Societies continually want a scapegoat, and Jews have remained the ideal target.
Publicado en The Washington Post, el 28 de abril de 2025
Like most Jews, I have long struggled to understand why antisemitism has persisted for thousands of years, seemingly immune to changes in history, culture, politics and geography. How has hatred for the Jews thrived through good times and bad, across nations and continents, in societies where Jews were prominent and those where they hardly existed? Why has antisemitism endured among people of vastly different religions, races and ideologies, often adapting to fit each era’s prevailing prejudices?
I have read countless explanations: the Catholic Church long portrayed Jews as Christ-killers; the Nazis as racial defilers; communists denounced them as capitalists; capitalists as communists; they have been vilified as colonial oppressors and as rootless cosmopolitans. Some think it is about jealousy of their perceived success. However, none of these theories explains the enduring nature of antisemitism. Antisemitism predates most of these grievances, and it has continued to flourish in societies that were literate and illiterate, rich and poor, religious and secular, technologically advanced and undeveloped. Even today, in what we like to think of as an enlightened age, antisemitism reemerged with brutal forcefollowing Hamas’s barbaric atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. The intensity of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment that erupted worldwide followed soon after — it was already there, just waiting for an excuse to surface.
A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League counted 9,354 antisemitic incidents — including vandalism, harassment, bomb threats and assaults — in the United States in 2024. This is the highest number ever recorded, and it represents an increase of almost 900 percent over the past 10 years. Incidents on college campuses have risen more than in any other location.
All the more paradoxical then, that despite the enduring nature of antisemitism, Judaism continues to be seen worldwide as one of the world’s great religions. It is frequently grouped with Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism — faiths with hundreds of millions or even billions of adherents. Yet Jews comprise only about 16 million people in total, representing a mere 0.2 percent of the world’s population, with far fewer active religious practitioners than that. How is it that a faith so numerically insignificant still commands such attention, hatred and admiration? Even more curiously, in a world where so many people despise Jews and Judaism, why is Judaism still acknowledged as one of the world’s great religions?
Christianity and Islam both have their roots in Judaism, adopting monotheism and moral law from it, and each believing their religion to be the true fulfillment of divine revelation. By all logic, Judaism should have faded into irrelevance, yet it has stubbornly persisted. This persistence is an affront,particularly to faiths that assumed they would naturally replace it.
Added to this is Judaism’s reluctance to seek converts, unlike Christianity and Islam, which actively proselytize. In fact, Judaism makes conversion so difficult one could be forgiven for assuming that Jews want their religion to disappear! And yet, throughout history, Jews have overwhelmingly refused to convert to dominant religions — even when faced with persecution, forced expulsions or death; they have defied conversion even when assimilation could have meant survival, leading to even greater hatred by their enemies.
This leads to one of history’s greatest ironies: without antisemitism, Judaism might well not have survived at all. Societies without external threats often see their cultures and traditions fade over time, whereas persecution fosters resilience. The more Jews have been targeted, the stronger their communal identity has become. Without antisemitism, it is quite possible that Jews would no longer exist as an entity. Instead, hatred has kept Jewish identity alive, only compounding the fury of antisemites. Their goal — whether through forced conversion, discrimination or outright extermination — has been to rid the world of Jews. And yet, their efforts have produced the opposite effect: Jewish identity, culture and continuity have persisted, often thriving in the face of adversity.
In his essay on antisemitism, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “If the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him.” This captures the true nature of antisemitism: it may well not be primarily about the Jews, but about the need for an eternal scapegoat. Maybe antisemitism survives because societies continually need “another” to blame. And Jews, in their stubborn refusal to disappear, have remained the ideal target.
In the end, no theory can fully explain antisemitism, because it is not based on a rational cause. It adapts to each era’s anxieties and insecurities. When Jews are poor, they are despised as beggars; when they are rich, as exploiters; when they are religious, they are portrayed as fanatics; when they are secular, they are dangerous radicals. In every situation, antisemites have no problem adapting their prejudices. Thus, antisemitism, if it is about the need to have someone else to blame, may well not be about Jews at all. Jews have survived because they have no choice but to survive, and in doing so, they have outlasted every empire, ideology and movement that sought to erase them. Perhaps antisemitism still exists only because humanity has so often needed it.