As has become my custom, I’m publishing a reflection on the anniversary of 10/7, a life-changing day. Since last year, there has been some good news. All of the hostages still alive were released. And just in the last few days, there was a miracle: a heroic Indian pilot and the heroic Israeli passengers aboard a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv managed to foil a hijacking by the co-pilot, an Omani Islamist, who wanted to commit a 9/11-style attack by crashing the plane at Ben Gurion Airport. Here in Massachusetts, the Commission on Combatting Antisemitism held public hearings that exposed the antisemitism the Jews of Massachusetts have been facing, including the efforts of radical leaders of the Commonwealth’s main teachers union to introduce antisemitic curriculum in the public schools, and that have led to legislative and other recommendations that will, I hope, soon be implemented. There have been similar bright spots around the United States and the world as people, including Christians, Muslims, and others who see that something is wrong and want to do something about it, have gotten more organized about confronting antisemitism at its roots.

But there has also been plenty of bad news. Antisemitism on the left and the right. Attacks on synagogues. Ostracism of Jewish writers, artists, and businesspeople. An increasingly sophisticated (or at least, an increasingly wordy and recondite) antisemitism among academics and others. People, including some Jews, excusing antisemitism within their own parties while condemning it in the other guy’s party, wrongly thinking that it’s better put the other guy back on his heels in the next news cycle or the next election than to address a growing ideological cancer that, history shows, will not just affect the Jews.

While I think there are some people who read posts like this and silently wish that I would just get back to writing about service by email when the Service Convention applies, I’ve received a lot of messages from people with kind words of support. My response is always the same. First, thank you! And second, please use your own voice and speak up in ways that are comfortable for you or even a little bit uncomfortable. The world needs you!

And if you want a suggestion for something you can do that doesn’t require you to say anything, publicly or privately, it’s this: read the new book by Dara Horn, The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living. It’s a very good statement of what it feels like to be Jewish in America now, and an interesting prescription about what we can do to make things better.