Op-Ed: S.C. Legoni: Anti-Semitism isn’t the Jews’ problem. It’s ours.

In her latest op-ed, S.C. Legoni explains why anti-Semitism is a problem that concerns us all, regardless of our religion or political worldview.

It seems every few days we are shocked again by a fresh wave of antisemitism. Insane conspiracies of Jewish control. Harassment and assault of Jews at universities and on city streets. Intimidation and defamation of Jewish people online and horrific violence in real life. And with each wave comes the same question: why do people hate the Jews?

Some claim it is jealousy. Jealousy of Jews’ financial success, their educational achievements, their prominence in the arts, sciences, and business. But this explanation collapses under the weight of history. It was not wealthy financiers who were driven from pogrom-ravaged villages in Ukraine or whose families were slaughtered in Polish shtetls. The Jews of Yemen and Iraq, dirt poor, politically powerless, and often barely literate, were targets of the same homicidal rage.

The answer is more foundational, more spiritual, and far more uncomfortable to face. Antisemitism does not stem from what Jews do. It stems from what they represent. For that reason, antisemitism is not the Jews’ problem. It is ours. Antisemitism is the world’s oldest hatred. But it is also the most revealing. It tells us not about the Jews, but about ourselves.

Western civilization, along with the Muslim world, is built on Jewish foundations. Christianity repurposes Jewish prophecy, Jewish ethics, and Jewish cosmology. The central characters of the New Testament are Jews. Islam also builds upon the monotheism of Abraham, the laws of Moses, and the stories of the Hebrew scripture. Both religions inherit and reinterpret the Jewish spiritual framework.

In other words, whether we are Christians or Muslims, our sacred stories are not fully our own. We did not write the opening act. Someone else did. And that someone was the Jewish people. Their story is the oldest thread running through the sacred histories of the West and the Middle East.

That is the root of antisemitism. It is not Jewish separatism, or banking, or Israel. The problem is not that Jews claim to be the chosen people. The problem is that many of us believe they are, and we resent it.

Other cultures hold beliefs about their special place in the world. The Japanese, for example, have a tradition that their land is the origin of the sun. The Aztecs believed their capital was the axis mundi, the central point connecting the heavens, the earth, and the underworld. But neither Europe nor the Middle East spent centuries obsessed with hatred of Japanese or Mexican people for these beliefs.

Because Japanese and Aztec myths do not undergird our moral and theological worldview. Judaism does.

And so we live with this twisted paradox. For two thousand years, societies that built themselves on Jewish foundations have repeatedly tried to tear those foundations down. Not because of rational grievance, but because of spiritual envy.

That envy mutates across time. In the Koran, it’s accusations of murdering prophets. In the medieval Christian world, it took the form of blood libels and charges of deicide. In the twentieth century, it became racial pseudoscience and extermination. Today, it masquerades as anti-Zionism or as a way to “punch up” against privilege. The script changes, but the hate remains the same.

This is why antisemitism is not a problem the Jewish community can fix, or even fully understand, because it does not come from them. It comes from our own unresolved relationship to our spiritual origins. And, increasingly, it comes from the radical extremes on both the political left and right.

This is why supposed conservative Marjorie Taylor Greene appears on radical progressive antisemite Cenk Uygur’s show to downplay her lunatic ranting that California wildfires were started by space lasers owned by the Rothschilds.

This is why Rashida Tlaib ceaselessly spreads false charges against Israel and it’s why Tucker Carlson echoes them, incessantly harping on Israel and Jews, insinuating that Jews killed Charlie Kirk, and directly embracing replacement theology and whining about “the chosen people.”

Jews make up less than one quarter of one percent of the global population yet, thankfully, they have made absurdly outsized contributions to every element of culture. They don’t need a come to Jesus moment. Some of us need a come to Moses moment.

The Muslim world may be too far gone, but if we want to preserve Western civilization, we must recognize the Jews not as interlopers in our story, but as its first protagonists, the root of our ethical tradition, our laws, and even our idea of human dignity. Without that foundation, our society collapses.

S.C. Legoni is the pseudonym of a writer, international conflict analyst, and amateur theologian.