Hard Pills to Swallow If You’re a Jew

But hard pills are often medicine. They cure us of illusions that make us weak. They teach us to depend not on others’ mercy but on our own strength, unity, and faith.

photo: David Holifield/Unsplash

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There are certain truths that every generation of Jews must relearn — truths that are bitter, unyielding, and impossible to dress up in optimism.

They are hard pills to swallow because they shatter illusions we would rather keep: the illusion that the world has changed, that antisemitism can be reasoned away, that Israel can earn love if only it behaves better, or that Jews will ever be fully accepted as equals among the nations.

Antisemitism today comes from both the Right and the Left, but it wears different disguises. On the Right, it emerges in the old familiar tropes: the global cabal, the banker, the puppet-master, the parasite within the nation. It feeds on conspiracy and scapegoating, and though it may occasionally cloak itself in nationalism, it is always animated by envy and resentment.

The Left, by contrast, has reinvented antisemitism as moral virtue, casting Jews as the privileged, Israel as the oppressor, and “anti-Zionism” as justice. Where the Right hated Jews for being stateless and rootless, the Left hates Jews for having a state and defending it.

Both sides claim to be fighting evil, and in both cases, the Jew is the symbol of that evil. One condemns us for being cosmopolitan; the other condemns us for being tribal. One despises our supposed power; the other denies our right to power at all. The Jew, uniquely, can never do right in the eyes of the world.

This is not a new story. From Pharaoh to Haman, from Torquemada to Stalin, the accusation has simply changed costumes. The Jews are too rich, too poor, too religious, too secular, too different, too similar, too loyal to themselves, too disloyal to others. The contradictions do not matter. The hatred itself is the constant.

And so Israel, the collective Jew, inherits this same double standard. It is the only nation whose legitimacy is debated daily. Other countries may commit atrocities and be forgiven; Israel may defend itself and be condemned. Other nations build walls and borders to protect their people; Israel builds one and is accused of apartheid. Other nations win wars and dictate peace terms; when Israel wins a war, it must apologize for surviving.

When Israel is attacked and responds, the world says, “enough bloodshed.” When Jews are murdered, the world says, “but let us not inflame tensions.” There is always some moral equivalence to be drawn, always some call for “restraint” that only ever applies to Jews.

These are not merely political hypocrisies. They reflect a deeper psychic truth: that Israel is not judged by the same standards as other nations because it is not seen as a nation like others. It is seen as the reincarnation of the Jew: the stranger, the outsider, the eternal moral test.

The moral inversion is staggering. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the world rallied overnight. When Black lives are claimed, protests filled the streets worldwide. When Hamas slaughtered Jewish families — burning, mutilating, kidnapping — the world hesitated, equivocated, rationalized. Some even cheered.

No government’s promises to the Jews are worth the paper they are written on. The world’s empathy has conditions. There is always a “but.” The massacre was terrible, but Israel provoked it. The hostages should be freed, but the “blockade” must end. Every expression of horror is swiftly followed by a clause that blames the victims for existing.

The silence after October 7th was not ignorance; it was indifference or, worse, relief. For many, it reaffirmed a comforting narrative: that the Jews are not innocent, that suffering has been restored to its “proper” cosmic order. Jews as victims make sense to the world. Jews as defenders do not.

This is the unbearable irony of Jewish existence: We are damned if we do, damned if we don’t. When we fight, we are called brutal. When we refrain, we are called weak. When we assimilate, we are accused of infiltration. When we resist assimilation, we are accused of separatism. When we die, we are pitied; when we survive, we are resented.

There is a famous line from the prophet Balaam, who sought to curse the Israelites but was forced to bless them instead: “Behold, it is a people that dwells alone, and is not reckoned among the nations.” This is perhaps the most enduring description of Jewish destiny ever written. It is both a blessing and a curse. To “dwell alone” is to possess moral clarity, to know who you are even when others misunderstand you. But it also means isolation — the painful knowledge that when push comes to shove, no one will come to save you.

History bears this out. From the destruction of the Temples to the pogroms, from the Holocaust to Hamas, the Jews have learned again and again that no other nation will fight their battles. Promises of protection dissolve when convenient. Treaties are abandoned. Friends become crickets or critics.

