When I was young, my mother began teaching me about the Holocaust, and tried to prepare me for the possibility of meeting anti-Semitism face-to-face. Since my mother was a children’s librarian, this meant growing up on a steady diet of Holocaust fiction, so much so that I regularly had dreams about running away from Nazis.
What I experienced was different from what she had prepared me for. To my adolescent self, it felt like a kind of well-mannered anti-Semitism, uncomfortable and kind of embarrassing, but basically harmless — based not on foundational beliefs of race or religion, but on class. Being Jewish was something to be slightly ashamed of because our parents hadn’t gone to the most elite schools and weren’t allowed into the exclusive clubs. There were times, when visiting non-Jewish friends’ country houses in restricted summer communities, or going to visit their grandparents’ homes on sprawling suburban estates, that I was told by my friend’s’ parents to just not tell people I was Jewish. I had blue eyes and straight hair and a non-Jewish name, so no one needed to know.
I determined to not raise my children with the specter of the Holocaust hanging over their heads. I would make sure that they heard the first-person narrative of the one survivor left in our synagogue community and that they knew it is wrong to treat people differently based on their identity, but I didn’t want them to feel that they had to always be on alert, never sure when anti-Semitism was going to rear its ugly head.
My Jewish friends and I always felt that we were Americans, woven into the very fabric of this country. As a rabbi I felt both connected to the long history of Jews throughout the world, but also proud that the route my ancestors took out of oppression had led them to these shores. I had learned that the history of the United States was inseparable from the history of Jews who played important roles in our national story. After all, where would the American Revolution have been without Haym Salomon, the Jewish immigrant who helped finance it? George Washington, in his famous letter to the Jews of Newport in 1790, had written, “For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance…” That was the America that I believed was my birthright, and that I thought I could bequeath to my children. I wanted them to be secure in their Judaism and in their sense of pride as members of one of the many religious or ethnic or racial minority groups in the beautiful diversity that makes up America.
This vision for my children, now young adults, and for the future was shattered one year ago when a white nationalist gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue with an AR-15 and multiple handguns, killing 11 congregants. Suddenly the ugly stench of dangerous, violent anti-Semitism was revealed.
The fears of my parents are now being realized. Jews being gunned down in Pittsburgh and in Poway, California. An old Jewish man beaten with a brick on a Brooklyn street. Swastikas and desecrated gravestones and anti-Semitic graffiti on synagogues and schools and playgrounds and cemeteries. Police and armed guards at the entrances to synagogues and Jewish institutions. All of it is too real. Though they think my concerns are overblown, I fear for my children, with their Jewish names and their loud Jewish identities, in a way that I never could have imagined.
Although anti-Semitism poses a unique threat to Jewish communities, it has also historically gone hand in hand with other kinds of hate, and we see that again today. Islamophobia is on the rise. Immigrants and refugees are targeted with family separation, ICE raids and inhumane detention centers. The rights of LGBTQ individuals are being restricted. White supremacy is being tolerated, even promulgated, by those in the seats of power in this country and abroad. What is happening was unimaginable to my younger, naive self.
One of the ways that demonization works is that it makes people suspect each other and causes rifts between them. But we must resist the urge to close ranks and separate ourselves out of fear. We can’t turn hate or distrust of us into hate or distrust of others. Instead, we have to create alliances across lines of faith and race to fight this growing intolerance and hatred. Imagine the power we could harness if all the disparate groups all under attack – Jewish communities, Muslim communities, LGBTQ people, immigrants, black communities and more – could band together and stand up for tolerance and respect for difference rather than fighting each other. Imagine the strength we could garner if we could show up for each other, defend each other’s institutions and practices and rights, and not let ourselves be divided by those who would far prefer we focus on our differences.
We must mourn those who were killed while at prayer in Pittsburgh and in Poway. We must do all we can to keep synagogues safe and to prevent such attacks from ever happening again. And we must do all that we can to work toward an America in which bigotry and hatred against any group cannot take root and flourish.
In these dark times, this is our responsibility, to keep the light of our highest aspirations for ourselves, our communities and our country shining as bright as possible.
https://news.yahoo.com/mom-warned-anti-semitism-didn-161546965.html
“this meant growing up on a steady diet of Holocaust fiction” It’s all fiction you moron.
