The gravest lesson of history is not that evil exists. It is that too many recognize it only after it has become impossible to ignore.
” Dumping on God? No way to start anything you are going to write,” bellowed a colleague, a globally acknowledged thought leader.
Not dumping.
Simply asking a less-than-theological question from the perspective of Jews and the enduring plague of antisemitism.
If every human being is created B’Tselem Elohim—in the image of God—did God fashion Jews to become willing participants in their own victimhood? To await rescue? To mistake passivity for virtue?
The question is neither academic nor theological. It is historical.
In its mainstream theological, ethical, and legal traditions, Judaism is fundamentally opposed to brutality. Brutality without explanation or qualification?
Mind what I call—and what many brilliant talking heads spend considerable effort rationalizing— the ghetto mentality.
God will save us. Assimilation will save us.
Balderdash.
I am frequently asked to explain antisemitism.
Most people do not want the history. They do not want the origins. They certainly do not want the centuries-long progression from prejudice to persecution, from persecution to violence, and from violence to slaughter.
They want the social media type executive summary.
During a recent interview with a major broadcaster, an astonishingly overpaid television personality, he interrupted me and said:
“Give it to me in a couple of sentences.”
A couple of sentences.
Two thousand years of expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, ghettos, quotas, concentration camps, and now the resurgence of open antisemitism across Europe and North America—compressed into a sound bite. Social media: the cancer of the intellect.
Needless to say, he and I will not be collaborating again. I will not be the headline interview—two hours of that. My choice.
Give a read to the piece by Rabbi Menachem Margolin, The Oldest Hatred Is Back: How It’s Consuming Europe and Crossing the Atlantic.
It is remarkable for two reasons.
First, that such a piece has become entirely necessary. Actually, alarmingly ordinary.
Second, that it survived on a major network’s digital front page for short hours. Lack of interest, I reckon.
Reports of antisemitism have become so commonplace that many scarcely notice them.
A story appears. There is momentary outrage. No! Get real! Occasional and brief outrage.Then silence.
The oldest hatred continues its work.
Last summer, I spoke with a first cousin who lives in Sweden.
In broad daylight, on a Sunday afternoon, he was walking down Drottninggatan, the busiest pedestrian street in Stockholm.
July 2025.
He witnessed a young Hassidic Jew running for his life. Three men chased him while screaming antisemitic slurs and hurling bricks at his head.
My cousin spotted a police officer and demanded that he intervene. The officer reportedly replied: “Why? It’s just a Jew.”
Stockholm.
Not 1938.
2025.
In its mainstream theological, ethical, and legal traditions, Judaism is fundamentally opposed to brutality.
Judaism is not a doctrine of passivity. Nor is it a doctrine of brutality. It recognizes the obligation to act, the necessity of self-defense, and the requirement that power be governed by ethical restraint.
The historical evidence is compelling. Jews have repeatedly suffered when they assumed that faith alone, goodwill alone, or assimilation alone would protect them. History suggests otherwise.
To the contrary, history repeatedly demonstrates that survival requires clarity, preparedness, resilience, and the willingness to confront threats before they become catastrophes.
The apologists and the intellectually fashionable theorists insist otherwise.
They assure us that reason will prevail. That assimilation will prevail. That society will eventually correct itself.
History offers a harsher lesson. Evil does not negotiate. It does not compromise.
It does not suddenly awaken to moral restraint. Left unopposed, it advances.
The twentieth century proved it. The twenty-first century is proving it again.
There are moments when survival depends not upon what one hopes, but upon what one is prepared to do.
The choice then becomes stark: Do or Die.
History has already voted.