If Israel survives, and it will, it will be because Jews, and Jews alone, ensure it. Not because of foreign aid or shifting alliances or moral sympathy, but because of Jewish determination, ingenuity, sacrifice, and faith.

To be a Jew, then, is to live in tension between idealism and realism. We are a people of vision, commanded to repair the world, to pursue justice, to love the stranger. But we are also a people who must defend ourselves from that very world we seek to repair. We believe in peace but cannot afford naivety. We believe in humanity but have learned that humanity does not always believe in us.

That is a hard pill to swallow. Jews want to be liked. We want to believe that if we explain ourselves clearly enough, if we make moral arguments, if we fight a just war, the world will understand. It never has. It never will.

Israel’s wars are not fought only on the battlefield. They are fought in the courtroom of world opinion, in the newsroom, in the classroom, on the streets of Western capitals. Each time, the verdict is the same: The Jew is guilty until proven guilty.

And so we swallow another pill: that the world’s outrage is not a reflection of our deeds, but of its own discomfort with Jewish sovereignty. The very existence of a powerful, self-defending Jewish state offends a subconscious order in which Jews are supposed to depend on others for safety. Our independence disrupts the script. It reminds the world that history’s victims have agency, and that unsettles them.

We tell ourselves that things are different now — that we live in enlightened times, that antisemitism is something that can be bought off or volunteered or well-intentioned away.

But the events of recent years have stripped away that illusion. We have watched university presidents twist themselves into pretzels rather than condemn calls of Jew-hatred. We have watched synagogues vandalized under the banner of “anti-Zionism.” We have watched Westerners march with Islamists, each using the other for their own ideological ends.

It is not new. What is new is that we can no longer pretend not to see it.

The global Jewish condition is once again exposed for what it has always been: precarious. Our safety in the diaspora has always depended on tolerance, and tolerance is fragile. Our sovereignty in Israel has always depended on vigilance, and vigilance is exhausting. There is no easy place to be a Jew. There never has been.

And yet, we endure. That is perhaps the hardest pill to swallow of all, at least for our enemies. They have tried every method to erase us: exile, conversion, annihilation, assimilation, defamation. None have succeeded. Every empire that sought to destroy us has vanished; the Jews remain.

We have outlasted Babylon, Persia, Rome, Spain, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union. We will outlast Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, too. But survival comes at a price: disillusionment. The Jewish soul must carry the weight of both moral longing and historical realism. We must build a society that loves peace but prepares for war, that believes in universal justice while knowing that justice will never be universal when it comes to us.

Israel’s peculiar position, then, is not merely geopolitical; it is metaphysical. It stands as the world’s moral mirror. When Israel acts, the world reveals itself. Those who cry for human rights often fall silent when Jewish rights are trampled. Those who champion diversity recoil from Jewish distinctiveness. Those who preach peace demand that only Israel pay its price.

Israel exposes hypocrisy because it embodies contradiction: a modern democracy rooted in ancient faith; a nation of refugees that became a regional superpower; a symbol of endurance that the world still wishes would disappear.

We should stop expecting fairness. Fairness is not a Jewish luxury. It is the hope of children. The adult Jew must see the world as it is, not as it should be.

This, then, is what it means to dwell alone: to accept that the Jewish story has never been about fitting in, but about standing apart. To embrace loneliness not as punishment, but as destiny. To know that being misunderstood is not failure, but fidelity — fidelity to a purpose larger than popularity.

There is a certain freedom in that realization. When you stop expecting applause, you act from conviction, not validation. When you stop waiting for the world’s approval, you begin to live by your own moral compass.

For millennia, Jews have been the world’s conscience, its scapegoat, and its reminder that morality cannot be reduced to majority opinion. That role is lonely, but it is holy.

So, yes, these are hard pills to swallow if you’re a Jew: That antisemitism wears both red and brown; that Israel is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t; that when Israel wins, it must apologize for surviving; that no commitment to Jewish safety is reliable except our own; that the world’s empathy is selective; that the Jews, once again, are alone.

But hard pills are often medicine. They cure us of illusions that make us weak. They teach us to depend not on others’ mercy but on our own strength, unity, and faith.

The Jews are alone, but not abandoned. In our loneliness lies our covenant, our resilience, and our unbreakable continuity. The world’s rejection has never defined us. Our response to it has.

We are the people who dwell alone and endure together. That is not a curse. It is our calling.

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