“Of course antisemitism is getting worse,” a Jewish friend told me recently. “But it’s not really happening to us.”

I’ve heard variations of that sentence constantly since October 7. Sometimes it’s masked: “Our neighborhood is different.” “My office is fine.” “This is just an Ivy League problem.”

The details shift, but the delusion remains the same: Antisemitism is real, but it happens to somebody else.

I understand the impulse. Nobody wants to believe the ground is giving way beneath a home they built, a career they nurtured, or a community they love. America has granted Jews extraordinary safety and opportunity, and most Americans are decent people who naturally reject anti-Jewish hatred.

But gratitude isn’t safety. Comfort isn’t security.

Too many of us are blurring those lines. We recognize antisemitism when it hits a campus our kids don’t attend, a city we don’t live in, or Jews whose politics, observance, or relationship to Israel look nothing like ours. We shake our heads, call it terrible, and quietly convince ourselves it has nothing to do with us.

That is a dangerous path.

The Distance Is an Illusion

The numbers aren’t abstract anymore. In 2023, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents—a 140 percent surge over 2022. In 2024, that number climbed higher to 9,354, matching FBI hate crime data showing anti-Jewish violence at historic highs.

Data can still feel distant. Charts allow us to treat hatred as a policy issue happening elsewhere. But the real world doesn’t offer........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)