only real democracy in the Middle East? The only place you'd want to be if you're gay or a woman? The only place where brains are more valuable than oil? And wasn't it a Jewish doctor who cured polio? All true, of course. And it's a wonderful thing that there are so many creative Jewish minds and generous Jewish donors. It's wonderful, too, that Israel remains a beacon of democratic courage and social creativity in the face of its totalitarian adversaries. But this earns us no favors with the haters. 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. And yet, as a Jewish community, we rarely seem to draw the obvious conclusion. Constantly seeking to prove ourselves worthy in order to win the world's love is a fool's errand. In the 1990s, Israel repeatedly took risks for peace for the sake of trying to end the occupation once and for all of the west bank and the Gaza Strip. It culminated in the second intifada, the murder of nearly 1,000 Jews, and the rise of the worldwide boycott, divest and sanctions movement. There isn't a social justice movement in America in which Jews haven't played a founding or leading role. Yet virtually every one of those movements today is shot through with antisemitism. This always seems to come as a shock to us, perhaps never more so than after October 7, when we witnessed just how little compassion there was for Jewish anguish, most of all from the very people to whom we had given so much. We need to stop being surprised. We need to stop being wounded. We need to stop being aggrieved and indignant. And I'd go further. We need to take this as an opportunity to stop caring. The goal of Jewish life is not to ingratiate ourselves with others so that they might dislike us somewhat less. 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. Exactly what goes on in these rooms every day of the week, nearly every day of the week, are central to every member's sense of him or herself. How we choose to invest in our Jewishness, whether more religiously or more culturally or more politically or whatever, is up to each of us to decide. But the main point is this. Jewish thriving happens not when there are a lot of rich and successful and well integrated Jews doing well and feeling safe in their host societies. Jewish thriving happens when being Jewish is not merely an incident of ancestry, but rather the centering fact of life, the source from which we derive meaning and purpose, our spiritual compass and moral anchor and emotional safe harbor. By this measure, what Franklin Foer called the Golden Age of American Jews, which he said in an Atlantic article was ending, was actually fading long before October 7th. It has been fading for decades, starting when American Jews began to treat their Jewishness as the most disposable part of their identity. It was fading when bar and Bat Mitzvahs became the last Jewish ritual many American Jews observed in their lives. It was fading when intermarriage rates crept above 50%. It was fading as a growing percentage of American Jews started to feel more embarrassment than pride in Israel. Now, however, we have an opportunity to reverse that trajectory. And paradoxically, this opportunity has been handed to us by our newfound awareness of our vulnerability, our unpopularity, our being hated. I'm the person who coined the term October 8 Jews in a New York Times column. Yet in hindsight, I got the definition only half right. I said at the time that the October 8th Jew was the Jew who, quote, woke up to discover who our friends are not. What I should have said was that the October 8th Jew was the one who woke up trying to remember who he or she truly is. And this brings me finally, finally, to the fourth point. Building our Own table. There are three great stories in the history of American jewelry. The name for the first story is called Arriving. It's the story of the first generation who came off the boats and lived in the tenements and never forgot the old country. This is what Irving Howe called in his great book, the World of Our Fathers. The second story is what Norman Pothorz in his great book called Making it the story of second generation Jews who went through schools like Stuyvesant and City College and went into professions like medicine and law, and of the third generation, their children, who went through Dalton and Yale and became investment bankers and tech entrepreneurs. I'm guessing that describes a fair number of people in this room tonight. Then there is the third story. It's called Departing. Some of those departures have been to Israel. They include extraordinary people like John Pollin and Rachel Goldberg Pollin of Chicago, parents of Hirsch Goldberg, Pollen of Beloved Memory, or Jim and Myrna Bennett of San Francisco, parents of Naftali Bennett. But there are also internal departures of Jews who at some point in their careers were told they weren't allowed to sit at the cool kids table and so went off and sat and made their own, ultimately creating fields like investment banking, Hollywood as we know it, private equity, most of today's biggest and best law firms, not to mention Bloomberg and Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts and a thousand other iconic American brands. Those individual departures can serve as a model for what the Jewish community as a whole must do to achieve the kind of Jewish thriving I spoke of earlier. The infrastructure is already mostly there. What's missing is the scale. We have superb Jewish day schools, but we need many more of them, hundreds more of them at Catholic school tuition rates, to give every Jewish family in America a chance to give their children an excellent education. Rooted in Jewish values. We have. We have astounding and vibrant cultural institutions like right here at the 92 NY and the Jewish Museum and Lair House up in Somerville, Massachusetts. We need to continue to invest in them and duplicate them in dozens of other cities. We have extraordinary Jewish philanthropies, but they need to become a primary locus of Jewish giving, not the relative afterthought they are to so many major Jewish philanthropists. We have Jewish priorities, but not a coherent funding mechanism. Perhaps, as my old friend Jordan Hirsch suggested recently in an essay in Sapir, we need the private equivalent of a Jewish sovereign wealth fund. We have a Jewish media that, to be honest, is something of a mixed bag, but could, with investment and vision, be put on a path to becoming the most desirable employment destination for the best writers and reporters and editors in America. We have an emerging rabbinate that, to be totally candid, runs the risk of being captured by ideological forces that do not represent the mainstream Jewish community. And we need to dedicate a great deal of effort to ensuring that, particularly the more liberal Jewish congregations don't suffer the same fate as the collapsing Presbyterian Church usa. We have millions of engaged Jewish readers who are currently being disserved by a publishing industry in which Zionism has become a dirty word. Let's reinvent publishing, too. In short, we have a lot. We need a lot more. We need it because we are not going back to the America we knew as Jews 50 or 40 or even 10 years ago. We need it because we know what has happened to Jewish communities throughout history, from Cordoba to Cologne to Cairo, that lose their instinct for danger and fail to notice that their zenith, their highest point, is just a step away from their precipice. We need it because too many of our children are walking away from even turning against their own Jewish inheritance. We need it because departing is only a synonym for a new beginning, and Jewish vitality has for millennia been renewed and refreshed and strengthened by that cycle of departure and new beginning. And we need it because America needs it. Because 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 no sayer in moments of overweening certitude and its yes sayer in moments of crushing self doubt. America needs us because the hope of the new Jerusalem that our founders sought to create in Plymouth in 1620 and Philadelphia in 1776 and Gettysburg in 1863 and the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 could never come to pass if it were built on anything. On anything but the memory and inspiration of that other Jerusalem, the one that was and is ours. All this was understood once and will be understood again. Until then, we will again endure the honor of being hated as we continue to work toward a thriving Jewish future. Thank you very much.
