Why We Must Name It

“Antisemitism is not about Jews. It is about those who harbor it.” — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

When the word antisemitism appears, defenses rise. Eyes glaze. People shift uncomfortably in their seats. Some insist the term is overused, politicized, or no longer relevant. But we must keep naming it — because what it stirs is unlike any other form of hatred. It reaches into something ancient, irrational, and deeply emotional.

Antisemitism doesn’t merely live in ideology; it festers in the collective unconscious. It is born not of logic, but of projection — a displacement of one’s own fear, envy, guilt, or powerlessness onto a convenient target. When societies face crisis or decay, they often turn to the same scapegoat: the Jewish people.

This is not coincidence. It’s a recurring psychological pattern, a ritual of blame repeated across millennia. When the world becomes unstable, people look for something — someone — to hold responsible. Jews have been cast in that role again and again: too rich, too poor, too separate, too assimilated; villains in one era, conspirators in another.

But beneath the slogans and accusations, something deeper churns. Those who spread lies about Jews are often struggling with unacknowledged emotions — the shame of moral confusion, the fear of chaos, the envy of resilience, the guilt of silence. Rather than face these inner demons, they externalize them. Hatred becomes catharsis. Blame becomes balm.

That’s why antisemitism is so enduring and so dangerous. It isn’t just prejudice — it’s possession. It taps into the most primal corners of the human psyche, where myth and fear blur into one. And once unleashed, it feeds itself, reshaping facts and morality until the lie feels like truth.

To fight it, we must name it. Not euphemize, not soften, not hide behind neutral language. Because what remains unnamed grows stronger.

To say “antisemitism” is not to single out one group’s pain — it is to illuminate the oldest wound in human history, one that festers whenever we refuse to look at our own reflection.

The cure is not more accusation but awareness. The moment we call this hatred what it is, we reclaim the power it steals — from Jews, from truth, and from the moral fabric that binds us all.

The Cycle Returns

We are watching this pattern return in real time. In universities, on social media, in our own communities — the same recycled myths and accusations, the same righteous fury aimed at the same people. What masquerades as political discourse too often conceals something more primitive: a reawakening of that ancient impulse to blame the Jew when the world feels broken.

But history is not doomed to repeat itself if consciousness intervenes. Each time we choose to see clearly — to recognize that antisemitism is not a reaction to events but a reflection of unresolved human shadow — we interrupt the cycle. We remind the world that this hatred is not truth; it is projection. And the antidote to projection is awareness.

Naming antisemitism is not merely an act of defense — it is an act of moral clarity. To speak its name is to shine light on the darkness it depends upon.

A Final Thought

I write these words not in anger but in remembrance — and in hope.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, “Antisemitism is not about Jews. It is about those who harbor it.” His words expose the true nature of this hatred — not as a flaw in its victims, but as a mirror of the moral and spiritual emptiness of those who perpetuate it.

Confronting antisemitism is therefore not only an act of defense, but also an act of illumination. It forces humanity to face the shadows it would rather deny — fear, envy, guilt, and the impulse to blame rather than understand.

The Jewish story has always been one of endurance, but endurance alone is not our calling. We are meant to awaken conscience — to remind the world that silence is never neutral, and that what is left unexamined in darkness will always return.