OPINION: What Do Young Jews See in the Mirror?
'The mirror matters. What our children see in it today will decide whether there is a Jewish tomorrow'
There’s a question which decides our future. It’s a question that feels at once deeply personal and universally urgent: what do young Jews in the diaspora see when they look in the mirror today? Because the answer does not just reveal how they feel about themselves, it speaks to whether we have a future as a minority community in many of the countries we have lived, helped build and contributed so greatly to over the centuries.
I know what I saw when I looked in the mirror growing up. I also know why I saw it.
My maternal grandmother escaped from Nazi Germany as a young girl, but most of her family were murdered in Auschwitz. My paternal grandparents met during the siege of Jerusalem in 1948 and fought in Israel’s War of Independence. I was raised with both the causation and the actualisation of the State of Israel coursing through my veins. It was all around me.
Survivor guilt, assimilation for self-protection, the mantra of never again, the knowledge that “it can happen in the blink of an eye.” And yet also the insistence: “I am not a Jew with trembling knees.”
On the surface, these were contradictory lessons. In time, I came to see the connective tissue between them: Diaspora, Antisemitism, and Israel.
Israel was the anchor of Jewish survival, the guarantee that I would never face the statelessness my grandparents knew.
The Diaspora was the place where I was raised, where I was taught to wear my Judaism with pride even when it made me a target, because pride matters more than fear.
And Antisemitism was the constant shadow that links the two, shaping the way I was taught to think about our future.
Together, those three words, Israel, Diaspora, Antisemitism, carried meaning. They were not abstract ideas. They were legacy and responsibility: honour the past, protect the present, ensure that I could live my Jewish identity with pride, not apology.
But at the heart of all this, there was something even deeper: the intrinsic link between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.
Photo Credit: Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA)
It is not a modern invention or a political convenience, it is the bedrock of who we are. The Bible begins and ends with the land. Our liturgy and festivals are bound to its harvests and seasons. Even in exile, for 2,000 years, Jews broke glasses at weddings and said, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem.” We prayed three times a day facing Zion. We ended the Seder every year with “Next year in Jerusalem.”
Israel is not just a state; it is the geographic and political embodiment of our religion, our culture, our collective memory. Without the land, we cannot exist as a people. So when I looked in the mirror as a child, I saw the descendant of survival and triumph. An Israelite whose people captured Eichmann, raided Entebbe, defeated the greatest armies in the region in six days, made flowers bloom in the desert and flew F-35s over Auschwitz on Yom HaShoah.
But all of that has changed. Changed incrementally since the first intifada of the late 80s, changed exponentially since October 7th 2023.
The slow, strategic, deliberate demonisation of Israel over the last 40 years, the false claims of occupation, colonisation, apartheid and, in recent months, the grotesque accusations of genocide and the endless antisemitic comparisons between Israel and the Nazis, have changed not just how performative activists view our homeland, but more dangerously, how young Jews view it. And by extension, how they view themselves.
Every trope has been revived and mainstreamed: blood libels, “Jewish control” of banks and media, conspiracies of Jewish manipulation. Every thin veil of anti- Zionism, presented as moral purity but in reality little more than recycled antisemitism, has been amplified online until it is deafening. It eats away at our young people, makes them question their heritage, their culture, their identity.
And when they step outside or scroll through their feeds, the reinforcement is everywhere.
They saw the celebration of Jew-hate on stage at Glastonbury. They watched Gary Lineker receive a standing ovation at the National Television Awards, his first-ever audience-voted award, in the same year he was fired by the BBC for sharing a meme comparing Jews to vermin. They see those they idolise unequivocal condemnation. They walk past weekly marches through central London where the chants of “from river to the sea” and “globalise the Intifada” are treated as civil rights slogans. They see campus encampments up and down the country demanding that Jewish students renounce their identity or stay silent.
Is it any wonder so many of them look in the mirror and do not recognise pride, only shame?
Our children are in danger. Not just physically, though the threats of violence are very real, but spiritually. They are in danger of abandoning their people. And if they do, then all is lost.
So the responsibility falls to us, parents, educators, leaders, elders in the community. It is on us to ensure that when young Jews look in the mirror, they see something else. They must see a Jew who inspires them, who fills them with strength, conviction, and pride.
And let’s be clear: pride does not mean agreeing with every action of the Israeli government, nor does it mean staying silent in the face of policies we believe are wrong, nor does it mean showing a lack of empathy for innocent suffering in Gaza.
Pride means something else. It means refusing to be silenced by hate and intimidation. It means understanding that our dignity is not negotiable.
If our enemies’ aim is to strip us of that dignity, then our task is the opposite. We must use every ounce of our energy to give the next generation pride, pride in their history, pride in their people, pride in their future. We must use every ounce of our energy to ensure that the Jew staring back at them is not a caricature drawn by our enemies, but a source of pride, strength, and dignity that no hate can erase.
The mirror matters. What our children see in it today will decide whether there is a Jewish tomorrow.
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