On Jew-Hatred — and Hatred in General
I hate the word tolerance.
I always have. It suggests putting up with something — or someone — rather than learning about them, honoring their humanity, and making space for difference. Tolerance feels thin. Conditional. Like something that can be withdrawn the moment it becomes inconvenient.
If you’ve been reading these essays for a while, you know I don’t often comment on current events. The news cycle is relentless — a year’s worth of tragedy and outrage packed into every week. I used to devour it all: the paper every morning, the evening news every night. These days I choose more carefully, not because I don’t care, but because I’ve learned what constant exposure does to the nervous system.
Still, I am acutely aware of what is happening in the world.
I am not surprised — but I am deeply shaken — by the rise of antisemitism. Or, more honestly, Jew-hatred.
People will point to headlines. To wars. To geopolitics. To what is happening in Israel and Gaza. But Jew-hatred did not begin in 1948. It did not begin with this war or the last one. It existed long before there was a Jewish state, and it will not be explained away by pretending it is simply a reaction to current events.
I know this not just historically, but personally. When I look back through my own social media over the past fifteen years, I see post after post about rising antisemitism — long before this moment, long before it became unavoidable to speak about it again.
There are only about 15 million Jews in the world today. (Depending on how you count, perhaps a few million more with Jewish ancestry.) We are few. And our legacy is complicated. But it is rich and resilient — rooted in covenant, learning, argument, memory, care, tradition, and moral responsibility.
That is why I care so deeply about the work being done across a wide ecosystem of organizations — from groups like Boundless, and AJC, ADL, and ICS, to countless educators, advocates, and cultural workers — who are confronting antisemitism not only when it erupts, but at its roots. Through education. Through narrative change. Through insisting that Jews, like all people, deserve to be seen in our full humanity rather than reduced to caricature or scapegoat. Will this work ever make Jew hatred disappear entirely? Of course not. But it is how we push it back, again and again, refusing to let it define who we are or how we live.
So yes — I hope the world will move beyond tolerance.
May it move toward real acceptance.
May it speak up instead of looking away.
And may we, in the face of all this, continue to choose who we are — openly and without apology. And may we continue to survive, and thrive, despite it all.
Fondly,
Kari
Pictured above: my dad’s childhood synagogue in erMihalyfalva, Hungary (Valea lui MIhai, Romania), a relic of a Jewish bygone era, decimated by unfettered hatred and restored by the Jews of the town’s diaspora.
