From hostages to heritage: Defending Diaspora Judaism's modern world - opinion

Every debate, military calculation, and public conversation revolved around one imperative: Bring them home.

Today, yet another hostage crisis is unfolding, and while it is slower and quieter, it is potentially even more dangerous.

A generation of young Jews, in Israel and across the Diaspora, is increasingly being held hostage in a cognitive war fought not with rockets but with narratives, algorithms, identity confusion, and historical erasure.

And unlike the hostages in Gaza, many do not realize that they are captives.

Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl famously wrote: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how.’”

Frankl observed that survival depends less on physical strength than on meaning. Prisoners who retained purpose endured unimaginable suffering; those who lost meaning collapsed.

The lesson applies not only to individuals but also to nations.

Israel’s founding generation knew its why: survival after catastrophe, national rebirth, and a homeland after 2,000 years of exile.

Today, many young people in Israel and abroad struggle to articulate that same purpose, and when the why weakens, resilience weakens with it.

Research over the past decade suggests weakening connections between youth and both Zionist history and Jewish identity, particularly in secular frameworks.

Studies by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), the Pew Research Center, and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (IJPR) show declining familiarity with Zionist history, weaker emotional attachment to Israel among younger

Diaspora Jews, and growing discomfort in publicly identifying as Jewish or Zionist in hostile environments.

The result is a generation less equipped to answer a simple but critical question: Why does Israel matter?

Israel’s adversaries have often played a longer game than Israelis have realized.

The conflict against Israel was never only military. It was demographic, cultural, educational, and psychological. Arab leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser often spoke of a “long struggle” in which patience and time would ultimately decide the conflict rather than a single decisive battle.

Over decades, their influence has expanded across universities, NGOs, media narratives, and increasingly through digital ecosystems. Social media algorithms reward outrage, reduce complex conflicts into moral binaries, and amplify emotionally charged content.

Cognitive warfare has acquired weapons of mass manipulation. Repeated exposure to distorted narratives reshapes reality itself. Context disappears. Victims become villains. Complexity collapses into slogans.

Young Jews abroad increasingly face environments where Jewish or Zionist identity invites hostility. The result is quiet withdrawal: Better to stay silent, better to disengage.

Within Israel itself, structural changes also pose long-term challenges.

Debates continue over curriculum and national identity education in increasingly diverse classrooms.

Individually, none of these trends threatens Israel’s future. But combined with a cognitive war targeting identity and legitimacy, they create strategic vulnerability.

A country that is strong militarily can still weaken psychologically.

October 7 demonstrated how surprise occurs when threats are underestimated. Cognitive warfare carries a similar risk: erosion is unnoticed until consequences are already visible.

Israel’s resilience was forged through wars, terror attacks, and isolation. Society absorbed trauma and rebuilt. But cognitive warfare now targets identity itself.

If young people no longer feel connected to their history, if they fear publicly identifying as Jewish, and if Israel becomes emotionally distant rather than personally meaningful, resilience becomes harder to sustain.

The Super Bowl 2026, one of the most-watched sporting events each year, included a commercial paid for by Robert Kraft, a Jewish leader worthy of much praise and appreciation, who reportedly invested some $15 million to address the growing wave of antisemitism in the USA. The commercial quoted a horrifying statistic: “Two in three Jewish teens have experienced antisemitism.”

A Jewish high-school student walking through school hallways finds that other students have secretly affixed a yellow note reading “dirty Jew” to his backpack. A Black student approaches him, places a blue square sticker over the hateful note, and says, “Do not listen to that.”

Resilience cannot be built on ignoring reality or running away from it. Instead, it must be met with courage, not cowardice, and pride, not fear of our identity.

Resilience today must include historical literacy, identity confidence, cultural belonging, and moral clarity about both Jewish and Israel’s existence.

Governments alone cannot solve this.

Civilian leaders, educators, media professionals, community institutions, and families shape identity. Identity is built through lived experience, education, storytelling, and communal confidence.

The goal is not propaganda but coherence. Young Jews do not need slogans; they need understanding. Complexity can be taught without surrendering legitimacy. Israel’s imperfections do not erase its moral foundation or historical necessity and responsibilities.

Frankl’s lesson applies again: Meaning sustains resilience.

If young Jews know why their story matters, they can withstand hostile narratives. If they do not, cognitive captivity follows.

Israel and the global Jewish community remained committed to bringing home the hostages taken on October 7.

Victory will not be measured by military success alone, but also by whether the next generation stands confidently in its identity and commitments.

When a people loses their “why,” even victory feels hollow, but when our “why” and purpose are clear, resilience follows. And resilience remains the Jewish people’s oldest and strongest defense.