As summer is winding down and autumn is before us, it is time to think about the High Holy Days. What does that mean?
Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and the 10 days of Repentance between are all dedicated to fixing mistakes and asking for forgiveness and are the most sacred and important days in the Jewish year.
At such a time of self-reflection, I cannot help but notice how many Jewish organizations there are to fight antisemitism. Of course, I can always remember the Anti-Defamation League, World Jewish Congress and The Simon Wiesenthal Center, but it seems that so many more organizations have sprung up.
This leads me to believe that fixing mistakes is not something universal. If 80 years after the end of World War II we need more help, not less, what decay has infested our society?
Turns out that nearly half of all national Jewish organizations that explicitly list combating antisemitism as part of their core mission were formed in the last 10 years. Even Robert Kraft, a multi-billionaire, found it necessary at the age of nearly 80 to found Blue Square Alliance in 2019.
The Blue Square Pin, denoting that Jews comprise a miniscule percentage of the world’s population, was introduced in 2023 and then in 2025, Mr. Kraft launched the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, coalescing partners to step into the fight against hate.
Self-reflection only works if we are honest, primarily with ourselves. Introspection would be worthwhile if each of us, Jew and Gentile alike, could examine our behaviors and have the integrity to own up to our prejudices and how that ugliness has invaded our souls.
What happened in the last 10 years, in fact in the last 3 years, which has caused such vitriol, the need to boycott, divest and sanction Israeli products, to march on college campuses, to assault Jews in the street, to call for the arrest of the Prime Minister of Israel?
The open hostility has inspired Jews to organize to help combat antisemitism through outreach and education, not through violence. We wear the Blue Square Pin as a reminder that we are a small segment of the population with a disproportionate number of verbal and physical attacks directed at us.
This is the time to stop the negative obsessive fixation on the Jewish community and ask forgiveness.
