For centuries, Jews have been told to justify themselves in exchange for belonging. But what if the real problem was the assumption that Jews must always stand trial in the first place?
Absolutely. The Roman Imperial Jurisdiction killed Christ. Their Guilt and Projection framed The Jews. Lies and Avarice, with a dosage of Racism has done the rest. But now we have our own Country. So **** them. Thank you Susan for your support.
You are correct. Scores of JEWS were tortured on croses just like Christ by them. It drove me away frim interfaith work when I learned all the clergy had been vehemently preaching that we
killed him! It grieved me greatly to witness when diverse clergy asked me 'what does it feel like to be a JEW after 9/11'. I handed out paper to each and asked the group I had been working with for years to write down what they thought it might feel like and there it was, the old as the hills blood-libel, that we deserved it because of the above and some on a rant about our ISRAELI landsmen... at which point I held up a picture of our young warriors and told them I would never sit in theiir group of liars again!
Thiis was right after and I told the group that in future; should the be a next Holocaust they should never forget, but rather remember the day I left them. The day I learned how ill informed 'my friends of the cloth' were.
And here we are in 5786/2026 stripped of decency by many of the same cast of characters after years of countries 'round the world trying as hard as they can to bury, burn and torture truth, the actual history in their ignorance; 'teachings and preaching' bearinfg fruit!
This world is falling in upon itself with blood libels and only Righteous Gentiles can call out the lies and hate. I in my time have had close friends, Christian whose names are eteched on the walls in Holicaust Museums. They are all gone now and I weep to think their work has gone into the ruins of this era in which I now alone breath and
bear witness in the armour of truth which I shall take with me to The Holy Court.
Thank you for your light in this darkening world.
We are the servants of our beloved CREATOR seeing in unison voiceas you have so bravely done. I am so weary and look forward to the embracement of their courage and love behing no the b gates.
Actually, the responsibility for the death of Christ rests on us all - both Jews and Gentiles. The reason He had to come and die was because of our sin. Furthermore, He came voluntarily, specifically to offer Himself as a perfect sacrifice for sin, this fulfilling the Old Testament sacrificial system. "He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." Isaiah 53. The good news is that He rose from the dead and ever lives to make intercession for us. To all who receive Him, He gives eternal life. Let us not neglect so great a salvation, freely offered to us all, both Jews and Gentiles, in Jesus Christ.
Isaiah 53 has nothing to do with Jesus. The Tanach does not mention once Jesus. The Church fathers retrofitted invented christology into the "Old Testament" (a corrupted version of the jewish bible for political purposes of Roman emperors)..
Thank you, Dan. I do read this page every day, but often haven't got time to answer much, and have to content myself with liking other people's posts! But I do pray daily for Israel and for the Jews around the world. The Lord is faithful!
I struggle between ignoring the haters and feeling the need to counter the lies and hatred. Personally, it's the fear that the anti semitism is spreading, getting bigger, that more and more dummies will believe it. Then it get's overwhelming, so I have to stop trying to counter it. Ignoring it and focusing on tikkum olam makes sense but nevertheless, it's still difficult
2026 and we are still stooped and begging for admittance into a club of losers. Forget it. Hold your head high. Am Yisrael Chai. We are in the club. A very select club. I am done. I’m following Rosa Parks and refusing to sit in the back of the bus.
“J Street (a U.S.-based liberal Jewish and Israel advocacy organization that has increasingly become anti-Zionist in practice) is one version of it.”
To the contrary, J Street never supported Israel or Jews.
Given the rising crescendo of Jew / Israel hatred on all sides, perhaps it is time for “liberal” Jews to stop playing apologists for the like of J Street and their fellow travellers. These self-styled y progressives but actually radicals are aiding and abetting the Red-Green-AltR axis calling for our which is actively seeking to solve the Jewish problem once and for all.
