When Hate Rides in Silence
On a cold Thursday evening in Toronto, Miriam Mattova – an accomplished model and former Miss Slovakia – got into an Uber after a FaceTime call with a friend. She had just returned from a trip to Israel, and her conversation reflected that. Moments later, the driver suddenly pulled over in the middle of a busy street and told her to get out.
Confused, Mattova asked why. The driver’s answer was chilling: she was “uncomfortable” and doesn’t drive Jewish people.
Mattova exited the vehicle and later reported the incident. Uber refunded her ride and issued a generic apology, but gave no clear answer as to whether the driver was removed or held accountable. Mattova, who is proudly Jewish and Canadian-Slovak, compared the moment to warnings she once heard from her Holocaust-survivor grandmother. The message: when bigotry reveals itself, you don’t ignore it.
Equal Rights Shouldn’t Be Selective
Now imagine this: what if the driver had said, “I don’t drive Black people”? The response from Uber, and the public, would likely have been swift, decisive, and unambiguous. And rightly so. Anti-Black discrimination in public accommodations is not only morally abhorrent; it is illegal under both Canadian and U.S. civil rights law. But that clarity was not easy to achieve. In the 1960s, activists fought bitterly to win legal recognition of equal rights: marching through beatings, facing jail, and risking death to secure the basic dignity of being treated equally in public life. The right to sit at a lunch counter or ride a bus wasn’t granted – it was demanded.
Yet when the discrimination is antisemitic, the same moral certainty too often disappears. The language softens. The act becomes debatable. Suddenly, hate is framed as “an opinion,” and accountability is optional. This inconsistency reveals a deeper problem: that our societies have a hierarchy of whose rights we are willing to defend and whose we’re willing to dismiss.
Free Speech Is Not a Free Pass
Some will say the driver was simply expressing discomfort. That her views, however offensive, are protected. But this is not a free speech issue.
Free expression protects individuals from government censorship. It does not protect discriminatory behavior in commercial settings. It does not shield slurs, denials, or exclusion from public accountability. And it certainly does not oblige Jewish passengers to remain silent when they’re told – explicitly or implicitly – that they are not welcome.
This moment is not isolated. Since October 7, Jewish communities have witnessed a surge in open antisemitism – from classrooms to protests to social platforms. What once festered in anonymity now appears proudly in the daylight, often wrapped in the language of political protest or misunderstood “activism.”
The Slope from Speech to Harm
We’ve seen where unchecked rhetoric can lead. The shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh didn’t start with a gun. He started online – with antisemitic memes, conspiracies, and posts. The line between speech and violence is not theoretical. It’s a pattern.
So when Jewish communities raise alarms, it is not hypersensitivity – it is vigilance. The cost of silence is already written in history.
Naming What This Is
Mattova’s experience matters not only because it was wrong, but because it was quiet. There was no shouting. No violence. Just a sentence that revealed everything: “I don’t drive Jewish people.”
That moment – mundane and menacing – is how normalized hate survives. It is not only expressed through laws or violence. Sometimes, it arrives behind the wheel of a car. And if we let it pass unchallenged, we send a message: some discrimination is still up for debate.
Jewish communities aren’t asking for special rules. We are asking for consistent standards. Equal protection, equal dignity, equal outrage.
The Choice Ahead
Free speech is a foundational right. But bigotry is a moral failing – one that institutions like Uber, and societies at large, must be willing to confront. Mattova chose clarity. She refused to let prejudice hide behind politeness or platform policy. Now it’s our turn.
If we want to stop hate from going unchecked, we must begin where it often begins: online. Document it. Report it. Push back when slurs are disguised as “opinions,” and when conspiracy theories about Jews are shared as if they were news. The internet isn’t a separate world. What lives there often crosses into ours.
Let’s not wait for the next Uber ride, the next classroom incident, or the next violent escalation.
Fight antisemitism when it’s “just words.” That’s when it’s still stoppable.