I don’t typically write about antisemitism. It’s been around long enough to feel almost procedural. Before October 7, the Jew News Review would cover it with a few bullet points in the weekly news roundup. That usually did the job.

Boy, those were the days.

What has changed is not just the frequency. It is where it is showing up. The extent to which it has seeped into institutions that were once expected to push back against it. But underneath that shift sits a deeper question.

What does it mean to be Jewish right now?

I grew up with what you might call a traditional liberal Jewish upbringing. Hebrew school three days a week. A bar mitzvah. Planting trees for Israel. Holidays that marked time in a way that felt steady and familiar. We were what people like to call cultural Jews. Not deeply religious, but very aware of who we were.

There was always a quiet duality to it. We wanted to fit in. We mostly did. But we also understood that we were not exactly the same as everyone else. Not excluded. Not persecuted. Just different in a way that did not need to be explained.

Then life moved on. A decade, maybe two, where my Jewish identity faded into the background. Career, family, routine. It never disappeared. I just stopped paying close attention to it. And then, at some point, it came back.

Raising Jewish children. Watching them move through the same rhythms. Seeing what carries forward and what quietly fades.

And with that, a different kind of awareness. Not just what it means to be Jewish, but what it means to pass something on. The JNR came out of that realization. A small effort to hold onto something, and maybe make it harder for the next generation to lose it entirely.

Which is why this moment feels different. Because the question is no longer just how we express Jewish identity. It is what........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)