The Question That Has Returned

Since October 7, many Jews have found themselves asking a question that once belonged mostly to family history, Holocaust testimony, and the private fears of older generations:

When is it time to leave?

For some, the question is literal. Should we leave a city, a country, a university, a workplace, a profession, or a public space that no longer feels safe? For others, it is psychological. At what point does discomfort become danger? At what point does public hostility become something more serious? At what point does reassurance become a substitute for protection?

The question is not new. Jews have asked it before, in different countries, under different conditions, and with different consequences. But after October 7, it has returned with new force.

My forthcoming book, When Is It Too Late? Holocaust Lessons on Risk, Decision Making, and the Failure to Act, was written to examine this question. The book is not intended as a simple comparison between past and present. The present is not the Holocaust. But Holocaust memory cannot be sealed so tightly in the past that it teaches nothing about warning, recognition, institutional failure, public hatred, and delay.

The book, scheduled for release in September, asks how people recognize danger before the point at which recognition no longer gives them the power to act.

That distinction matters.

The Difficulty of Recognizing Danger in Time

It is easy, from safety and hindsight, to ask why Jews in Europe did not leave earlier. It is much harder to sit honestly with the conditions under which such decisions had to be made. Leaving was rarely simple. It meant abandoning homes, businesses, parents, grandparents, community, language, graves, schools, synagogues, property, and identity. It required money, documents, receiving countries, family agreement, physical ability, and often luck. Fear alone did not open borders.

The question “when is it........

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