Why Can the Mere Existence of a Different Identity Feel Threatening to Someone Seeking Validation?
Why can another group’s distinct identity feel like a threat even when it is not directly harming us?
This source-based Torah essay offers a theological and homiletic reading of Jewish distinctiveness and antisemitism through Parashat Balak. Its central question is broader: why can another identity be experienced as a challenge to one’s own self-justification? The essay’s historical examples, quotations, and causal explanation of antisemitism remain source-framed and require independent verification; they are not presented here as established social-science conclusions or as generalizations about non-Jews.