The shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia. An arson attack on a synagogue in Mississippi. The murder of worshippers in Pittsburgh. The fatal attack on a Latter-day Saint church in Michigan.
These are not isolated eruptions of violence. They are manifestations of an ancient hatred that adapts easily to modern circumstances. The targets may differ, but the logic is familiar: When a society feels unmoored — morally anxious, politically frustrated, culturally disoriented — it looks for a people to blame. Jews have long served that role.
Antisemitism is a denial of the humanity of the Jew. It is also a protean hatred, capable of assuming countless and often contradictory forms. Consider the calculus of the antisemite: Jews are imagined as both subhuman and superhuman — vermin who nevertheless control the world. Antisemitic rhetoric routinely places Jews at the center of conspiracies, secretly directing America, global finance, the Middle East, colonialism, immigration, the Federal Reserve, NATO or whatever force seems most powerful or frightening at the moment.
Jews are hated for being communists and capitalists, foreigners and insiders, immigrants and elites, unassimilated and overly assimilated. They are despised for allegedly bankrolling the left (George Soros) or the right (Sheldon Adelson), for being weak and stateless or for being Zionists who defend a state. This hatred always cloaks itself in explanation; it is never just because someone is Jewish. Antisemitism, like other hatreds, insists on rationalization to disguise its irrational core.
This is why antisemitism is not merely one prejudice among many. It is a symptom of a deeper social sickness — a failure to take moral responsibility, a need for scapegoats when institutions falter or values erode. Much of the contemporary protest against Israel reflects this pathology. Israel is the only country in the world routinely and widely targeted for eradication. Activists angry at China do not attack Chinese restaurants in Paris; outrage at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not lead to the shooting of Russian civilians abroad. Yet, Jews are assaulted wherever they can be found, and synagogues are burned or defaced in the name of “protest.”
But the hatred is not toward policy, it is toward people.
Understanding this matters, especially for those who rightly resist identity politics yet now see antisemitism quietly tolerated — or even defended — particularly among younger activists. When figures openly hostile to Jews are excused as merely “anti-globalist” or “provocative,” the disease is already spreading. Antisemitism corrodes any movement that accommodates it. History makes this plain.
The roots of this hatred are deep. When I taught at Harvard Divinity School, I often wondered whether students learned that both the New Testament — and, in a different manner, the Quran — contain passages hostile to Jews; whether they studied Martin Luther’s call to burn synagogues and expel Jews as “a serpent’s brood”; whether they learned of the Almohad persecutions, when Jews were forced to convert, flee or die; or of the 15 centuries of Christian persecution that included expulsions, pogroms and massacres. These episodes are not peripheral to Western history. They helped shape it.
Why such enduring hatred toward one small people? In part, because Jews remained different. We would not become Christian or Muslim. We persisted as outsiders, bearers of difference in societies that demanded conformity. Jewish culture — portable, text-centered, reverent of learning — also proved unusually adaptive in modern economies where information and mental agility confer advantage. When resentment already exists, visible success intensifies hostility.
The energy and outrage directed at Jews — 0.2% of the world’s population — is wildly disproportionate. Antisemitism is feral and irrational, and it rarely travels alone. Those who hate Jews often hate others as well; antisemitism readily allies itself with racism, xenophobia, misogyny and contempt for learning. The crucial truth is this: Just as racism is not caused by the behavior of Black Americans, antisemitism is not caused by the behavior of Jews. Hate originates in the heart of the hater, not in the actions of the hated.
Which brings us to responsibility. Being privately horrified by antisemitism is not enough. Silence is interpreted as consent. When antisemitic language appears in conversation, on social media or at political rallies, it must be challenged — calmly, clearly and without apology. When institutions excuse it, they should be confronted. When movements tolerate it, they should be warned that they are corroding their own moral foundations.
Jews gave the world a radical and fragile idea: that every human being is created in the image of God. Remembering that truth is not only a defense against antisemitism, but against hatred itself. And remembering that requires more than memory. It requires action.
This story appears in the April 2026 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.