Antisemitism is skyrocketing, but that doesn’t mean Jews are losing.

What feels like “the world falling apart” is often the end of an illusion.

photo: Levi Meir Clancy/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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“The world is in a terrible place.”

You hear it everywhere — at dinner tables, in group chats, across headlines, woven into the emotional tone of daily life. It’s become less of an observation and more of a reflex. Something bad happens, or many bad things happen at once, and the conclusion arrives pre-packaged: decline, decay, collapse.

In the Jewish world, especially since October 7th, that instinct feels justified. Antisemitism is rising in ways that are hard to ignore and harder to stomach. Just this week, two Jewish men aged 76 and 34 were stabbed and seriously wounded in the heavily Jewish London neighborhood of Golders Green in an antisemitic terror attack, the latest in a spate of incidents targeting British Jews.

Jewish students feel unsafe on campuses that once marketed themselves as havens of tolerance. Synagogues require security in countries where Jews once felt comfortably embedded. Social media churns with rhetoric that would have been unthinkable in polite society not long ago, now repackaged as activism, or irony, or just “part of the conversation.”

One would have to be willfully blind or intellectually dishonest to deny any of this.

But here’s the problem: Recognizing that things are upsetting and uncomfortable and unsettling is not the same as understanding what kind of bad we’re in. And right now, a lot of people are getting that distinction wrong.

Because when people say “the world is in a terrible place,” what they’re really doing is collapsing multiple, very different phenomena into a single emotional conclusion. They’re taking real deterioration, amplifying it through distorted expectations and constant exposure, and arriving at something that feels like civilizational collapse.

It isn’t.

What we’re living through is not collapse. It’s stress. And confusing the two leads to bad thinking — and worse decisions.

Take, for instance, visibility.

Antisemitism did not suddenly reappear in the last two and a half years. It did not lie dormant for decades and then erupt out of nowhere. What changed is not just the presence of hatred, but its frictionless expression. Social media didn’t create antisemitism; it removed the cost of broadcasting it. It scaled it. It algorithmically rewarded it.

What used to exist in private conversations, fringe spaces, or geographic pockets is now instantly visible, shareable, and repeatable. A single incident no longer stays local; it becomes national and sometimes global within hours. The result is an environment where everything feels bigger, faster, and more pervasive than it would have in any previous era.

That doesn’t make the hatred less real. But it does mean that what feels like exponential growth is, in part, exponential exposure.

Then there’s the issue of expectations.

Many Jews today, particularly in the West, are not comparing the present to most of Jewish history. They are comparing it to a very specific, very recent period: the post–World War II era, especially in North America, parts of Europe, and Australia. It was a time of unprecedented acceptance, integration, and opportunity; a time when being visibly Jewish did not, in most contexts, feel like a liability.

But that period wasn’t the norm; it was the exception.

For most of history, Jewish life was defined by some combination of vulnerability, exclusion, and dependence on the goodwill of others. Even in relatively stable periods, that stability was often fragile and reversible.

So when the ground shifts today — when hostility becomes more visible, when institutions wobble, when social acceptance feels less guaranteed — it doesn’t just register as change. It feels like collapse. Not because it is, but because the baseline people are using is historically distorted.

What feels like “the world falling apart” is often the end of an illusion: the illusion that a uniquely comfortable moment was permanent.

And then there’s the most uncomfortable piece of all: strength.

Because at the very same time that antisemitism is rising, something else is also true — something that complicates the narrative of decline. And that something is this: The Jewish People, collectively, are more powerful, more connected, and more capable of self-defense than at any point in history.

Israel exists, not as a theoretical refuge, but as a sovereign state with military strength, technological innovation, and global influence. Jewish communities around the world are networked, resourced, and able to mobilize in ways that were unimaginable even a century ago. There is agency where there used to be dependence.

And that changes the equation.

When Jews were powerless, antisemitism was often quieter in its expression but more catastrophic in its consequences. When Jews are visible, sovereign, and influential, antisemitism doesn’t disappear; it adapts. It becomes louder, more politicized, more globalized. It attaches itself to new narratives, new platforms, new coalitions.

That doesn’t make it less dangerous, but it does mean that its form is different.

Which raises a harder question than “Does the world suck right now?” The harder question is this: Are we worse off, or just more exposed?

Because those are not the same thing.

Part of what’s happening right now is not just a change in external conditions, but a shift in perception. The modern information environment is, fundamentally, a pessimism machine. It surfaces the most emotionally charged, morally outrageous, and attention-grabbing content at a relentless pace. It collapses distance between events, making everything feel immediate and personal. It blurs the line between widespread reality and concentrated noise.

A protest in one city becomes a symbol of everywhere. A viral video becomes evidence of consensus. A loud minority begins to feel like a dominant force.

This doesn’t mean the problems aren’t real; it means the scale is often misread.

There is a difference between institutional failure and societal collapse, between elite discourse and everyday interactions, between what trends and what actually defines most people’s lived experiences. Lumping all of that into “the world is in a terrible place” might feel accurate, but it isn’t precise. And imprecision, especially in moments of tension, is dangerous because it leads to the wrong conclusions.

If we think we’re living through collapse, our instincts shift toward despair, withdrawal, or panic. If we recognize that we’re living through stress — serious, uncomfortable, sometimes frightening stress — we’re more likely to respond with clarity, strategy, and resilience.

That distinction matters.

None of this is an argument for complacency. Rising antisemitism should be taken seriously — fought, exposed, and confronted without hesitation. Institutional failures should be named. Social trends that normalize hatred should be challenged.

But reacting effectively requires understanding reality as it is, not as it feels in its most amplified form. Hence, the mistake isn’t thinking things are bad; it’s thinking that bad means we’re losing, because what’s actually happening is more complicated and, in a strange way, more demanding.

The world isn’t in a terrible place; it’s under pressure. And pressure doesn’t just break things — it reveals what’s actually there.

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