The Jewish world needs game theorists as well as historians

(Oct. 14, 2026 / JNS)

The Jewish world needs game theorists as well as historians. That is no insult to historians. Few populations have greater reason to remember expulsions, pogroms, inquisitions, blood libels and betrayals. History explains why conspiracies about Jewish money resemble medieval fantasies about usury, and why accusations of dual loyalty have such an unpleasant pedigree.

Yet Jewish advocates should spend more time with game theorists. Game theory studies strategic interaction: how people respond to one another, anticipate reactions and adjust their behavior. It examines incentives, signaling, deterrence, credibility and repeated encounters. Instead of merely asking whether something is wrong, it asks what might actually change it.

The use of game theory is necessary because things that work are in short supply in the battle against antisemitism. Jewish advocacy organizations excel at documentation: They count incidents, classify rhetoric, publish surveys, educate journalists and explain how contemporary language echoes older hatreds.

The data is grim. The Anti-Defamation League recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2025, the third-highest annual total since its records began. The story is similar across the West.

The problem is clear, but effective responses are less so. Jewish organizations often inadvertently reward the provocateurs they denounce: Someone makes an outrageous claim. Advocacy groups amplify it, journalists call, followers multiply and donations arrive. Everyone congratulates themselves on exposing antisemitism.

Antisemites disrupt a Jewish university event. Jewish organizations issue furious statements, the incident becomes national news, social media explodes, and administrators convene. What lesson has been communicated?

Jewish advocates may believe they have demonstrated vigilance. The Jew-haters may conclude they have discovered an excellent publicity machine.

That is a game-theoretic problem.

A better approach might begin before the event, with written enforcement protocols, predetermined consequences for disruption and clear procedures if administrators fail to act. If those rules are ignored, advocates can pursue legitimate institutional or legal remedies. The objective is not to win another argument about whether Jews may hold meetings undisturbed. It is to make disruption and institutional tolerance of disruption predictably costly.

The same applies to politicians who discover that generic condemnations satisfy communal leaders, or university presidents who learn that commissioning a task force buys six months of inaction. No conspiracy is necessary. They are responding to incentives. Reward behavior consistently and you will get more of it.

Sometimes, the smarter response is to document the offense, report genuine rule violations and warn those who need warning, while denying an attention-seeker the mass audience he wants.

This requires judgment. A major politician spreading an antisemitic conspiracy cannot be ignored; nor can a genuine threat. But a cabinet member and an anonymous account with 600 followers should not receive equal attention. Sometimes, exposure is essential; sometimes public pressure is the only way to force institutional action.

Game theory offers no commandments. It asks what behavior a response rewards, what precedent it establishes and what a rational opponent will do next.

These questions are too often absent from Jewish advocacy. History has trained Jews to explain themselves. For centuries, misunderstanding could be lethal, so Jews became accomplished at defending their position. The instinct survives.

Yet every answer tacitly accepts that an accusation deserves an answer. An asymmetry develops: One side invents allegations at virtually no intellectual cost; the other produces a doctoral thesis, by which time the attacker has moved on to another lie. Jews, befitting a people who value learning, treat the contest as scholarship. It should be about the economics of communication.

Deterrence depends on expectations. The other party must believe certain behavior will predictably produce an undesirable consequence. Credibility matters more than indignation.

Jewish organizations understand this in terms of physical security. Synagogues do not deter attackers by explaining why attacking synagogues is antisemitic. They install barriers, cameras, guards and procedures that alter an attacker’s calculations.

Strangely, this clarity often evaporates in the cultural sphere. Consider an employer who responds to repeated discrimination against Jewish staff with another human resources meeting and a recycled memo about inclusion. Nothing in that arrangement encourages meaningful change. But if documented discrimination leads to formal complaints, regulatory scrutiny, litigation or financial liability, protecting Jewish employees becomes the cheaper option.

The reluctance to think this way reflects a deeply ingrained assumption: If people understood antisemitism properly, they would stop being antisemitic.

That is an attractive idea, but it is often wrong.

If hostility toward Zionists brings status within a political tribe, attracts followers, demonstrates ideological purity and wins peer approval, a history lesson about blood libels will accomplish little. An antisemitic individual’s problem is not inadequate information. It is that his incentives are functioning perfectly.

Much contemporary antisemitism operates inside prestige systems. Certain beliefs confer membership and signal virtue. Humans crave belonging, and condemnation from the opposing camp might make the applause louder. “The ADL says I am antisemitic” can be a badge of honor. Thus, traditional defensive measures become ineffective and even counterproductive.

So, a successful strategy requires more than moral clarity. It requires deciding what victory actually means. Fewer attacks? Stronger enforcement? Institutional sanctions? Greater Jewish confidence? Less amplification of fringe extremists?

These objectives may demand different, even contradictory tactics, but an organization cannot select an intelligent strategy without defining the outcome it seeks.

Stop automatically amplifying people’s desperate desire for attention. Stop rewarding politicians equally for empty words and concrete action. Stop renegotiating institutional boundaries when violations carry no consequences. Stop spending 20 pages rebutting accusations invented in 20 seconds.

Instead, identify the behavior you want to change, determine what rewards it, and alter the incentives through legitimate means. The answer may be education, exposure, litigation, disciplinary action, political pressure, withdrawal of cooperation or deliberate silence. The response should follow the objective, not habit.

History remains indispensable. Strategy without memory is blind. Jews ignorant of antisemitism’s history will mistake old poisons for new perfumes. But memory without strategy can leave a community expert in how its enemies behaved in 1890 and clueless about how to combat them in 2026.

The question Jewish advocates must ask more often is not simply whether an accusation is antisemitic. It is: What happens if we respond this way?