By: Fern Sidman

For the third consecutive year, the most watched television event in the United States will carry, tucked between beer commercials and cinematic previews, a moral exhortation aimed at confronting one of the oldest hatreds in human history. During the Super Bowl broadcast on Sunday, an advertisement funded by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft will again seek to marshal the spectacle of mass entertainment in the service of combating antisemitism. As The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on Friday, the campaign arrives this year under altered circumstances: Kraft’s football franchise is competing in the championship game; his philanthropic vehicle has been rebranded from the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism to the Blue Square Alliance; and, perhaps most consequentially, the entire enterprise has become the focal point of an increasingly acrimonious debate within Jewish public life over what effective advocacy against antisemitism should look like in the post–October 7 era.

The $15 million commercial, titled “Sticky Note,” depicts a scenario of adolescent cruelty in the familiar corridors of an American high school. A Jewish teenager, David, discovers a note affixed to his backpack bearing a slur. As his peers snicker, the camera lingers on his stunned isolation. Then a classmate, a Black student named Bilal, intervenes. He covers the note with a blue square, tells David not to internalize the abuse, and signals solidarity by placing a blue square on his own chest. The two introduce themselves and walk away from the jeers together. The screen fades to a statistic: two in three Jewish teens have experienced antisemitism. The call to action invites viewers to share the blue square as a gesture of care.

In its visual grammar, the ad seeks to compress the trauma of prejudice, the possibility of allyship, and the promise of collective action into half a minute of emotional narrative. The JTA report contextualized the spot as the most explicit of Kraft’s Super Bowl efforts to date in naming antisemitism as the problem to be confronted. Yet even before its televised debut, the ad has drawn fierce criticism from across the Jewish ideological spectrum. The backlash reveals fault lines not only over the content of the commercial but over the very premises of philanthropic activism in an age of digitally mediated hate and geopolitical polarization.

On the political right, a growing chorus has begun to question whether the vast sums expended annually by Jewish philanthropy on antisemitism awareness campaigns amount to a misallocation of resources. In a high-profile address in New York billed as a “State of World Jewry” speech, conservative commentator Bret Stephens castigated what he characterized as an industry of well-meaning but ineffectual efforts. As the JTA reported, Stephens argued that tens of millions of dollars poured into the fight against antisemitism have produced little measurable deterrence, suggesting instead that Jewish communal energy would be better invested in strengthening Jewish life and resilience. His remarks framed the Kraft campaign not as a necessary intervention but as emblematic of a broader philanthropic misdiagnosis.

The reaction to “Sticky Note” has been no less scathing among cultural commentators. Liel Leibovitz, a columnist for Tablet magazine, derided the commercial in terms that, as the JTA report noted, themselves sparked controversy for reviving derogatory language long abandoned by advocates for people with disabilities. Leibovitz’s critique was not merely aesthetic but ideological. He lamented the portrayal of Jewish vulnerability, arguing that in an era marked by assertive Jewish self-defense, particularly in Israel, messaging that foregrounds victimhood risks reinforcing stereotypes rather than countering them. His suggestion that a more effective Super Bowl ad would showcase Israeli military prowess was amplified widely on social media, crystallizing a strand of thought that equates the fight against antisemitism with the projection of strength rather than appeals to empathy.

That sentiment has been echoed by younger conservative Jewish voices galvanized by the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 attack. Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard alumnus who emerged as a prominent critic of elite institutions’ responses to antisemitism, argued in comments reported by JTA that funds devoted to public awareness campaigns would be better directed toward building Jewish educational infrastructure.

His exhortation to “fund Jewish day schools, not Super Bowl ads” distilled a generational impatience with symbolic gestures that do little to fortify Jewish continuity or security. The critique reflects a broader shift among some Jewish activists toward inward investment over outward-facing messaging.

Even among pro-Israel influencers, skepticism has abounded. Isaac de Castro, whose social media presence has often targeted both anti-Zionist activism and far-right extremism, questioned whether the blue square symbol functions as anything more than a performative badge. As the JTA report recounted, de Castro argued that the campaign risks offering viewers an illusory sense of moral accomplishment without compelling them to confront the sources of contemporary antisemitism, whether emanating from radical anti-Israel movements or neo-Nazi networks. The critique strikes at the heart of the Blue Square Alliance’s strategy: can symbolic solidarity catalyze substantive change, or does it merely anesthetize consciences?

