Here’s a video of NYT columnist Bret Stephens speaking at the famous 92nd Street YMCA in New York. (It’s 34 minutes long, and well worth watching.) I like Stephens’s columns quite a bit despite his identification as a “conservative”. He’s the paper’s best columnist on Israel and the Gaza War, and he’s also Jewish, and he’s a centrist conservative, not at all a MAGA conservative.
In the video Stephens gives a heterodox take on the “state of World Jewry.” His message is fourfold (I’m expanding on his own words here):
1.) The fight against antisemitism is a well-meaning but mostly wasted effort. We should spend and focus our energy elsewhere.
2.) Antisemitism is the world’s most unwitting compliment, for it is based largely on envy and resentment based on Jewish success.
3.) Proper defense against Jew-hatred is not to prove haters wrong by acting well, but to lean into our Jewishness irrespective of what anybody else thinks of it. As he says, “It goes without saying that there’s nothing Jews can do to cure the Jew-haters of their hate. . . .And there is nothing we should want to do, either. . . If it’s impossible to cure an antisemite, it’s almost impossible to cure Jews of the delusion that we can cure antisemites.”
4.) Jews don’t need a seat at the table of victimized groups. We should build our own table.
To me, the best part is his analysis of the psychology of antisemitism, which he think is not properly understood. Here is one misconception: “We think that antisemitism stems from missing or inaccurate information.” (e.g., the lies of the Gaza war). The result is that people hope to erase antisemitism by correcting widespread misconceptions (“Israel is an apartheid state”, “Israel is committing genocide,” and so on.)
But he argues that Jew hatred is “not the result of a defect of education,” It is, instead, “the product of a psychological reflex. . . . It’s not just a prejudice and belief, but a neurosis.” Antisemitism preceded the founding of the state of Israel, and therefore can’t just rest on the presence of a Jewish state. He further argues that Jew hatred doesn’t come largely because “we killed Christ,” which is just one excuse people use to justify their bigotry. Instead, says Stephens, people hate Jews because of the virtues of our religion (e.g., the love of life rather than death), and, most of all, because Jews have been successful. A quote: “They do not hate us because of our faults and failures; they hate us because of our virtues and successes. The more virtuous and successful we are, the more we’ll be hated by those whose animating emotions are resentment and envy.”
To Stephens, the obvious conclusion is that it’s a fool’s errand for Jews to try to earn the world’s love.
As for building our own table, it seems to involve “Jewish thriving”: “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.” He thinks that this can be done both culturally and religiously. (I don’t know how pious Stephens is, or what he believes about God and the Old Testament, but he seems to be more religious than I thought.) Building our own table further involves expanding Jewish education, building more Jewish cultural institutions and creating more venues for Jewish philanthropy, de-wokeifying liberal Jewish congregations, and “reinventing publishing” so it is not as antisemitic as it is now.
As an atheist but also a cultural Jew, I’m a bit put off by the overly religious nature of Stephen’s suggested cure. After all, Jewish schools are founded on the truth of Judaism, which is, like that of all religions, pure superstition. But yes, Jews need to de-wokeify (the ones who voted for Mamdani, for example, seem to me deluded) and not act like victims.
And I agree with Stephens that it’s time to stop trying to prove to the rest of the world that we’re okay. That is truly a fool’s errand, and what has happened since October 7 proves it. The more Israel tried to help Gazans dispossessed by the war, the more Israel (and Jews) was hated. It seems to me that antisemitism is now worse than ever; there are daily pro-Palestinian and anti-Jewish demnonstrations (e.g. “From the river to the sea. . “) all over Europe, Jews are killed en masse in Australia, and universities cater to pro-Palestinians and “encampers,” failing to enforce their rules when they are violated by antisemites.
In the end, Stephens avers that the precipice of Judaism is but a step away from its zenith, and we’ve failed to recognize the imminence of our downfall. But he’s still hopeful, finishing this way:
“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 for a thriving Jewish future.”
Besides the overemphasis on religious Judaism, my only criticism is that Stephens, like all academics in the humanities, reads a pre-written paper out loud, rarely looking at the audience. But I’ll excuse that, for his talk provides a lot of food for thought—and for argument. And I think his main argument, encapsulated in the four points above, is correct.
