Shavuot eve came, and was marred. Not some far away story somewhere in a town I don’t know. But right here, in Boulder, practically an extension of Denver.
Jews targeted and burned! Including a Holocaust survivor who was spared the camps, and instead was burning alive here in America, in Boulder, Colorado, at the ripe age of 88 years old! Why? To “Free Palestine.”
Here were a group of peaceful Jews, openly Jewish and openly supporting the release of the hostages.
Traditionally, it is customary to count day by day from Passover to Shavuot (the “Omer”). This year’s Passover to Shavuot season was bracketed by terrorist attacks. Seder night, a Jewish governor’s mansion was attack. Shavuot eve, an attack that set Jews on fire in Boulder.
And in between, the execution of two young Israeli embassy staffers in our nation’s capital.
This is America 2025.
The media is fanning the flames reporting lie after lie about the famine in Gaza, caused by Israel. Passing off Hamas propaganda as news.
Many news outlets seems be choreographing a new standard of acceptable Jewish life in America. You can be Jewish, but not too openly Jewish, and certainly not Jewish in support of Israel. Keep your heads down, and you will be accepted. Peacefully marching for a cause close to Zionism in an open public space? Now, that’s too much.
I’ve heard certain extremist Jewish groups blame anti-Semitism on Israel. As though it’s Israel’s fault.
In reality, it’s quite the opposite.
While the genesis of modern Israel began in the late 1800’s, before the Holocaust, it’s the devastation of the Holocaust that clinched the creation of the modern state of Israel. Israel followed, rather than preceded, the Holocaust and all the other exiles and persecutions.What about the auto-da-fe? The expulsion from Spain? They had nothing to do with Israel. Israel had nothing to do with them. Don’t fall for that “reason,” for that pretext, which is nothing other than the current iteration of anti-Semitism in our time.
I shake for what’s unfolding here. Here we are in another painful Jewish exile. I wonder, will we need to have Shiboleth codes to enter synagogues and Jewish spaces?
Our ancestors have lived this before. They have taught us, assimilation does not provide any answer. Perpetrators don’t care what kind of Jew any Jew is.
Externally, I admit, I worry about publicly being Jewish here and what the ramifications can look like. It feels like parts of the mainstream media are complicit in this. Internally, I know it’s a call for us only to become stronger as a Jewish community.
And we will.
I’m a fifth generation American on my father’s maternal side. American identity, pride and gratitude run deep.
On my mother’s side, my grandmother was the sole escapee of her family from the Holocaust. Likewise, my grandfather, plus one his sister, an Auschwitz survivor.
We have lived here in America, nestled in the good life of American freedom and opportunity. For one half of my family, America was literally a lifesaver. On the other side — American bonds for generations.
And yet, these days, here we are brooding, amidst something dark that is brewing.
Until not that long ago, no shuls had security on a regular basis. At some point in my twenties, there was security on the High Holidays. That’s all. But now it’s every Shabbat. The “new normal” of being Jewish in America.
In 2018, Tree of Life Synagogue was attacked during Shabbat services. A turning point.
In 2019, again, a synagogue was attacked during Shabbat prayer in Poway, California. A turning point. Also in 2019, a kosher market in Jersey City was attacked. Then came Oct. 7, 2023, and its aftermath in America too. More than just another turning point. Would this be called a watershed? a seismic shift? A pivotal turning point?
These past 17 months, anti-Semitism has has become socially— and even to some degree, politically— acceptable. Many Jewish parents could no longer dare or dream of sending their Jewish children to my alma mater, Columbia University, or other prominent universities, where many in my generation studied, graduated and, with their skills, contribute to America.
Chanting “globalize the intifada” became a norm, knowing those words are a call to action, a call to murder us Jews. But condescendingly, in what might could be considered a textbook definition of gaslighting, Jews were waved off. Called drama queens or paranoid.
But those words “globalize the intifada” were foreboding, and we knew it.
None of us will forget where we were when the news of Yaron and Sarah’s murder reached us. It was simply blood curdling.
They were murdered for their assumed identity as Jews. Executed “for Gaza,” in the name of “Free Palestine,” in the capital of the United States of America, down the street from the FBI.
A target has been painted on the back of every American Jew, or even every presumed Jew, people who are Jewish adjacent or in the vicinity of a Jewish venue.
In the Book of Daniel, chapter 5, the fall of Rome was predicted. The mysterious hand on the wall that spelled four Aramaic words: Mene. Mene. Takel. Upharsin. Numbered. Numbered. Weighed. Divided.
It wasn’t a turning point. The message was explicit. It foretold the fall of Rome.
G-d had “numbered” the kingdom of Belshazzar and brought it to an end. That the king had been “weighed” and found wanting. His kingdom was “divided” and would be given to the Persians.
Today, we don’t have such explicit prophecy.
But in the Jewish community we are all shaken, worried, morbidly waiting to see what G-d forbid can come next.
We are reading the handwriting on the wall.
Yet, the Jewish people lives!
“Netzach Yisrael Lo Yeshaker” (I Samuel 15:29). Its meaning, “The Jewish people are eternal.”
Whether I am in America or in Israel, those are the words I hold onto.
We have always survived against the odds.
We will continue to do so.
“Netzach Yisrael Lo Yeshaker.”
The Jewish people are and will forever be, eternal.
© IJN 2025
