Opinion: Jewish Identity and Antisemitism Aren’t Competing Priorities. They’re a Package Deal.

Andrew Goretsky

I’m a Jewish man who has never been to Israel, yet I feel a deep connection to that place. Support for Israel as a Jewish state wasn’t taught to me as a slogan; it was part of the story I inherited — peoplehood, survival, responsibility.

The reason I’ve never been there isn’t ideological. It’s practical. My family couldn’t afford it when I was a kid. Birthright Israel didn’t exist when I was in college. Years later, I planned to take my son for his bar mitzvah.

On Oct. 6, 2023, my family finalized our itinerary. We were supposed to book on Oct. 9. Then Oct. 7 happened — and the trip, like so many other things, went on pause.

I share that not for sympathy, but because it points to something deeper: Jewish identity is built through experiences — learning, relationships, culture, community — and those experiences often depend on access. I grew up going to the JCC and JCC camp, but the reason I could go was that my mother taught there and we got a discount. A lot of families don’t have that. Too many Jewish kids never get the formative moments that make Judaism feel like a civilization they’re proud to inherit, because the price tag is simply too high.

That’s why this debate matters.

In his “State of World Jewry” address at 92nd Street Y, Bret Stephens argued that American Jews should redirect major communal resources away from fighting antisemitism and toward strengthening Jewish identity — schools, culture, religious leadership, media. In the Q&A, he said he would “dismantle” the Anti-Defamation League, because victimhood “cannot be the locus of Jewish identity.”

He’s naming a real fear: that antisemitism has become so central that Jewishness shrinks into a defensive crouch. Many Jews are exhausted. Many parents are asking: Are we only going to raise kids who know how to be afraid?

Fear cannot be the center of Jewish identity. If Jewish life becomes primarily threat response, we raise children who associate Judaism with anxiety instead of meaning.

But walking away from the fight against antisemitism also doesn’t reflect what I see every day as senior regional director of ADL Philadelphia. Jewish life doesn’t flourish in a vacuum.

It flourishes when people feel safe enough to show up, speak up, and participate fully.

The point isn’t to choose identity or safety. The point is to do both, intelligently.

In my work, I use two tools: “Target. Goal. Resource” (who are we trying to move, to what, with what capacity?) and the “spectrum of allies” (too many of us spend most of our time focused on those people who actively disagree).

A campus visit made this concrete.

Jewish student leaders showed me flyers advertising an event “celebrating the life of the martyr Sinwar.” Their first instinct was to get it canceled. The event was small, and yes — there are times cancellation is the right call: not because it converts extremists, but because it clarifies what a community will and won’t normalize. In this case, the community acted and it was canceled.

But even when cancellation is justified, the fight over cancellation can become a no-win narrative. If it’s shut down, opponents frame it as “Jewish power” silencing speech. If it isn’t, they frame it as proof that “Jewish power” is real and ask what Jews were afraid of. Either way, the story can slide into familiar tropes.

So, the goal can’t be only “win the cancellation.” The goal must be bigger than the event.
I asked how many flyers were up. “Hundreds,” they told me. That was my deeper concern: the hundreds or thousands walking by who had no idea who Sinwar was and might simply absorb the cue: this is someone worth honoring.

I told them about a non-Jewish visitor who listened to me talk about Oct. 7 and then asked, sincerely, “Please don’t think I’m stupid, but you keep saying ‘10/7’ and I don’t know why that date is important.” He wasn’t malicious. He simply lived in a different information bubble. That’s the world we’re in now: people’s beliefs track with what their feeds deliver, not with what is true.

So, I urged the students to treat cancellation, when appropriate, as a floor — not a finish line. Keep it simple, keep it factual and aim it at the neutrals: create a counter-flyer with Sinwar’s name and photo, add two short, verifiable facts, include a QR code to a credible explainer, and place it everywhere the original appeared — same real estate, same visibility, different story.

That’s what a smarter fight against antisemitism can look like: push back when a line is crossed, but also do the work that prevents the movable middle from drifting into confusion or moral inversion.

This is why I think Stephens is right about the diagnosis — but wrong about the solution.
We should invest far more deeply in Jewish identity, and we should reduce financial barriers that make Jewish camp, Israel engagement and community feel like luxuries. We cannot raise a generation that experiences Judaism primarily as threat response.

But we also can’t build Jewish life on the assumption that the civic terrain will remain stable on its own. In 2024, ADL recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States.

Whether you attribute the causes to the far right, the far left, conspiracy ecosystems, or geopolitical aftershocks, the result is the same: Intimidation and stigma have real effects on whether Jews show up, speak up and participate.

If your kid is scared to wear a Star of David on campus, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the curriculum is. If your synagogue’s window gets smashed, it’s hard to host a joyful Shabbat dinner. If Jewish students are routinely told that “Zionists” don’t belong, it affects who volunteers for leadership and who quietly disappears.

So, what does “both/and — done better” look like?

Make Jewish life accessible. If the building blocks of Jewish life are transformative, price should not be the gatekeeper.

Fight antisemitism strategically. Not every provocation deserves the same response; don’t confuse motion with impact; put more energy into moving the movable middle than debating the immovable edge.

Build confidence without building a culture of fear. Security and threat monitoring are baseline governance, but identity can’t be built out of security briefings. The goal is not to live in permanent emergency. The goal is to build confident Jewish life in a society where Jews can participate without intimidation.

At the end of this, I come back to my son — and to that trip that didn’t happen.

I still want to take him to Israel. I want him to inherit something thicker than fear, and to grow up in America knowing that being Jewish is not something you have to hide, explain, or apologize for.

That future won’t arrive through identity alone. And it won’t arrive through defense alone.
It will come because we treat Jewish identity and the fight against antisemitism as what they are: a package deal.

Andrew Goretsky, Ed.D., is the senior regional director for the Philadelphia office of the Anti-Defamation League, serving Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey and Delaware.