Weight of the Crowd: A Candid Talk on Jew-Hatred

The time for mincing words has passed. We must call it what it is: Jew-hatred. The clinical term “Antisemitism” no longer captures the raw, ancient vitriol surging through our streets.

It is a sobering reality that in 2025, Jews live in a state of constant, justified hyper-vigilance. We saw why on the first night of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney. As families gathered to light the first candle, a targeted massacre left 15 dead, many more injured, and a community shattered. What should have been a celebration of survival became a scene of slaughter.

This attack came on the heels of unprecedented antisemitic protests and acts of violence targeting Australian Jews—incidents that went unchecked and unchallenged. This is the inevitable result when we turn a blind eye and normalize rhetoric that singles out Jews and promotes violence against them. Is this the “new normal”? Indeed, in the last few years, we have witnessed nothing short of a tsunami of hateful speech and hate crimes targeting Jews both in the streets and online.

A History of “Catching Up”
Jew-hatred is the world’s oldest obsession. From the Seleucids in 160 BCE to the Roman slaughter of 500,000 in 70 CE; from the Spanish Expulsion of 1492 to the industrial genocide of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, where six million Jews were murdered in death camps.

Consider the math of survival: In 1939, there were 16.6 million Jews in the world. Today, 86 years after the Holocaust, the global Jewish population is still only 15.8 million. While there are 2.6 billion Christians and 2.1 billion Muslims, the Jewish people—a mere 0.2% of the world—are still playing “catch up” from a wound the world seems determined to reopen.

The Shifting........

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