Exploring Purim’s central paradox can guide Jewish leaders to balance the fight against antisemitism with the pressing need to invest in Jewish life.
Dr Jonathan Boyd
On the Shabbat before Purim, we read one of the Torah’s most striking paradoxes: “Remember what Amalek did to you” and “blot out the memory of Amalek.” Somehow, we are asked to hold the memory and let it go at the same time. And Purim ritual mirrors it: in trying to drown out Haman’s name during the megillah reading, we only make him more unforgettable.
That paradox feels painfully contemporary after 7 October, when trauma and rising antisemitism have weighed heavily on Jews even as they try to continue living full Jewish lives. The challenge is not to resolve the tension, but to inhabit it - to understand how memory and renewal must coexist.
Fear has become a dominant organising principle of Jewish identity
JPR data shows how deeply this tension already shapes us. Jewish identity today is anchored far more in Holocaust memory and antisemitism than in religiosity or lived Jewish culture. And since 7 October, this dynamic has intensified. Eighty‑two percent of British Jews now see antisemitism as a major problem - up from 48 percent about a decade ago - and close to a third experienced an antisemitic incident in 2024, helping to explain why fear has become such a dominant organising principle of Jewish identity.
Many Jews now inhabit the “remember” command every day. The conversation about antisemitism is all-consuming, shaping our emotional and psychological landscape. Any renewal of Jewish life after 7 October has to begin from that reality, rather than wishing it away.
But Purim’s paradox offers guidance: we are commanded both to remember and to blot out. That tension between vigilance and vitality is not a problem to solve, but a condition to manage.
Investing in fostering Jewish life, not just protecting it
This debate resurfaced recently thanks to Bret Stephens, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist and founding editor of the Jewish ideas journal Sapir. He argued that much of the communal fight against antisemitism is “a wasted effort” and that Jewish life would be far stronger if those resources were redirected into education, culture and leadership. His warning against rooting Jewish identity in fear is timely. But the choice he presents — either combat antisemitism or foster Jewish life — misreads where people actually are. JPR data makes clear that antisemitism profoundly shapes Jewish identity today. You cannot simply tell people to detach from experiences that define their daily reality.
At the same time, Stephens is right that the “remembering” side has overwhelmed the “blotting out.” Virtually no government-level plans take seriously the parallel need to invest in Jewish life. One striking exception is the ‘EU Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life’, which makes this dual imperative explicit. Its programme is not merely focused on fighting antisemitism; it is deliberately designed to foster Jewish life alongside it. It captures the Purim logic well: safety and flourishing held together, each reinforcing the other.
Still, antisemitism taps deeply into primal Jewish fears, and when it dominates the communal conversation, it can eclipse everything else. If memory and vitality must coexist, our communal systems need to be built to support both. As the systems thinker Russell Ackoff warned, interconnected problems cannot be fixed in isolation - and Jewish life today is such a system, where security, identity, education, trauma and Israel engagement are intertwined.
We need clear goals, serious investment and ongoing measurement
There are, however, practical ways to meet this moment. Crucially, community leaders should recognise that good intentions are not enough without clear goals, serious investment and ongoing measurement.
So what might community life look like if designed to live within that paradox? Alongside strong security provision and rapid‑response capability, we would double down now – precisely at such a challenging time – and invest more seriously than ever in Jewish vitality. That means, for example, boosting participation in youth movements, upskilling Jewish teachers, building leadership pipelines — all with clear baselines, targets and consistent, transparent measurement. None of this diminishes the need for vigilance. Rather, it ensures that vigilance serves a larger purpose: enabling a Jewish community that is protected – and able to thrive.
Purim doesn’t ask us to choose between remembrance and erasure. It asks us to live consciously in the tension – to remember what was done, blot out what should not define us, and build a Jewish life rooted in joy, generosity and connection. If Jews can cultivate that duality - acknowledging memory without being dominated by it, while investing in vitality at least as seriously as we protect ourselves - we may yet embody the paradox of that ancient command: not by choosing one side, but by carrying both with courage, clarity and purpose.
Dr Jonathan Boyd
Executive Director
Dr Jonathan Boyd
Executive Director
Jonathan has been Executive Director of JPR since 2010, having previously held research and policy positions at the JDC International Centre for Community Development in...
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