Answering Hate with Empathy
Growing up in Greece, a predominantly Christian Orthodox country, I had limited exposure to my Jewish heritage. The stories my mother told me of the annihilation of my hometown’s Jewish community during the Holocaust felt like echoes of a distant past. But as the Economic Crisis unfolded, that distance vanished. I began to feel the weight of a history I didn’t fully understand. When my grandmother was offered a seminal anti-Semitic book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, at a newsstand, I didn’t understand the sinister gravity such an offer could possess. When I learned a local store refused to serve known Jewish families, I felt only a gnawing discomfort, a vague sense that I didn’t belong. My mother, a public figure, tried to shield me from the worst of it, but gradually I caught whispers of death threats and rising hostility. I felt small, exposed, and deeply unsettled, as though I had been thrust into a fight for which I wasn’t ready. I had never expected to be hated for something I couldn’t change.
As I grew older, I wrestled with how to process the prejudice I encountered. When I shared my confusion with my mother, she told me, “If you can understand why they feel this way, you’ll know how to face it.” Why would I empathize with hate? I wondered. It felt unfair. The empathy would clearly be going one way only. Still, I decided to give it a try. Forcefully, at first, I strained to look beyond the words of anti-Semites, trying to grasp the fears and frustrations behind them—and with practice, I began to see that hatred wasn’t born in a vacuum but shaped by misunderstanding and a lack of exposure to other perspectives. Soon, as classmates repeated anti-Semitic slogans they’d heard at home, I stopped seeing my peers as adversaries and instead recognized them as individuals shaped by their circumstances. Their words reflected not who they were but what they had been taught. By approaching these moments with patience and understanding, I found chances to foster dialogue rather than deepen divides. This shift taught me to meet prejudice with empathy, turning conflict into a chance for connection and growth.
I carried this ethic with me wherever I went, and during the Syrian refugee crisis, it enabled me to confront some difficult truths about my country and countrymen. Greece became a gateway for millions fleeing war, and strain on an already fragile economy fueled a wave of xenophobia. I watched as many, overwhelmed by fear and uncertainty, turned to hateful rhetoric. I could see that this response was not rooted in inherent cruelty but reflective of Greeks’ struggles to make sense of hardship. This time, though, I wasn’t the one being victimized; it wasn’t just a matter of reaching across the aisle to understand. Even and especially because I wasn’t directly targeted, I felt a responsibility to do the difficult, uncomfortable work of becoming a buffer: one who sought to connect fear and hatred to their effects on their victims.
When I began volunteering to help unaccompanied and orphaned refugee children navigate and adapt to their new environment—teaching them Greek, introducing them to local customs, and listening to their stories—I knew this wasn’t a perfect solution; assimilation shouldn’t have been the price of acceptance, and the prejudice they faced wasn’t theirs to resolve. But I also understood that fostering connection could create small spaces where empathy might grow. By showing my mentees that, despite the hostility they faced, there was a place for them in Greece, I aimed to empower them to join in our expressions of community. At the same time, I hoped to force those who pushed an exclusionary, preferential view of such heritage to confront the humanity of those they looked to alienate.
These experiences have shaped who I am. One of the children I worked with, Ali, was not much older than me at the time, and helping him learn the lay of the land, integrate into the community, and even use the Greek we studied to get an apprenticeship in Athens made me feel as though I had used something I had learned from my own negative experiences for good. He instilled in me a belief in the transformative power of empathy and dialogue and a conviction that compassion must be rooted in understanding.
Each day since, I’ve been reminded anew that meaningful change begins not with easy oppositional thinking but with a commitment to addressing the realities that underpin conflict. In law school, I plan to build on these lessons by engaging in work that demands that each participant search for or devise common ground and in discussions that challenge my assumptions, pushing me to see issues from multiple angles. Having learned that our duty in engaging with people unlike us is not just to resolve disputes but to foster mutual acknowledgment, even if animosity remains, I am eager to contribute to conversations and initiatives that focus on meaningful, human-centered solutions with impacts beyond the immediate problem. By combining this approach with the tools I’ll gain in law school, I hope to become an advocate who brings people together, even in the face of deeply entrenched divisions.
