The Hidden, Hated Jew
This is a warped world we live in
How strange is it to be hated by so many who don’t know me? Hated by so many who have never heard my name yet know that people like me exist.
Jews.
How strange is it for my own friends to talk about a country and its people as terror-mongers, fuelled by hate and oppression, when they don’t realise it’s also my country?
Israel.
Am I lucky that here in my little corner of England I blend in? English is my mother tongue and Caucasian defines the colour of my skin.
Sometimes my olive complexion is questioned. Sometimes, with that, my brown eyes are noted. But no one I meet in the street, at the grocery store, or at the school gate knows that Hebrew has infused my life since childhood, that my family were lighting Hanukkah candles while my peers were singing carols, or that my childhood “Easter” holidays were spent with my aunts, uncles and cousins sharing a Passover seder in a joyful and loud apartment in Bat Yam.
It’s easy for my identity and roots to be hidden here. Yet not so easy to look around and see the hate spewing ignorantly out towards me, even when I remain camouflaged by my quaint British surroundings.
