We are today witnessing a dramatic rise in antisemitism in the United States and around the world that most Jews alive have never seen, experienced or imagined before. This millennia-old shape-shifting hatred that appears in different forms in every era continues to permeate our politics and culture.

It is important to understand what modern Jew-hatred is and what it is not. To that end, despite it being a complex psychological, cultural, religious, political, and historic phenomenon unlike any other hatred in world history, I offer a few comments below that I believe help clarify what this hatred is, what it is not, and what we Jews (and others) should do as we confront it.

“There are a number of modern and classic iterations of antisemitism that continue to be promulgated by the [political] far left and far right. They include Holocaust denial, offensive stereotypes of Jews (such as casting a Jewish individual as a Christ-killer, a puppet master, imposter, and swindler who manipulates national events for malign purposes, a foreigner, a controller of banking, the media, government, and the wealthy elite), denying the Jewish people our right to self-determination, applying double standards to Jews and Israel that are not applied to any other nation, using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism to characterize Israel and/or Israelis, drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, and holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.” –Rabbi John Rosove, “From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi” (West of West Books, 2024)

“The antisemite was a coward, afraid of himself, of his own consciousness, of his own liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and the world — of everything except the Jews. The antisemite doesn’t hate Jews because of some bad experience with flesh-and-blood Jews, but uses a preexisting ‘idea of the Jew’ as a prism for ordering his troubled world. Antisemitism was thus a psychic liberation from responsibility for one’s conscience, a rebellion against the burdens of rationalism….If the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him.” -Jean Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew (1946)

“Jews know that democracy is their best protection. Less democracy means less protection for all minorities, and even if the dictator makes a big show of being the Jews’ protector and a friend of Israel, it’s at best temporary and conditional. No one is ever safe with a dictator, certainly not the Jews.” -Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz, July 29, 2022

“Today, anti-Zionism is often a form of antisemitism, but not always. After all, there are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews who identify as Jews proudly. However, the single-minded blind obsession with Israel often bleeds into hatred of Jews and normalizes Jew-hatred. Of course, not all criticism of Israel is illegitimate or unwarranted, and certainly not antisemitic, but some of it is, and on some college campuses and on-line forums a lot of it is. We need to be able to appreciate subtlety, nuance, and historical context, and to distinguish between legitimate critique and the new mutated form of antisemitism dressed up in the garment of pathological anti-Zionism.” -Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch – Podcast “In These Times” with Natan Sharansky (2022)

“What we generally call antisemitism is a 19th-century coinage that helped turn an ancient religious hatred into a racial hatred. As racial hatred came to be considered uncouth after World War II, anti-Zionism (that is, blanket opposition to a Jewish state, not criticism of particular Israeli policies) became a more acceptable way of opposing Jewish political interests and denigrating Jews. Should Israel cease to exist, new forms of bigotry will surely develop for the next stage of anti-Judaism, adapted to the prevailing beliefs of the times. The common denominator in each of these mutations is an idea, based in fantasy and conspiracy, about Jewish power. The old-fashioned religious antisemite believed Jews had the power to kill Christ. The 19th-century antisemites who were the forerunners to the Nazis believed Jews had the power to start wars, manipulate kings and swindle native people of their patrimony. Present-day anti-Zionists attribute to Israel and its supporters in the United States vast powers that they do not possess, like the power to draw America into war. On the far right, antisemites think that Jews are engaged in an immense scheme to replace white, working-class America with immigrant labor. Tucker Carlson and others have taken this conspiracy theory mainstream, even if they are careful to leave out the part about Jews… the foul antisemitism of the right, yoked to its old themes of nativism, protectionism, nationalism and isolationism, is erupting into the public square like a burst sewage pipe.” –Bret Stephens – What an Antisemite’s Fantasy Says About Jewish Reality – NYT – Jan. 21, 2022

“In 2025 America, antisemitism is real – sometimes in plain sight, sometimes encoded and winked at, and sometimes expressed as obsessive hatred of Israel and Zionism. The problem transcends left-right politics – stretching from Nick Fuentes and “great replacement” conspiracists on the far-right to those on the far-left who cast Jews globally as oppressors. We see it everywhere – from chants in the streets to online memes in our social media feeds and conspiracies festering in the darker corners of the web. As we wage this critical fight, we must take care not to undermine either our own interests or the health of American democracy. And we must be honest that – at times – the fight against antisemitism is itself being politicized and weaponized. If we are not careful in our approach, we risk ending up less safe, less free, and more isolated.

We cannot define legitimate criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitism – especially not in law. Weaponizing antisemitism as justification to slam the gates shut [on immigration into the United States] is not “protecting Jews,” it is erasing a core American ideal that granted us protection. To allow right-wing actors – including those willing to defend and platform dangerous figures like Nick Fuentes – to chip away at those pillars in the name of “protecting Jews” is not only hypocritical and ironic – it is deeply, dangerously self-defeating. Not all the anger coming at the Jewish community today is rooted in ancient hatred. Some of it is rooted in protest against the policies of the government of Israel – policies that many Jews disagree with as well. While some protest on the left crosses a line into antisemitic narratives, that doesn’t negate the legitimate reasons for much of the protest. We cannot fight antisemitism by censoring political speech, by withdrawing from civil rights coalitions, by letting the far-right weaponize our fear, or by refusing to look at our own agency and responsibility. We should be honest that both the left and right ends of the spectrum have some antisemitic elements and not allow this important issue to be made into a political football. We need to defend democracy. Defend free speech. Build alliances. Protect the rule of law. And we need to do all this out of a firm conviction that Jewish safety in America will not come from isolating ourselves or policing ideas. It will come only from solidarity, partnership, and the deep and universal American promise that freedom and equality are not for some, but for all.” –Jeremy Ben-Ami, “Can We Do Better at Fighting Antisemitism,” Word on the Street, November 2, 2025)