J Street and their ilk are lending their so-called Jewish identity to those who say “See, even Jews think Israel has no legitimacy and should be annihilated . See, even Jews condemn fellow Jews for their Jewishness. J Street et al are attacking Jewish support for the essence of 3,500 year plus pillars upon which Jewish Identity survived the worst attempts to extinguish it: the Land (Israel) the People, the Covenant.
“Jewish particularity could be privately maintained, while its entry into public life required justification in terms set unilaterally by the dominant culture.”
Only Jews are accused of “particularity,” never so-called Palestinians who claim they want their own state, From the River to the Sea, of course.
As to “degrees of Jewish civic belonging .[and] entry into public life,” it is not integration where you get to be yourself even as you participate in society at large as an equal. It is assimilation whose demands for allowance to be in the Commons to begin with is for you to discard your traditional garb, change your name, abandon your language, stop talking with your hands, observe your fossilized rites if you must, but behind closed doors. And for heaven’s sake, get a nose job.
Interesting summoning up the spirit of the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra Aetate as an example how doctrinal condemnation of Jews could be reversed. An objective reading of this declaration reveals that the accusation of deicide was not dismissed but forgiven. Furthermore, the core doctrines of the faith: Fulfillment, Replacement, Supersessionist, and Supremacist theologies were reafirmed.
“Stephens sees that arguing for Jewish worth is futile, but he has not yet asked who authorized the argument in the first place.”
History reveals its source: it began with doctrines promoted by the Church to legitimize itself, was reinforced by social institutions (government, courts), became norms of culture, accepted as certitudes by families, and ended as givens by individuals.
Someone asked me the other day my thoughts about Israel and what’s going on. I said. I’m Jewish. I support Israel. No apologies. No “Poor Palestinian recognition crap” NOOOOOOO.
How? We now turn our backs to the Antisemitic and Racist State here in Europe, its officers and all its works. They are now Nazi-adjacent, and a danger to themselves. We do not need them. Forward to the Future my friends!
Joanne, we are constantly responding instead of initiating. We wait for the accusation, then defend ourselves. We wait for the slogan, then explain why it is inaccurate. We wait for the demonstration, then hold our own smaller counter-demonstration afterward. We are almost always entering the conversation as defendants instead of refusing the framework entirely, exactly as you describe.
And honestly, I think that passivity is one reason Jews are losing so badly in the propaganda and cultural war. The other side understands emotional narratives, repetition, symbolism, slogans, activism, and psychological framing extremely well. Meanwhile, we respond with nuance, disclaimers, explanations, historical context, and institutional caution.
Bullies instinctively target what they perceive as passive, fragmented, apologetic, and psychologically hesitant.
Your article gets to the deeper issue underneath all of this: Jews should stop accepting the premise that we are permanently on trial and required to justify our existence, nationalism, security concerns, or identity in ways no other people are expected to do.
Zionism is the movement for the Jewish People’s national self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
Zionism stands as a remarkable example of decolonization, in which an oppressed and exiled people returned to their ancestral homeland, revived their ancient language, and built a vibrant democracy.
The essence of Eretz Yisrael is found in its significance as the spiritual center and refuge of Jewish life, a reality that exists solely within the heart of a Jew.
Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel did not arrive in the country armed to their teeth, and did not strive to take it by force from the native population.
The pioneer immigrants conceived the normalization of Jewish life in terms of return to manual labour, not in exercising military power.
The Hovevei Zion, (Lovers of Zion), were responsible for the creation of 20 new Jewish cities in the Southern Ottoman Sanjaks (later Palestine) between 1870 and 1897.
Since 1855 almost a century before the WWII, Jews had been investing in the Holy Land. Drying swamps, Irrigating brown, arid ground and turning it into green, fertile fields.
They built homes, cities, villages communal farms and collective villages, shops, restaurants, factories, businesses, hospitals schools, a university and research institutes.
In Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias, Jews constituted the majority.
Before the Holocaust, the Zionist's movement central aims were the creation of a Jewish National Home and cultural center in then Palestine, by facilitating Jewish migration.
