What Rising Antisemitism Means for Our Seder Tables

Resources, Conversations & Jewish Resilience for Families in 2026

by Rabbi Amy Rader  •  The Neshamah Institute

“In every generation they rise up against us to destroy us, and the Holy Blessed One saves us from their hands.” – Passover Haggadah, V’hi She’amda

I want to begin with something honest.

This Passover feels different. Not because the holiday has changed — the matzah, the maror, the four cups, the ancient words are the same. But we, the people sitting around the table, are different. We are tired. We are watchful. Some of us are grieving. And nearly all of us are carrying something that our parents and grandparents hoped we would never have to carry again: the weight of knowing that simply being Jewish, in this moment in history, can make us a target.

Since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Jewish communities around the world have watched antisemitism surge to levels not seen in decades. On college campuses, in city streets, on social media feeds — our people have been threatened, isolated, attacked, and told that their pain does not count.

And yet — here we are. Setting the table. Filling the cups. Beginning again.

That, too, is a Jewish thing.

This article is for every family sitting down to a seder in 2026. It is for the parent who doesn’t know how to answer their child’s question about why someone at school said something ugly about Jews. It is for the grandparent who remembers a time when these fears felt safely in the past. It is for the person who has been avoiding Jewish spaces, who has hidden their Star of David, who has felt alone in this.

You are not alone. And the seder was made for exactly this moment.

The Climate We Are Sitting In

What the Numbers Tell Us

Before we can teach our children, we need to understand the landscape. The data from the past year is sobering.

91%  of American Jews say they feel less safe as a Jewish person in the U.S. as a result of violent antisemitic attacks in 2025, including murders, bombings, and arson. (AJC, February 2026)

73%  of American Jews have experienced antisemitism online — the highest level ever recorded in this survey’s history. (AJC, 2025)

42%  of American Jewish college students report experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus — up from 35% the year prior. (AJC, 2025)

66%  of American Jews say Jews in the United States are less secure than the year before. (AJC, 2025)

2.2 billion  adults worldwide — nearly half the global adult population — harbor deeply entrenched antisemitic attitudes, according to a 2025 ADL global survey.

These are not abstract numbers. They are the woman who removes her Star of David necklace before going to work. The college student who doesn’t mention Israel in a classroom conversation. The family who debates whether to put a mezuzah on the door of their new home. They are us.

And 2025 was also marked by tragedy: the murders of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., after an American Jewish Committee event; a firebombing at a Boulder, Colorado march in support of the hostages; and an arson attack on the Pennsylvania Governor’s residence during Passover. These were not isolated incidents. They were part of a pattern.

A Note on Complexity

Jews do not all think alike — about Israel, about politics, about the best response to antisemitism. The Jewish community is not a monolith, and this blog post is not a political argument. Reasonable people disagree, often passionately, about policy, about the conduct of the war in Gaza, about what justice requires in the Middle East.

What is not a matter of reasonable disagreement is this: antisemitism is wrong. Targeting Jewish people — in person, online, on campuses, in the streets — because of their religion or their connection to Israel is wrong. And the Passover seder, with its ancient insistence that every generation must see itself as having personally left Egypt, gives us a profound framework for responding to this moment with both clarity and compassion.

We can hold complexity and still name hatred as hatred.

What Happened to Israel — and What It Means for the Seder

From October 7 to Passover 5785

On October 7, 2023 — Shemini Atzeret, the last day of Sukkot — Hamas launched the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. 1,200 people were murdered. 251 were taken hostage to Gaza, including children, elderly people, and soldiers.

For 843 days, the hostage crisis defined the life of Israel and the Jewish world. Families left empty seats at every seder table. Israelis held seders at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, singing Dayenu with yellow ribbons on their clothing and the faces of the missing printed on the Haggadah.

This Passover, we mark something painful and significant: as of January 26, 2026, all hostages have been accounted for. The last, Ran Gvili — a 24-year-old police officer who died rescuing survivors at the Nova music festival — was recovered from a cemetery in Gaza. His body came home 843 days after he was taken.

“There are no more hostages in Gaza,” Prime Minister Netanyahu told the Israeli Knesset on January 26, 2026, removing the yellow ribbon pin that Israeli leaders had worn throughout the war.

168 hostages were returned alive. 85 were brought home in caskets. For their families, for Israel, for all of us — there is relief, and there is grief without bottom. There is no clean ending to this story. There is only the obligation to remember.

The Hostage Chair: A Ritual for This Year’s Seder

Last year, families around the world set an empty chair at their seder table — a physical embodiment of the 59 who were still held in Gaza. This year, the chair takes on a different meaning. We set it now as a memorial, a witness, a refusal to forget.

