Gaza war brings long-held hatred out in open
“What we’re seeing is a tremendous amount of this Jewish awakening. We’re seeing Jews doubling down on their Judaism by spending more time with fellow Jews, by becoming more Jewish.” Rabbi Motti Seligson
In Nevada, there are Jewish people who have hidden any signs of their faith, painting over the mezuzahs that hang outside their homes. That’s happened in Texas, too, where a Jewish city council member’s Dallas home was defaced with bright red graffiti. But Jewish people in South Carolina say Christians in their community stop them on the streets to offer prayers. Sometimes they even get a hug. Just for being Jewish.
Antisemitism is on the rise in America. Some places you feel that, Jewish people across the country say, other places you don’t. States are not monolithic, nor are people. But we set out to answer a question: What does the widely reported surge in antisemitism look like?
As we interviewed people, there were things we heard over and over: People are frightened. They’re frustrated. And they all worry, even if they feel safe in their own communities.
Antisemitism impacts secular Jewish people and religious ones, children and adults, regular folks and TV stars. Actor Mayim Bialik says Jewish people everywhere are having the same surreal conversations.
“I thought about taking my mezuzah down in the weeks and first couple months after Oct. 7, and I don’t think about that anymore, but I do have a pervasive fear that I will be confronted by someone, especially since I am a public face of being Jewish,” says the former star of “The Big Bang Theory.” “It’s a fear that I think many of us have experienced, even if you’re not a public person.”
Bialik feels a responsibility to speak out: “I never thought that my platform would have to be used to defend the right of Jewish people to exist. I was raised and educated and even studied the Jewish experience in America, and I knew that there was a tremendous amount of antisemitism both covert and overt, but I did not understand the scale,” she says. “I had no idea of the scale.”
Right now, Jewish people are observing Passover, a holiday centered on the exodus from Egypt.
The story carries more weight this year: After all, it is, in part, a tale of Jewish people leaving a place where they no longer felt they could live at ease. Some say they feel that way today − in America.
“Jews are talking about ‘Do you have a passport?’ ‘Are you armed?’ People are actually having these conversations,” says Shoshana Stein Benarroch, 43, who runs @mysocalledjewishlife on TikTok. Her kosher cooking videos have been inundated with hate.
Yet in a fascinating phenomenon, some faithful are returning to their synagogues and leaning into their Judaism, rather than shying away from it.
“What we’re seeing is a tremendous amount of this Jewish awakening,” says Rabbi Motti Seligson, public relations director for Chabad.org. “We’re seeing Jews doubling down on their Judaism by spending more time with fellow Jews, by becoming more Jewish.”
The past six months have been a wake-up call, Seligson says: “I think that all this (hate) just came to the surface. It’s not like it didn’t exist. You just needed the right circumstances to expose it.”