The Jew's Jew

2/27/26

Nobody is advocating for Jew-hatred, and better would be a world without it. In the last year alone, it has brought death in Manchester, DC, Boulder, and Bondi. It has brought isolation in schools and on college campuses, and it has reawakened the darkest fears within the Jewish community.

There is no doubt, however, that alongside these terrible consequences, the recent proliferation of antisemitism has also produced a few results that have made us stronger. Some have been widely reported, such as the surge in Jewish engagement, the rise of the October 8th Jew, the growth of summer camps, and the refocusing of philanthropists toward Jewish causes.

But there is one result that has been less, if at all, reported, and it is an equally powerful transformation.

When a popular YouTuber posted a video earlier this week “exposing” the “Jewish invasion” by “welfare-addicted Jews” of Lakewood, NJ, I was pleasantly surprised to see mainstream Jewish reporting outlets come out in defense of the Orthodox community. Pleasantly surprised, because this reaction reflects a sobering wake-up call and a radical change of attitude from just a few short years ago.

It was not long ago that these same outlets were themselves writing the exposés on Orthodox communities. In the years before October 7, the Orthodox communities of New York and New Jersey were the subject of a myriad of articles and videos, scornfully scrutinizing and attacking their way of life and their choice of education.

The Orthodox have always been the Jew’s Jew. If the Jew was different and strange to the world, the Orthodox was different and strange to the Jew.

But so long as the fallacy of assimilation reigned supreme and antisemitism was thought to be relegated to history, there were some Jews who did not see themselves as different and, in their imagined luxury, focused their ire on the different among themselves. On the nebulous, backward, and uneducated Jew. The Jew who was an embarrassment to the Jews.

But this has all changed, and increasingly so since October 7 (in the US that is; in Israel it is a different and more complicated story). It has come to what seems to be a welcome and abrupt end. It has come to a halt because Jews have realized that they themselves are seen as different, and that the illusion that they were simply one of their neighbors was just a sweet but false dream.

It is the realization that the same YouTuber publishing an exposé on the “Jewish invasion” of New Jersey hates the secular Jew just as he hates the Orthodox Jew. Today his piece may focus on the “welfare Jews” of Lakewood, but tomorrow he would be eager to do the same about the “wealthy Jews” of Wall Street.

Next week, we will celebrate Purim, the holiday that commemorates our victory over Haman, who sought to annihilate the Jews, “men, women, and children in one day.”

Haman was the architect of the so-called “Jewish question.” When Mordechai refused to bow before him, defying local custom, Haman asked the king’s permission to kill the Jews, saying: “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of all other peoples, and they do not obey the king’s laws, so it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them."

Haman’s words echo today in the annals of social media and in the proliferation of attacks on Jews and Judaism. Sometimes it is an attack on the "Talmudic Jews", and sometimes on “Zionist Jews.” Sometimes on “wealthy Jews,” and sometimes on “welfare Jews.”

What we should take from Purim is the understanding that to the antisemite, all Jews are different and all are equally despised.

And perhaps that realization might lend us some renewed appreciation for our own, to people and groups whom we once thought to be different. Maybe we will come to respect the choices they make and the commitments they hold to principles that are not our own.

And maybe, just yet, this will continue to lead to increased unity among Jews, when the Orthodox embrace the non-Orthodox and the non-Orthodox embrace the Orthodox.

Or better yet, maybe this will lead us to a world in which there are no differentiation labels among Jews. A world in which we see ourselves only the way the antisemite sees us.