Consider adding this to your seder:

• Place an empty chair and say: “This chair is for the 85 who came home in caskets. For the 168 who came home broken and brave. For the families who are still healing. For the 1,200 who were murdered on a holiday morning when they thought the world was safe. We do not forget them.”
• Say the names of those from your own circles — or choose a hostage family to honor and learn about before the seder.
• Sing a verse of Ani Ma’amin — “I believe with complete faith in the coming of the Messiah” — the song that sustained Jewish hope through the darkest chapters of our history.

The Connection Between Then and Now

Our Haggadah contains a passage called V’hi She’amda — “And this is what has stood for our ancestors and for us.” It is one of the most remarkable passages in Jewish liturgy, because it is honest about history in a way that most religious texts are not:

“In every generation they rise up against us to destroy us, and the Holy Blessed One saves us from their hands.”

The passage doesn’t say “once, long ago, an enemy rose up.” It says: in every generation. It names a pattern. And it places our current experience inside a story that is thousands of years old — which is not a reason for despair, but for the opposite.

We are still here. That is the miracle the seder celebrates.

The Israelites left Egypt. They crossed the sea. They built a life and a people and a literature and a law. And when enemies rose against them in Persia, in Rome, in Spain, in Europe — they survived those too. Not without loss. Not without scars. But they survived.

We are part of that story. And the seder table is where we tell it to our children.

Talking to Your Children: Age-by-Age Guidance

Why This Conversation Cannot Wait

Many parents instinctively want to protect their children from the ugliness of antisemitism for as long as possible. That instinct comes from love. But Jewish tradition takes a different approach: we tell hard stories at the seder table precisely because we believe that naming reality is better than sheltering children from it.

Children who don’t have a framework for understanding antisemitism are more vulnerable — not less — when they encounter it. A child who knows: “Jews have faced hatred before, and we have survived, and we have people who love us and a tradition that holds us” is a child who can withstand what they might hear on a bus, in a classroom, in a comment section.

Here is how to approach the conversation by age:

Ages 5–8: Simple, Grounded, Safe

Children this age can understand: some people say mean things about Jewish people, and that is wrong. They don’t need historical context yet — they need to feel safe.

• “Our family is Jewish. That means we’re part of a very old, very special people with wonderful stories and traditions.”
• “Sometimes people say unkind things about Jewish people. That’s called antisemitism, and it’s always wrong — just like any other kind of meanness based on who someone is.”
• “If anyone ever says something mean to you about being Jewish, you can always tell a grown-up you trust. And you can always tell me.”
• “The people at our seder table — we’re your people. We love you. You are safe.”

Ages 9–12: History and Identity

Children this age can begin to understand patterns — the fact that antisemitism has recurred across time, and what that means for Jewish identity.

• Introduce the concept of the Exodus as one chapter in a longer story of Jewish survival. “The Haggadah tells us that in every generation, enemies rise against us. We’ve been through hard times before. We’re still here.”
• Talk about what happened on October 7. Use simple, honest language — not graphic detail, but truth: Hamas attacked Israel and hurt many people, including children. Many were taken captive. The Jewish world spent two years trying to bring them home.
• Connect it to Passover: “When we talk about the narrow place — Mitzrayim — at the seder, we mean not just Egypt long ago, but the hard places people face now too. That’s what the holiday teaches us: that freedom matters, and people deserve to be safe.”
• Encourage questions. If your child has encountered antisemitism at school, the seder is a safe place to name it and process it.

Ages 13 and Up: Nuance, Values, and Standing Up

Teenagers are encountering antisemitism in real time — on social media, on campuses, in political discourse. They need both truth and tools.

• Be honest about what is happening: the statistics, the incidents, the way anti-Israel sentiment has sometimes crossed into antisemitism and targeted Jewish students who have nothing to do with Israeli government policy.
• Help them distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies (which is political speech and can be part of honest conversation) and antisemitism (which targets Jewish people, denies Israel’s right to exist, or holds Jews collectively responsible for political decisions).
• Teach the concept of upstander versus bystander — the Jewish value of lo taamod al dam re’echa: “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.” How do we speak up when we witness hate, whether it targets Jews or anyone else?
• Let them lead a conversation at the seder about what it means to be Jewish in this moment, and what they feel called to do about it.

Connecting Passover to the Present: Seder Table Teachings

V’hi She’amda: The Passage That Holds Everything

During the Maggid section of the seder, consider pausing at V’hi She’amda and inviting your table into a conversation:

“In every generation they rise up against us to destroy us, and the Holy Blessed One saves us from their hands.”