There is no other example in human history of a "nation" being restored after such a long period of existence as a Diaspora including the revival of a language that scholars had long (and to some extent erroneously) considered “dead”.
The success of Zionism shows that the percentage of the world's Jewish population who live in Israel has steadily grown over the years, and today 55% of the world's Jews live in Israel.
Zionism is an essentially secular Jewish movement that arose out of the nationalist climate of late nineteenth-century Europe.
According to Bernard Lewis, there “had been a steady movement of Jews to the Holy Land throughout the centuries, sometimes in greater, sometimes in smaller numbers according to changing circumstances. But [this] had always been inspired by religious and what one might call cultural motives, never by political purposes.”
(Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, p. 164.)
While then Palestinian Arabs made efforts to curb the influx of Zionist emigration and lands purchases beginning in 1880, the recognition of Israel as an independent Jewish state after WWII, fulfilled the dream of statehood for thousands of years.
I’ve been saying for a while that what Jews need to be doing is:
Being a light unto the nations.
How I see that happening now in addition to all we already do is,
1. Create strong allies. Educate other communities and build allies in minority communities and share our lessons with them. Especially about antisemitism. But also about preserving heritage, stemming assimilation and all the concerns we share. And ask them for their protection and tell them how.
2. Jews should be running for office in record numbers at this point. We should be educating the next generation of local state and national activist and politicians from our own ranks and then from the ranks of the communities we ally with. And our older individuals 50 and up should be running. We have tons of brilliance in our community. Become activists.
3. We need to begin interfaith outreach along the lines of Righteous Gentiles. If youve been to YAD VaShem, you’ll remember the room devoted to those who saved Jews. We need to be cultivating Righteous Gentiles now. This should be an honor and an educational curriculum. Let ordinary people become heroes by doing the right thing. I would like to see churches and city councils and schools adopt “Our Jews” and protect and advocate for us.
Mind you, when it comes to implementing, the plans are yet to be drawn up. I believe we have MANY allies but that those people have no idea what to do.
As leaders we must tell them! We must give them a way.
Hi Karen, it’s a great question and I don’t have a complete answer. But I suspect these debates may not be serving us, and that they might be debates other people want us to have. And if that’s true, we should figure out why. And then we should probably ask ourselves what debates we need to have in order to move our community forward. What do you think?
Or maybe there's not a prior question, but rather a better question, which would be how to be known in the world? For centuries Jews have been forced to be insular, to steer clear of other people for fear we might taint them. Jews also preferred some of this insularity, so we would not be tempted to be too much like "others". What if we participate by opening our doors to show what we believe, how we behave, how we contribute to our communities? People aren't so very different. If more non-Jews have met us and understand us, might they be less afraid of us, and see us as equals?
We have now proved tonight The Nazis have a senior Team operating to attempt the theft of Market positions in Europe tonight here in London, by a Nazi Team leader. We have his name. There is No Fun under Nazism for anyone. Best wishes. This is an ongoing operation to out Nazis who have infiltrated both Five and Six here in London. Our work is appreciated here in Europe outing these Nazis in The State. This is our actual job, and is vital to prevent Nazism and mass violence breaking out in Europe again. And we Jews are very good at this.
A brilliant piece! Not simply a treatise or an exercise in the failures of the Catholic Church or the Francophiles but the continuing decline of a world gone mad because of the unmitigated anger against a handful of Jewish souls. All of this and more as we watch our own nation’s animus pre-empt any sense of moral authority emanating from the institutions whose sole existence is to condemn the global Jewish community and Israel. And Stephens, one of America’s great public intellectuals, needs to be much more careful in distinguishing between friends and enemies.
Absolutely right. I am a Christian Zionist.
This ridiculous Idea that the Jews killed Christ is anathema.
The Romans killed Christ.
These ridiculous parameters must stop!
Absolutely. The Roman Imperial Jurisdiction killed Christ. Their Guilt and Projection framed The Jews. Lies and Avarice, with a dosage of Racism has done the rest. But now we have our own Country. So **** them. Thank you Susan for your support.
