Want to be more resilient? Try popping your Jewish bubble

It’s not our obligation to understand antisemitism. No one should demand that young Jews patiently decode every micro-aggression we encounter. But we live in the world, not just in a Jewish group chat. Unless we stay in our bubble forever, we will have to face it.

For a long time, my instinct was to call everything out. Every remark, every stereotype, every “joke”. I thought that was what being a responsible Jew meant. If I let something slide, I felt like I’d failed, like I’d betrayed other Jews, abandoned history, or worse – betrayed my grandfather who survived the Holocaust.

And honestly? It broke me. Constantly gearing up for a fight, drafting angry emails in my head, walking around campus like a one-person complaints department… it’s exhausting. My body started keeping the score: tight chest, racing heart, buzzing anger that doesn’t turn off when you go to sleep.

I could have retreated into my Jewish bubble and stayed there. But my instinct kept telling me that I needed to re-enter the world. I had a university masters to finish, at the very least.

Outside the bubble, I started noticing a pattern: antisemitism is actually more about them than it is about me.

There’s the guy who has all these theories about Jews and business, how we supposedly got into “positions of power” to protect our people, then stayed there for selfish reasons. Underneath the stereotypes, he’s just stuck in his own anxiety about money, morality and adulthood. Jews become a projection screen for his neuroses.