In past decades, citizens of Western societies lived their lives and mapped out their futures more or less in line with the expectation of a slowly changing progression from past to future. Individuals might have experienced events that radically changed their lives for the worse – for instance, a serious illness. But such events mainly influenced personal environments. They had hardly any impact on society at large.

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The term "culture shock" was coined in the 1950s to describe the experience of people who found themselves disoriented when they went abroad. Immigrants, for example, arrived in societies with unfamiliar cultures and often found adaptation difficult. The same could happen to students who went abroad to far-away universities. Even tourists who visited a country for a short time could experience shock at the country's radically different culture.

In certain circumstances, a form of culture shock can affect Westerners while they are in their home environment. This can happen if, for example, asylum seekers from completely different environments are placed in or close to their Western hometowns. Still, the local people's home environment remains largely the same.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused a very different type of culture shock. It affects the essential elements of peoples' lives in their own home environment. Often very personal issues are at stake. These include where one can go, whom one can meet, where one can work and who can visit one's home, which can even include a prohibition against receiving close family members.

A culture shock of this magnitude, affecting a great many people all at once in a variety of countries, has not occurred in most Western societies since World War II. That conflict upended the lives of huge numbers of people, and for a far longer time and to a much greater degree than coronavirus.

There have been major culture shocks in past decades in smaller territories as well. The Greek Civil War, which occurred just after World War II, was one example. Others were the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and the imposition of communism on a number of countries in Middle and Eastern Europe after World War II, which had a huge impact on those societies. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union and the freeing of its satellite countries from communism created yet another culture shock.

The coronavirus culture shock will have a number of layers that will affect individuals, groups and societies at large. There are sizable numbers of "new poor," for example. Many of these people never imagined that they were at such risk. Their reaction to this personal kind of culture shock will be heavily influenced by their self-image.

The culture shock for many of the newly unemployed will probably be significant. The problem is particularly difficult because these people live in societies where unemployment has greatly risen, making it much more difficult to find new work. If companies close factories down, the closures will affect not only the factories' employees but the many others who provide services to the factories and their employees.

People over 50 who find themselves unemployed will have great difficulty finding new work. Women might be particularly hard-hit, as there are indications that more women have lost their jobs during the pandemic than men. This can partly be explained by the fact that more women than men tend to have jobs that involve contact with others.

Young people entering the workforce will be confronted with far higher barriers to employment than they faced prior to the pandemic. Internships and apprenticeships will be much harder to secure. Young people, many of whom are not used to much hardship, will have to cope with more structural societal adversity than did previous generations.

All of this means that many people will have to accept less desirable jobs if they are to work at all. In such a context, those able to take initiative and be resilient will have great advantages over others.

Some people have suffered from the virus more severely than others. After-effects like the loss of the senses of smell or taste might last for people's entire lives. There are indications that mental health problems have multiplied, and professionals might find themselves unable to cope with the increased demand. There are also cases of what might be called long-term disorientation. There is some debate on whether suicides are increasing.

The societal response to those who are suffering may prove to be inadequate or even negligent. In a post-pandemic society, there will probably be less attention paid to individuals' specific problems. The welfare state will be further weakened. The phrase "social justice" is unlikely to disappear from public discourse, but operationally it will get far less attention.

A frequently raised topic is how children will be affected in the long run by the disturbance of their normal lives during the pandemic. If World War II is to be our reference, we might find that compared to adults, children are more resilient and suffer from fewer long-term negative effects from the disruption to their lives caused by the coronavirus.

Not everyone is vulnerable by any means. Not much may change for government employees, for instance, compared to their pre-pandemic lives. Possibly their salaries will be frozen. But still, the societal environment these people will live in after the pandemic will differ from the one before it.

The scale of the problems facing individuals and societies after the pandemic ends is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to forecast. We can, however, identify broad phenomena that will play a role in defining how societies have changed. They may be important enough to represent culture shocks for society at large.

The first phenomenon concerns money. During the pandemic, governments broke generally accepted economic rules concerning budget deficiencies. Several governments injected money into their societies in an unsustainable manner. They will have to allocate budget funds after the pandemic in a much tougher way than before. The shortage of available money versus the accumulated demand of all those who will make claims to receive it is serious. This is likely to lead to far more ferocious battles over funds than in the past.

The second phenomenon concerns civil unrest. There have been many protests against the ways governments made decisions relating to the pandemic. In many countries, there are demonstrations against government measures such as lockdowns and possible forced vaccination. When the pandemic ends, public discontent will likely mutate in other directions that are not yet foreseeable.

