The Emotional & Spiritual Cancer of Assimilated Jews

Sadly, Not Everyone Will Survive the Self-Imposed Blight

In this post-9/11, post-October 7, post-democracy era—amid the digital jihad flooding the legacy and my social media landscape—there’s no better time than now to shine a floodlight on what my mother used to call “assimilated Jews.” When she would accuse me of being one, I took it as though she meant it lovingly. And now that I’ve moved on from actually being one, I know there’s nothing loving about it.

Take the word assimilate—please. The first thing you see is the word ASS, which tells us all we need do know about this subject.

According to Merriam-Webster, to assimilate means:

1. To take in and make part of a body or system.
   Translation: What happens when you surrender your Jewish identity, regurgitating propaganda spoon-fed by people who will celebrate your death.

2. To absorb into the cultural tradition of a population or group.
   Translation: Disappearing into someone else’s nonsense, convinced that people who support terrorists will protect you because you march in lockstep with their rhetoric.

3. To make similar.
   Translation: Your fecklessness weakens your resolve to stand up for your own people.

Being an assimilated Jew doesn't neutralize you, in fact it’s most likely the after effect of being propagandized. So, I’d like to officially declare the disease of assimilation —in Jews particularly — and label it — ESC, Emotional and Spiritual Cancer — a condition which causes you to shed your history, be lulled into someone else’s narrative, hollowing out your true identity until there’s nothing left, and you can look in the mirror and see who you desperately want to be.

Assimilation doesn’t just weaken your Jewishness. It eats away at it. It weaponizes your best instincts to turn against your own people and yourself. Don’t believe me? Ask any Kapo. Oh wait—you can’t — they’re dead.

Assimilated Jews aren’t righteous dissidents. They’re collaborators, especially those who chant “genocide” because Hamas addicts told them to. That’s the crowd you’re desperately seeking to be “in” with — unpaid interns for terrorists. (The paid ones are the ones who looped you assimilated Jews in because it’s their jobs.) When you repeat words crafted to “Free Palestine” by Qatar, Iran, or Hamas, you’re not speaking the truth—you’re spewing words in support of death to your own people.

I know this disease well because I suffered from it. Not the same strain as the current mob donning keffiyehs covering their faces — to cover their meeskite faces. I was more of a garden variety assimilated Jew. I spent years numbing myself with every kind of chazerai, desperate to blend in with the so-called cool kids. I grew up being bullied in school for being the fat Jew, haunted by the knowledge of my Holocaust survivor parents — hearing the nightmares they lived through to where assimilation felt like a way out. Hence the self-prescribed anesthesia.

For a long while, I thought assimilation kept me safe but it was an illusion. Then came the first wake up call that I needed a round of emotional chemo: Charlottesville, 2017. Nazis marching with torches chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” No amount of blending in protected me. Assimilation could have killed me. The insanity of actually hearing myself say that I was grateful that my parents weren’t alive to see this was more than I needed to realize that change was imminent.

The final emotional chemo was brutal and cleansing: October 7, 2023. Hamas’s massacre stripped away the last illusions. It purged the ESC from my body and soul. I survived. Many won’t. It confirmed my belief in everything is a teaching moment and an opportunity to grow and love yourself more.

Today antisemitism is shouted in the streets, on campuses, and in the New York Times opinion section. And assimilated Jews nod along, eager for approval, marching to chants written for Gaza — a dubious call indeed.

Assimilation whispers: Keep your head down. Distance yourself from the loud Jews, the proud Jews. Maybe then you’ll be liked. But silence doesn’t buy safety. It buys oblivion. History doesn’t remember Jews who apologized for existing. It remembers the ones who survived by refusing to. Like my parents.

ESC and assimilation is a terminal illness if left untreated. But there is a cure. Reconnection doesn’t mean aliyah or instant religiosity. It means re-anchoring yourself in Jewish history, peoplehood, dignity. It means reclaiming pride without apology. The world doesn’t need more Jews begging for approval from people who want them gone. It needs Jews unapologetically living, building, defending life.

The choice is stark: remain assimilated and die slowly of ESC, or reconnect and live with soul. The cure is courage, connection, and pride. The choice is yours.