The Assumptions Jews Make

While making assumptions sometimes makes people feel good in the moment, they don’t say for no reason: “Assuming makes an ass out of you and me.”

The Western Wall in Jerusalem (photo: Sander Crombach/Unsplash

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Last week, on my essay titled “American Jews cannot count on Biden or Trump.” someone commented, disagreeing with my analysis, saying: “I can tell where you get your ‘news’ and it is not a reliable source.”

Since I was critical of U.S. President Joe Biden in this essay (and also of Donald Trump), it seems that she is talking about Fox News, the notorious Right-wing American outlet.

Indeed, my only three news sources are The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, and Ynet (an Israeli Hebrew-language news site). And I do not use social media at all (neither personally nor to receive news).

In other words, this reader was assuming that, because my “news” source is Fox News (or the like), what I wrote must so obviously be (in her mind) overly Right-wing nonsense. And this is exactly what is so dangerous about assuming:

It is not the assumptions in and of themselves that are dangerous; it is the conclusions we draw and the stories we tell ourselves about the assumptions we make that alter our perceptions of reality and affect the way in which we learn, evolve, and relate to others.

Had this reader not assumed that my news source was Fox News (or the like), she might have given my essay more thought, which would have led her down a more fact-based perception of the world, since my essay was mostly a combination of well-documented facts.

I get it, though, political subjects are messy and trigger profound feelings, often trumping reason, level-headedness, and intellect. But making knee-jerk assumptions does not serve anyone — not the assumption-maker and not the parties of whom things are being assumed.

Byron Kathleen Mitchell, better known as Byron Katie, is an author who teaches a method of self-inquiry known as “The Work of Byron Katie” or simply “The Work.” It includes four questions that people should ask themselves when dealing with complex situations and the troubles that tend to follow them. The four questions are:

1. Is it true?

2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

3. How do you react when you believe that thought?

4. Who would you be without that thought?

My life significantly upgraded when I began doing this exercise across many aspects of my day-to-day life.

I minimized my judgments of people (family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances) and situations at face value. I became more and more cognizant of the thought loops that spiraled following assumptions that naturally creeped into my mind.

And, ultimately, I developed the skill of preventing my mind from jumping from assumption-making to the faulty conclusions and subsequent thoughts, feelings, anxieties, frustrations, and sadness that accumulate from drawing faulty conclusions based on making assumptions.

My relationship with Judaism and the Jewish People also dramatically changed when I started to apply these four questions to how I think about and perceive other Jews and groups/types of Jews. I still have very little in common with, for example, ultra-Orthodox Jews, but I stopped judging them and their lifestyle and choices because I realized that I was leaping to all kinds of unfounded conclusions based on the human inclination to quickly make assumptions.

One assumption leads to another; we jump to conclusions; and we take our conclusions so very seriously, and so very personally. Then we start gossiping to help us justify our assumptions, and a distorted concept becomes exponentially more distorted. While making assumptions sometimes makes people feel good in the moment, they don’t say for no reason: “Assuming makes an ass out of you and me.”

Now, think about all the assumptions we make in the Jewish world:

• Assumptions about other Jews (e.g. Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, religious and secular, liberal and conservative, partial Jews and full Jews, born Jews and converted Jews)

• Assumptions about Israel

• Assumptions about Israeli Jews and assumptions about Diaspora Jews

• Assumptions about Zionism and Zionists

• Assumptions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

• Assumptions the Middle East

• Assumptions about our lay-leaders and clergy members

• Assumptions about our institutions and organizations

• Assumptions about our Jewish or Jew-ish children and grandchildren

Now, think about all the assumptions that many people have made since October 7th:

• Assumptions about the IDF

• Assumptions about the Israeli government and its leaders

• Assumptions about certain political factions in Israel

• Assumptions about certain segments of Israeli society

• Assumptions about Palestinians (i.e. that “most of them” are interested in living in peace alongside the Jewish State of Israel)

• Assumptions about the premises of this war

Here’s a story for you: When Jewish survivors of the Holocaust arrived in Israel, many of them were shamed by Jews already living in Israel during this atrocity. The locals would say to them: “Why didn’t you fight back?” and “How could you let them do that to you?”

True story.

All these shaming Jews knew was what they read in the newspapers, listened to on the radio, and perhaps some hear-say.

Instead of asking survivors what really happened, they jumped to conclusions based on quite minimal information. And it’s not like these survivors landed in Israel happy-happy-joy-joy and eager to pour out their unimaginable traumas to anyone who would lend an ear or two.

Today, Holocaust survivors are universally celebrated in Israel, with initiatives to preserve their stories on videotape, as well as dozens of organizations dedicated to supporting the diminishing group of Holocaust survivors.

And Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day (different from the international one) was only enacted in 1959, more than a decade after the State’s founding, following a public struggle of Holocaust survivors there.

So, what exactly changed in Israel?

Survivors started talking about their stories, and the rest started listening with a real intent to learn, to understand, to come together.

If we would just ask more questions — with a real intent to learn, to understand, to come together — we could rather quickly fan the flames of this pressing desire that results in knee-jerk assumption-making.

Dr. Warren Goldstein, the Chief Rabbi of South Africa, calls this “making space for each other” which means “transcending our ego, rising above ourselves, and developing the capacity to show understanding, forgiveness, and compassion to those around us.”¹

This doesn’t mean that everyone needs to agree on everything, all the time, in every conversation. I am a big believer in diversity of thought, within (a very wide range of) reason. We should welcome disagreement because, oftentimes, disagreement stems from two people seeing the same issue from different perspectives simply because they have two different life experiences, neither superior nor inferior than the other.

Something else I noticed recently is that, frequently, when people are discussing or debating a topic, they talk past each other and get increasingly frustrated because the terms they are using mean different things to each of them. Now, when I am having a meaningful conversation of any kind with someone, I always ask them to define the given terms so that I am not projecting my definition of these terms onto them and the conversation.

For example, someone might say to me: I think Israel is too conservative of a country, so I would immediately follow this remark by asking them how they define the word “conservative.” What they consider “conservative” I might consider “moderate” for instance, but without this knowledge, I am talking to them through the lens of what I think they mean by the term “conservative” while they are actually describing a more “moderate” worldview.

I can then share with them examples that demonstrate Israel is actually more “moderate” than “conservative” in many ways — and by doing so, they suddenly have a different perception and understanding of the Jewish state, which they might then pass off to other people in other conversations about Israel.

The point is, when we become more open to hearing other people’s life experiences, how they think, and the reasons behind why they think, feel, and do certain things, we might just find that there are much more building blocks and common grounds than we previously assumed.

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1. “Striving for unity among the Jewish people is a practical undertaking.” The Jerusalem Post.