Jewish in America, Lately
I grew up as a typical millennial byproduct of the 1990s in a family of mixed religious backgrounds. My father is an Ashkenazi Jew, and my mother is an Irish-Catholic. Despite this mixed background, I have always identified as both ethnically and spiritually Jewish. I am married to a converted Jewish woman, and we are active in a Reform synagogue. We are continuing to navigate the ever-changing waters of married life and raising our 2-year-old son in what is becoming an increasingly upsetting world. And I know I’m not alone in this feeling because the Pew research polling data I’ve seen really backs me up in this regard.
The area where I grew up has more Jews than average at about 10% of the city population compared to the U.S. domestic total which sits at about 2.5%. I really experienced very little antisemitism in my youth. I can think of maybe one, possibly two outright incidents of antisemitic epithets thrown my way. Of course, as time goes on, additional incidents did happen, but I’d still characterize them as very infrequent. When they did occur, I made sure to forcefully assert myself.
In fact, when I think back to attending Hebrew school, I recall tales of Nazism (from firsthand experience) as told by my teachers to be…something of a relic. These firsthand stories were impactful for me to hear, but were mentally placed on the shelf of history. For me it was an abstraction. This was something that we discussed in a historical context; I could not fathom such events being relevant to my present day lived experience.
I recall my teacher discussing how as a boy he was smuggled out of Poland on a cargo ship in a crate and he never saw his immediate family again. I recall an Israeli teacher of mine shouting at all of us, ‘sheket bevakasha,’ which means basically ‘shut up (and listen). My teacher was distraught and worried about her family back in Israel. Israel was undergoing the ‘Second Intifada,’ which (among many other things) included waves of suicide bombings in nightclubs, buses, restaurants, and other public places. It was a very deadly time, over 1,000 Israelis died in the early 2000s.
I recall a photo of a Palestinian man who held his hands steeped in blood out of a building window to a cheering crowd. Even then, the outright unadulterated joy that I could see on the man’s face with bloody hands, smiling ear to ear, was chilling. There was a literal lynch mob that tore two Israeli soldiers limb from limb because they’d taken the wrong turn traversing through Ramallah. For context, 20% of Israel’s population is Arab/Muslim but if two Jews go through Ramallah, they end up getting lynched.
Still, despite these early experiences, everything “antisemitism” was so far away from me personally. When it came to Nazis, it was emotional but mostly academic. When it came to Israel and/or Islamism and Jihad, I had no family in Israel that I knew of (turns out I do of course as DNA testing later became more widespread). I do have cousins who fled to Israel sometime after leaving one of Joseph Stalin’s gulags after his death in 1953. They then went on to live in Ukraine, until antisemitism there became too extreme; at which time they emigrated to Israel.
I know that my father’s family fled the Belarus/Russia area roughly five years prior to the Russian Revolution which took place in 1917. Family folklore would have it that Cossacks on horseback were murdering Jews from village to village, and my great-grandfather who was a wheat farmer had thought it important enough to trade for a gun which they stationed near the front of their farm. When the men on horseback came for them, my great-grandfather killed them, and our family fled to North America where they entered through Canada and made their way to northeastern Ohio, finally settling.
It seems nearly every Jew I know has a similar family story of a perilous journey made to the promised land whether that be Israel, the U.S. or any other western country where they’ve found some semblance of momentary peace. For nearly the last 80 years we’ve lived in this Pax Americana dreamworld where all of us thought we’d evolved beyond (at least mostly beyond) petty tribal grievances and hostilities about religion/race.
It turns out we are not the enlightened beings we thought we were. And for Jews specifically, perhaps we’re waking up to the reality that the last 80 years were merely an exception and not the rule. And there may not be any excuse for such ignorance and naivety given we collectively have 2,000 years of history to look back on and learn from.
I do not say all of this to have an internet pity party, in fact fuck pity I do not want it. The point of this is not to seek pity, it’s to emphasize that a wake-up call is needed. The day that October 7th happened, a day in which over 350 people died at a music festival and hundreds more died in utterly gruesome fashion across the Kibbutzim in Israel, I myself was at a music festival with my wife in Texas. What are the odds? I later thought that could have been us. Why couldn’t it have been? Ultimately, it’s a simple difference in geography. We’re Jews. If our geography were different there’s no reason that couldn’t have been us. Our son could have been an orphan. And for what, to satisfy some Jihadist’s bloodlust? I do not believe I speak for myself, when I say that day forever changed us as a peoplehood.
I can count on one hand how many people reached out to check in and see how I was doing. I don’t hold any ill will or grudges about that. I cannot reasonably expect non-Jewish friends or even family of mine to understand this feeling or perhaps to begin to know what to say if in fact they wanted to say something. If you’re reading this and you have felt ‘otherism’ in a very real way, you begin to understand this feeling I have a hard time articulating. But I do not fault anyone for not reaching out or knowing what to say during this time. People have their own lives and problems, I understand that.
