Mark Oppenheimer wrote an op-ed that was published in the Wall Street Journal last Wednesday titled “The Growing Risk for Jews Who Show Their Jewishness” relating to the recent hostage crisis in a Reform synagogue near Fort Worth, Texas. 

“It seems that violent attacks on Jews in the U.S. have become a regular occurrence, like natural disasters,” Oppenheimer began, citing the deadly synagogue shootings in Poway, California, and near Pittsburgh in recent years. He also noted the shooting at the kosher market in Jersey City in December 2019.  Though some would attribute the attacks to the white supremacist and Islamist ideologies that motivated the attacks, the author dismissed “man-made causes” and possible solutions relating to those causes. 

Instead, he stated that the attacks “targeted the shrinking minority of Jews who regularly do Jewish things in Jewish spaces”, Jews the author described as “Jews who ‘Jew it’.”

“On the other hand, for people who are Jewish but don’t do Jewish things, the U.S. is less oppressive than ever,” Oppenheimer explained, noting the lack of anti-semitism in the workplace and social institutions, phenomena he described as “artifacts of the past.”

As proof of declining anti-semitism he cited intermarriage, noting a study that documented that  61% of Jews who married in the past 10 years took a non-Jewish spouse. Another proof of declining anti-Semitism he noted was that secular Jews, which he labeled as “liberated Jews”, “are abandoning Jewish spaces. Only a fifth of Jews attend worship services at least monthly, and only 12% weekly.” Other results of declining anti-semitism the author cited were declining numbers of Jews fasting on Yom Kippur and fewer Jews keeping kosher homes. 

“In short, outside the Orthodox world, we are becoming a people who never encounter anti-Semitism in school or at work and seldom enter the spaces where anti-Semites look for us, like the synagogue, JCC or kosher market,” Oppenheimer wrote. “For such Jews, there is nearly zero risk of being victimized by anti-Jewish violence or bias. Simply put, Jews who go to synagogue are terrified of anti-Semitism right now. Jews who don’t have no reason to be.”

The author did admit that some of the “liberated” Jews are still bothered by these anti-semitic attacks despite not personally entering Jewish spaces.

“They are hardly disinterested bystanders when hostages are taken in Texas,” Oppenheimer wrote. “All of them will shudder at left-wing anti-Semitism, often framed as anti-Zionism, and at the anti-Semitism pervasive on the nativist and xenophobic right.”

His conclusion was that the future of anti-semitism lay with the identifiably Jewish.

“Yet it will be an ever-shrinking percentage who will actually be in harm’s way. The Jews at risk of anti-Semitic attack will include the small but growing number whose clothes make them targets, like many Orthodox, including Hasidim. Then there are the teachers at Jewish schools, the kosher butchers, the nurses in Jewish homes for the aged. And, of course, there will be those eccentric holdouts: Jews who continue to enter places like synagogues, having decided that praying with fellow Jews is worth the risk of dying with them.”

A Twitter post claimed that Oppenheimer’s statements were called into question by a friend who labeled them as “dangerous and offensive”. Oppenheimer responded, “You misunderstood. ‘Eccentric’ was meant ironically–especially as it describes me to a tee.” 

Oppenheimer noted that he had prayed in a synagogue that morning with his children who attended a Hebrew day school. 

“I was just describing that the antisemitism has moved from school admissions and country clubs to our Jewish spaces. (I concede that there is a lot on social media, too–I could have mentioned that.”

Mark’s response when a friend confronted him about his article, calling it “dangerous” and “offensive”. He’s a joke. pic.twitter.com/e5zwbNBxlU

— Cari (@carmarder) January 23, 2022

The focus of the article was on anti-semitic attacks in Jewish institutions but Oppenheimer also made a passing reference to “left-wing anti-Semitism, often framed as anti-Zionism”. Last May, while the IDF responded to Hamas firing 4,600 rockets at Israeli cities, Jews were targeted for attacks in the streets. In New York and Los Angeles Jews were beaten while walking down the street, attacked while out to dinner, and even assailed by fireworks tossed out of a car. Synagogues were also targeted and online antisemitism skyrocketed. 

In general, antisemitism is on the rise. In 2019, the ADL recorded more than 2,100 cases of assault, vandalism and harassment against Jews across the U.S., the most since tracking began in 1979. Antisemitism has gotten even worse in Europe and Great Britian