I don’t typically write about antisemitism. It’s been around long enough to feel almost procedural. Before October 7, the Jew News Review would cover it with a few bullet points in the weekly news roundup. That usually did the job.

Boy, those were the days.

What has changed is not just the frequency. It is where it is showing up. The extent to which it has seeped into institutions that were once expected to push back against it. But underneath that shift sits a deeper question.

What does it mean to be Jewish right now?

I grew up with what you might call a traditional liberal Jewish upbringing. Hebrew school three days a week. A bar mitzvah. Planting trees for Israel. Holidays that marked time in a way that felt steady and familiar. We were what people like to call cultural Jews. Not deeply religious, but very aware of who we were.

There was always a quiet duality to it. We wanted to fit in. We mostly did. But we also understood that we were not exactly the same as everyone else. Not excluded. Not persecuted. Just different in a way that did not need to be explained.

Then life moved on. A decade, maybe two, where my Jewish identity faded into the background. Career, family, routine. It never disappeared. I just stopped paying close attention to it. And then, at some point, it came back.

Raising Jewish children. Watching them move through the same rhythms. Seeing what carries forward and what quietly fades.

And with that, a different kind of awareness. Not just what it means to be Jewish, but what it means to pass something on. The JNR came out of that realization. A small effort to hold onto something, and maybe make it harder for the next generation to lose it entirely.

Which is why this moment feels different. Because the question is no longer just how we express Jewish identity. It is what that identity is still allowed to include. For most of modern Jewish life, there was a balance. Jewish identity held two ideas at once. A universal moral language and a particular historical one. The obligation to care for the stranger sat alongside the understanding that Jews, as a people, needed safety, continuity, and self determination.

Those ideas were not in conflict. They explained each other. But that balance is starting to break. And part of the reason is not hard to see. For many Jews, the behavior of Israel under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu has made that balance harder to maintain. It creates real moral tension. Anger for some. Uncertainty for others. A sense that the alignment between values and identity is no longer so easy.

That tension is real and should be taken seriously. But it is also where things can start to slip. There is a difference between wrestling with the policies of a government and redefining the legitimacy of a people’s story.

There is another layer to this conversation that deserves attention. Some Jewish voices argue that Zionism itself is the problem. That nationalism, especially when it prioritizes one group, runs counter to Jewish values of equality and justice. That Judaism, at its core, is about ethical living and repairing the world, not political sovereignty.

It is not a trivial argument. It draws on real Jewish texts and real moral instincts. But it runs into a different reality. The Jewish story has never been just about universal values. It is also about a people. A shared history. And a long memory of what happens when we do not have the ability to protect ourselves. For centuries, Jews lived without sovereignty, dependent on the goodwill of others. Sometimes that worked. Often it did not. The 20th century did not just challenge that model. It shattered it.

That is why, for many Jews, Zionism is not an abstract political idea. It is a conclusion drawn from experience. A recognition that self determination is not a luxury. It is a form of insurance. You can debate the policies of a government. You can question decisions, leadership, direction. But removing the idea of a Jewish homeland from Jewish identity is not a policy critique. It is a different kind of argument entirely.

If I think about how I was raised, none of this felt like a contradiction. Caring about others and caring about our own people were part of the same story. You did not have to choose between them. Now it feels different.

The values that are easiest to share publicly are the universal ones. The ones that sound familiar to everyone else: Justice. Empathy. Standing up for others. Those matter. They always have. But the other parts, the ones that are more particular to us, the connection to Israel, the idea of a Jewish homeland, the understanding that Jewish survival is not theoretical, are starting to feel harder to say out loud without qualification.

Over time, that changes the balance. It stops being something we hold together. It starts becoming something we have to choose between. And you can see this tension showing up in places you might not expect.

For example, in the literary world, a group of Jewish authors recently accused the Jewish Book Council of placing too much emphasis on Israeli and Zionist voices (imagine that!). At the same time, the broader publishing ecosystem has been moving in the opposite direction, where association with Israel carries an increasing cost.

At the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Bernard-Henri Lévy was dropped after backlash to his pro Israel views. At the Adelaide Writers’ Week 2024, Thomas Friedman did not appear following a pressure campaign, officially due to “scheduling issues”. One is explicit. The other is polite. Both send the same signal. There are forms of Jewish expression that are becoming harder to accommodate in mainstream cultural spaces.

You can see the same tension in politics. Drew Warshaw, a Jewish candidate for New York City Comptroller, has called for divesting from Israeli bonds, framing the position as a moral obligation rooted in Jewish values. It is a serious argument, and a clear indication of a shift that would have felt unthinkable not that long ago.

In New York, still the most Jewish city in the world outside of Israel, the center of gravity is moving, along with the language that defines what counts as a legitimate moral position.

If Jewish identity is defined through frameworks that have limited tolerance for Jewish particularism, then over time, the parts that do not fit will not simply be debated. They will be edged out. Not with declarations, but with pressure. With incentives. With a growing understanding of what is easier to say, and what is easier to leave unsaid. This is how institutions drift. Quietly at first. Not all at once. Not by design. But steadily.

At some point, communities have to decide whether they are willing to hold both truths at once. To wrestle with the imperfections of a state while still recognizing the necessity of its existence. Because if they do not, the story does not disappear in a single moment. It gets edited. And eventually, something essential is missing.

So what does it mean to be Jewish right now?

For me, it means holding onto the same balance I was raised with. Caring about others, and caring about our own people. Holding onto the universal values that define who we aspire to be, while not letting go of the particular story that explains why we are still here.

It is not always comfortable. It is not always clean.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)