Illustrative: Demonstrators hold Palestinian flags and placards that read “Free Palestine” during a Jan. 19, 2022 demonstration outside in London. Photo: Hesther Ng / SOPA Images/Sipa USA

When a streamer chasing viral content confronted Jerry Seinfeld outside Madison Square Garden after a Knicks game and demanded that he say “Free Palestine,” Seinfeld declined and challenged the premise behind the slogan.

Agree or disagree with his response. That is not the point. The point is that he said what he believed without first asking permission.

In contemporary America, that alone has become noteworthy.

What struck me was not Seinfeld’s position. It was the rarity of his willingness to express it. In an age of carefully calibrated public statements, corporate-approved talking points, and endless fear of social media backlash, more and more people seem reluctant to say plainly what they think. They speak in euphemisms; they hedge; they self-censor; and they remain silent.

For a people whose very peoplehood was built on argument, Jews have become surprisingly hesitant to argue.

If there was a moment that exposed this hesitation, it was October 7. Jews watched as the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was almost immediately reframed in many quarters as a discussion about Israeli culpability. Murder became context. Hostages became footnotes. Terrorists became symbols of resistance. On campuses, in professional organizations, and across social media, slogans displaced inquiry and certainty replaced curiosity.

As a professor watching these sentiments creep on collegiate campuses for decades, I was not shocked. What was shocking was how many Jews who had something to say concluded it was safer not to say it.

Some stayed quiet because they feared professional consequences. Others feared social isolation. Still others worried that speaking honestly would jeopardize friendships, careers, or standing within institutions they valued.

Those fears are not imaginary. I have spent years studying self-censorship, viewpoint discrimination, and the pressures commonly grouped under the term “cancel culture,” and the data are unambiguous. Eric Kaufmann’s analysis of FIRE’s large-scale campus surveys found that the share of Jewish students at Ivy League schools who reported self-censoring several times a week roughly tripled after October 7 – from the low teens to 35 percent in 2024 – and climbed higher still once the encampments went up. People lose opportunities. They become targets. They learn that certain opinions carry costs. The incentives encouraging silence are real.

But Jews should be uniquely resistant to the proposition that social comfort matters more than truth. Jewish civilization may be history’s greatest culture of principled disagreement.

Abraham argues with God over the fate of Sodom. Moses challenges divine judgment after the Golden Calf. The Talmud preserves centuries of disputes among scholars who disagreed sharply, publicly, and often without resolution. The Passover Seder is structured around questions. Jewish children are taught not merely to learn answers but to ask why.

Our tradition did not merely tolerate disagreement. It sanctified it.

“Every dispute that is for the sake of Heaven will in the end endure,” teaches Pirkei Avot (5:17). The Mishnah points to the disputes between the Houses of Hillel and Shammai as its model. These debates were not viewed as threats to communal life. They were viewed as essential to it. The purpose was not unanimity. The purpose was wisdom.

Indeed, the Talmud goes further. Regarding the competing interpretations of Hillel and Shammai, it declares: “These and these are the words of the living God.”

Imagine how foreign that sounds today. We increasingly inhabit a culture that treats disagreement as a form of aggression. To challenge an idea is interpreted as an attack on a person. To dissent from a fashionable consensus is treated as evidence of moral deficiency. The goal is no longer persuasion. It is compliance.

Jews should know better. We are descendants of people who argued with God. Our founding story is not obedience. It is argument.

Why, then, are we afraid of faculty meetings? Why are we afraid of awkward dinner parties? Why are we afraid of being disliked?

None of this requires agreement. Jews have never agreed about politics, theology, law, or communal priorities. We certainly do not agree about Israel, nor should we expect to. One can support the Israeli government, oppose it, or occupy the vast territory in between. The question is not what Jews think. The question is whether Jews still possess the confidence to say what they think.

This is one reason Seinfeld’s response resonated. Comedians possess a particular gift. Their craft requires them to identify the gap between reality and performance. They notice contradictions. They puncture euphemisms. They expose fashionable nonsense. Their job is not to repeat approved slogans but to test them.

There is something deeply Jewish about that instinct. The rabbi and the comedian have more in common than we often acknowledge. Both challenge assumptions. Both ask uncomfortable questions. Both probe ideas others take for granted. Both refuse to accept a proposition simply because it has become popular. From the academies of Babylonia to the stages of the Borscht Belt, Jewish culture has long rewarded those willing to ask a simple question: Does this actually make sense?

It is no accident that Jews became disproportionately represented among lawyers, journalists, scholars, and comedians – professions that reward skepticism, inquiry, and a willingness to challenge prevailing opinion.

Those habits are now under strain. Too many Jews have come to believe that social acceptance depends upon silence. Too many have accepted the premise that expressing unpopular views is inherently dangerous. And too many have forgotten that Jewish history is, in many respects, the story of a people who survived precisely because they refused to stop speaking.

Jewish civilization was not built by people who kept their heads down. It was built by people who asked one more question. Abraham asked one more question. The rabbis asked one more question. The scholars, lawyers, journalists, dissidents, and comedians who followed asked one more question.

The world has never lacked for slogans. What it lacks – and what Jews have historically supplied – are people willing to challenge them.

For centuries, Jews survived because we refused to confuse power with truth. We questioned emperors. We questioned priests. We questioned governments. We questioned one another.

Now, too often, we question ourselves into silence. Jerry Seinfeld’s comment will be forgotten in a week. The larger question will remain. Are Jews still the people who ask difficult questions or have we become so afraid of disapproval that we no longer dare give honest answers?

Our ancestors argued with God. We have no business being afraid of each other.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute