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"What is going on with Australia?" my wife asked. It's a good question. The horrific Bondi Beach shooting is merely the latest atrocity Down Under. Since the Oct. 7 massacre, antisemitic violence has risen steadily in a country long thought to be a safe haven for Jews.
Nevertheless, it's the wrong question. Because it's not only Australia, and it's not only since Oct. 7.
In the last decade, violent attacks on Jews have surged in the United States, Britain and France. We've seen grotesque Jewish caricatures in a Belgian parade; proposed legislation in Ireland criminalizing tourism in Israel; synagogue and cemetery desecrations; unprovoked threats and physical assaults; openly antisemitic epithets from members of the American Congress and British Parliament.
After more than half a century of dormancy, why this ugly resurgence of antisemitism? It's a question we can't possibly answer without first understanding why Jew-hatred exists at all.
Sigmund Freud (and many others) proposed Jewish cultural "otherness" as the most obvious explanation for antisemitism. But history proves otherwise: assimilation intensifies, rather than inhibits, antisemitism. The large majority of Jews in pre-Nazi Germany, pre-Inquisitorial Spain and pre-Chmielnicki Poland were thoroughly assimilated.
The deeper and far more disturbing explanation can be found in the schoolyard.
In Please Stop Laughing at us ... One Survivor's Quest to Prevent School Bullying, bestselling author Jodee Blanco attempts to deconstruct and quantify the social dynamics that divide children — and sometimes adults — into predators and prey.
Based upon countless interviews and observations, Ms. Blanco identifies the typical bullying victim as an "ancient child," who possesses a more highly developed capacity for empathy than his or her peers. In contrast, those most likely to bully sense their own inferiority in the presence of greater emotional maturity. Feeling threatened and inadequate without understanding why, they lash out in response.
The underlying factor, Ms. Blanco suggests, is this week's entry into the Ethical Lexicon:
Empathy Deficit Disorder
An underdeveloped level of sensitivity that inhibits the ability to feel compassion.
Among the community of nations, it is the Jews who have historically been the ancient child, introducing the world to the universal values of peace, justice, charity and social conscience. Rather than embrace the ideals of human nobility, the world responded with centuries of violent oppression.
Gradually, however, liberal sensitivities began to take hold. As articulated by Locke, Kant and Rousseau, the fundamental values drawn from the ancient teachings of Jewish law and ethics became enshrined as axioms of moral philosophy.
And then, after the Nazi Holocaust confronted the world with the ghastly handiwork of unbridled evil, the world embraced the Jewish people as poster children for the overarching moral standards that govern civilized society. The innate empathy of mankind began to emerge. Antisemitism became as indefensible as infanticide.
But even the most noble virtues can be corrupted and distorted. Under the corrosive influence of social media, Western culture has descended into intellectual laziness and moral astigmatism. Nuance, reason and principled compromise are supplanted by inflexible dogma. Ideologies become entrenched. Truth becomes subjective. Civil discourse disintegrates. Rhetoric becomes weaponry. Society descends into empathy deficit disorder.
Today, progressive ideology simplistically divides the entire world into oppressors and the oppressed, transforming victims into perpetrators and villains into heroes. The impulse to judge every person favorably mutates into non-judgmentalism. Charity morphs into entitlement. Liberty devolves into libertinism. Civility becomes weaponized into political correctness.
Most perversely, Israel has been compared to Nazi Germany. Inevitably, violence follows as institutional bullying becomes the new normal.
The resurgence of Jew-hatred, therefore, symbolizes the moral decline of man, not into immorality but amorality — rejecting moral absolutes and embracing moral relativism.
Ironically, the new antisemitism has more to do with non-Jewish society than it does with either the Jew or his Judaism. It is the bully's reflexive response in the face of moral maturity on the playground of human society.
That's why empathy deficit disorder extends to every form of ethnic, racial, religious, cultural and ideological prejudice. We don't want to think; we want to vindicate our feelings. The rise of identity politics and cultural tribalism has normalized misinformation, hyperbole and character assassination, turning us all into victims and, paradoxically, granting us license to bully our perceived oppressors.
To win the battle for the soul of Western Civilization, we need to restore rational debate, renew civil discourse and reject ideological extremism on either side. Only by breaking the vicious circle of empathy deficit disorder can we marginalize voices of hate. Only then will the ancient ideals of human nobility prevail.
You can be a bully or a victim. You can be both. Or, you can be neither.
Which will you be?
Rabbi Yonason Goldson graduated from the University of California at Davis with a degree in English, which he put to good use by setting off hitchhiking cross-country and backpacking across Europe. He eventually arrived in Israel where he connected with his Jewish roots and spent the next nine years studying Torah, completing his rabbinic training as part of Ohr Somayach's first ordination program. After teaching yeshiva high school for 23 years in Budapest, Hungary, Atlanta, Georgia, and St. Louis, Missouri, Rabbi Goldson established himself as a professional speaker and advisor, working with business leaders to create a company culture built on ethics and trust. He has published seven books and given two TEDx Talks, is an award-winning host of two podcasts, and writes a weekly column for Fast Company Magazine. He also serves as scholar-in-residence for congregations around the country.
Previously:
• The rank stupidity of 'Just let it go'
• To create a functioning, biblically-based civilization
• The difference between optimism and hope
• The Next Piece of the Puzzle Might Fill the Hole in Your Heart
• Self-Esteem Isn't Given -- It's Earned
• Remember the Past to Promote a Successful Future
• Are We Making Failure the Price of Success?
• Demoralization Is More About Culture than Feelings
• The Lesson We're Missing From the Death of Charlie Kirk
• Invest in Your Own Success by Building Up Others
• The Most Valiant Heroes Fight on a Different Battlefield
• How Pundits Came to Give Punditry a Bad Name
• The Wisdom of Knowing What You Don't Know
• Success Thrives in the Light of Purpose and Passion
• When Seeking Peace, Don't Release the Dogs of War
• Greta Thunberg Sails Toward Moral Hypocrisy
• Checking More Boxes Is Not the Solution
• Why Sometimes NOT Seeing Is MORE Believing
• A Healthy Diet for the Brain Promotes Ethical Clarity for the Mind
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