I’ve run on too long: listen to the talk (if you’re a religious or a cultural Jew, you must listen to the talk):
I was able largely to put to one side his stuff about believing in one God—all the “faith” stuff, but otherwise thought this talk to have some really important messages, which I boil down to two:
First, Jews cannot fix antisemitism by offering more information or reasoned discourse. One simply cannot expect rational discourse to fix what is effectively an irrational hatred.
Second, Jews should stop and think very hard about their involvement with all the “social justice” groups to which they have for decades poured out their hearts, souls, time, and bank accounts. If we thought that joining in would make us more acceptable or better liked, we were wrong, as was shown decisively after the October 7 attack on Israel. As I have said several times, and as is implied in Bret Stephens’s speech, American Jews need to rethink the company they keep.
As an FYI, Bret Stephens, Dara Horn, and Deborah Lipstadt will be debating whether fighting antisemitism is worthwhile or not in an online and in-person forum on March 1: https://www.92ny.org/event/is-fighting-antisemitism-a-losing-battle.
I always assumed many Jews were involved with justice movements because it aligned with their values, not because other people would find them virtuous. That’s the opinion I formed based on Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights movement. It’s hard to believe people risked life and limb in order to be better accepted.
No, that’s not what happened. Jews joined those movements because they (we) thought that we were brothers and sisters with other oppressed people, not because it was a way of signaling virtue. When I demonstrated in the Sixties (and was arrested for protesting apartheid), the thought that I was Jewish didn’t cross my mind at all.
But we were blindsided when our history of social justice wasn’t taken into account by people who in the end were simply bigots. Even many black people have rejected Jews despite our longstanding involvement in the Civil Rights movement. Yes, that stings, but Stephens said we should not expect otherwise. I don’t think he’s saying that we shouldn’t fight for oppressed people; we just shouldn’t do it and expect to get brownie points.
I did write not to signal virtue. I don’t think it was to be accepted by others, but because of values- that the causes were truly believed in. It sounds like my post was reversed in meaning.
As a non-Jew who has always been sympathetic to both Jews and Israel, I would credit educational efforts with tipping me firmly into Israel’s camp each time in her hours of desperate need. Antisemites will never be persuaded who believe that genocide should be visited on the Jews to keep Israelis from committing genocide in Gaza, or just because they are Jews. But there are a lot of persuadable people who do (or used to) worry about “Palestinian rights”, and aren’t the Israelis abridging them and even if this shouldn’t be a reason to constrain Israel’s ability to wage war on its enemies, ought it not to have some bearing on what The Peace should look like?
I think those non-Jews, and I am one, are reachable by fact-based arguments. We are the ones who do what we can to keep our governments on the right side, against the fury of Islamic (and other) antisemitism that wants Israel to lose whatever war happens next and be liquidated, or do something foolish like agree to a Palestinian state, which amounts to the same thing. We have the numbers in every place in the world save Israel. It’s up to us. I’m scared to death of Canadian ridings where there are enough Muslims to tip the vote. Right now the Liberal Party is one seat shy of a majority, and many of its seats were swung by concentrations of Muslim voters. The Prime Minister says “Muslim values are Canadian values.”
Non-Jews need to hear Brett Stephens’s message. The theological issues Jews will have to work out for themselves, just as baptized English Protestants have to. I think all Jews know that being atheist doesn’t stop the enemy from regarding them as Jewish, just as my being atheist doesn’t cause the radical Left to stop seeing me as Christian-guilty.
You point out factual and historical inaccuracies not to convince the true believer zealots, but to inform others. Likewise, you logically and calmly debate an opponent not necessarily to change their minds, but to inform the observing audience.
Yeah, well the Epstein files are not doing Jews any favours…
Not sure how many people are envious and jealous of that kind of ‘success’
Individuals have their reasons, but for leftist organizations, their antisemitism is caused, I think, in large part by organizational inertia. During Cold War, the anti-Israeli stance of Moscow dictated the positions of leftist organizations everywhere. Now that the Soviet sponsorship is no longer there, they still cling to the old script. Organizations do not change their views. What happened after the atrocities of October 7th was that the orthodoxy became even more untenable, but those who found it odious were forced to leave or stay quiet. I think this needs to be pointed out more. I would not hold any hope that it will reduce the number of organizations with antisemitic views, but individuals may be persuaded to for once follow their conscience.