Jewish Americans confront antisemitism with resolve, worry
NEW YORK >> Jewish Americans are closely following the recent upsurge in antisemitic rhetoric and actions with a mix of anxiety and resolve — along with a yearning that a broader swath of Americans, including leaders across the political spectrum, speak out against anti-Jewish hatred.
New Yorker Rizy Horowitz, who runs a program in Brooklyn providing meals and activities for Holocaust survivors, says the widespread vitriol prompts her to ask: “When can I pack up my suitcase and run away?”
“It’s a very frightening moment. There is no other word,” said Horowitz. “We’re all frightened because we’ve seen the past and we don’t want to relive it.”
As for those spewing the hate, she says: “Have I done something? No. It’s just I’m a Jew.”
Rabbi Seth Adelson of Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh, located near the Tree of Life synagogue where 11 worshippers were killed in 2018 in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, said anxiety has intensified as anti-Jewish vitriol abounds on social media, embraced by some widely followed celebrities.
The rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, expressed love for Adolf Hitler in an interview. Former President Donald Trump hosted Ye and a Holocaustdenying white supremacist at Mar-a-Lago. Basketball star Kyrie Irving was suspended after posting a link to an antisemitic film
“The antisemitic cat is out of the bag,” said Adelson.
“I don’t think it’s reached a place where we feel it’s time to go hide in the basement. But it certainly has increased everybody’s anxiety.”
“We feel it whenever we go in and out of buildings, because now we have security in a way that we didn’t before,” he said. “There are armed security guards at most, if not all, Jewish buildings and metal detectors and all of those things.”
“People who hate Jews want us to cower in fear,” he added. “What I hope for is that Jewish people will understand that the way to respond to antisemitism is to be loudly and proudly Jewish, to be proud of our traditions.”
A prominent Los Angeles rabbi, David Wolpe, has wrestled with his response to the antisemitism upsurge.
“When I began my career, I thought antisemitism was an issue in my father’s generation — it won’t be in mine,” he said. “I was sadly and unforgivingly wrong.”
He strives to put the recent events in perspective.
“We are still — in America — as safe and free as Jews have been in all of human history,” he said. “It’s so easy to be alarmist, ... to lose perspective, to scare our kids. I don’t want to do that.”
Asked what makes this moment different, Wolpe was succinct.
“It’s the volume, the persistence, the permissibility.”
The expanding use of social media by antisemites is a major concern.
“This hateful rhetoric is being promoted by people who unfortunately influence hundreds of thousands of people,” said Pat Halper, a community activist in Nashville, Tennessee. “We never know if one of those followers, or many of them, will take the next hateful or violent step.”
Yet Halper’s outlook is resolute.
“We’ve been in bad places before and found our way,” she said. “I have to believe we’ll find our way through this too.”
Texas author Anna Salton Eisen, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, has been sharing her late parents’ stories for years.
“When I started speaking in schools more than 20 years ago, the Holocaust was a history lesson. Now it has become a lesson in current events,” she said.