A few weeks ago, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) published a new research study that should make every Jewish organization rethink its approach to fighting antisemitism. The study examined whether anti-bias training actually works, and the results were both fascinating and deeply unsettling.
The researchers took a hard look at educational materials widely used in schools, including curricula developed by the ADL. They divided students into groups, measured their attitudes on various issues, then exposed them to anti-racism content and measured again.
What they found was striking: after reading materials about discrimination against Black Americans, students became significantly more sensitive to racism – in some cases, too sensitive. When presented with ambiguous scenarios containing no actual evidence of racial bias, these students were more likely to interpret the situation as racist and even advocate for punishing the supposed offenders.
One could argue the training overshot its mark, but at least it moved in the intended direction. People became more protective of a marginalized group. Except when that group was Jews.
When students received similar training about antisemitism, something else happened entirely. Their attitudes toward Jews didn’t improve: they got worse. The more students learned about Jewish victimhood and marginalization, the more negative their views of Jews became. It was as if the training triggered a backlash, making students resentful rather than sympathetic.
Programs to combat antisemitism might be creating antisemites
Think about what this means. Right now, across America, schools are implementing programs designed to combat antisemitism. Corporate HR departments are running training sessions. Community centers are hosting awareness events. And according to this research, many of these well-intentioned efforts might be creating more antisemites than they prevent.
The Free Press reported on similar findings, noting how attempts to position Jews within the broader framework of diversity, equity, and inclusion often backfire spectacularly. Students who readily embrace narratives of oppression for other groups seem to reject them when applied to Jews. Even worse, they appear to resent being asked to care.
Antisemitism doesn't work like other forms of prejudice. The standard playbook for fighting bias assumes that prejudice stems from ignorance and unfamiliarity. Show people that a group has suffered, the thinking goes, and they’ll become more compassionate. But Jews break this model completely.
The researchers did find one approach that consistently reduced antisemitic attitudes, but it was not what most Jewish organizations would expect. It was not stronger victim narratives or more explicit education about antisemitism. What worked was reinforcing universal moral obligations, such as justice, fairness, and human dignity, without framing Jews primarily as victims.
Western society has never quite known what to do with Jews. We sit at the center of its moral and religious imagination, yet also outside its social categories. Christianity and Islam both emerged in sustained engagement with Judaism, whether through inheritance, reinterpretation, or critique. Even secular Western ethics remains deeply shaped by Biblical moral concepts that entered the world through Jewish law and scripture.
As a result, Jews occupy a unique psychological space. We are not perceived as just another minority. Consciously or not, the West has come to see Jews as carriers of moral meaning itself, shaped by a tradition of law and ethical obligation that has governed Jewish life for millennia.
That creates a strange and often toxic expectation. Somewhere deep in the collective subconscious is the sense that Jews bear a special responsibility for the moral order of society. This is not something Jews asked for, and it is often profoundly unfair, but it changes how moral failure is processed.
When society fails another minority, the response is guilt and sympathy. When society fails the Jews, the failure is unconsciously inverted. The Jews are not seen as victims of moral collapse, but as its cause.
This does not mean that antisemitism is caused by Jewish behavior, nor does it justify it. Antisemitism long predates modern Jewish life and persists regardless of what Jews do. However, it does explain why certain well-meaning educational strategies inevitably backfire. They collide with a psychological structure that treats Jewish suffering not as a reason for sympathy, but as an accusation.
Traditional bigotry is about disliking the unfamiliar. Antisemitism functions differently. It operates as a moral accusation, in which Jews are not merely seen as outsiders, but as figures held responsible, consciously or not, for the moral condition of the world.
What follows from this is not Jewish silence, retreat, or self-blame, but responsibility. If Jews are treated as moral reference points, then the Jewish task is not to plead for sympathy, but to live and model ethical obligation with confidence in ways that strengthen the moral agency of the wider society. Not to perform virtue for approval, but to bear it as a vocation.
This aligns closely with a core Jewish idea that long predates modern politics. The Jewish people do not exist to occupy a privileged position among nations, but to bear responsibility within history. In classical Jewish thought, that responsibility is universal: a shared ethical baseline for humanity itself, often described through the Noahide framework, as a way of affirming moral responsibility, human dignity, and ethical self-respect across societies.
None of this means Jews should stop defending themselves, calling out double standards, or confronting antisemitism directly when necessary. But it does suggest that guilt-based strategies and victim narratives are not only ineffective, but they may also be counterproductive.
Antisemitism is not ordinary bigotry: It is a moral accusation disguised as prejudice. Treating it like every other form of bias misunderstands its psychology – and strengthens it.
The most effective response to antisemitism may be neither silence nor protest, but a renewed willingness to define Jewish life, for ourselves and for the wider world, as the Torah does: a public discipline of law, responsibility, and teachings that helps ourselves and the whole world to be a more moral, spiritual, and Godly place.
The writer currently serves as the Educational Visionary of Aish, a global Jewish educational movement, and resides in Jerusalem. He is known for his ability to tackle difficult topics and has numerous videos and articles online. He is an expert on Jewish and Muslim history and has given several talks on the subject of the Judeo-Muslim dynamic.