10 Readers on Opposing Anti-Semitism

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Last week I asked readers, “What is the best response to anti-Semitism in America?”

Yosef responded with acid observations about the type of anti-Semitism that prompts the most media coverage:

I find it ironic that those who are the most perplexed and dismayed about any rise in anti-Semitism are those who are least Jewish. At the same time, those who are most affected by anti-Semitism are those who are most Jewish. In greater New York City, in mass shootings and daily crime, it is the Hassidim who are attacked the most. But [violent] anti-Semitism and online anti-Semitism are distinct forms. One is a stone and one is a tweet.

Tweets take place on Twitter, which is a space almost devoid of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Yet you ask me this question because of anti-Semitic tweets, not when Jews are stabbed. Stabbings of Hassidim just don’t seem to occupy the same societal headspace that right-wing lunatics do. The Jews who live outside of the Jewish world are less likely to be physically attacked because they don’t