‘Never Again’ strategy: Facing soaring antisemitism and Holocaust ‘erasure,’ how should Jews fight back? |
On Sunday, the Jewish columnist Bret Stephens stoked a small firestorm when he said, at a landmark event, that the Anti-Defamation League should be abolished and implied that its $275 million in assets should instead be allocated to building Jewish institutions like schools and cultural centers.
Days earlier, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a collection of major figures and groups drew attention for what they didn’t say: the word “Jews.” In their statements commemorating the Holocaust, US Vice President JD Vance, the BBC, and the British Green Party all failed to mention who the Holocaust’s main victims were.
This is far from the first time a leader, or leading institution, neglected to name Jews in a Holocaust statement. Nor is it the first time a Jewish commentator has called on the community to shift its mindset, and money, from fighting antisemitism to building Jewish life.
But the confluence of the two has cast a fraught reality into stark relief: Antisemitism is rising. The Holocaust’s cultural importance is fading. And no one really knows what to do about it.
The current rise in antisemitism, supercharged after October 7, 2023, has been happening for about a decade. In that time, millions of dollars, and untold manhours, have been devoted to fighting the scourge of Jew-hatred. One estimate said the Jewish community spends $600 million annually fighting antisemitism.
Between 2015 and 2025, the ADL’s operating budget more than doubled, from about $60 million to more than $130 million. A collection of other anti-antisemitism enterprises have been founded or risen in prominence. In 2023, before October 7, Israel’s Diaspora Ministry added “Combat Antisemitism” to its name and got a hugely expanded budget.
In parallel, at least in the US, there’s been a doubling down on Holocaust education. The US Congress passed a bill strengthening Holocaust education in 2020, and put another one on the docket last year with bipartisan support. In New York, home to the most Jews in the country, programs have expanded to take kids to Holocaust museums to combat a rise in anti-Jewish attacks. Faced with the dwindling number of survivors 80 years after the genocide ended, museums are experimenting with holograms and VR.
Is any of it working? Antisemitism is at historic levels, as study after study shows, despite all the efforts to fight it. And many people don’t know basic facts about the Holocaust, as study after study shows, despite all of the efforts to teach about it.
Against that backdrop, on a day meant to memorialize the Holocaust, and amid mounting........