Growing anti-semitism stuns American Jews
‘There is still so much evil,’ Holocast survivor says
Until recent years, many Jews in America believed that the worst of anti-semitism was over there, in Europe, a vestige of the old country.
American Jews were welcome in universities, country clubs and corporate boards that once excluded their grandparents. They married non-jews, moved into mixed neighborhoods and by 2000, the first Jew ran for vice president on a major party ticket.
So the massacre Saturday of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, by a man who told police when he surrendered that he “wanted all Jews to die,” was for many a shocking wake-up call.
“This kind of evil makes me think of the Holocaust and how people can be so cruel, that there is so much evil in the world, still,” said Moshe Taube, 91, a retired cantor from Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh and a survivor of the Holocaust.
But it did not come out of nowhere, said experts in anti-semitism. At the same time that Jews were feeling unprecedented acceptance in the United States, the climate was growing increasingly hostile, intensifying in the two years since Donald Trump was elected president. And it comes at a time when attacks on Jews are on the rise in Europe as well, with frequent anti-semitic incidents in France and Germany.
The hate in the United States came into full view last year as white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Va., with lines of men carrying torches and chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”
Swastikas and other anti-semitic graffiti have been cropping up on synagogues and Jewish homes around the country. Jews online are subjected to vicious slurs and threats. Many synagogues and Jewish day schools have been amping up security measures.