The Long Brief: Survival by Design

Why Jewish economic relevance has repeatedly functioned as a hedge against vulnerability — and why tolerance alone never has.

Shalom, friends.

There’s a moment I keep coming back to regularly as I read news and receive too many WhatsApp pings.

A few months ago, I was on a call with a Jewish communal professional — smart, serious, deeply committed. We weren’t talking ideology. We weren’t talking theology. We were talking budgets. Security budgets. Insurance. Donor fatigue. And at one point, almost offhandedly, she said something like: “We’re fine. We’re relevant. People need us.”

She didn’t mean morally. She didn’t mean spiritually. She meant economically. Institutionally. Politically.

And it stuck with me — not because it sounded reassuring, but because it sounded familiar. Too familiar. Too naive.

Those words could have been uttered in medieval Frankfurt. Or early modern Vienna. Or Berlin in 1928. Over the course of history, some version of it has been said many times before. Whether quietly, proudly, or desperately.

This long brief started as an attempt to interrogate that instinct — not to flatter it, not to dismiss it, but to examine it honestly. When has Jewish economic relevance actually protected Jews? When did it merely delay catastrophe? And what happens when relevance disappears?

What follows is not a celebration of success, and not a catalogue of victimhood. It’s an attempt to trace a pattern — uncomfortable, durable, and deeply instructive — from the Diaspora to the State of Israel.