Thank you, ZA! A chicken dinner coming to you for finding the ham hock in the matzo soup! And what “fiction” have they pedaled that hasn’t been rewrapped as “history” is the $64,000.00 question?!
Or $6,000,000 question. Same thing it seems…
Wait, what?!
I mean, am I reading this right? Okay, now I get it…
Martist, I did not know you did stand up. This had me rollin’. I guess you’re testing out new material. Great writing, buddy. Is this what they call 180 comedy?
Anyhow, where is your next gig, Smartsville?
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HAHAHA So you read everything else read then, too! 🙂
This whole thing is ridiculous and set up for kickin’ down I can’t believe it!
And that’s what I find unsettling about current media.
It’s TOO easy and it’s NEVER been THIS easy.
When I smell a rat, I think it might be a rat, but some things are uncanny.
Ha! Yeah, courtesy of Yahoo.
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Yeah, well I hope you all do stand together, it will make it easier to route out this plague on our nation.
I do not give a fk if you identify as any fkn thing, religious, Jew, Commie, what the fk ever…. Either you are for the absolute Law of our nation which is The Bill of Rights and our common law to enforce such, or you are an enemy.
It is really that simple mthrfkrs…..As Henry states, it is our ratified, codified iron clad Law of these lands. You are for it or you are against it. If you are against it, then you are the enemy and a literal criminal by all definitions, identify in any way you see fit…but know where we stand and you stand…
Weak people who stand together on weak foundations and lies, will shatter like glass… Bill of Rights and Common Law and a total restoration of our republic is the only solution and is worth the blood that is coming… Oh, and fk the Kike ass licker who wrote this shit…..you are the one trying to divide the people….!
I’ve had every manner of friend on this earth in my 55 yrs. Kikes, Gays, Niggers, Chinks, Spics on and on, and when we called each other these epithets, we laugh and chuckled and usually have a few drinks…..and not a one of them ever wished to force their belief or lifestyle on me and mine.
They had the look of the label, but the label is reserved for those who act like the labels….. and they usually returned the favor of name calling back on me, good thing I found it funny too like they did.
Oh those were the days, Norm, when we’d tease each other, call each other names, exaggerate stereotypes, even make each other cry. But didn’t it make us stronger, and didn’t we laugh so hard our sides would bust? Hard to run into that kind of abandonment these days. By the way… You’re a jerk. Hahahahahahaha. Of course I’m kidding, *&%$#@&!!
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Ok Galen, now I have to go to my safe space with that kind of name calling…. 🙂
LOL
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I am curious? Why no support in the comments for my post of a video about the movie from 1934 called “House of Rothschild”? A movie made by Jews about Jewish history. It was incriminating and far from flattering for the Jews and the Rothschilds.
Why no supporting comments?
It was an impressive video analysis of that movie.
Hi Captain Obvious. I did see that post, but I had seen that film a few years back, so with all the news I just passed it by. Should have said, yes, it’s a classic. Learned so much from it. The roots of how one patriarch sent his 5 sons to move throughout many parts of the developed world ruthlessly making money deals. I guess I should watch it again considering how that family is pretty much sitting on the root of our problem.
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Some posts are glossed over depending on the day. Some days people just dont feel like commenting because of this or that, going on in their lives. Try reposting it, see what happens. When Laura gets busy, sometimes she just puts up many at once and some just get glossed over.
There is a method to the madness…
House of Rothschilds was my first awakening to the Zionist and how they view the rest of us. Great read, maybe re-post it again, I usually just share links to good articles or videos on other sites and especially links to FTTWR….
some days for me anyway, I just see something and say yep, tired of this shit and move on, no commenting etc.
I think we all here appreciate what the other trenchers do at every level even though we may or may not comment. Sharing to other sites is the best support we can do even though it gets blocked and censored.
I had blue eyes and straight hair and a non-Jewish name, so no one needed to know.
SO. YOU GREW UP WITH LYING ASS PARENTS.
ONE MORE TIME;
THERE
IS
NO
SUCH
THING
AS A “JEW”.