Our response in the face of anti-Semitism should be to be more Jewish
Calls to “gas the Jews” are defended as protected speech; leaders of the academic world unabashedly insist that advocating the genocide of the Jewish People is acceptable conduct. A few months ago, no one would have dreamed that such virulent anti-Semitism would sprout up. Suddenly, even the places where Jews have always felt at home are starting to feel like 1930s Germany.
As history has taught us, anti-Semitism isn’t the result of anything Jews do. They don’t hate us for what we do; they hate us for who we are. It’s always been that way. Rashi in Daniel 11:17 says Antiochus sought to kill everyone who called himself a Jew. Anti-Semites simply can’t tolerate the existence of a Jew in the world.
That leads us to ask a basic question we may never have asked before: What is a Jew? Not in the halachic or genealogical sense; rather, what is the essence of a Jew that the anti-Semites can’t stand?
To answer this question, we have to go back to the birth of the Jewish nation in Mitzrayim. The beginning of the Jewish People was far from picture-perfect. The Ramban in parshas Bo writes that the Jews there had fallen to a dismal spiritual state. They even abandoned the mitzvah of bris milah and worshipped avodah zarah. They did not deserve to leave Mitzrayim; yet, says the Ramban, they called out to Hashem, and He heard their prayers.
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