just 18 FREE ways you can be an ally to the Jewish people
Something I’ve heard a lot of gentiles express as of late is that they’d like to be an ally to Jews, but they don’t know how. It’s not your fault for being born into a society with entrenched antisemitism and that many mainstream social justice spaces largely ignore, erase, and deprioritize Jews and antisemitism, nor is it your fault that resources on how to actually be an ally to the Jewish community are relatively sparse.
That doesn’t mean, however, that there’s nothing to be done - here are a few ways you can get started on being an ally to Jews.
Usual disclaimers that I am only one Jew out of roughly fourteen million (and thus not claiming to represent all Jews everywhere) and that this list is not exhaustive.
1. Care about Jews and antisemitism when it’s not about the Holocaust. Engage with the reality that other forms of antisemitism exist, and actually listen to us when we talk about antisemitism. Even if we say it comes from a person or entity you like or otherwise have sympathy for, or is in a form that you are not previously familiar with. [Note: in Judaism we believe that teshuvah is possible - someone saying or doing an antisemitism rarely means they’re irredeemable - just that they need to stop and make good and not do it again].
2. Don’t immediately ask, upon meeting someone Jewish or finding out they’re Jewish, their opinions on the Holocaust and Israel.
3. Read about Jewish history, beliefs, and culture from Jewish sources. (Sefaria, myjewishlearning, jewfaq, books written by Jews).
4. Don’t project your ideas about one religion (usually Christianity) onto all religions, including not doing this to Judaism. Judaism does not equal Christianity minus Jesus, we don’t believe in original sin, blind obedience to Gd is not our thing, the views of [particular brands] of Christianity do not represent Jewish ideas about LGBTQ rights or women, we don’t evangelize, etc.
5. Learn about antisemitism from your own country’s and culture’s history. Don’t assume it’s not there - it takes 30 seconds to google “the history of the Jews in x” or “y [religion/culture/subculture] and antisemitism.” Recognize a Jewish person calling out antisemitism from a country or culture is NOT an indictment of that whole community, but an ask to address a harmful aspect within it.
6. Learn about the Jewish calendar, back up Jewish classmates or coworkers if they need time off for the holidays. Stop calling the Gregorian calendar the “secular calendar.”
7. If you are a creator, include Jewish characters in your works (and get Jewish sensitivity readers).
8. Don’t police the language of Jews when we talk about our community. Goyim is NOT a slur (literally means “nations”), Jews is an appropriate ethnic demonym (you can use Jewish community if you prefer, but DO NOT police Jews who say “Jew”), the word antisemitism was literally created to describe the hatred of Jews, etc.
9. Learn about kosher, how it works, and common heckshers [kosher marks for processed foods].
10. Learn about antisemitic stereotypes and canards. Call people out when they perpetuate antisemitism.
11. Don’t appropriate Jewish practices. If you want to go to a seder, find an invite to a seder. Ask a local synagogue (or if you’re a student, a campus organization) if you can go to theirs if you don’t have a friend who will invite you. Hop on zoom to a live stream. Don’t just declare Jewish practices your own to do with as you please.
12. Include Jews in your activism and antisemitism in the lists of hatreds you disavow. I mean this in the bigger picture too, but also literally when it comes to lists on posts and bios of safe spaces for x groups and y forms of hatred are not tolerated.
13. Learn about the Shoah/Holocaust from Jewish sources, preferably those curated by survivors and their families. If seeing/hearing a survivor in person isn’t an option (as time passes, this is increasingly the case), watching videos of and read books written by survivors.
14. Divorce the assumption that everyone knows about the holocaust and extent of its horrors. Holocaust education is not mandatory in most states or countries and frequently downplays how much it was about Jews specifically. Holocaust denial, minimalization, and insentience that it wasn’t really about the Jews runs rampant. Call out lies about the Holocaust when you hear them.
15. Be mindful when making comparisons to the Shoah [holocaust]. Is the thing you are comparing legitimately comparable to the physical, cultural, linguistic, and spiritual genocide of millions of people? I posit (and some Jews disagree) that there are things that absolutely are, but the vast majority of comparisons are clumsy at best, actively antisemitic at worst, and most often simply inaccurate and insensitive.
16. Accept that Jews have generational trauma and the Holocaust was not a one-off.
17. Acknowledge and understand the prevalence of antisemitism today. When you hear statistics and stories about antisemitism, don’t assume they’re being exaggerated, immediately pivot to making it about all hate in general (or all anti-religious-bias hate in general), or assert that other forms of anti-religious hate are a bigger concern. Don’t speak over Jews and claim that oh-this-other-thing-is-the-real-problem when we cite that anti-Jewish hate crimes have been more than half of anti-religion-bias hate crimes in the U.S. since at least 1996 and that antisemitism continues to rise globally.
18. Remember that the Jewish community is diverse both demographically and philosophically diverse - Jews and Jewish communities are not a monolith.
