In the days after October 7th, something unusual happened. Jews around the world, religious and secular, left and right, suddenly felt unified. While months of division had left us vulnerable, our newfound unity gave us strength.
A few months after the attacks, I joined a mission to Capitol Hill. I expected policy meetings and talking points. But then Congressman Steny Hoyer leaned forward, looked at us, and asked: “Why have Jews always been hated?”
It wasn’t a rhetorical question. He was genuinely confused and genuinely disturbed.
That moment stayed with me. Because even non-Jews can sense that the hatred is irrational, inexplicable, without justification.
Sharansky’s “Three Ds” — and a Surprising Parallel
Natan Sharansky, the famed Soviet refusenik and Israeli politician, developed a powerful framework for recognizing antisemitism. He called it the “Three Ds”:
• Demonization – portraying Israel or Jews as evil or subhuman.
• Double Standards – applying rules to Jews that no other group is expected to follow.
• Delegitimization – denying the Jewish people’s right to a homeland.
Sharansky argued that when rhetoric crosses any of these lines, it’s not just criticism—it’s hatred.
The Three Ds are not only a useful definition of antisemitism; they can serve as a window into our own psyche, revealing how we view our fellow Jews who are different than us.
Turning the Lens Inward
Let’s flip Sharansky’s Three Ds inward:
• Do we demonize fellow Jews?
Do we assign sinister motives to those toward whom we hold deep-seated resentment?
• Do we apply double standards?
Do we excuse behavior in ourselves or our circles that we condemn in others we have decided to judge.
• Do we delegitimize?
Do we write off individuals we dislike or entire segments of the Jewish people as unworthy of dignity or inclusion?
If the answer is sometimes yes, then perhaps the Jew-hatred we see outside is a tragic reflection of what is still broken within.
Deeper Roots
The Talmud teaches that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam—baseless hatred (Yoma 9b).
The First Temple fell for the “big three” sins: idolatry, murder, and immorality. But the fact that we’re still mourning 2,000 years later tells us something chilling: The hatred between Jews is harder to fix than any of those transgressions.
The Chafetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan (1838–1933), a renowned rabbinic leader best known for his works on Jewish law and ethics, explains why. A sin committed with a limb harms that limb. But hatred lives in the heart—the vital organ that fuels everything. If the heart is diseased, the whole body of our entire spiritual being suffers.
The Three Weeks: Time to Heal
Our sages teach that any generation in which the Holy Temple of Jerusalem hasn’t been rebuilt is considered to have destroyed it (Yerushalmi, Yoma 1:1). The generation still embodies the causes that destroyed the temple.
During the Three Weeks, a mourning period between the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av that commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples and other tragedies in Jewish history, we don’t only mourn stone walls. We look within and examine what may be still cracked within the soul of the nation.
Are we ourselves guilty of the same Jew-hatred that is intensifying throughout the world?
What Can We Do?
Reach out to someone you’ve judged, avoided, or written off.
Notice one double standard and correct it.
Speak one word of praise about a Jewish group or individual you usually criticize.
Antisemitism may not make logical sense, and that may be the point. The irrational hatred from the outside might be Hashem’s way of pointing us to the hatred we’ve nurtured on the inside.
By healing the heart of the Jewish people, the world will start looking different on both sides of the mirror.
