New Terminology to Meet the New Challenges
Today’s Antisemitism requires clarity for the sake of all of us
I’m not anti-Semitic!
Nothing worse than non-Jewish or Jewish from some mythical ancestry deciding if actions, behaviors, words are harassment. While African Americans have ensured that the words and actions of anti-Black racism are understood, while women have defined sexism and appropriately slam mansplaining, American Jews are in a swirl of indecision over the nature of today’s Jew Hatred. Belittling, insulting, and knowing better than Jews are hallmarks of the discourse; exclusions and violence are tools of the new antisemitism, with an array of privileged excuses for those hateful behaviors and actions.
Across the USA, there are too many organizations, and too few active listeners, who can articulate the dynamics of the subordination and harassment of Jews today. American Jewish organizations have created a hegemonic invocation of the Shoah/the Holocaust, the industrial murder of six million Jews in Europe and North Africa, for the fear of what might happen but not what is currently happening. What kind of leadership, Jewish and non-Jewish, is needed? One simple step: clarity of terminology.
Anti-Semitism is a term coined by a Jew hater in Germany in the late 19th century. Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904) came up with the term in 1862 to argue for a racial rather than religious hatred of Jews. That racialized hatred led to the Holocaust. But as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks famously noted that the hatred that started with religion moved to race is now focused on peoplehood, specifically the self-determination of Jews in their ancestral homeland as the State of Israel. Anti-Zionism is today’s Jew Hatred.
One of the key insights from Anthropology, a discipline developed in the USA by Franz Boas to confront racism, advocates listening to people, in this case for the trauma of Jew Hatred. Social psychologists, based on listening, have provided two useful terms for understanding the damage of today’s massive harassment campaign. Here are descriptions of the new terminology for understanding the new Jew Hatred: Traumatic invalidation and Empathicide
1. Miri Bar-Halpern & Jaclyn Wolfman published Traumatic invalidation in the Jewish community after October 7 in the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10911359.2025.2503441
Traumatic invalidation occurs when an individual's experiences, emotions, or reactions are dismissed by others, leading to significant emotional distress and potential long-term mental health consequences. For Jews, the traumatic invalidation of the October 7th Hamas pogrom
The insights using traumatic invalidation:
In the aftermath of October 7 Bar-Halpern and Wolfman apply a framework to understand the trauma experienced by Jews around the world: “Rather than being met with compassion and care, many were instead met with a stunning mix of silence, blaming, excluding, and even outright denying the atrocities of October 7 along with any emotional pain stemming from them.
“In trauma therapy, there is a term for this type of response from others-traumatic invalidation.”
The article describes nine types of trauma invalidation:
· Ignoring (Others not paying attention to what you do or say. Being treated like an unimportant person)
· Emotional Neglect (Not receiving caring or loving responses from people. Others being indifferent to your suffering)
· Criticizing (Being insulted, put down, mocked, or called names. Being told that what you do, feel, or value is wrong)
· Blaming (Being blamed for things that are not your fault. Being told you cause stress or trouble for others)
· Misinterpreting (Having your behavior and intentions misread in negative ways)
· Denying Reality (Being told your perceptions of basic facts are inaccurate. Others denying certain events occurred)
· Controlling (Others telling you what to do, being treated like you are incapable of making wise choices)
· Excluding (Being left out of important activities. Being denied entry to valued groups)
· Unequal Treatment (Being treated as less than or different from others. Discrimination based on your personal characteristics)
·
The article provides examples for each type of trauma invalidation
Naming the dynamic is significant, as the scholars note: “Traumatic invalidation can have a significant negative influence on one’s emotions, relationships, and sense of self …Furthermore, due to intergenerational trauma and past traumatic experiences related to being part of a minority group, Jewish individuals may experience intense emotions related to past incidents of traumatic invalidation, which can contribute to anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns.”
The article describes six categories of potential consequences
· PTSD symptoms
· self-invalidation
· unrealistic standards
· not trusting yourself
· pervasive insecurity
· feeling invalid
with examples for each category
The goal of going through these examples and the framework: “Receiving validation for thoughts, feelings, and experiences that were previously invalidated can increase self-compassion and help to correct the harm caused by the invalidation.”
2. Dr. Kira Stein offers empathicide to help us grapple with antisemitism and its larger societal implications. Empathy as a weapon is the focus of the article "Empathicide: The Corruption of Empathy — What the Rise of Antisemitism Reveals About the Collapse of Moral Clarity" in
The Jewish Journal https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/382787/empathicide-the-corruption-of-empathy-what-the-rise-of-antisemitism-reveals-about-the-collapse-of-moral-clarity/
Dr. Stein defines empathicide as “the social and psychological process where the genuine, healing intent behind empathy is distorted into an instrument that excludes, dehumanizes, or silences.”
The article differentiates Strategy-Driven Empathicide, which “intentional exploitation of empathy to silence and demoralize others” and Authority-Driven Empathicide is when those in power/authority are complicit with the strategy-driven programs. The main focus is university administrations who have facilitated the expansion of Empathicide, since October 2023, against Jewish and Zionist students and faculty. Of pressing concern is the drive by faculty to equate violence, including rape, with resistance. The article shared an example of a professor making that argument, faculty hearing from students and speaking up, and the ones who spoke up being attacked. The connection between strategy-drive and authority-driven Empathicide becomes “one of the most troubling consequences of empathicide: standing against hate is treated as hate, while spreading it is protected and elevated.”
“Empathicide goes beyond isolated incidents; it shapes institutional culture. American college campuses have enabled a climate where students feel comfortable weaponizing the term “Zionist” as a slur against Jews to invalidate the core of Jewish identity itself and its connection with the biblical land of Israel. Reducing “Zionist” to a pejorative term used to marginalize Jews is not activism. It is antisemitism.”
Dr. Stein argues: Empathicide is “a failure to anchor compassion in truth. It manifests during times of fear, retaliation, or when political movements utilize suffering to advance their agendas.”
The article concludes with describing Empathicide as:
“a phenomenon that takes many forms:
• The pressure to conform
• The distortion of truth
• The manipulation of empathy
• The denial of trauma
• The justification of martyrdom
“So where do we go from here?
“We name and call out empathicide, no matter where it comes from — left, right, or anywhere in between.
“We embrace intellectual honesty and viewpoint diversity in education.
“We resist the temptation to become what we oppose.
“If we don’t recognize empathicide, it will keep distorting how we see each other — and what we call right or wrong.
“Real empathy sees humanity truthfully. It feels and cares for all pain, yet itself has no agenda.”
Conclusion
Will these terms make Jew Hatred disappear? No. But Traumatic invalidation and Empathicide offer new terminology for grasping what is occurring at American college campuses and beyond. These terms are more effective to show individuals that they are contributing to Jew Hatred not by calling them antiSemites - they will deny that labeling - but hopefully get them to stop invalidating trauma and abusing empathy.
We all – Jews and non-Jews alike – have a lot of work to do to stem this tidal wave of hatred, for the sake of all of us. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote: "The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews"
