Fear is one significant way Jews in the United States and globally — a multiracial, muti-ethnic family — experience antisemitism.
This fear is created by being subject to, witnessing, or remembering violent antisemitic acts in the past and present, which have ranged from individual, interpersonal discrimination or violence to state-sponsored expulsion and genocide.
American Jews represent a very small percentage of the population of the United States (Pew estimates 2.4%) and roughly 0.2% of global population.
Fear is adaptation to danger
Fear is adaptation to danger
Fear is adaptation to danger
Fear is adaptation to danger
Fear is adaptation to danger
Fear can put us in danger
Fear can put us in danger
Fear can put us in danger
Fear can put us in danger
Fear can put us in danger
Fear in the Brain
Fear is a powerful emotional state. In human evolution, the fear response is a critical adaptation allowing us to handle danger by activating stress hormones that cause us to laser focus on the threat. Some psychologists call these the “freeze,” “fight,” “flight,” and “fright” responses.
But fear also has important implications on our political decision-making. Social psychologists have found that fear makes people hypervigilant — constantly monitoring threats — and risk-averse, which may lead us to react to situations that are hard, painful, or uncomfortable as if they represent a direct threat. It makes us seek out people we perceive to be part of our “in-group” and mistrust people we perceive as different from us. Fear decreases political participation and can even cause people to become more authoritarian. Overall, researchers find that fear necessarily makes us more conservative — it doesn’t work the other way around.
Jewish People
&
Fear
It is important to consider, then, the effect of fear from antisemitism on Jewish people.
Studies from social psychologists in Israel have shown that sharing stories of traumatic events from the Jewish past increases fear among Jewish Israelis and leads to more hawkish views toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Of course, this is not unique to Jewish people — all those who have experienced trauma, on an individual or communal level can be affected by powerful fear responses. When we understand how and why this happens, we can approach ourselves and each other with compassion while choosing to move away from isolationist and authoritarian impulses. We can also learn to recognize our own nervous system responses so that we can distinguish between real and perceived threats and make mindful choices about how to respond.
Jewish people’s existential fears are triggered by antisemitism, and these fears are also reinforced by the way we talk about antisemitism.
In this guide, we offer language to help Jewish and non-Jewish partners address antisemitism with integrity and compassion without triggering fear responses that make things worse.
