Impact to Action: Stories of Jewish Identity & Antisemitism

As the leading anti-hate organization in the world, the ADL has a treasure trove of data on hate crimes and antisemitic incidents. But data doesn’t tell the story of the Jewish experience—it can’t communicate the personal toll that antisemitism takes on individual lives across the U.S. To continue working towards a just and inclusive society for all, the organization put away its charts and graphs, and picked up a camera to show the faces behind the numbers.

But you can’t tell the story of a persecuted people in a 60-second video. So the ADL committed to creating a long-form piece of content that effectively communicated its messaging and captured real stories of antisemitism. The organization recruited a group of everyday people who reflected the broad spectrum of what Judaism looks like. There were no actors. No pomp and circumstance. The ADL let the participants’ stories take center stage—especially their experiences with antisemitism.

Within the first minute of the video, contributors share their (widely varying) names, as well as how they identify in the world. The answers run the gamut—teacher, business person, musician, Rabbi, ICU nurse, student, Israeli... the list goes on. When asked about how they define their relationship with Judaism, or about community traditions, the responses are just as varied.

Equally important is the light that the ADL shined on the prevalence of antisemitic incidents, which served as another avenue for corroborating the organization’s data, but more importantly, presenting it in a way that felt tangible to the audience. Each individual in the video shared their raw, firsthand experience with racism, from being spit on to being followed home. This approach personalized the organization’s data while educating the audience on the realities of antisemitism.

The ADL, and much of the Jewish population, are invested in driving this discourse forward and building a sense of optimism for a just and inclusive way forward—and the content needed to reflect that. Accordingly, the organization reserved the last segment of the video to focus on the contributors’ hopes for the future, and ideas for driving progress.