Status Updates From How to Fight Anti-Semitism

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “Jews have always been the irritant of empires because of our insistence on the dignity of the individual and his or her liberty.”

“The more a society prizes freedom, the more Jews thrive.”

27. Nurture your Jewish identity - and that of those around you.
28. Know that one person can change history. Is it you?
29. Tell your story.

19. Maintain your liberalism.
20. Support Israel.
21. Maintain the David and Goliath paradox.
22. Build community.
23. Do not divide. Multiply.
24. If you find yourself standing alone, know that you are in good company.
25. Knowing when to stand alone depends on knowing exactly what you are fighting for.
26. Lean into Judaism.

10. At the same time. We must fight the anti-Semitism on our own side.
11. Expect solidarity.
12. Stop blaming yourself.
13. Choose life.
14. Never ask of yourself what you would not ask of another minority.
15. Resist hierarchical identity politics.
16. Never, ever forget to love your neighbor.
17. Fight, first and foremost, as Americans.
18. Wherever you are, vote for freedom.

8. Follow the Pittsburgh principle.
Israel is a test of its neighbors as much as its neighbors are a test for Israel. If the Israeli experiment fails, then Islam will have failed, and so will the Christian culture that plays a shaping role in that part of the region.”

9. Praises those who do the right thing.

“But 1,000 voices condemning you- even 10k - will be, I promise you, drowned out when a single person you admire tells you that you are courageous, that you are standing up for what’s right, that you’ve inspired them to do the same. Make sure you are listening closely for the single voice that will mean more to you than the braying mob. Pay it forward by being that voice for someone else.”

5. Don’t trust people who seek to divide Jews. Even if they are Jews.
6. Allow for the possibility of change.
7. Notice your enemies. But even more, notice your friends.

4. Apply the kippah (or Magen David) test.
If you would be uncomfortable wearing a kippah or a Magen David necklace in your neighborhood, you should make a plan to improve your neighborhood or make a plan to leave it.”

1. Tell the truth.
2. Trust your discomfort.
3. Call it out. Especially when it’s hard.

“There has not been a single moment in Jewish history in which there weren’t anti-Semites determined to eradicate Judaism and the Jews. But the Jews did not sustain their magnificent civilization because they were anti-anti-Semites. They sustained it because they knew who they were and why they were.”

“In Lebanon, there are around 450K Palestinians. More than 50% of them, according to the United Nations, live in the country’s 12 refugee camps. In part that is because the state bars them by law from more than 20 professions, including from working as doctors, lawyers, engineers, or accountants.”

“…presence in the historical land of Israel since the destruction of the Temple. They will say that Israel was established by foreign imperial powers, but they will ignore that modern India, say, was established in the same way. Somehow none of those who claim to oppose nationalism ever suggest dismantling India.”

“Anti-Zionists will say that they are opposed to nationalism, yet they champion the Palestinian kind. They will say that they care about religious minorities, but they are curiously silent about the treatment of Uighurs in China or the forced modern exodus of Christians from the Middle East. They will say that they care about indigenous rights, yet they elide the inconvenient truth that there has been Jewish…

“America is a uni-national and, except for secondary cultures, a uni-cultural land. Judaism here naturally takes the form of a religio-cultural entity. But Poland, Rumania, and the Soviet Union are composed of many peoples, cultures, and nationalities. There Jews constitute in law and public opinion a nationality.”

“Anti-Zionism is not about criticizing Israeli policies or expressing concern about the direction Israel is heading. It is about the demonization and the delegitimization and, ultimately, the elimination of a single state that exists in the actual world.”

“I am not saying that criticizing Israeli policy is anti-Semitic. Not in the least. Just as I believe that a crucial part of being an American patriot is not just defending American but insisting that it live up to its promise, part of being a Zionist means calling Israel to account when it falls short.”

“Many of us have largely become numb to the reality that there is a significant political movement in the West that believes only one state in the world is illegitimate. Why just this one state, given that so many other modern states (Lebanon, Iraq, Syria) were likewise forged in war and displacement, their borders drawn by imperial powers whose empires have faded.”

“If the Christian Bible is the most important book in Western civilization and Jesus is that civilization’s most important figure, the Jews’ rejection of him and his message means that anti-Semitism is baked into the very foundations of the world we inhabit.”

“The mere fact that the Jews continued to exist in the world as Jews was an affront to the most foundational Christian idea, which is that the Messiah had indeed come.”

“…in the world…..

The priest insisted that the Jews of Egypt were actually lepers who had taken control of Egypt and unleashed a reign of terror on its people. Egypt was saved only thanks to an exiled Egyptian king who killed the diseased Jews and banished the remaining ones from his land.”

“The roots of anti-Semitism are ancient and located in the same place where the Israelites were enslaved: Egypt. Scholars place much of the blame on a pagan - an Egyptian priest by the name of Manetho. His original anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, devised in about 300 BCE, was a response to the Jewish story of the Exodus at a time when Alexandria’s Jewish community was the largest…

“Americans feel ‘warmer’ about Jews than any other religious group, just ahead of Catholics, according to a 2017 Pew poll. We are loved so much that non-Jews want to marry us: Around 70% of non-Orthodox Jews now marry outside the tribe.”

From 1790 letter from George Washington to Hebrew Congregation in Newport, RI:
“May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants - while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”