About this time, Jews have kind of had enough and there’s a major shift in their culture. If you’ve ever been to a Black Lives Matter protest, or a trans rights march, you’ll probably notice there are a lot of Jews there. This cultural attitude, though not universally shared, can be attributed to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment - where the fostering of civil rights becomes a major part of Jewish identity. They focus on education, they focus of working within the political system for protection. And unfortunately, all this advocacy leads to the rise of modern antisemitism.

An irony of “Zionism” being used as a slur against Jewish people is the desire for a homeland comes from the political consciousness of this era, which heavily focused on civil rights for themselves and others.

Listening to Twitter, you’d think Zionism is a bloodthirsty war cry. The reality is, Jews were working through various civil processes to find legally codified safety - and as they became prominent enough to have a voice in European affairs, they garnered the political influence to begin to dream of a nation to call their own. Zionism was also fostered by the exploding antisemitism of the era. Pogroms (violent riots that target and slaughter Jewish communities) become widespread. Discrimination also becomes widespread, especially in Tsarist Russia and Eastern Europe.

One of the many horrors of the Holocaust is that Jewish success in Germany formalizing their civil rights led many to think it was a safe place for them. Many Jews migrated to the Weimar Republic and contributed to political, cultural and artistic life. They thought they were safe, and the reality is there are fewer Jews alive today than before the Holocaust, despite the explosion of the world’s population.