Jewish people make up roughly 2% of the U.S. population, but are the targets of 15% of all reported hate crimes. It’s just one of many staggering statistics on antisemitic crimes and other bias-related incidents that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has collected as the leading anti-hate organization in the world, their mission is to stop the defamation of the Jewish people
But as valuable as the data is, it doesn’t tell the story of the Jewish experience—it can’t communicate the immense toll that antisemitism takes on individual lives across the U.S. If the ADL wanted to further its decades-long mission to combat antisemitism, counter extremism, and ensure a just and inclusive society for all, it had to show the faces behind the numbers.
The nonprofit’s objective became clear. It needed to craft a piece of content that captured real experiences of antisemitism and personal accounts of what it means to be Jewish that would have an emotional impact on viewers, and inspire them to take action.
At the same time, the ADL didn’t want the audience to walk away feeling like everything was doom and gloom; rather it aimed to foster a sense of hope and relay the Jewish community’s desire to open up a dialogue and tell their story.
How do you tell the story of a persecuted people in a 60-second video? The short answer is: You don’t. So the ADL committed to creating a different style long-form piece of content that effectively communicated its messaging and captured the faces of the victims of antisemitism.
To make it happen, the organization recruited not just one or two participants to be featured in the video, but a group of everyday people who reflected the broad spectrum of what Judaism looks like. There were no actors. No scripts. No pomp and circumstance. With a small living room-inspired setup and a simple backdrop, the ADL let the participants’ stories take center stage—especially their personal experiences with antisemitism.
The diversity theme was driven home from the get-go. 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, actor, business person, musician, Rabbi, ICU nurse, college student, mother, father, Israeli... and the list goes on. When asked about how they define their relationship with Judaism, or what their family and community traditions are, 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 and bigotry, from being spit on to being followed to school to having rocks thrown at them. The world “heartbreak” was mentioned more than once, and the participants’ pain was palpable. This unique approach personalized antisemitism while educating the audience on the many different faces antisemitism can look like.
Indeed, if viewers had any Jewish stereotypes, or generalized notions of what antisemitism looks like, lingering in their minds, the content ensured that they walked away more informed, and more prepared to act. Statistics might be easy to ignore, but real-world comments like “hate is part of the Jewish experience” are not.
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.
This project was just completed and released in market, so we don’t yet have hard metrics to measure its success. It has, however, been adapted into social cut-downs to raise awareness around antisemitism. The film has been incredibly well-received internally and by the ADLs social media community. Most importantly, we’ve told an authentic, moving story about the trauma that millions of everyday people face every day.
