The recent and rapid escalation of anti-Semitic attacks unleashed in the New York metropolitan area is horrifying, almost reaching epidemic levels. It seems like every other week, or sometimes every other day, another attack on an identifiably Jewish person is perpetrated.
Mostly, I see the stories online in social media. The perpetrators in these attacks most of the time do not fit the profile of white supremacists. They don’t seem to fit the media’s narrative or bias, so they are relegated to irrelevant footnotes. Hence the deafening silence in the absence of appropriate media remonstration or reporting.
It can feel dangerous when an attack does not fit a progressive, doctrinaire perspective or a media narrative, because media partisanship trumps actual Jewish safety.
It is disturbing to feel that the media calls out Jewish hate with gusto when it fits the narrative bias, yet displays a degree of cold restraint when it doesn’t. In the American progressive narrative, the only terrorists worth noting are white nationalists. As Seth Franzman put it aptly, there is “inconvenient anti-Semitism.”
It’s disturbing not only on a moral level but because, you can be sure, anti-Semites take note. Hate is emboldened. Even if unintentionally, partisan coverage of anti-Semitism become a breeding ground of anti-Semitism.
Of course, when there’s no choice, when the scale of the story is so big, it makes the news —for example, two weeks ago, when the NJ kosher market was attacked. And tragically also on the seventh night of Chanukah, when a machete-wielding attacker barged into the private home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg’s candlelighting celebration. But in the intervening weeks between these two events, there was a continuous string of anti-Semitic incidences. Where were the media then?
Seventh night of Chanukah, on the cusp of 2020 — by the time this is published, officially 2020 — and a private Jewish party in America is marred by a bloodied anti-Semitic attack. Is this the tipping point of anti-Semitism in America? When does it reach the point when we sadly recognize, the tide has turned?
Maybe the Hypercacher supermarket siege we were all horrified by in Paris a few years back reached the shores of America on the seventh night of Chanukah.
Change is not necessarily seismic. It can happen in small, gradual, incremental steps, until one day you wake up and realize you are living in a different reality.
The Jewish American reality I grew up in didn’t include Chanukah lightings bloodied by machete-wielding anti-Semites.
When I was a child and even all the way into adulthood, no synagogue doors were locked.
Nowadays, many are. And now, the attack target site has shifted from the public domain of the synagogue to the private domain of a Jewish home.
Does this mean, G-d forbid, the conversation will shift from shul security to negotiable mezuzzahs, the symbol that announces a Jewish home? Where does this story end?
The one constant in these attacks, be it Tree of Life in Pittsburgh, Chabad of Poway, California, and now Monsey, New York, is the deep inspirational response of Jewish resilience in the face of such evil threats.
Word is that Rabbi Rottenberg continued with his Chanukah menorah lighting, even after the attacker had entered, or was it just as he exited? Does it really matter? What matters is to be able to dig so deep within at such moments — at life-threatening moments of fight or flight when panic and trauma are foregone conclusions. To possess the stunning emotional and spiritual presence of mind to continue on, to kindle a menorah in defiance, not to surrender to an evil and threatening darkness, is nothing short of astounding.
I can only imagine the panicked pandemonium that reigned in that home. To evoke that mental picture, but then instead to evoke a very different mental picture of a literal kindling of light over darkness, is to evoke the tangible Jewish spirit that lives on.
For at the end of the day, after all is said and done about adding more security and more preventative measures, this is really the only “weapon” we have left. Our light. Our Judaism. Our faith. Our resilience.
There’s a famous philosophical debate between Talmudic colleagues, the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai regarding the sequence of lighting the Chanukah menorah.
The school of Shammai posits: The menorah ought to be lit in full on the first night, coming out of the gate swinging with all eight flames burning bright, and then, as the days of Chanukah pass by, one candle, one flame at a time, should be deducted, to reflect the passage of the holiday.
The school of Hillel disagrees. The menorah ought to be lit one candle at a time, day by day, adding one candle each night, increasing the light over the darkness. “Ma’alin ba-kodesh ve-ein moridin, in matters of sanctity, we always increase, we do not decrease.”
Jewish law follows the opinion of the school of Hillel. Each night of Chanukah, we increase the light; candle to candle, flame to flame, until all eight are burning in the full menorah, on the pinnacle day of Chanukah illumination: its final and holiest day.
This is our true ammunition. One candle at a time, lighting up the darkness of the world, with our Judaism.
What that candle of light is, will take different forms at different times. Here is the form it takes this very week (January 1, 2020), mere days after the Chanukah attack in Monsey. Here comes a strong Jewish response of light: Siyum HaShas. A gathering of more than 100,000 Jews around the world to mark the 13th cycle of the study of the daily Talmud folio.
There will be more than 100,000 Jews at the flagship celebration in the New York area. Instead of a gathering of multitudes that could potentially lead to maddening crowds and perhaps panic, there will be the silent Amidah, when amidst the multitudes you can hear a pin drop, but just before that you can hear the electrifying and thundering in unison “Yehei Shmei Rabbas” of more than 100,000 Jews that will embody a living light of Jewish resilience and tradition.
Ultimately, this is the only real light that holds the power to dispel and drown out the darkness of anti-Semitism. Ma’alin ba-kodesh.
Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News
