One of the side effects of spending a few decades in the advertising business, as I did, is that thoughts percolate in your mind whether you like it or not.
For several years now, one pesky thought has been bothering me: Why is it that the more money and resources we put in our fight against antisemitism, the more antisemitism goes up?
If our fight against antisemitism were a bagel business, we’d be in Chapter 11. Instead, we just keep adding new chapters.
I’ve been part of those chapters, and for good reason. If my people are attacked—whether on a college campus or in the media or anywhere else— my first instinct is to fight back. It’s a fight that infuses my life with meaning.
There is, however, a weird downside to that fight. By necessity, we must talk about the disease we’re fighting. This is what percolates in my brain. The hate. The hate for Jews. We talk about it so much and with such force, we rarely stop to ask ourselves: Are we losing something with all this hate talk?
There’s an idea in advertising that distinguishes between what we say and what we communicate. We know what we’re saying when we talk about the hate for Jews, but what are we communicating? Is it possible that we’re communicating the very opposite of what we need to communicate? When we relentlessly call out the hate, when we do all those things activists are called to do, are we unwittingly doing the bidding of the haters?
We need to open our minds to the possibility that the louder we make our fight against Jew-haters, the happier we make them. Nothing brings them more joy than the prospect that our fight will backfire—that the more we fight Jew-hatred, the more people may think there’s something “special” about Jews that is worth hating.
The best way to counter that is with the one thing Jew-haters hate the most: good news about Jews. They hate it as much as they hate Jews. Their whole purpose is to keep us in the mud of bad news—to frame us as people who must constantly defend themselves, people always fighting a losing battle.
A fashionable idea these days is to “manifest” a goal. Whatever we’re looking for—a soulmate, career success, better relationships, etc.— we can manifest it with the right mindset.
In recent years, Jews have manifested the opposite of good news. We have become associated with the bad news of being hated and with our urgent efforts to tame that hate.
Maybe it’s time to try another direction. Can we “manifest” the kind of good news about Jews that would help demoralize Jew-haters– like, for example, the news that America does not hate Jews? Or the news that Jews are still doing very well in America and even thriving as proud Jews, proud Zionists and proud Americans?
Even if there’s plenty of truth to the rise in antisemitism, who says we have to help it along? Why not manifest a reality that works to our advantage? Nothing would crush the haters more than the thought that they are failing and we are winning.
This doesn’t mean we abandon traditional methods. When Jew-haters break the law or harass Jews because they’re Jews, they must pay consequences. When we need to protect ourselves physically, we do that. Those are no-brainers.
But the real secret weapon against Jew-haters is to turn them into losers; to make their fight against Jews look like a royal failure.
(For those of you who’ve been reading me through the years, you may be sensing a familiar ring. Indeed, I’ve written many columns on this theme from several different angles. I’m even tempted to gather them in an e-book for greater impact. Stay tuned.)
In any case, it’s clear that when the sky seems to be falling on Jews, good news is a hard sell. Jew-haters are hoping we’ll keep it that way. They want to keep us in the fight, in the mud, talking constantly about our battle against hate, a battle we never seem to win. The last thing they need is another view of Jews, a view where Jews look strong, confident and, above all, successful.
The haters will never turn into losers until we turn into winners. I learned that in advertising.
