An Open Letter to University Presidents
7 min read
Looking at events from a larger, historical perspective gives you a more comprehensive, nuanced outlook.
Recency bias is the tendency to place extra emphasis on experiences that are freshest in one’s memory, usually at the expense of previous or other experiences which are just as important or consequential.
In behavioral economics, it is a cognitive error whereby people incorrectly — and often irrationally — believe that recent events will occur again, leading people to make emotional and irrational decisions.
Recency bias causes Jews to make short-term decisions incompatible with the nation’s long-term goals.
Throughout the Jewish world, recency bias is hurting the Jewish people, causing Jews to make short-term decisions incompatible with the nation’s long-term goals, such as Jewish unity and the fight against antisemitism.
Here are three examples of recency bias amongst Jews today, and suggestions for overcoming them to gain a more comprehensive, nuanced outlook.
Nowadays, many people perceive Israel as the aggressor whenever a military conflict arises between the Jewish country and Palestinian factions, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. If you look at the results of these conflicts — thanks to Israel’s overwhelming military might — then it’s easy to view Israel as the aggressor.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg.
If we look at the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s clear that Israel’s enemies, past and present, seek power. To harm or damage Israel, therefore, is an attempt at achieving power. On the other hand, most of Israel’s responses have been that of survival, not power.
For example, Hamas was founded in 1987, soon after the First Intifada broke out, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which in its Gaza branch had previously been non-confrontational toward Israel and hostile to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Co-founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, and the Hamas Charter affirmed, that Hamas was founded to liberate Palestine, including modern-day Israel, from Israeli occupation and to establish an Islamic state in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.
Yet, in 1947, the Jewish Agency for Palestine and most Zionist factions accepted the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine — a resolution that recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States and a Special International Regime for the city of Jerusalem. And why the Arab Higher Committee, the Arab League, and other Arab leaders and governments rejected it and indicated an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial division.
The result was a series of military conflicts in which various Arab countries were the aggressors, including the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, and so forth. With every victory, Israel strengthened itself economically, militarily, politically, and otherwise. It also took preemptive steps to defend itself, such as increasing its borders and other measures, which undoubtedly inflamed the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. But, again, this was primarily a reaction to history, not a revision of it.
The point is not that Israel is right; Israel has wronged and been wronged, just like every country, past and present. Rather, the point is that there is so much nuance and history. Today’s military conflicts, as well as our culture of headline-reading and short-form content, don’t do the Israeli-Palestinian conflict any justice — for both sides.
Fortunately, there are tons of books, YouTube videos, and other resources for us to learn more about all of this history, which is a great place to better understand and start trying to solve the conflicts of today.
The Holocaust was an unspeakable and horrific series of events that we must continue to learn about and expose to generation after generation, both Jews and non-Jews alike.
By making so much of Jewish history about the Holocaust, we cloud the Jewish people’s remarkable 3,300-year history.
When it comes to recency bias, the Holocaust is not the problem; it’s the overemphasis on the Holocaust at the expense of the rest of Jewish history. By making so much of Jewish history about the Holocaust, as well as the events preceding and succeeding it, we cloud the Jewish people’s remarkable 3,300-year history.
We also tarnish the Jewish people’s “brand,” from one predominantly of victimhood, discrimination, persecution and suffering, to one of peoplehood, perseverance, wisdom, ingenuity, values, and self-determination.
Don’t just take it from me. When I recently visited the ANU – Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv following its $100-million, 10-year renovation, I noticed that the Holocaust was significantly underplayed; amongst the museum’s three massive floors, only a small room tucked away in the corner of the second floor is dedicated to the Holocaust.
In an episode of This Israeli Life, which I produced for IZZY — the Israeli TV streaming platform I founded in 2020 — Dr. Orit Shaham Gover told me that the Holocaust wasn’t a focal point by design because, when they started to look back into Jewish history, they found prosperity.
“Economic prosperity, cultural prosperity, ingenuity, a lot of cultural dialogue,” she said. “And this cultural involvement is the essence of the Jewish story, not the persecution and killing and atrocities. It’s not that we don’t relate to the atrocities in the museum; we do in the historical context when they happened, where they happened. But not as the lenses through which we look at the Jewish story.”
Hence why it’s imperative that Jewish education and Jewish dialogue involve the entirety of Jewish history — the so-called good, bad, and ugly. Of course, this means we must know history in order to speak about and teach it, and the internet has made access to this knowledge incredibly accessible, not to mention enticing and enjoyable.
There seems to be a presiding mindset that Jews, today and in the future, will be just fine and dandy living in the Diaspora. That the Holocaust was our absolute low point and there’s just no way Jews living outside of the Jewish state will ever be endangered again.
The question is not whether there will be another Holocaust, but rather: Will a meaningful number of Jews again face unjust persecution or violence, just like they have countless times in our past?
The answer, unfortunately, is “quite likely” because, if you study Jewish history, you quickly learn that persecutory events against Jews look and feel starkly different, such as the Holocaust, the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132 A.C.E., and the Kishinev pogrom in 1903.
So, will a Holocaust happen again? Probably not. But tjat isn’t the proper question, because the Holocaust is not the only type of persecution or violence that Jews have faced.
There’s another recency bias at play here, on the other side of the Holocaust spectrum: that things have generally been good for Jews across the globe since the Holocaust. The world is certainly different now than it was back then, but it’s not a new world with new creatures. It’s still the same world, with the same human tendencies and the same political and socioeconomic forces.
Presuming that Jewish persecution and violence are suddenly dead in their tracks is simply ignorant. If it can happen to Moses in 133 A.C.E. and Vera in 1540 and Max in 1903, it can happen to you in 2023 or your kids in 2047 or your grandkids in 2092. These are not scare tactics; I’m just calling it like it is.
