A big part of why some Orthodox Jews refuse to accept that what weโre living through today has disturbing parallels to the 1930s comes from a certain sense of superiority among some religious Jews, particularly Orthodox and Hasidic Jews: the belief that because theyโre more religious, theyโre somehow higher on the ladder of Jewishness than a secular Jew who is โjustโ ethnically Jewish.
But we religious Jews constantly repeat a principle that contradicts that mindset: โA Jew is born a Jew and dies a Jew.โ
If being Jewish were simply a belief, you could stop being Jewish by changing your beliefs. Yet a Jew can stop keeping Shabbos, stop eating kosher, stop going to shul, and even stop believing in God, and he remains a Jew.
Jewishness isnโt merely something you believe. Jews are a people. Beliefs can change. Ancestry doesnโt.
Weโve also all heard rabbis say: โYou gain nothing by not being religious. Hitler went back three generations and killed Jews regardless.โ
Thatโs true, but the reason behind it is more important. Hitler wasnโt interested in what Jews believed. Nazi ideology was obsessed with race and ancestry. The Nazis targeted secular and assimilated Jews, including people of Jewish ancestry who didnโt even consider themselves Jewish. Whether you kept Shabbos, believed in God, or wanted nothing to do with Judaism was irrelevant to them.
The distinctions Jews made among themselves meant nothing to the people hunting them.
And thatโs where the 1930s parallel becomes relevant today.
Look at whoโs being targeted in New York City. Orthodox and Hasidic Jews are screamed at, harassed, assaulted, chased, and bullied on the street. Almost everyone in our communities has either witnessed it firsthand or knows someone with a story. These arenโt Israeli politicians or IDF soldiers. Theyโre Jews walking to shul, going to work, or simply walking down the street.
Nobody stops a Hasidic Jew before attacking him and asks, โExcuse me, whatโs your position on Gaza? Do you support Netanyahu? Are you a Zionist?โ
They see a Jew.
Yet some Orthodox Jews still comfort themselves with the idea that the hate is directed at somebody else: โItโs about Israel. Itโs about Zionists. They can see Iโm Orthodox. Theyโll understand Iโm different.โ
The attacks on Orthodox Jews themselves should destroy that illusion.
If a Hasidic Jew is chased down a Brooklyn street or has eggs thrown in his face simply because he looks Jewish, his opinion about Israel isnโt protecting him. If synagogues and Jewish schools need security simply because theyโre Jewish, nobody is checking the politics of the people inside. When anger supposedly directed at Israel repeatedly lands on visibly Jewish people in New York or elsewhere, that distinction starts to become meaningless in practice.
Thatโs what I mean by the 1930s comparison. New York in 2026 isnโt literally Germany in 1938. Iโm saying one of historyโs most dangerous Jewish mistakes is believing that just because we distinguish between religious and secular, Zionist and anti-Zionist, Israeli and American, the people who hate us will honor those distinctions too.
They didnโt then, and the Orthodox Jew being chased down a Brooklyn street today should remind us that they donโt necessarily do so now.
You can spend all day explaining what kind of Jew you are. The person who hates you only cares that youโre a Jew.