Being a Jew is not the same as being part of the Jewish community. Not raised as the former, it’s taken half a lifetime for me to finally feel integrated in the latter, and I’ve discovered something from “inside”. This is to the Jews and gentiles who aren’t part of this wonderful, kind, disparate and frustrating collective: you might think I’m lying, that this is a double-bluff, but I’m telling you, Jews DON’T run the world.

Carrying my internalised antisemitism with me through the gates, for years a tiny part expected at some point to be taken aside: “Josh, you’ve done enough gigs for Jewish charities, I can finally reveal that over there is where we have the meetings.”

Don’t get me wrong, the Jewish community loves a meeting. LOVES IT. Doing the minutes, having meetings about how the meetings are going to get run, meetings that run twice as long as necessary and make you question your sanity, but alas it’s not the world’s economy or starting wars or white replacement theory that’s on the agenda. It’s getting a new playground, replacing the synagogue’s chairs, interfaith chicken soup making, collecting for refugees, charity, lots of charity. But. There are some meetings that we should be having, and we’re not, and now I’m talking to the Jewish community.

By accident, five years ago, I became part of a minuscule subset of our number. And if there were any further proof I needed about how we’re not running the show, in fact the opposite, how precarious our position is, it has been these last years spent fighting antisemitism on social media.

Formerly using Twitter solely as a testing ground for gags, I started noticing content from colleagues in the comedy world and the wider left that I knew to not be true. I also saw a handful of people challenging them. Next thing I knew, a “like” here, a retweet there, and into the rabbit hole I was sucked.

Losing days to endless Twitter threads, I learnt the traps, the tropes, saving links, posting links, taking screenshots, googling statistics, all the while disbelieving as Corbyn’s Labour course-corrected in the opposite direction at every opportunity. In the aftermath of the 2019 election I was in a bit of state. The pile-ons, best friend lost, anonymous abuse through my website, being blocked by colleagues after taking the fight to Facebook, even a threat of violence, I was exhausted, distracted and dazed. And I was only a bit player.

Friends asked me, even Jewish ones, what’s the point? Because it felt necessary to fight the lies, to put forward a counter-narrative to what I hoped was a watching silent majority.
The problem is, as it’s ever been, there are just so many people who hate us, thousands upon thousands, against so few. In the UK, maybe a core of 20-50, now grown to maybe 200 including a handful of non-Jews who’ve made this fight their own simply because it was the right thing.

Our enemies might think we’re cyphers coordinated by Mossad agents but what became shockingly apparent was how little coordination there is. I’ve connected with many in real life, and others digitally, and it’s mostly just a bunch of normal people with normal jobs who felt compelled to take a stand. The main advantage we’ve had is how clever, insightful and funny some of our number are. Also, facts. And that antisemites tend to be so very thick.

Still though, they come and come, their gaslighting and racism unrelenting. The ironic thing is, the best way to disabuse antisemites of the notion that Jews run the world, to illustrate just how powerless we are, would be for them to try and fight antisemitism.

This week we did have a win, but we also had a very big loss. A virulent repeat offender antisemite will hopefully be going to jail, the hard work of the adults in the room and those organisations that’ve risen to the challenge. But Pete Newbon, one of the most inspiring, funniest and cleverest of the core group who first took a stand for our community has died. He was a true hero, he stood tall and unwavering and it’s time for our institutions to finally get to grips with what’s been going on online and put some resources into the following: therapeutic support; financial support for those who this has turned into a full time job. (Not for me! Obviously I don’t need it, I’ve got a column in the JC); and technical support and social media instruction, with a database of sources and information.

The latter would make it easier so that hopefully those who might be feeling intimidated have the necessary knowledge to be inspired to join in. This may seem ridiculous from the outside, but even a “like” makes a real difference. It shows that we’re a community.