Who cares. It’s an old lie and we are too old to keep defending ourselves.
Stop it!!! Get it right
You are correct. Scores of JEWS were tortured on croses just like Christ by them. It drove me away frim interfaith work when I learned all the clergy had been vehemently preaching that we
killed him! It grieved me greatly to witness when diverse clergy asked me 'what does it feel like to be a JEW after 9/11'. I handed out paper to each and asked the group I had been working with for years to write down what they thought it might feel like and there it was, the old as the hills blood-libel, that we deserved it because of the above and some on a rant about our ISRAELI landsmen... at which point I held up a picture of our young warriors and told them I would never sit in theiir group of liars again!
Thiis was right after and I told the group that in future; should the be a next Holocaust they should never forget, but rather remember the day I left them. The day I learned how ill informed 'my friends of the cloth' were.
And here we are in 5786/2026 stripped of decency by many of the same cast of characters after years of countries 'round the world trying as hard as they can to bury, burn and torture truth, the actual history in their ignorance; 'teachings and preaching' bearinfg fruit!
This world is falling in upon itself with blood libels and only Righteous Gentiles can call out the lies and hate. I in my time have had close friends, Christian whose names are eteched on the walls in Holicaust Museums. They are all gone now and I weep to think their work has gone into the ruins of this era in which I now alone breath and
bear witness in the armour of truth which I shall take with me to The Holy Court.
Thank you for your light in this darkening world.
We are the servants of our beloved CREATOR seeing in unison voiceas you have so bravely done. I am so weary and look forward to the embracement of their courage and love behing no the b gates.
G-D bless you dearheart.
Actually, the responsibility for the death of Christ rests on us all - both Jews and Gentiles. The reason He had to come and die was because of our sin. Furthermore, He came voluntarily, specifically to offer Himself as a perfect sacrifice for sin, this fulfilling the Old Testament sacrificial system. "He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." Isaiah 53. The good news is that He rose from the dead and ever lives to make intercession for us. To all who receive Him, He gives eternal life. Let us not neglect so great a salvation, freely offered to us all, both Jews and Gentiles, in Jesus Christ.
Isaiah 53 has nothing to do with Jesus. The Tanach does not mention once Jesus. The Church fathers retrofitted invented christology into the "Old Testament" (a corrupted version of the jewish bible for political purposes of Roman emperors)..
Hi there, Alison. Good to see you on here again. Have a great day! Best wishes. Dan
Thank you, Dan. I do read this page every day, but often haven't got time to answer much, and have to content myself with liking other people's posts! But I do pray daily for Israel and for the Jews around the world. The Lord is faithful!
Thank you Alison. The Lord is indeed Faithful, even to sinners, provided we Repent, as you have told me. Best Wishes. Dan
I struggle between ignoring the haters and feeling the need to counter the lies and hatred. Personally, it's the fear that the anti semitism is spreading, getting bigger, that more and more dummies will believe it. Then it get's overwhelming, so I have to stop trying to counter it. Ignoring it and focusing on tikkum olam makes sense but nevertheless, it's still difficult
I feel the same way. Hang in there 🩵
2026 and we are still stooped and begging for admittance into a club of losers. Forget it. Hold your head high. Am Yisrael Chai. We are in the club. A very select club. I am done. I’m following Rosa Parks and refusing to sit in the back of the bus.
“J Street (a U.S.-based liberal Jewish and Israel advocacy organization that has increasingly become anti-Zionist in practice) is one version of it.”
To the contrary, J Street never supported Israel or Jews.
Given the rising crescendo of Jew / Israel hatred on all sides, perhaps it is time for “liberal” Jews to stop playing apologists for the like of J Street and their fellow travellers. These self-styled y progressives but actually radicals are aiding and abetting the Red-Green-AltR axis calling for our which is actively seeking to solve the Jewish problem once and for all.