But for us (Jews), our world was upside down. How was I doing, a few did ask? I was numb, I couldn’t even be angry, yet I was just numb and in disbelief. We are only maybe 16 million people in a world of 8 billion. That represents 0.2% of the global population. When terrorists kill 1,200 people and kidnap 240 people, that has an immense impact on our collective psyche. For scale, the October 7th massacre represents 15 times the scale of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. when you compare populations of both countries. If this is how I felt, I cannot even begin to imagine what the victims’ families were feeling.
There are images I saw on that day that I’ll unfortunately never forget, and I can only hope my children never have to see. But I also can’t bury my head in the sand and act like they don’t exist. Every one of those victims deserves to have their stories told. I do not have the privilege of apathy or ignorance; I have skin in this game and what you’ll soon realize is that we all ultimately have skin in the game.
I can’t unsee the exuberance, the ecstasy of these “normal Gazan civilians” cheering at the sight of a dead girl’s corpse being paraded around their town as they spit on her and tore at her hair. I’ll never forget the charred bodies that had fused together as they clung to each other with their mouths open in pain. I’ll never forget the charred bodies of women with their skirts lifted up and their legs spread apart. I’ll never forget a normal Gazan civilian chopping off a Thai farm worker’s head with a garden hoe as he screamed, “Allah Akbar”! But mostly, mostly I’ll never forget the lack of empathy… the global and local silence. I won’t forget the gaslighting that people across many platforms want to convince us all that we had it…coming.
What’s worse, so many loved this day and took joy in it. Not even 24 hours had passed until the alarmingly ready and able mobs started marching globally for ‘ceasefire’ before a single IDF shot had gone out in response. The fires were still burning in the Kibbutzim. People’s loved ones still did not know if their family members were dead, or on the run with a phone out of battery. How did they know, how were they so ready with these massive banners and collective organization?
And what did I do? I clung to the news cycle like a nutcase. I went to work, all the while thinking, “what the fuck am I even doing here?” How trivial is my life in comparison to what is going on in the world, happening to my people. Why am I not going out and enlisting to fight? I did not go out and fight. I did not do anything besides feel terrible. And you know what, my own personal pity party has come to an end. I do not intend to be silent; I do not intend to go quietly if things take a turn for our people once again.
Why am I ultimately sharing these stories? This is a call to action to me, and to you. And this doesn’t just involve Jews despite how personal I’ve made this. While Jews appear to be on the verge of existential threat yet again, you should know that what starts with us will not end with us. There is a Middle Eastern proverb that translates to, “After Saturday comes Sunday”. I’ll let you look into that proverb and analyze its meaning, but it essentially means after we’re done with the Jews, we will come for the other non-believing infidels.
Don’t let your eyes deceive you. What you have seen in our city streets and the ugliness of these “protests” represent a threat to civil society. Does that sound incendiary and sensational? Well, you be the judge. Plainly, we haven’t seen this sort of thing dating back to 1968 riots. There have been many successful national revolutions that started as student-led protests. Most notably, look to the 1978 Iranian Revolution which now represents the regime that funds and coordinates most global terrorism; including the barbarians that committed the October 7th atrocities.
And don’t look away as the mask slips and the protestors chant “Death to America!”. Don’t look away when you can’t find a single solitary American flag among the sea of Pro-Palestinian protestors. These are angry, disillusioned blood-thirsty cultists that have no future to look forward to but will do anything to assure yours is ruined.
One can’t begin addressing a problem if it can’t be acknowledged. We have a very serious radicalization problem in this country and at the root of it is Academia. When the United States government publicizes that Qatar and China are among the top 5 in foreign donations among U.S. universities, that should more than raise eyebrows. This needs to be addressed and we must hold our politicians accountable. Protestors that are here on student visas that openly support terrorists and intimidate, assault or threaten others should have their visas revoked full stop. When the DHS self-discloses that upwards of 400 ISIS-affiliated migrants have crossed into our border, that should raise alarm bells. Again, we must hold our politicians accountable and put partisan bullshit aside to address security concerns at the border.
If you’re Jewish and reading this, you have a responsibility to your community to keep it safe. Take seriously your 2nd amendment right to bear arms. You have a responsibility to your family to be physically fit and able to protect them from harm along with your community. Counterprotest and do not go alone, and do not be silent. Teach your children not to be silent in the face of antisemitism. The moment you go silent and remain a soft target, the further you embolden these nutcases.
If you’re not Jewish and reading this, I thank you for coming this far. I realize this is heavy, so I do appreciate you sticking with me. And I want to emphasize that it’s not fear mongering to say “what starts with us doesn’t end with us”. There is a larger geopolitical chess game at play between east vs. west, civilization vs. barbarism. It is vital to be on the right side of history, else you’re setting yourself and your future children to live in a society that is gripped by extremist ideology. Unlike what appears to have already erupted in many European countries, there is still some hope yet for the United States of America.
Am Yisrael Chai.
