Antisemitism
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Anonymous
NP here. People should be able to wear symbols of their religion without being harassed. |
Anonymous
Religious Jews tend to self segregate for obvious reasons. To live a religious lifestyle you need to live near stores that sell kosher food (though many foods are kosher), live near a synagogue, etc. Many parents don’t want their kid to be the only Jew in the class, so they choose to live in places with other Jews or so it can be easier to raise a family in a religious Jewish lifestyle. Many Jews are not religious though and this may or many not be important to them. Many religious Jews also have contact with the non-Jews, even non-Jewish friends. |
Anonymous
I’m Jewish and there has always been bigotry and prejudice. People are just more blatant about it now. |
Anonymous
DP here. But she should still stop people from attacking in the 1st place. Teach your kids to respect people regardless of religion, race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, etc. |
Anonymous
Like hanging a mezuzah on my doorframe? Or maybe walking in or out of a synagogue? Are those the types of things I should avoid doing? What about my Jewish last name? Should I stop publishing my work under my own name because of online trolls and threats? That type of thing? |
Anonymous
| I am Jewish. I live in a Pittsburgh suburb. My kids have graduated but I hear from friends that there are incidents of antisemitism in the school district where I live and a nearby school district fairly often (language, graffiti, bullying etc). The two districts have a fair amount of Jewish kids and have 2 synagogues nearby - we are about 35 minutes from Squirrel Hill where Tree of Life is. All of the kids know about TOL yet the antisemitism continues and appears to be getting worse. They are targeting people they know. The only way the offenders know the victims are Jewish is bc the offenders know them - they don’t keep Shabbat, don’t keep kosher, don’t wear a kippah. It’s just ignorance and evil. And it starts at home. It’s a terrible time right now. |
Anonymous
I'm going to engage with you as if you are sincere. About 75% of Jews (like me) in America identify as either secular or reform Jews, and another 16% identity as conservative. We live in the same neighborhood as you, shop at the same grocery store, send our kids to a local public school, play on the same little league teams. Some of us go to temple, some never do. Less than ten percent are Hardei or Orthodox, and live in commentates bound by eruvs and dress, shop, school etc in an obviously identifiable way. Jews cannot, nor should they have to, hide their Jewishness in America in order to avoid being assaulted, just as no other ethnic or religious group should have to. We are not guests in your country. This is very important for you to understand. |
Anonymous
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There is so much of this going around- Asian hate in the wake of COVID, hateful remarks against POC, LBGQT, and the list goes on...
Sorry that this additional anxiety is felt after such a hellish year. |
Anonymous
Sorry about this -- and I wouldn't be surprised if the people harassing Jews think of themselves as good Christians and/or patriotic Americans. |
Anonymous
Thank you - I’m not going to speculate. But a group of those patriotic Americans were opposed to a rally last summer organized by black and white students in support of our black community members. Instead of going, they stayed home with their guns, afraid of violence. Note that the rally was held in our police dept parking lot with the support of our local government and police. If they had gone, they would have heard heartbreaking stories of micro aggressions and down right bullying against students of color, including top student athletes. Tragic. The antisemitism and the racism in the schools won’t stop until there are tough consequences against the students. Calling a name you don’t understand calls for education IMO. Repeated harassment after you have been educated needs a harsh consequence. We aren’t there yet where I live. |
Anonymous
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I think this piece captures how I’m feeling right now and does a great job of explaining the frustration I personally feel when people feel the need to bring Israel into the conversation about antisemitism here in the US.
https://boazmunro.medium.com/dear-american-progressives-your-jewish-friends-are-terrified-b24068fcf488 |
Anonymous
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This is a good piece from Jewish Currents:
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-closer-look-at-the-uptick-in-antisemitism/ If I removed incidents in which the ADL’s determination of antisemitism is controversial, including protest signs with anti-Zionist content or Holocaust comparisons—as well as the “F Zionist Israel” graffiti at Bates College, which did not target a Jewish institution—the increase was more modest: from seven entries the week before the crisis, to ten between May 7th and May 13th, and 16 between May 14th and May 21st. More than a doubling, to be sure, but given an American Jewish population of 7.6 million, hardly an epidemic, especially given that all but eight of the incidents were nonviolent. The prominent reports of antisemitic violent assaults included in the tracker, and making the rounds on social media, are certainly concerning. “To my knowledge, we haven’t seen these attacks on Jews before during moments of mass protests on the street,” said Ben Lorber, a research analyst at Political Research Associates who studies far-right antisemitism and white nationalism. But the significance of these attacks is obscured when they are lumped in with other incidents of a far less severe nature, like Facebook comments, and incidents in which the antisemitic content is arguable, like anti-Zionist protest chants. It is also suspect to base claims of an uptick on incidents that have not yet been fully investigated. Yet news outlets like MSBNC have already created maps of the antisemitic surge compiling incidents from the tracker without disambiguating their categories, and reports in outlets like NPR and NBC cite the ADL number of 193 reported incidents without specifying which kinds of incidents make up this number. By conflating weighty incidents with trivial ones—and encouraging others to do the same—the ADL only makes it more difficult to measure antisemitism in American life. Jerome Chanes, a writer on Jewish public affairs who has done extensive research on antisemitism, said that “very few serious social scientists” take the ADL’s yearly audit of antisemitic incidents seriously. “We don’t have a handle on what many of these incidents are. Some of them might be serious—I’m sure they are,” he said. “Some of them are on the level of ‘My neighbor said she heard something on the radio last night,’ and it’s all lumped together. It’s very hard to evaluate the numbers.” |
Anonymous
Say it louder for those in the back! |
Anonymous
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I think a lot these days about the "are we guests here?" question, which it merits saying is something we didn't used to actually say out loud or bother to defensively insist we're not. The times have definitely brought this out. That's telling in itself.
I also (in our Progressive city, in my Progressive workplace, etc. ) feel this enormous pressure to demonstrate I'm one of the "good" Jews. Not too attached to Jewish tradition, not too aware of Jewish history, not too relieved Israel exists in the event we turn out to be guests here after all. And this is simply not an area with much of an observant Jewish community. I have to remind myself every time DCUM Jews, who seem to skew very Reform or basically Reform, shock me by proclaiming themselves to be both "good" Jews (as in inoffensive cosmopolitan universalists who have no interest in Jewish particularity) and also that they can be this way and insist that they're still somehow good Jews (as Jews) because they're totally free to decide for themselves, from within their own pupiks (look it up if you need to, case in point) what that means. Anyway, I recommend this essay, which I thought was a very clear-sighted discussion of Jew-hating moments in the world like the one that has emerged again. The thing is we're inherently uncool, and we'll be punished as long as we refuse to make ourselves cool: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/the-cool-kids |
Anonymous
Thank you for posting the link to this letter. I’ve had questions about how I can best be an ally and I found this letter to be both informative and very helpful. |