• “Does this feel true to you right now? What does it feel like to be Jewish in 2026?”
• “What does it mean that the Haggadah names this pattern so directly — without minimizing it, but also without despair?”
• “Who has ‘stood for us’ in our own time — friends, allies, institutions, individuals who have spoken out against antisemitism?”
• “What does it mean to be saved ‘from their hands’? What do we have to do, and what are we trusting something beyond us to do?”

The Four Children — and the Four Responses to Hatred

The Haggadah’s four children can be read as four ways people respond to antisemitism in our own time:

The Wise Child asks: How do we understand what is happening, historically and theologically? What does our tradition say about resilience and response?

The Wicked Child — more accurately, the alienated child — says: This has nothing to do with me. I’m not part of this. The Haggadah’s response is not to expel them but to engage them — to say: this is your story whether you claim it or not.

The Simple Child asks: Why are people angry at us? Why does any of this matter? The simple answer: because we exist, and we have always existed, and our existence has always provoked both wonder and hostility.

The Child Who Does Not Know How to Ask sits with the weight of it — overwhelmed, uncertain, perhaps afraid to name what they feel. To that child, the Haggadah says: you begin for them. You open the door. You start the conversation.

Which child do you recognize at your table this year? Which one are you?

The Empty Chair and the Hostage Haggadah

Families of the hostages created a special Haggadah supplement during the crisis years, weaving the story of the hostages into the seder liturgy. Even though all hostages have now been accounted for, these materials remain powerful as a memorial and teaching tool.

• The Hostages and Missing Families Forum (bringthemhomenow.org) has made memorial seder resources available for download.
• The American Jewish Committee (ajc.org) has Passover educational materials connecting the holiday to the themes of October 7 and Jewish resilience.
• Consider printing the names of those who did not survive and placing them near the seder plate as a way of bearing witness.

Resources: What to Read, Watch, and Share

Below are vetted resources for families who want to go deeper before or after the seder. These are organized by purpose.

A Pastoral Word: For Those Who Are Struggling

I want to speak directly to those of you who are finding this Passover particularly heavy.

If you have hidden your Jewish identity in the past two years — removed jewelry, avoided synagogue, stayed quiet in conversations where you once would have spoken — I want you to know: you are not alone, and you have nothing to be ashamed of. Fear is a reasonable response to a threatening environment. Your safety matters.

And I also want to say this: the Passover seder is an act of defiance.

When the Israelites gathered in Egypt on the night of the Exodus, they were told to eat standing up, dressed for travel, in haste. They did not know if they would survive the night. And yet they gathered. They ate together. They told the story. They trusted that morning would come.

Every seder table set in 2026 is an act in that same tradition. It says: we are still here. We remember. We will not disappear into fear or silence. We will light the candles, fill the cups, ask the questions, and eat the bitter herbs — and then we will eat the meal together, because we are a people who celebrate even from the narrow place.

“The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the essential thing is not to be afraid.” — Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

The bridge is narrow right now. Walk it anyway. Walk it together.

Closing: What We Owe the Story

The Passover Haggadah ends with a declaration: L’shana haba’ah biYerushalayim — “Next year in Jerusalem.” For two thousand years of exile, that phrase was hope. For the generation that built the State of Israel, it became possibility. For us, in 2026, it carries both weight and wonder.

Jerusalem is a real place where real people — including people who went through 843 days of horror — are still trying to build a life in safety. It is also a symbol: the city of wholeness, of shalom, of a world repaired enough to be called home.

We are not there yet. We know we are not there yet. The seder holds that too — the matzah that is both the bread of affliction and the bread of hope, the salt water that is both tears and sea, the bitter herbs and the sweet charoset on the same plate.

Our job this Passover is not to resolve everything. It is to show up. To set the table. To tell the story. To make sure every person sitting with us — child, teenager, newcomer, skeptic, mourner, and celebrant alike — feels that they are part of something that has survived worse than this, and will survive this too.

Chag Pesach Sameach. A meaningful, strengthening, and courageous Passover to you and all those you love.

— Rabbi Amy Rader, The Neshamah Institute

About Rabbi Amy Rader & The Neshamah Institute

Rabbi Amy Rader is the founder and Senior Rabbi of The Neshamah Institute, a synagogue without walls serving the Jewish community of Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and greater Palm Beach County, Florida. Neshamah offers Shabbat services, High Holy Days, Passover programming, Jewish education, and a safe, caring community for Jews of all backgrounds — including interfaith families, unaffiliated Jews, and anyone seeking meaningful Jewish community in South Florida without membership dues or obligations.

If this article spoke to something you’ve been carrying, you don’t have to carry it alone.

The Neshamah Institute is a Jewish community in South Florida where hard conversations are welcomed, questions are honored, and every person — regardless of background — is genuinely embraced. We would love to connect with you. Visit niboca.org to learn more, or reach out directly. Rabbi Amy personally responds to every message.

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