[Excerpted from the author’s new book, Unlearning Jewish Anxiety: How to Live with More Joy and Less Suffering, Monkfish Books, 2026.]
What would our lives feel like if we were less anxious? How would it feel to experience more joy, not because we’ve worked hard enough to earn it, but simply because we’re alive? Jewish anxiety is a terrible, sneaky thief. It steals our joy. It shrinks our world and constricts our imagination of what’s possible.
I think that one of the most powerful forms of resistance to anti-Jewish oppression is to insist on our inherent dignity, worth and belonging in this world. I believe we are entitled to and deserving of joy. I believe that we Jews are worthy of safety, love, belonging and joy, simply because we exist.
Jewish anxiety is not inevitable
However, the truth is that many of us experience persistent, debilitating anxiety, and we laugh it off as inevitable, as just a fact of being Jewish. We learn early on how to act smaller than we are, to take up less space, keep quiet, be good and please others. Some of this suffering is the legacy of our inherited, intergenerational trauma. Some of this suffering is an understandable response to deeply entrenched anti-Jewish contempt, oppression and violence in the world. When we don’t feel safe when we don’t feel inherently worthy of care and respect, and when we worry about whether we truly belong, life can feel deeply anxiety-provoking.
Learning to become anxious is not our fault. Anti-Jewish contempt is real, pernicious and pervasive. It’s difficult to be Jewish when people routinely express ambivalence and hostility toward our existence. Anxiety causes deep suffering — in our minds, in our bodies, in our relationships with ourselves, and in our relationships with other people and the wider world. Our bodies contract with tension, and our breathing changes. Our minds race with worst-case scenarios, and we often feel like we always have to do something in response to these unpleasant feelings. Many of us (me, included!) enlist well-worn, automatic habits of avoidance or distraction. We overwork, overschedule, doomscroll or numb out by binge-watching Netflix. The truth is, it’s utterly exhausting to feel anxious all the time.
Why are we so anxious?
One way to understand anxiety is to think of an equation: fear + uncertainty = our habits triggered by Jewish questions around safety, worth and belonging. Living with fear and uncertainty is part of being human. We are living through an era where ugly anti-Jewish rhetoric and AI-generated images are visible in social media. We experience anti-Jewish micro and macroaggressions on a regular basis. Claims of anti-Jewish contempt on university campuses are weaponized for authoritarian purposes by the current administration. These conditions generate considerable fear and uncertainty for us, and there is no question that being Jewish today involves a certain degree of fear and uncertainty.
We can decide whether and how to choose a different alternative that might help us feel calm and increase our joy.
Our nervous systems have developed sophisticated responses (fight, flight, freeze and fawning) to help us stay safe in response to this fear and uncertainty. However, many of us learn to habitually question our safety, worth and belonging. And then we habitually respond from that hypervigilant, hyper-aroused, frozen or people-pleasing state. If we can learn to become more aware of our anxiety habits and when we’re stuck in an anxious response, then we can discern, with more awareness, whether our habitual choice might amplify or soothe our anxiety and suffering. We can decide whether and how to choose a different alternative that might help us feel calm and increase our joy.
We can practice our inherent agency to loosen the grip of anxiety through kindfulness: practicing present-moment awareness, with kindness, compassion and curiosity. We can notice the sensations in our bodies and discern what our bodies need from moment to moment. We can deploy Jewish spiritual practices of pausing, breathing and listening to our kol demama daka: our inner spiritual voice. We can practice pausing, breathing and listening to what our bodies need, in short moments, many times throughout our day. We can discern, through awareness, kindness and compassion, how to choose alternative daily habits that amplify our joy. I know, from my own lived experience, that by noticing the sensations in our bodies, examining our habits, and responding to what we need in a given moment, that change is possible.
Healing ourselves
In my new book, Unlearning Jewish Anxiety: How to Live with More Joy and Less Suffering, I focus on the Jewish value of tikkun atzmi — healing ourselves, by taking responsibility for how we respond to that challenging reality, and by caring for ourselves with kindness and compassion by looking at our habits. When we prioritize caring for ourselves and cultivating joy, we become better resourced to address tikkun olam — the Jewish value of repairing our broken world. Healing ourselves and the world are interdependent, like braided strands in a challah.
We can invite our allies to do the reparative work of changing hearts and minds in their own communities to soften and dissolve anti-Jewish contempt, ignorance and oppression.
I believe it’s aleinu: It’s upon us. It’s our responsibility to look at our habits that unwittingly amplify suffering. It’s our responsibility to nourish and care for ourselves, to honor our needs for safety, love, acceptance and belonging. It’s up to us to nurture our bodies and our spirit, especially in difficult times, such as the one we’re currently living through. We can prioritize our own healing from the suffering we inherited, the anxiety we carry each day. We can look at the anxious patterns we transmit to others in our families and Jewish communities with compassion and choose better alternatives. I believe that when we change our habits, we can suffer less and change our lives. We can free up our individual and collective energy for more joy, creativity, liberation, expansiveness, activism or whatever we’re yearning for in our lives. When we change our lives, we create space to change the world.
Working with allies
And, lo aleinu: It’s not only our responsibility. It’s not only up to us to soften and dissolve anti-Jewish contempt and oppression. This is the responsibility and work of our allies and partners in justice movements who care about Jewish safety, respect, acceptance and belonging. When we are well-resourced, we can enlist our partners and allies to help us stay safe. We can invite our allies to do the reparative work of changing hearts and minds in their own communities to soften and dissolve anti-Jewish contempt, ignorance and oppression. We can work across other communities that experience oppression to build a better, kinder, more compassionate, more just world for all of us. It’s time.