Another issue is how government attitudes will change as a result of the pandemic. The policies of those in power toward the crisis were largely trial and error. This has led to policies that differ substantially from country to country. What the states have in common is that their leaders were not elected to deal with this kind of exceptional situation.

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After the pandemic, governments will have to interfere in society more than many of them can justify ideologically. What will this lead to? Will there be new mutations of socialist government due to the need to provide a financial safety net for many more people than before? Or will we see more attempts at authoritarianism? Concerning the latter, it is clear that segments of the public will not let governments get away with the attempt.

Another related issue is trust in the authorities. As governments did not find efficient ways to deal with the pandemic, will the public be able to trust them on other issues? How will this lack of trust express itself? What does this mean for democracy? Is liberal democracy able to deal with the post-pandemic challenges, many of which will likely require a firm hand?

And what about violence in post-coronavirus society? Considering all the new strains on societies, common sense would say that violence is likely to increase. But where and in what circumstances will it erupt, and how will it manifest itself?

Features on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

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From time to time, the idea is raised that Israel should give a formal voice to representatives of Diaspora Jewry regarding decisions that could affect Jews abroad.

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This is a radically misconceived idea. The most obvious reason is that as a sovereign state, Israel should not share any part of its sovereignty, however small, with Jews abroad.

Israel has been very generous in its legislation toward the Diaspora. In recent years across the Western world, there has been a rise in support for placing limits on immigration, but Israel's Law of Return has not been changed. For decades, Israel has granted Diaspora Jews the right to settle in the country. Often, it has even been generously incentivized.

It was recently announced that proposed Knesset legislation would give Diaspora Jewish leaders a formal role in Israeli affairs. Knesset member Tehila Friedman of the Blue and White Party sponsored the measure.

The proposed law would require the Israeli government to consult world Jewish leaders on issues it deems crucial to the 8 million or so Jews who live outside the country. A JTA article claimed that such a bill is supported by the Israeli Diaspora Affairs Ministry. The minister in charge, Omer Yankelevich, also belongs to Blue and White. Her CV shows that she has no experience in the field in which her party leaders have appointed her minister.

To better explain why Israel's consulting of Diaspora Jews is such a bad idea, a simple means of analysis is to assume that Israel would set up a council representative of organized Diaspora Jewry. (It is impossible to give a voice to unorganized Jews – or, as they are often called by US statistics, "just Jews.")

Who would represent US Jewry on such a council? Those who line up with Israel's enemies, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, would probably be too small to claim representation.

Yet it is reasonable to assume that the world's largest organization of Jewish masochists, the American group J Street, would be entitled to have representation on the council. This is likely to be true, irrespective of the fact that J Street was barred from becoming a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in 2014.

The latter body aims to advance the interests of the American-Jewish community, sustain a broad base of support for Israel and address critical concerns facing world Jewry. Sources within the organization, as well outsiders close to it, have repeatedly told me that in the last few years, the Conference of Presidents has to a large extent been paralyzed.

That is just one indication of the decline of American Jewry over more than a decade. There are many others.

In 2005, when my book, American Jewry's Challenge, was published, one could still claim that American Jewry was the second major force in world Jewry next to Israel. The book contained 17 interviews with American-Jewish leaders and thinkers.

Few of the interviewees are still in the limelight of American Jewry. Some, including Rabbi Norman Lamm and Shoshana Cardin, have passed away. Some are no longer publicly active, while others have been replaced, often by people of a lesser caliber.

Today, one can barely speak of a national American-Jewish lay leadership. The title of the interview in my book with Daniel Pipes, The End of American Jewry's Golden Era, was particularly prescient. The strength of American Jewry has partly moved to local leadership, including some synagogue rabbis and grassroots organizations.

American Jewry reached a new moral low when 600 American-Jewish organizations identified themselves with the anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter movement. After an initial letter of support on June 25 for BLM, these Jewish organizations added insult to injury by publishing the letter in The New York Times.

By that time, it had become clear that supporting BLM was radically different from coming out against discrimination against blacks and other minorities in the United States. Of BLM's original founders, two identify as neo-Marxists.

It is, in essence, a black, racist, anti-democratic movement that should be exposed and fought. Its original platform was permeated by hatred of Israel, as were some of its gatherings.

In 2005, the future of world Jewry was still resting on two pillars, the State of Israel and American Jewry. Such an assessment is no longer valid. American Jewry, with its widespread assimilation (of which mixed marriage is only one major expression) and the main leanings of its majority toward generally liberal, rather than Jewish, fundamentals holds no great promise for Jewry's future if the State of Israel were no longer there.

