The Fatal Farce of Assimilation

3/14/25

I was recently reading Abraham by Professor Alan Dershowitz, which describes the lawyer-like tendencies of the first Jew and the continued legal struggle by his descendants ever since.

Then I came across a paragraph that struck me, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

“In the United States, antisemitism is largely a thing of the past, but shortly after the Dreyfus case it was still prevalent in parts of our nation, as became evident during the trial of Leo Frank and its tragic aftermath.”

Mind you, this was written and published in 2015: “In the United States, antisemitism is largely a thing of the past.”

Only ten years ago, this was a sensible statement to make that would cause nobody to blink. Jews had successfully assimilated and were now woven into the red, blue, and white fabric of America's melting pot—or so we liked to believe.

In the Purim story, which we celebrate today, we read the megillah that tells the textbook tale of antisemitism when Haman planned "to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews, young and old, infants, and women, in a single day."

Haman approaches King Ahasuerus to seek permission for his plot, telling him:

“There is a certain people scattered and separate among the peoples throughout all the provinces of your kingdom, and their laws differ from those of every people.”

But for the past 80 years, American Jews increasingly felt that Haman's claim was outdated.

For close to a century, many American Jews have been under the illusion that they had finally achieved the ultimate dream of assimilation and that antisemitism was largely a thing of the past in this country.

Haman's claim that we were a people apart, different from all others, was simply no longer true in 21st-century America.

We are American Jews, people liked to think—Americans first, Jews second. Our Jewish heritage and family background had little relevance in the way we were perceived, and therefore little impact on the way we should behave.

This illusion proved fatal for American Jewry. The false belief caused Jews to invest less in their children's Jewish education, become less committed to raising Jewish families, and celebrate July 4th more than, say, Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, or Purim.

But if the last two years have taught us anything at all, it's that this was all a farce—a falsehood, a figment of our collective imagination.

If you are unlucky enough to spend some time on social media, you will quickly see that antisemitism is rampant, growing, and spreading at a frightening speed.

Antisemitic conspiracies that would once only be published in Der Stürmer have now become part of mainstream internet discourse, and the lowest antisemites are proudly hosted on the country's largest podcasts.

While this strain of antisemitism comes mostly from the right, the left fares no better. Just switch the word “Jew” to the dirty word “Zionist,” and medieval antisemites would blush at how far you can go with your Jew hatred.

We're in 2025, and Jews have once again become the other.

Haman's words that the Jews are a people apart, "different from everyone else," have never echoed louder.

Antisemitism is spreading like wildfire, and the American Jewish community has been royally slapped in the face by the very causes they always allied with.

We've been royally played, and now it's time for a royal awakening.

If you look closely at the megillah’s tale of the Purim story, you will notice that Haman's claim that the Jews are a people apart was not refuted by Esther nor Mordechai. They fought against his scheme to kill the Jews, and they succeeded, with a decisive victory. But they did not disagree or argue with his thesis.

Esther and Mordechai agreed that the Jews were a people apart. And it's high time we do too.

It's time we embrace our Jewish identity and wear it with pride. It's time being Jewish becomes the most important part of our lives. It's time we give ourselves and our children a robust Jewish education. It's time we direct our philanthropy to building strong and proud Jewish communities. It's time we recommit ourselves to raising Jewish families. It's time we celebrate being Jewish more today than we did yesterday.

If the Purim story has a lesson for us in 2025, it’s that the world sees the Jews as a people apart.

We should too.