Jews must respond to rising anti-Semitism
Last week was a horrible news week for everyone, but if you are watching closely, it was especially bad for American Jews like me.
There was yet another synagogue shooting by a radicalized white supremacist. The next day, the FBI arrested a recently converted Muslim on terrorism charges. These perpetrators had one thing in common — they both wanted to kill a lot of Jews.
For years, I have wanted to brush off signs of growing antiSemitism as an exaggeration, an example of wrongly extrapolating a broad societal trend from acts of the demented few. Decades ago I even wondered if an organization like the Anti-Defamation League was any longer necessary. A Jew even came within a couple hundred votes of becoming U.S. vice president.
However, it is now undeniable that the deep societal divisions rending the social fabric of our nation have loosened the sources of anti-Semitism as well. White supremacists and radical Islamists point to different ills that they believe plague our society, but it is unnerving that they find common cause in blaming the Jews.
As the manifesto by the synagogue
shooter attests, besides centuries-old false anti-Semitic narratives, his animus arose from belief that Jews are part of the liberal elite supporting largescale immigration that is changing the complexion of America and challenging historical white power and privilege.
Hateful Muslims have their own set of bigoted tropes, but a modern core claim is that American Jews exert disproportional political power to advance a pro-Israel foreign policy, including continued colonization of oppressed
Palestinians.
Even scarier, both sides see the fingerprints of Jews on the powerful global economic forces that they oppose; classic anti-Semitic themes of Jewish financiers who tilt the scales toward elites, in an age where populism reigns and the establishment is under siege.
We Jews cannot take any solace in a belief that modern antiJewish bigotry is isolated to the political fringes. Indeed, it is being mainstreamed.
Europe is an anti-Jewish mess. Openly anti-Semitic, farright political parties are gaining strength throughout the continent; Holocaust denial legislation has succeeded in multiple eastern European parliaments; and overt anti-Semites like Viktor Orban have a vice-grip on political power in places like Hungary.
The venerable British Labor Party is wracked with anti-Semitism throughout its ranks, leading a Jewish member of Parliament to bolt Labor, claiming it was “sickeningly institutionally racist.”
It is far better here at home, but warning signs cannot be ignored. In too many communities, and even in the halls of Congress, opposition to the Netanyahu government and Israeli policy has far too easily taken the form of classic anti-Semitism with Rep. Ilhan Omar often leading the way. Brazen anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence from the far right is too often only hesitatingly criticized in the mildest of terms by our president and his enablers in the White House.
There are no quick fixes for rising anti-Jewish vitriol. If they existed, we Jews would have used them centuries ago. Indeed, our own community is so divided — on Israel-Palestine, on domestic politics, even on the basic question of “Who is a Jew?” — we could probably never agree on a unified response to antiSemitism anyway.
Considering this, it is incumbent on each individual and each community to address our modern peril in the way that makes most sense to them.
I, for one, agree with the rabbi from the Poway synagogue who lost a finger, and almost his life, in last week’s attack. He wrote that the times call for being “brazenly Jewish.”
For me, being brazenly Jewish means being bolder and more vocal in calling out injustice when I see it. The injustice of Christian Sri Lankans being slain by the bigotry of ISIS; of thousands of Egyptian Muslims being locked up for opposing a tyrannical government; of the destruction of 73 Jewish gravestones in a Romanian cemetery; of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
As is said in the book of Proverbs: “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous and terror to the evildoer.”
After a tragic week, it is high time we started turning the tables on evildoers and bringing some joy to the hearts of the righteous.