In the meantime, Israel has grown stronger and has started to integrate itself more into the political reality of the Middle East. The disparity in power, influence and importance between the two entities has increased.

On a Diaspora-Jewry council, one would find representatives of organizations that identify with the black community without reservation. They pay no attention to the fact that, for instance, the Anti-Defamation League has found that anti-Semitism among blacks is substantially higher than among whites.

Lumping all black Americans together with the iconic figure of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is a caricature. America's leading anti-Semite, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, is black. Former US President Barack Obama's longtime church leader, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who presided over the Obamas' marriage, is an extreme anti-Israel inciter.

In his recently published autobiography, Obama continues to ignore Wright's anti-Semitism. The black communist feminist Angela Davis is rabidly anti-Israeli. The list goes on.

One can also look at smaller Jewish communities in other countries. The umbrella organization of Swiss Jewry (SIG), for example, elected a new chairman who had not been active in the community for decades. He sits on the board of the New Israel Fund. According to NGO Monitor, this organization subsidizes groups that demonize Israel.

The problem can be even better seen with respect to the Dutch-Jewish community, which numbers 50,000 at the most. About one-third of the 150 Dutch parliamentarians come from anti-Israeli parties: the left-liberal D66, the Social Democrat PvdA, the Green Left Party and the left-wing Socialist Party SP. To this one has to add the small and bizarre Party for the Animals.

A poll was taken by the Dutch Jewish weekly NIW before the last parliamentary elections in 2017. At that time, the PvdA received approximately 7 percent of the general vote. Among the Jews, 20 percent intended to vote for this anti-Israel party. A variety of Jewish leaders are members of it. They did not even leave the PvdA in March 2013, after the party's first Middle East Congress took place in the town of Zwolle. Then-party leader Diederik Samson spoke at that gathering about the Middle East. This arrogant nitwit called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the oldest conflict in the Middle East.

He had apparently never heard of the Sunni-Shi'ite conflict, which preceded the Arab-Israeli conflict by more than a millennium. He also blamed Israel for the non-solution of the problem with the Palestinians, even though by that time Israeli P.M.s Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert had both offered generous peace proposals to the Palestinians that were rejected by PLO chief Yasser Arafat and P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas, respectively. Samson did not mention Palestinian terrorism, its political support among Palestinians or the culture of death in their society.

Any self-respecting Jewish member of that party should have left it in disgust after that speech. At the very least, they should have protested against his distortion of the truth. They did not. This is typical of many galut Jews: they have a weak relationship to Jewish honor and an inability to straighten their moral backs.

If world Jewry had the strength to create its own representative council, that would be a different story. It obviously is not. There are a variety of international Jewish organizations, such as the Jewish Agency, where one finds Jews from abroad who have an interest in Israel. But that is very different from a representative council of Diaspora Jews founded by Israel.

The probable upcoming Israeli elections are likely to stall the bill for many months, but that doesn't take away the need for Israel to improve its outreach in general and more intensively to Jews abroad, both organized and individuals.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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Johnson, himself a member of Labour, explains that three types of anti-Semitism exist in the party. The first is the "socialism of fools." This means seeing capitalism, globalization, or the banking system as in some way "Jewish." Johnson writes: "When you hear talk of 'Rothschild capitalism,' you know you are listening to the socialism of fools." The second type Johnson identifies is "classical racial antisemitism, sometimes but not always informed these days by Islamist ideas about Jews." The third is "antisemitism dressed up as 'anti-Zionism.' "

Johnson cites many cases to substantiate his arguments, and they are damning for the party. They include continuing cases of Labour failing to safeguard its Jewish members and failing to educate its members about anti-Semitism. The party also exhibits a refusal to attempt to understand and empathize with the Jewish experience. Labour does not effectively deal with anti-Semitism, but instead makes overly tolerant decisions with regard to individual cases. Johnson also notes that Labour has not put a stop to the party's culture of antisemitism denial and victim-blaming.

Despite all this, Johnson believes the party can find a way out of its awkward reality. This would require, as a first step, that the party break "decisively with the left that does not learn."

Several developments after the publication of the study provide additional illustrations of how ineffective Labour has been in dealing with anti-Semitism. The Metropolitan Police announced that they had arrested Labour Party members for disseminating anti-Semitic social-media messages. One case involved a party member who posted on Facebook that a "Jewish Labour MP would be beaten." A Labour councilor was accused of inflicting "ten years of hell on a child. He called him a 'Jew boy.' " In a third case, a party member threatened in a social-media post to throw two MPs off the top of a building.

