Decades after the Rebbe’s repeated calls to the Jewish community and Jewish organizations about the only true way to confront antisemitism, secular Jewish leaders are finally starting to speak the same language.

In the “State of World Jewry” talk last week at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, Bret Stephens, New York Times columnist and founder of the Jewish thought journal Sapir, argued that supporters of the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish defense groups should largely abandon their current approach to combating antisemitism and instead focus on strengthening Jewish life itself.

Antisemitism, he explained, is largely impervious to appeals to tolerance, reminders of Jewish and Israeli accomplishments, or mandatory Holocaust education.

“What we call the fight against antisemitism, which consumes tens of millions of dollars every year in Jewish philanthropy and has become an organizing principle across Jewish organizations, is a well-meaning, but mostly wasted, effort,” Stephens said. “We should spend the money and focus our energy elsewhere.”

Instead, he called for large-scale investment in Jewish day schools, institutions, publishing, and religious leadership.

If it were up to him, he said, he would “dismantle” the ADL, the leading Jewish group fighting antisemitism. Acknowledging that ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt was in the audience, he explained:

“That’s not helping raise a generation of young Jews who are conscious of their Jewishness as something other than the fact that they saw Schindler’s List and they visited the Holocaust Museum. That cannot be the locus of Jewish identity. If we’re going to survive, victimization cannot be at the heart of our identity.”

Stephens questioned whether decades of investment in education, advocacy, and monitoring by groups like the ADL and campus advocacy organizations have produced measurable results.

“We think that antisemitism stems fundamentally from missing or inaccurate information… That thesis is wrong,” Stephens said. Stephens criticized the Jewish impulse to seek validation through contributions to wider society, calling it “a fool’s errand.”

For the third consecutive year, the State of World Jewry speech has focused on the idea that the strongest response to a community reeling from antisemitism is turning inward, investing in Jewish institutions, and encouraging Jews to wake up and remember their true identity.

Long before the recent resurgence of hate in the past two years, the Rebbe articulated a bold and practical philosophy of how Jews should confront, or not confront, antisemitism.

In an article written by Rabbi Elkanah Shmotkin, director of Jewish Educational Media, he contends that “the Rebbe was not simply sidestepping the issue. Rather, the ‘non-attention’ is actually a key aspect of how the Rebbe believed antisemitism should be handled. He refused to allow it to occupy center stage, nor to become a focal point of any kind.”

As the Rebbe explained in the farbrengen of Purim 5725 (1965), it doesn’t matter what the Jew does or doesn’t do, – it won’t help to stop acting Jewish, to eat, speak, and dress the same as everyone else. Antisemitism has nothing to do with your actions. A Jew is a representation of Torah and Hashem, and his very existence makes the antisemite feel inadequate and envious of him.

Instead, the Rebbe encouraged exerting influence through quiet diplomacy. It’s not effective, the Rebbe explained, to confront someone by proving that he is an antisemite. On the contrary, where possible, do your best to engage them.

“The only way to deal with an antisemite is not by coming to him every day and shouting: Listen here, you are an antisemite! Listen here, you are a thief, a murderer, etc.! Rather, speak to him in a diplomatic way,” the Rebbe said at a farbrengen in 5730.

The Rebbe noted the example that only after the major protest against French President Georges Pompidou quieted down was Israel Jews able, through quiet diplomacy, to use his help to extract 300 Jews from Egypt.

In a letter to Professor Alan Dershowitz, who was upset about how Chabad honored Senator Jesse Helms, a staunch opponent of Israel’s cause, the Rebbe wrote:

“My experience with such people has convinced me that politicians are generally motivated more by expediency than by conviction… most of them, if not all, are subject to change in their positions, depending on time, place, and other factors.”

The Rebbe explained that it doesn’t serve any useful purpose “to brand one as an ‘enemy’ or an ‘antisemite,’ however tempting it is to do so.”

It can only be counterproductive. On the contrary, the Rebbe says, “ways and means should be found to persuade such a person to take a favorable stance, at least publicly. We haven’t too many friends, and attaching labels, etc. will not gain us any.”

Like the Rebbe said in a farbrengen of 5730, he had asked a big askan, “Why are you running around and crying antisemitism, when you see it’s simply not effective in creating change?” to which the man answered, “I figured out ten years ago that is a good modus operandi, and I don’t have time to rethink it. Stop telling me what to do.”

Obviously, when engaging in diplomacy, the Rebbe said, it is imperative to do so without losing your backbone and to maintain pride in yourself as a Jew, and in Torah and mitzvos.

The Rebbe repeatedly called on Jewsih organizations and leaders not to spend energy answering specific individual complaints against the Jews and trying to rationalize our behavior or trying to explain the evil of the enemy and how bad they are. Leave that for others. Those who wish to hate us will hate. They will find their reasoning.

Instead, hit the streets with the potent force of pro-Semitism. The Rebbe taught that Jews must never allow hatred to become the center of their story. When Jewish identity becomes defensive or apologetic, it shrinks. When it becomes rooted in pride, mitzvos, community, and visibility, it thrives.

The Rebbe instead advocated constantly for public menorahs, for adding in other mivtzoim, and for taking to the streets even when people suggested going low profile and retreating into fear so as not to irk anyone.

Instead of hiding after a series of antisemitic incidents, shluchim on campus will encourage their students to put up mezuzahs on their dorms and wear yarmulkas in public. And as always, the atmosphere shifts, participation in Jewish activities grows, and hostility decreases.

“We take it for granted that the way to address the evil of anti-Semitism is to fight it,” writes columnist David Suissa in the Jewish Journal. “It’s a natural part of our vocabulary. We fight, we confront, we condemn, we call out.”

Although it seems to make perfect sense, he suggests looking to the Rebbe’s approach to confronting darkness.

“You never heard the Rebbe call for protests or demonstrations. He never urged his followers to hit the streets to confront evil. Instead, he urged them to hit the streets to spread goodness and kindness.”

And as history has shown, when Jews stand strong in who they are, hatred does not define them. It dissolves before them.