On Silence and Moral Responsibility

In his inaugural address at St Andrews University in 1867, the philosopher John Stuart Mill warned that respect for morality is not only a duty of nations, but of “every person in it” whose opinions help form public sentiment. He cautioned against the comforting delusion that one can do no harm by taking no position at all. “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends,” Mill wrote, “than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

I thought of Mill’s words while reflecting on the past year for the Jews.

We all suffer from what psychologists call the availability bias: we recall most easily what we have encountered most recently. And recent examples are not hard to find. A father and son murdering fifteen Jews at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney in December. A man killing two parishioners at a Manchester synagogue in October. Another throwing firebombs into a Jewish gathering in Boulder in June. Another setting fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence in April.

And, in November, at a synagogue three blocks from my home - here I quote directly, not to provoke outrage, but to make it harder to look away - a young woman at an organized protest shouted: “F**k you. Kill yourself. Do us all a favor and go fking kill yourself. Slit your throat. Kill yourself.”

Sadly, none of these incidents is unprecedented. What unsettles me is how easily they are absorbed into the background noise.

And yet, for most, 2025 was fine.

We lived, worked, and marked the milestones of ordinary life. We celebrated with friends and family and mourned those we lost. I rode my bike for six glorious days in the Dolomites, spent a week with a cousin in Colorado, and visited an old friend in Florida. Our son received a promotion and a raise; our older daughter graduated from college; our younger daughter found success in school and on the rugby pitch. Like mine, I suspect your year was largely normal and, at times, joyful.

Two conversations helped me make sense of this unease.

I heard the quantum physicist David Deutsch describe what he calls the Pattern: the idea that antisemitism is not merely a prejudice or a bundle of false beliefs, but a recurring moral logic that legitimizes harm against Jews simply for being Jewish, even when it does not erupt into overt violence. The rationalizations change over time—deicide, control of finance, Zionism, conspiracy—but they need not even be logically consistent.

Deutsch, who calls himself an atheist Zionist, worries aloud about an atmosphere of “worldwide pogrom,” yet remains hopeful that it can be countered by a large and vocal anti-Pattern coalition among non-Jews. I hope he is right.

I also listened to Russell Moore, the former editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, reflect on the moral and institutional corrosion that occurs when religious language is conscripted to legitimize political resentment, particularly toward Jews and Israel. Moore, a Baptist pastor, argues that contemporary attacks on “Christian Zionism” often function as post hoc rationalizations for animus, displacing political or cultural grievance onto Jews for what other Christians believe or do.

Like Deutsch, Moore emphasizes that these dynamics are intensified by attention-driven media ecosystems, where provocation and symbolic cruelty crowd out persuasion, doctrine, and moral restraint. Taken together, their arguments suggest to me that today’s antisemitism is sustained not only by ignorance, but by institutional failure: religious bodies, non-profits, movements, and leaders losing the capacity to say, plainly and authoritatively, “this is wrong,” even when the justifications offered are incoherent or self-contradictory.

As I look to the year ahead, I return to Anne Frank’s reflection: “It’s really a wonder I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Quoting a fifteen-year-old murdered by the Nazis weeks after writing these words may seem sentimental, even strained. But it is precisely because of friends like you—people unwilling to look away or remain silent—that I enter 2026 with hope. In spite of everything.