J Street and their ilk are lending their so-called Jewish identity to those who say “See, even Jews think Israel has no legitimacy and should be annihilated . See, even Jews condemn fellow Jews for their Jewishness. J Street et al are attacking Jewish support for the essence of 3,500 year plus pillars upon which Jewish Identity survived the worst attempts to extinguish it: the Land (Israel) the People, the Covenant.
“Jewish particularity could be privately maintained, while its entry into public life required justification in terms set unilaterally by the dominant culture.”
Only Jews are accused of “particularity,” never so-called Palestinians who claim they want their own state, From the River to the Sea, of course.
As to “degrees of Jewish civic belonging .[and] entry into public life,” it is not integration where you get to be yourself even as you participate in society at large as an equal. It is assimilation whose demands for allowance to be in the Commons to begin with is for you to discard your traditional garb, change your name, abandon your language, stop talking with your hands, observe your fossilized rites if you must, but behind closed doors. And for heaven’s sake, get a nose job.
Interesting summoning up the spirit of the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra Aetate as an example how doctrinal condemnation of Jews could be reversed. An objective reading of this declaration reveals that the accusation of deicide was not dismissed but forgiven. Furthermore, the core doctrines of the faith: Fulfillment, Replacement, Supersessionist, and Supremacist theologies were reafirmed.
“Stephens sees that arguing for Jewish worth is futile, but he has not yet asked who authorized the argument in the first place.”
History reveals its source: it began with doctrines promoted by the Church to legitimize itself, was reinforced by social institutions (government, courts), became norms of culture, accepted as certitudes by families, and ended as givens by individuals.
Someone asked me the other day my thoughts about Israel and what’s going on. I said. I’m Jewish. I support Israel. No apologies. No “Poor Palestinian recognition crap” NOOOOOOO.
I agree with it all, but the question I have is, how?
How? We now turn our backs to the Antisemitic and Racist State here in Europe, its officers and all its works. They are now Nazi-adjacent, and a danger to themselves. We do not need them. Forward to the Future my friends!
Joanne, we are constantly responding instead of initiating. We wait for the accusation, then defend ourselves. We wait for the slogan, then explain why it is inaccurate. We wait for the demonstration, then hold our own smaller counter-demonstration afterward. We are almost always entering the conversation as defendants instead of refusing the framework entirely, exactly as you describe.
And honestly, I think that passivity is one reason Jews are losing so badly in the propaganda and cultural war. The other side understands emotional narratives, repetition, symbolism, slogans, activism, and psychological framing extremely well. Meanwhile, we respond with nuance, disclaimers, explanations, historical context, and institutional caution.
Bullies instinctively target what they perceive as passive, fragmented, apologetic, and psychologically hesitant.
Your article gets to the deeper issue underneath all of this: Jews should stop accepting the premise that we are permanently on trial and required to justify our existence, nationalism, security concerns, or identity in ways no other people are expected to do.
Zionism is the movement for the Jewish People’s national self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
Zionism stands as a remarkable example of decolonization, in which an oppressed and exiled people returned to their ancestral homeland, revived their ancient language, and built a vibrant democracy.
The essence of Eretz Yisrael is found in its significance as the spiritual center and refuge of Jewish life, a reality that exists solely within the heart of a Jew.
Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel did not arrive in the country armed to their teeth, and did not strive to take it by force from the native population.
The pioneer immigrants conceived the normalization of Jewish life in terms of return to manual labour, not in exercising military power.
The Hovevei Zion, (Lovers of Zion), were responsible for the creation of 20 new Jewish cities in the Southern Ottoman Sanjaks (later Palestine) between 1870 and 1897.
Since 1855 almost a century before the WWII, Jews had been investing in the Holy Land. Drying swamps, Irrigating brown, arid ground and turning it into green, fertile fields.
They built homes, cities, villages communal farms and collective villages, shops, restaurants, factories, businesses, hospitals schools, a university and research institutes.
In Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias, Jews constituted the majority.
Before the Holocaust, the Zionist's movement central aims were the creation of a Jewish National Home and cultural center in then Palestine, by facilitating Jewish migration.