The controversy is sharpened by the history of Kraft’s Super Bowl interventions. JTA has chronicled how the foundation’s inaugural ad in 2024, featuring a speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr., was widely regarded as the first Super Bowl commercial to center antisemitism explicitly. The following year’s spot, starring Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg, broadened the message to oppose “all hate,” eliding specific reference to Jews. That ad aired in uneasy juxtaposition with a separate commercial by Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who infamously hawked merchandise emblazoned with swastikas. The juxtaposition, as the JTA report noted, underscored the paradox of combating hate within a commercial ecosystem that remains indifferent to moral coherence.

Not all reactions to “Sticky Note” have been dismissive. Some parents and educators, attuned to the quotidian realities of schoolyard prejudice, have welcomed the ad’s depiction of in-person antisemitism. Rachel Steinhardt, a Jewish mother in California, wrote on Instagram that while the portrayal may be stylized, it reflects experiences that Jewish children encounter in public schools. For such observers, the ad’s value lies less in its theoretical efficacy than in its capacity to render visible a form of hostility that is often minimized or ignored in mainstream discourse.

Others have sought to salvage a more assertive reading of the commercial’s narrative arc. Influencer Jake Donnelly, who identifies with multiple cultural lineages, initially expressed frustration with misdirected activism. Yet upon reflection, he found in David’s clenched fists a subtle assertion of agency. As the JTA reported, Donnelly argued that the Jewish teen was not depicted as helpless but as poised to resist, choosing strategic withdrawal over futile confrontation. In this interpretation, the ad conveys not passivity but discernment, a readiness to fight when necessary tempered by the wisdom to avoid self-destructive battles.

The rebranding of Kraft’s foundation to the Blue Square Alliance adds another layer to the debate. The blue square, conceived as a unifying emblem of opposition to antisemitism, has become both the campaign’s signature and its lightning rod. The JTA report observed that the symbol’s simplicity is both its strength and its vulnerability: easily shareable, yet susceptible to charges of vacuity. The alliance’s defenders argue that in a fragmented media environment, symbolic coherence is indispensable for mobilizing diffuse publics. Its critics counter that symbols divorced from structural interventions risk devolving into what one commentator derided as “clicktivism.”

The timing of the ad is inescapably political. With antisemitic incidents rising in the United States and globally, and with debates over Israel polarizing public discourse, the Super Bowl platform confers an unparalleled megaphone. Kraft’s decision to persist with the campaign for a third year signals a conviction that mass culture can still be conscripted in the struggle against prejudice. Yet as the JTA report makes clear, the very notion of a singular “fight against antisemitism” has fractured into competing visions: one emphasizing empathy and allyship, another privileging strength and self-assertion, and a third urging a retreat from spectacle toward community-building.

The Patriots’ presence in this year’s Super Bowl adds a personal dimension to Kraft’s advocacy. The convergence of his professional and philanthropic identities on the sport’s grandest stage blurs the boundary between civic messaging and brand association. Critics have not hesitated to note the optics of leveraging a corporate sports platform for moral suasion, even as supporters argue that such visibility is precisely what the moment demands. The JTA report framed this tension as emblematic of contemporary Jewish philanthropy’s struggle to reconcile scale with substance.

As the Super Bowl approaches, the “Sticky Note” ad will undoubtedly reach tens of millions of viewers, many of whom may have little prior engagement with debates over antisemitism or Jewish communal strategy. Whether the commercial will soften hearts, harden skeptics, or simply dissolve into the ephemera of advertising remains an open question. What is clear, as the JTA report observed, is that the campaign has already succeeded in provoking a searching conversation within Jewish public life about the narratives Jews tell about themselves, the alliances they seek, and the strategies they deploy in confronting hatred. Under the stadium lights, amid the spectacle of American sport, that conversation will play out in compressed form, a testament to the enduring challenge of translating moral urgency into collective action.