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):