There is no other example in human history of a "nation" being restored after such a long period of existence as a Diaspora including the revival of a language that scholars had long (and to some extent erroneously) considered “dead”.
The success of Zionism shows that the percentage of the world's Jewish population who live in Israel has steadily grown over the years, and today 55% of the world's Jews live in Israel.
Zionism is an essentially secular Jewish movement that arose out of the nationalist climate of late nineteenth-century Europe.
According to Bernard Lewis, there “had been a steady movement of Jews to the Holy Land throughout the centuries, sometimes in greater, sometimes in smaller numbers according to changing circumstances. But [this] had always been inspired by religious and what one might call cultural motives, never by political purposes.”
(Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, p. 164.)
While then Palestinian Arabs made efforts to curb the influx of Zionist emigration and lands purchases beginning in 1880, the recognition of Israel as an independent Jewish state after WWII, fulfilled the dream of statehood for thousands of years.
Excellent points.
The Lord is indeed faithful, even to sinners, provided we Repent, as you have told me. Best wishes. Dan
Tell us more about what you’re proposing.
I’ve been saying for a while that what Jews need to be doing is:
Being a light unto the nations.
How I see that happening now in addition to all we already do is,
1. Create strong allies. Educate other communities and build allies in minority communities and share our lessons with them. Especially about antisemitism. But also about preserving heritage, stemming assimilation and all the concerns we share. And ask them for their protection and tell them how.
2. Jews should be running for office in record numbers at this point. We should be educating the next generation of local state and national activist and politicians from our own ranks and then from the ranks of the communities we ally with. And our older individuals 50 and up should be running. We have tons of brilliance in our community. Become activists.
3. We need to begin interfaith outreach along the lines of Righteous Gentiles. If youve been to YAD VaShem, you’ll remember the room devoted to those who saved Jews. We need to be cultivating Righteous Gentiles now. This should be an honor and an educational curriculum. Let ordinary people become heroes by doing the right thing. I would like to see churches and city councils and schools adopt “Our Jews” and protect and advocate for us.
Mind you, when it comes to implementing, the plans are yet to be drawn up. I believe we have MANY allies but that those people have no idea what to do.
As leaders we must tell them! We must give them a way.
Hi Karen, it’s a great question and I don’t have a complete answer. But I suspect these debates may not be serving us, and that they might be debates other people want us to have. And if that’s true, we should figure out why. And then we should probably ask ourselves what debates we need to have in order to move our community forward. What do you think?
Interesting
"We need to ask the prior question" ... which is?
Or maybe there's not a prior question, but rather a better question, which would be how to be known in the world? For centuries Jews have been forced to be insular, to steer clear of other people for fear we might taint them. Jews also preferred some of this insularity, so we would not be tempted to be too much like "others". What if we participate by opening our doors to show what we believe, how we behave, how we contribute to our communities? People aren't so very different. If more non-Jews have met us and understand us, might they be less afraid of us, and see us as equals?
I agree with this and always been open about my "Jewishness" I would like to think it helped against anti semetism. I'm not sure
We have now proved tonight The Nazis have a senior Team operating to attempt the theft of Market positions in Europe tonight here in London, by a Nazi Team leader. We have his name. There is No Fun under Nazism for anyone. Best wishes. This is an ongoing operation to out Nazis who have infiltrated both Five and Six here in London. Our work is appreciated here in Europe outing these Nazis in The State. This is our actual job, and is vital to prevent Nazism and mass violence breaking out in Europe again. And we Jews are very good at this.
A brilliant piece! Not simply a treatise or an exercise in the failures of the Catholic Church or the Francophiles but the continuing decline of a world gone mad because of the unmitigated anger against a handful of Jewish souls. All of this and more as we watch our own nation’s animus pre-empt any sense of moral authority emanating from the institutions whose sole existence is to condemn the global Jewish community and Israel. And Stephens, one of America’s great public intellectuals, needs to be much more careful in distinguishing between friends and enemies.