American Jews are asking: What has happened to the America that we thought we knew? 

We do not need to romanticize the history of American Jews. Jews have not always been welcome. As scholars such as David Sorkin and Lila Corwin Berman have documented, Jewish status as citizens in the US was not always assured and not always equally distributed. Even what it means to be a citizen — which rights are granted by that status — is subject to ongoing negotiation. Yet it is still the case that, as Shuli Rubin Schwartz wrote in eJewishPhilanthropy just a few years ago, “This country has offered Jews a sense of at-homeness unprecedented in Jewish history.” 

Now, however, the feeling of being at home in America has been shattered. Antisemitism — already surging ominously before the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel — has exploded into public view. It is no longer hidden but proudly displayed on campuses, in workplaces and in the public square. It includes vandalism, exclusionary rhetoric that would be unthinkable in the case of any other group, and low-level physical assaults, but is not limited to those phenomena. On the right, white nationalism and replacement theory was normalized at the highest levels of government and led to deadly violence. On the left, demonization of Israel and of the Jewish people have been normalized in the most enlightened circles and have led to deadly violence as well. 

Meanwhile, democratic norms in this country have not merely eroded but imploded: assaults on due process and the separation of powers, brazen and explicit targeting of political opponents, manipulation of national security concerns to justify denial of rights and the use of military force, rampant political interference in independent institutions cynical weaponization of misinformation, and celebration of authoritarianism abroad. 

Franklin Foer wrote last summer that “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending.” For some, Foer’s categorical judgment combined romanticism about the past with hyperbolic pessimism about the present. But less than a year later, he seems not to have been pessimistic enough.

How should Jewish education respond?

Some will argue that Jewish educators and Jewish educational institutions should continue to do what they have always done, helping students to situate themselves within the Jewish tradition, fostering ownership and creativity. There is surely wisdom in maintaining steadfast focus on these foundations. But as Erica Brown has written, Jewish educators today are like teachers trying to teach in a classroom while a storm rages outside. “We are in that storm,” she warns. “We need to take our students to that window and talk about the storm.”

This means, first, that we have to actively prepare students for a hostile environment. 

Preparing students for a hostile environment does not entail declaring that the sky is falling. It does not imply that Jews must solve antisemitism. It does not suggest that we should respond hysterically to every political disagreement or challenging idea. 

Instead, it demands sober and rigorous analysis, in place of the simplistic naming-and-shaming that seems to dominate Jewish communal discourse. Students deserve our help to understand the ways that antisemitism manifests in patterns such as gaslighting, conditional acceptance, erasure of Jewish experience, demonization and denial of the right to self-definition. There’s important educational work to be done here. Understanding these patterns will empower young Jews to advocate for themselves with confidence and resilience.

But understanding antisemitism is not enough. This moment demands an aspirational effort to renew America’s democratic ethos, including within the Jewish community. A newly invigorated American Jewish civic education is not merely self-protection; it is preparation for responsible participation in a pluralistic democratic project. Jewish education must prepare students to help rebuild and renew the civic and moral frameworks that have sustained American Jewish life, on the basis of principles drawn from the Jewish tradition. 

What are these principles? Here are five:

1.) Dina de-malkhuta dina (“The law of the land is the law”)

The Talmudic sages knew that the rule of law, and the social stability that comes with it, is fundamental to human flourishing. The law must promote justice, check abuses of power and guarantee due process. Jewish education should cultivate not just obedience to the law but, more aspirationally, a sense of responsibility for a democratic legal system under which Jews thrive because everyone thrives.

2.) Ger ve-toshav (“Both a stranger and a resident”)

Joseph Soloveitchik famously interpreted this phrase to signal that Jews embrace both integration and distinctiveness. That is surely true in America. Being a Jew in America, like other hyphenated identities, is not a strange or inferior way of being American; America is stronger because of our communal commitments. Jews ought to able to advance our own interests while also maintaining a commitment to and responsibility for the broader polity.

3.) Mipnei darkhei shalom (“For the sake of peace”)

In the Talmud, this principle is cited as the basis for a variety of rulings that promote social cohesion. For us today, Jews must build coalitions with those from whom we differ ethnically, religiously or ideologically. If we are going to rebuild our democratic ethos, we have to believe that our fellow citizens are not our enemies.

4.) Mahloket le-shem shamayim (“Disagreement for the sake of Heaven”)

Jewish education should help students to develop the capacity to navigate ideological differences thoughtfully and respectfully. Democratic resilience depends on the ability to uphold strong convictions while honoring the dignity of others, even as our disagreements will persist.

5.) Kohi ve-otzem yadi (“My power and the strength of my hand”)

This phrase from the Torah (Deut. 8:17) demands humility from the powerful. The lesson for us is that we need to pay far more rigorous attention to the ethics of power than we typically do. In America, Jews exercise power in a democratic polity made up of diverse groups with diverse interests; our narrative is inevitably bound up with the narratives of others. In Israel, too, Jews exercise power as we navigate a conflict with another national group with whom we are fated to share the Land; there too our narrative is one in which others are already present. These are the realities. Jewish education must help students to think seriously and critically about the ethical exercise of power, by the Jewish community, in relation to those outside of the community. The goal is not to decrease power, but to increase responsibility. 

These guiding principles do not dictate particular policies, andteaching these principles will not magically solve our problems. However, by articulating principles such as these that draw on the Jewish textual tradition, we are saying that we have a responsibility to bring young Jews into an American Jewish communal conversation about democracy and its values. Jewish education must evolve to meet this historical moment, even as it continues to anchor students within Jewish tradition. We must prepare young people not only to withstand the storm, but to participate in courageously rebuilding the democratic frameworks that have long protected and must again protect the flourishing of Jewish life in America.

Jon A. Levisohn teaches at Brandeis University, where he directs the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education. This essay is an abbreviated version of his chapter in the edited volume, Education after October 7: Essays about Teaching and Learning in the Jewish Diaspora (edited by Matt Reingold, forthcoming from Academic Studies Press). The development of these ideas benefited greatly from the contributions of his colleagues in the 2024-2025 American Jewish Civics Seminar, an initiative co-sponsored by A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy and the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, which is developing related materials to promote the renewal of American Jewish civic education.