Check in on Your Jewish Friends

January 15, 2025

by: Kate Norman, BFP Writer

A flight from Tel Aviv landed in Dagestan—a southeastern region of Russia bordering the Caspian Sea—on October 30, 2023, just weeks after Hamas’s devastating massacre on October 7. Videos of the incident show a mob from the Muslim-majority region, knowing a plane was arriving from Israel, storming through the airport, searching for anyone Jewish. Some 20 people, including police officers, were injured in the riot, the BBC reported, citing the republic’s health ministry.

US actress and activist Alyssa Milano posted a photo of the airport riot and wrote: “Check in on your Jewish friends. They are not okay. Tell them you see them. The rise in antisemitism must stop now. Hate is never the answer.”

Now, nearly a year and a half after the start of the Israel–Hamas war, Jewish people in Israel and around the world continue to experience the horrifying effects of skyrocketing antisemitism.

Record-breaking Hatred

Between October 7 and the end of 2023, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 5,204 incidents of antisemitism in the United States. That short time period accounted for more incidents of antisemitism than the entire previous year.

Since 1979, the ADL has published a yearly Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in the US. The 2023 audit showed the highest number on record since the organization began tracking, with 8,873 antisemitic incidents in 2023—a 140% spike from the previous year, and more than the previous three years combined.

The ADL has yet to release its annual audit for all of 2024, but a preliminary report in October 2024 showed more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents between October 7, 2023 to September 24, 2024—a 200% jump from the same period the previous year.

Of those 10,000 antisemitic incidents recorded, 8,015 were verbal or written harassment, 1,840 were vandalism and 150 physical assaults.

FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress in a testimony after the Hamas attack on October 7: “The Jewish community is uniquely—uniquely—targeted by pretty much [every] terrorist organization across the spectrum.”

“And when you look at a group that makes up 2.4%, roughly, of the American population,” Wray said, as quoted by CNN, “it should be jarring to everyone that that same population accounts for something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.”

But the hatred and violence are not confined to the US. In Amsterdam in November, mobs of antisemitic gangs attacked Jewish fans after a football game between the Maccabi Tel Aviv football club and Amsterdam’s team. At least 10 people were injured in the attacks, described as a modern-day pogrom.

In December, two arsonists in Melbourne, Australia, set fire to a synagogue and wounded two people attending prayers. Another synagogue in Toronto, Canada, was vandalized in December for the seventh time in almost as many months. In November, four teenagers from a school in London boarded a double-decker bus full of students from a nearby Jewish school and proceeded to swear at the Jewish children and scream slurs, including “F— Israel.” They then got off the bus and began throwing rocks at it. The list goes on and on.

Solidarity

Though Milano issued the call to “check on your Jewish friends” more than a year ago, the words still hold true today. As antisemitism and hatred continue rising around the world, Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora (Jewish population outside Israel) now more than ever need to know that they have the support of their non-Jewish friends.

Regardless of your feelings toward Israel and Zionism, check on your Jewish friends. A Jewish–American man told the Harvard Business Review in 2022 that at the time of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre in 2018, his colleagues knew that he was Jewish but never acknowledged what happened or checked in with him.

He said he wished that his non-Jewish colleagues would have checked in with him after antisemitic incidents. “They could have sent me a note or a text, or talked to me before or after a meeting,” he told the Harvard Business Review. “Just to say: ‘I saw the news and I am horrified at what’s happening in the world. I wish I knew what to say. How are you doing right now? What can I do to help you at work?’”

Send a text, mention it in conversation, make a call, say something. As the world shouts more and more hatred of Israel and the Jewish people, let them know that they are not alone, that you see them, you care and you stand with them.

But what if you don’t know any Jewish people? Maggie Phillips, a non-Jewish writer for Jewish magazine Tablet, urged readers to find a local synagogue and reach out, voicing support through a voicemail, email or social media comment. Phillips also suggested voicing your support for the Jewish people online, noting that “for someone feeling like their hurt, pain, and confusion are being ignored or jeered at, scrolling and seeing a post standing by Jews and condemning the actions of Hamas, might well kindle the small flame of hope they’re struggling to keep alive.”

Don’t keep silent. Simi Lichtman wrote on the Medium platform that for those who have not checked in or spoken up for the Jewish people, their silence has not gone unnoticed. But it’s not too late to say something. “…your words will be noticed and appreciated,” Lichtman wrote. “It will help calm the nerves of so many who don’t know if we’re living in a safe world anymore. The longer we feel the silence of those around us, the more alone and afraid we feel.”

Lichtman added that as a Jew, she has “felt the importance of support from friends and colleagues who aren’t Jewish.”

“A text from someone I hadn’t spoken with in months brought tears to my eyes,” she wrote. “A message from a Catholic friend of mine that he was attending prayer services for Israel, or that the Pope was asking people to fast for Israel—these have been sustaining in the midst of horrors and atrocities being committed against my people.”

So, pick up your phone. Speak out. Check in. Your support matters to your Jewish friends.

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