In a recent talk, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens argued that American Jews should stop obsessing over antisemitism and refocus on Jewish identity. The provocation is useful, because it names a real pathology. When antisemitism becomes the primary organizing principle of Jewish public life, it weakens us. It can turn Jewishness into a defensive crouch — more alarm system than civilization.

But Stephens’ framing risks replacing one error with another. The choice is not “fight antisemitism” or “build Jewish life.” Security and identity aren’t competing priorities; they’re inseparable preconditions for Jewish flourishing in an open society. Shutting down the Anti-Defamation League or other Jewish organizations is not some magic formula that promises self-reliance; it’s a disastrous prescription for unilateral disarmament.

From vicious anti-Zionists to violent white supremacists, the threats to the Jewish community are multifarious, dangerous and real.

The real question is whether we can do both — intelligently, without panic and with strategies that actually work. Jewish flourishing in an open society depends on two conditions at once: thick internal vitality and a public square where Jews can participate without intimidation or stigma. Either one without the other is unstable.

At ADL, we treat antisemitism not as a permanent emergency, but as an applied social problem: measurable, testable, manageable and reducible.

That doesn’t vindicate the old playbook. Like Stephens, I’m skeptical of reactive messaging that frames Jews as perpetual victims or that treats every viral moment as the whole story.

Fear is a terrible identity project. But it’s also a mistake to treat antisemitism as mere “weather”: unpleasant, inevitable and beyond influence. If you believe nothing can be improved, you’ll eventually stop trying, and the people most eager to reshape the public square won’t.

What does it look like to build Jewish life without surrendering the civic terrain?

Protect, because you can’t flourish if you’re bracing for impact

Security and threat monitoring aren’t “obsession”; they’re baseline governance in a time when harassment, doxxing and intimidation are pervasive problems. The data tells the story: a 900% increase in anti-Jewish acts of harassment, vandalism and violence over the past decade. From a historic synagogue firebombed in Mississippi, to an elderly woman burned to death while marching in solidarity with hostages in Colorado and a young couple gunned down outside a Jewish museum in Washington, the incidents are real, the death toll is rising and such horrors are having a profound impact on Jewish life in America.

You can’t build confident communities while telling people their fear is melodrama. In 2025 alone, the ADL Center on Extremism examined millions of antisemitic and extremist social media posts and analyzed tens of thousands of hours of extremist videos and audio content posted online. 

Numerous people — including white supremacists, dangerous anti-Zionists and other extremists, and even a potential school shooter — have been arrested after law enforcement investigations that included actionable intelligence from ADL. 

In February 2025, intelligence ADL shared helped the Joint Terrorism Task Force of Orange County, Calif., arrest five members of an antisemitic swatting ring that terrorized synagogues across the country.

Protection also includes legal infrastructure, ensuring that when Jews face discrimination or targeted hostility, they have access to best-of-class legal support and institutional backing. Launched in 2025, ADL’s Legal Action Network brings together more than 50 of the top law firms in the country whose attorneys have committed to take cases pro bono. This is the largest legal team ever assembled solely to combat the evil of antisemitism.

Advocate, because public systems shape private life

Every day, schools, city councils, statehouses, employers and platforms make decisions that determine what is permitted and what is punished. Advocacy isn’t performative politics; it’s the work of maintaining a civic environment where Jews can participate alongside other Americans as equals. That means pursuing accountability when institutions fail, pushing for resources that reduce vulnerability and drawing clear lines between legitimate debate and targeted exclusion.

ADL currently is working in at least 29 states on close to 60 bills and initiatives aimed at fighting antisemitism. Last year, our advocacy helped secure more than $500 million in government funding to protect at-risk institutions — resources that enabled real-world improvements such as the security cameras that captured the arsonist who attempted to burn down Congregation Beth Israel in Jackson, Miss.. 

In New York City, after ADL research identified a proposed appointee in the new mayoral administration who had a history of antisemitic comments, the appointee voluntarily stepped down and Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration cited our research as the impetus for improving their vetting process.

But the battle extends beyond politics; it reaches into corporate boardrooms. Last year, 75 out of the Fortune 500 companies faced boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns targeting Israel. These initiatives have negligible commercial impact, but create hostile environments because they denigrate the Jewish state, demonize its supporters along with Jewish and Israeli employees and distract from the core responsibility of the company.

JLens, an affiliate of ADL, is the first organization to use shareholder advocacy to fight for the Jewish community, ensuring we have a seat at the table to push back. When Microsoft shareholders rejected a BDS-aligned proposal in December after JLens led the action against it, it demonstrated what’s possible when the Jewish community has a representative voice in those boardrooms. 

Educate, because antisemitism is learned, transmitted and socially permitted

If you want long-run change, you have to fight on the front line where norms form: classrooms, campuses, media ecosystems and increasingly the online spaces that set the default assumptions of a generation. Education here shouldn’t mean bland “tolerance training.” It should mean empirically grounded interventions that reduce conspiratorial thinking, diminish zero-sum moral reasoning and strengthen bystander willingness to act.

We have seen that when institutions know they’re being measured, they act. Following ADL’s first Campus Antisemitism Report Card issued in 2023, 70% of the schools evaluated reached out to ADL for help. A year later, more than one-third of colleges and universities improved by a full letter grade because they strengthened policies, mandated antisemitism education and improved bias reporting systems. This is how you change institutional behavior at scale.

Through the ADL Center on Technology and Society, we engage daily with leading players in Silicon Valley, helping the largest companies and dynamic startups get it right, even as we call them out when they get it wrong. This is where young people consume content and get most of their information; we can’t afford to cede that territory.

Stephens is right that Jews would be ill-served to focus all aspects of Jewish life to fight against antisemitism. But Jewish pride isn’t a substitute for confronting antisemitism. It’s one of the things that makes confronting it possible without becoming consumed by it.

So yes: build Jewish life that is joyful, learned and unapologetic. Invest in camps and schools, synagogues and Shabbat tables, Hebrew immersion and Israel experiences. Do it all. But don’t romanticize disengagement from the world that surrounds those institutions. Flourishing requires both inner strength and outer conditions that don’t punish Jewish presence.

The words in our founding statement — “to fight the defamation of the Jewish people” — remain as important today as they did when they were written in 1913. While our mission has never changed, our strategies will continue to evolve and we will continue to innovate to identify the most effective approaches to beating back hate. We will scale what works, sunset what falls short and continue to fight ferociously every single day to protect the Jewish people.

The work is not either/or. It’s both/and — done better.

Jonathan Greenblatt is CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League.