Three years after the October 7, 2023 attacks in Israel, American Jewish life is being pulled in two directions at once. Antisemitic incidents keep climbing, online and off. And yet, writing in American Thinker, Susan Quinn argues that the more interesting story is what Jews are doing about it — and it isn’t walking away.
Quinn’s essay, published on the third anniversary of the attacks, takes direct aim at a familiar media narrative: that American Jews are leaving Judaism in large numbers. The data, she writes, point the other way. Rather than shedding their identity, many Jews are reaching toward one another — for solidarity, for comfort, and for faith — even as they watch antisemitic activity rise around them.
The numbers behind the fear
Quinn doesn’t minimize the threat. Most major social media platforms — Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok among them — have seen increases in antisemitic attacks, she notes. A 2025 report from the American Jewish Committee found that two-thirds of American Jews feel less secure than they did a year earlier.
She points to Holly Huffnagle, the AJC’s Director of Antisemitism Policy, who frames the problem as bigger than any one community. When hatred toward Jews is allowed to spread, Huffnagle said, it corrodes social trust, legitimizes extremism, and weakens the democratic institutions that protect everyone — making a clear, dedicated government response not optional but necessary.
Quinn also ties part of the erosion of confidence to politics, specifically the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America and other extremist groups, which she suggests have contributed to doubts about the government’s willingness to protect Jews.
A shift in the pews, not an exodus
The essay’s central claim is about where Jews are going, not whether they’re leaving. Quinn acknowledges that participation in Reform and secular Jewish organizations may be declining and concedes that this can look like a shrinkage of communal life. But she argues the movement is really a realignment: Jews are gravitating toward Orthodox and traditional communities instead.
That shift shows up in how people are engaging with Jewish learning and community. Quinn cites podcasts and study groups as growing outlets, and singles out Chabad for offering community activities to any interested Jew without demanding allegiance to a particular denomination. For Jews who feel exposed in public life, that open-door model appears to hold appeal.
Quinn’s answer to the apparent paradox — fear rising even as resilience grows — is that many Jews have simply decided not to give in to the fear. They are joining synagogues and community organizations, she writes, and strengthening their resolve to practice their faith.
The Democratic alliance under strain
The essay also examines a relationship that has been shifting for years: the long alliance between Jewish voters and the Democratic Party. Quinn attributes the bond partly to a shared commitment to fighting for the underdog. But she argues that many Democratic Jews have received the message that they will no longer be warmly embraced by the party so long as they support Israel and Zionism — a break she says has deepened since October 7.
At the same time, she notes, Democrats who aren’t prepared to align with leftist extremists are still voicing support for American Jews and Israel. She cites Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada, who has criticized streamer Hasan Piker in strong terms; House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has rejected attacks on Jews; and Jon Cowan, president of the centrist group Third Way, who has warned about the extreme left and predicted that the DSA will set out to destroy the Democratic Party once it makes sufficient inroads into the political process.
Quinn suggests that Jews are not alone in rethinking their partisan ties. Traditional Democrats, she writes, also feel compelled to speak up in support of Jews.
The quiet calculus of visibility
For all that public support, Quinn describes a community that is often reluctant to be publicly identifiable as Jewish. Some Jews avoid displaying items that would mark them as Jewish — Israeli flags, Jewish stars. Some steer clear of online statements that would identify them with the Jewish community. Others skip public events where people might assume they are Jewish.
That reticence is itself a measure of how much the climate has changed since October 7, and it sits uneasily alongside the communal strengthening Quinn documents. Fear and resilience, in her telling, aren’t opposites; they’re happening in the same households.
The questions the anniversary leaves open
Quinn closes by laying out the unresolved questions rather than pretending to answer them. Will Jews keep deepening their ties to the broader Jewish community and its organizations? Will the fear many experience fade with time, or continue to shape how they participate in Jewish life? Or will living under that tension eventually push some to abandon their Jewish identity altogether?
She also asks whether antisemitism will keep rising in the wider society, whether Jews themselves will speak out against antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and whether support for Israel will erode as Middle East issues persist.
Her own read is sober. The existence of the Jewish community has always been threatened, she writes, and antisemitism is likely to keep growing given uncertainty in the Middle East and rising Muslim populations worldwide, with extremist groups on both the left and the right adding to the pressure.
What remains to be seen, she suggests, is whether American Jews will reject fear and embrace courage in this century — whether they will, in her phrase, hang tough and keep battling for fairness and recognition. It’s a question the third anniversary raises but cannot settle. The one thing Quinn seems confident about is that the answer won’t be found in the headlines insisting that Jews are walking away.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/10/reflecting-on-the-third-anniversary-of-october-7-2023/