On March 31, The Sunday Times reported that last year, Laura Murray – a top adviser to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – blocked the suspension of one of the three arrested party members.

On March 27, Jackie Walker was expelled from Labour. She was a former vice chair of the left-wing Momentum Group, which is the main supporter of Corbyn. Walker had claimed inter alia on Facebook that "Jews were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade." She also argued that the Jewish Holocaust doesn't allow Zionists to do what they want. A spokesperson for the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) said the expulsion had come "two-and-a-half years too late."

Johnson is not alone in his claims about institutional antisemitism in Labour. The JLM has referred the party to Britain's Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The EHRC initially gave Labour two weeks to provide a satisfactory response. On March 25, this was extended for another week.

The EHRC had already said that it believes Labour may have "unlawfully discriminated against people because of their ethnicity and religious beliefs." If the EHRC decides to launch a formal human-rights investigation against Labour, it could force the party to disclose details of its handling of anti-Semitism cases. This may include revealing internal communications such as emails and texts.

The Sunday Times has since published leaked internal data from Labour that show that the party failed to take disciplinary measures against hundreds of its members accused of antisemitism. If the underlying information were to be passed to the EHRC, it is hard to see how a full investigation of the party by that body could be avoided. In April, the JLM almost unanimously passed a motion of no confidence in Corbyn.

The Labour Party has 500,000 members, enough people to fill a medium-sized city. Yet when the party receives complaints about anti-Semitism, they mainly concern elected officials or activists. These represent only a small portion of the party's members. Many dues-paying anti-Semites are not easily identifiable as Labour members.

Several Labour MPs have said they believe the party's general secretary, Jennie Formby, was intervening to protect members accused of anti-Semitism from punishment. She was forced by MPs to provide details about anti-Semitism complaints and the party's actions against it. The numbers that were released would have been shocking concerning anti-Jewish hate-mongering in a city, let alone for a town equal in population to the much smaller number of Labour activists.

Formby revealed that the party had received 673 complaints in 10 months about acts of antisemitism by its members. This covered the period from April 2018 to January 2019. She said 96 members were immediately suspended from the party, yet only 12 were expelled. Later, it became known that six additional party members had received other sanctions and five had left the party of their own accord.

In a meeting of the parliamentary Labour Party, Formby said twice that it was impossible to fully eradicate anti-Semitism from Labour. She said, "I don't think that anyone can ever say that we can eradicate antisemitism completely and stop every single person … every single day someone else could join the party and tomorrow do something." This was a transparent effort to deflect criticism of anti-Semitism among existing members. It is likely that quite a few have been in Labour for a long time.

Labour is Europe's largest socialist party by membership. What makes it unique among these parties is that so much of its anti-Semitism targets Jews and not only Israel.

It is not difficult to find anti-Israelism among leading figures in a variety of other European socialist or social democratic parties. When Sigmar Gabriel was leader of the German SPD and the country's foreign minister, he accused Israel of apartheid. It took him months to apologize.

The Norwegian Labour Party leader and former Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere called Israel an "apartheid state" after the nation-state law was passed in the Israeli Knesset. Earlier, he wrote a back-cover comment praising a book by two Norwegian Hamas supporters who claimed that Israel entered Gaza in a military campaign to kill women and children.

Margot Wallström, the Social Democrat Swedish foreign minister, demanded an international investigation into the killing of suicide bombers by Israel while not asking the same of any other country. She said, "It is vital that there is a thorough, credible investigation into these deaths in order to clarify and bring about possible accountability."

Many more similar examples can be added from other European socialists. Yet in none of the other socialist parties do we find major anti-Semitism targeting local Jews.

There are other, more far-reaching questions that should be asked. In quite a few of the European populist parties there is far less anti-Semitism than in Labour. As Israel doesn't boycott Labour, why would it boycott these parties?

The ultimate question concerns the United States. What does it mean that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist and in his previous campaign surrounded himself with a variety of problematic figures?

This pattern seems to be recurring in his current campaign. Two of Sanders's advisers have an anti-Israel record. A press aide of his campaign wondered aloud whether American Jews have a dual loyalty to Israel. She has since apologized.

Sanders is not an anti-Semite. Yet his defense of Congress member Ilhan Omar, who has made anti-Semitic comments, raises doubts about where he truly stands.

This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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