Every diaspora Jew must ask themselves a question: How bad will antisemitism have to get before you decide to make aliyah?
If you do not have an answer to this question-a benchmark-you will have no way of recognizing when circumstances have crossed the threshold from tolerable to intolerable.
The risk is you will simply keep adjusting your expectations downward, accommodating each fresh indignity, until the unthinkable becomes the new normal.
This is the peril of incrementalism.
People are highly adept at normalizing deterioration. What would have been considered outrageous yesterday becomes unfortunate today and unremarkable tomorrow.
For diaspora Jews, this process has been unfolding. A Jewish student is harassed on campus. A synagogue is vandalized. A Jewish business is boycotted. A Jewish child is bullied at school. A Jewish neighborhood requires security guards. A Jewish institution is threatened. A Jewish family thinks twice before displaying a mezuzah, wearing a Star of David or speaking Hebrew in public.
Each incident is treated as an isolated episode, an aberration, an unfortunate manifestation of somebody else’s extremism. Authorities issue condemnations. Politicians express solidarity. Community leaders organize another rally. Everyone returns to their lives.
Until the next incident.
The effect accumulates like compound interest. A society does not have to become Nazi Germany before Jews reconsider their place within it-or whether they still have one. Nor does antisemitism have to become universally acceptable before it becomes sufficiently entrenched to make Jewish life precarious.
The historical lesson is not that every manifestation of antisemitism presages catastrophe. It is that Jewish communities usually underestimated the speed with which apparently secure environments can become inhospitable.
Every diaspora Jew must establish a personal red line; a reasonably explicit set of circumstances that would trigger a serious reassessment of their future.
Would you make aliyah if your child could no longer attend university without being subjected to antisemitic intimidation? If your synagogue required armed protection? If Jewish institutions were routinely targeted and the authorities proved unwilling or incapable of protecting them? If your government began treating Jewish security as subordinate to the political sensitivities of those threatening it?
What about a situation in which you felt compelled to conceal your Jewish identity in public? Or one in which your children told you they no longer wanted to be visibly Jewish because of the hostility it attracted?
Would you wait until somebody was physically attacked? Until your local synagogue was firebombed? Until your government introduced policies that discriminated against Jews?
Perhaps most pertinently, would you wait until your own family was personally affected?
These are not predictions. They are questions about preparedness.
There is a difference between being alarmist and being prudent. The former imagines disaster around every corner. The latter understands that certain eventualities deserve preparation precisely because their consequences are so grave. We buy insurance without expecting our houses to burn down.
Yet some Jews seem to regard contemplating aliyah as an expression of panic or disloyalty to their country.
It is neither.
Another persistent diaspora assumption is that the prevailing political and social order is permanent.
It is not.
Jewish communities have flourished in countries that subsequently became hostile to them. They have enjoyed generations of prosperity, cultural acceptance and apparent security, only to discover that their position was contingent.
The comforting refrain that “this could never happen here" is particularly seductive. It is also historically worthless.
Germany was a sophisticated, cultured, economically advanced nation. Its Jewish population was integrated to the point that many German Jews considered themselves German first and Jewish second. Their patriotism and attachment to their homeland ran deep. Neither proved sufficient protection when the political climate changed.
There is no suggestion that contemporary Australia, Britain, Canada, France or the US is destined to replicate that history. Historical analogies should illuminate, not obliterate distinctions. Yet the underlying lesson is incontrovertible: integration is not immunity, prosperity is not security, and citizenship is not an insurance policy against the caprices of political culture.
Nor should Jews confuse their current political rights with an eternal security guarantee.
A government that is unwilling to confront antisemitism when it is politically inconvenient will eventually discover that its inaction has consequences. A police force that tolerates intimidation outside synagogues or Jewish schools helps establish what perpetrators believe they can get away with. A political class that repeatedly contextualizes Jew-hatred rather than confronting it legitimizes it.
The erosion of Jewish security is rarely announced in advance. It is assembled through a succession of accommodations, equivocations and failures of nerve.
Another reason to establish a benchmark is that aliyah is not something that should be undertaken in a state of desperation.
Moving countries is complicated. It involves employment, housing, education, language, finances, family obligations and emotional dislocation. For older Jews, the considerations may be too much. For those with children, the consequences extend across generations.
The time to investigate these questions is when you still have the luxury of deliberation.
Learn about Israel. Visit beyond the tourist enclaves. Investigate employment opportunities, schools and communities. Understand the financial and bureaucratic implications. Discuss the possibility with your family. Consider what you would gain and what you would relinquish.
You do not have to make aliyah tomorrow, or perhaps at all. Yet you should know what it would entail, and how long it might take you to accomplish it. There is a huge difference between having a plan and having a vague intention. One can be activated. The other is just reassuring.
Indeed, the Jews who insist that they would leave if things became sufficiently bad should ask themselves whether they have done anything to make leaving practicable. Have they identified a destination? Investigated the logistics? Or do they imagine that they will somehow work everything out when the time comes?
For Jews who are not particularly troubled by the current climate, and think their society is a long way from such a point, the question is no less relevant. You may believe that the latest outbreak of antisemitism is containable, that the political pendulum will swing back, that your country’s institutions remain robust and that the current turbulence will eventually subside.
I sincerely hope you are right.
For Jews who are already deeply anxious, meanwhile, establishing a benchmark may help distinguish legitimate vigilance from perpetual apprehension. It provides a framework for assessing developments rather than being buffeted by every new outrage. It also prevents the opposite error: allowing anxiety to become so familiar that it ceases to produce action.
There is, moreover, a larger Jewish consideration. For two millennia, Jewish existence has involved negotiating the relationship between belonging and vulnerability. Israel’s rebirth transformed that equation. Jews now have a sovereign state to which they could return, not as supplicants seeking refuge but as citizens exercising their right to national self-determination.
Aliyah is not an admission of defeat but an affirmation of Jewish agency.
Israel has its own formidable challenges. It is not a utopia. It faces security threats, political dysfunction, and the same frustrations around healthcare, schooling and living costs as every other country. Making aliyah is not an escape from life’s difficulties. It is a choice about where to confront them, and about the future of Jewish collective existence.
Yet those difficulties should not obscure the extraordinary historical proposition that Israel represents: Jews no longer have to wait for another country to decide whether they are welcome.
It is ironic, then, that some of the people most vociferously defending their right to remain where they are have given no thought at all to the circumstances in which they might choose not to. They insist that they are not going anywhere and will not be driven from their countries and cities. Others insist that things are not nearly bad enough. Still others say they will cross that bridge when they come to it.
Yet bridges can become impassable, borders can close and circumstances can change rapidly. And the practical, financial and emotional costs of leaving can rise precipitously when everyone else decides to leave at the same time.
It is not a matter of every Jew having to make aliyah. That is a personal decision with no universal prescription. It is about diaspora Jews asking themselves: What is your threshold? What would have to happen before you concluded that the social contract under which you have lived had broken down? How much intimidation, discrimination, institutional indifference or danger would be enough?
And, crucially, how would you know when that threshold had been crossed?
Do not wait for somebody else to tell you. Do not outsource the judgment to politicians who do not care about you or your family’s security, or to community leaders whose public reassurances may hide deep private anxieties.
Establish your benchmark. Discuss it. Prepare. Hopefully, you will never need to act on it, but the worst time to decide whether to leave is when you are already desperate to do so.
The purpose of a red line is not to cross it. It is to know when you are approaching it, and to have the courage to act before it is too late.