By Matthew H. Solomson
Saturday, March 07, 2026
A growing chorus of Jewish thinkers has argued that
American Jews’ massive investments of time and energy in fighting antisemitism
are largely misdirected. Antisemitism, these thinkers point out, is not a
problem of insufficient information. No awareness campaign has ever cured a
monomania. Better to invest in building Jewish life from the inside.
They are right. But a conversation I recently had with
Jewish service academy cadets at a conference for Jewish military chaplains,
hosted by the Aleph Institute in Surfside, Fla., illuminated a more granular,
workaday approach to weathering and overcoming anti-Jewish sentiment.
The chaplains were commissioned officers who have
deployed with special forces, served aboard ships for months at a time, and
ministered to troops around the world. The cadets represented all of our
nation’s service academies. These young men and women had the grades and
accomplishments to attend virtually any university in America and instead chose
a harder path. These soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines voluntarily
accepted the obligation to put their lives on the line for the rest of us —
people they will never meet and whose politics and beliefs they may not share.
Being in that room was to behold citizenship at its finest.
They do face a particular challenge, however: being a
minority (Jewish) within a minority (service members), navigating institutions
where they are sometimes met with curiosity and ignorance, but also
occasionally with disturbing, conspiratorial online content. Yet what struck me
most was not their frustration — it was their resolve. These Jewish men and
women in uniform, along with other Americans who decide to serve, have given up
easier lives to make incredible sacrifices. But they are not looking for sympathy,
media campaigns, or institutional statements. They are not hopefuls for the
victimhood Olympics. They are tough, love their brothers and sisters in arms,
and value their friendship. These service members overcome prejudice the
old-fashioned way: by being so good, so reliable, and so beyond reproach that
prejudice has nowhere to stand.
Now, to be sure, a person who makes mistakes or falls
short of ideal behavior should also not be subjected to prejudice. Nor
should any individual citizen be blamed for the failings of their
co-religionists. Such bigotry is, itself, un-American. But what can you do
about people who hate Jews first and come up with reasons why later? Not much.
Jews should not spend much time worrying about hardened, conspiratorial
anti-Jewish sentiment that takes aim at Jews as a group both for their failings
and, paradoxically, for their success. But the vast majority of Americans are
not like this. Some may misunderstand Judaism or Jewish history and culture —
and even harbor some disturbing misconceptions — but they aren’t animated by
hatred. Americans are truly decent people who will stand up to bigotry in all
its forms.
Ultimately, several lessons emerged from my conversation
with the chaplains and the cadets:
Assume good faith. Most people who say something
clumsy or ignorant are not your enemies. They are not ideologues. They simply
don’t know better — and ordinary people, given the chance, will meet good faith
with good faith. A rabbi friend coined a Yiddish phrase for the right
disposition: uber shtoltz, a pride and self-possession so secure that
petty slights simply don’t land. If people are still using the term
“microaggression,” the prefix gives away the game. Taking offense at small
things often says more about your own confidence than it does about the person
giving offense. Reserve your energy for the actual bad actors. There are enough
of them.
Be excellent. The fact is that the best way to
overcome latent bigotry is to adopt the approach pioneered by icons like Jackie
Robinson and the Tuskegee Airmen. Particularly for a visible minority, personal
conduct is the most powerful argument there is — far more powerful than op-eds,
task forces, or institutional statements. What actually changes minds is
working alongside someone whose integrity is unimpeachable, whose commitment is
total, whose patriotism and ethics are beyond question. It is a great approach
to life anyhow and happens to be applicable to Jews or anyone navigating
environments where being a misunderstood minority brings quiet burdens.
None of this is to say that Jews collectively have
something to fix. Nor is it fair for Jews to have to overperform to be treated
as trusted colleagues. But fairness is a principle; human nature is a fact. My
father, a retired Army colonel and surgeon, was once criticized by a colleague
who said that Jews had it easy — or somehow gamed the system — because they got
Jewish and Christian holidays off. My father’s response: Open the
operating room on Christmas, schedule patients, and I’ll be there for surgery.
No argument, no grievance. Just presence, excellence, and the willingness to
carry his share. That is what overcomes prejudice. Not because it should have
to; it simply does.
Know your tradition. Judaism has a phrase for the
obligation to answer those who challenge you: da mah l’hashiv, know what
to respond. For example, if you hear someone cynically mocking Jews for
believing they are the chosen people, you could answer that the tradition
actually conceives of chosenness not as natural superiority but as covenantal
obligation. But you cannot defend what you don’t understand, and you cannot
teach what you haven’t learned.
That knowledge must be grounded in our canonical texts:
the Torah, the Talmud, Maimonides, the Code of Jewish Law. Without them, there
is simply no Judaism. For those entirely unfamiliar with Jewish texts, the
religious tradition collapses into platitudes — a self-help program with a
Hebrew veneer, untethered from the obligations and reasoning that give our
faith its content and force. Nor is Judaism merely a rejection of Christianity.
Judaism has its own texts, its own arguments stretching across centuries, its
own account of what human beings owe to God and to one another. Learn it.
Engage with it. Be proud of it — not because anyone demands it, but because it
is yours.
Know who your friends are. This may be the most
important lesson of all, particularly given the value Judaism places on hakaras
ha’tov (gratitude; literally, recognizing the good).
When I saw Columbia University’s treatment of Jewish
students following the October 7 attacks, I felt compelled to act. I reached
out to two fellow federal judges who had previously taken a stand against other
schools over their treatment of conservative students: Judge Jim Ho of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Judge Lisa Branch of the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. I asked them whether and how we might
properly call out Columbia’s intolerable conduct toward Jewish students. Judge
Ho and Judge Branch — both committed Christians — helped develop our position,
and a dozen or so other judges signed on to a hiring boycott of Columbia. We
all expected (baseless) ethics complaints, which were eventually filed and duly
dismissed. There was a reputational risk. But having considered the goal and
the ethics question, these judges proceeded with what they thought was right.
That is real friendship — the kind that costs something.
More recently, First Liberty Institute, a Christian think
tank and litigation organization focused on religious freedom, supported and
applauded the removal of a hostile member of the president’s Religious Liberty
Commission. Here’s what the organization said: “First Liberty Institute
proudly represents synagogues and other Jewish clients, and we will continue to
represent their cause as a core part of our mission to defend all people of
faith in America. We will always be a friend to the Jewish people.”
The Jewish people need to know who their friends are —
and who they’re not: academics, including law professors, who dress up a modern
blood libel in the language of scholarship by characterizing Israel’s war of
self-defense as genocide, or who declare that both Israel and the United States
are settler-colonial states and therefore illegitimate. These are profoundly
warped ideas, derived from an axiomatic hatred of the civilization that enabled
Jewish flourishing in America. Such notions are the opposite of everything the
cadets and chaplains I met with stand for.
So my advice is this: Don’t lose the friends you have
courting the friends you don’t. Be proud. Be prepared. Be excellent. And
express gratitude to the people who show up for you at real cost to themselves
simply because they know it is right.
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