CHANUKAH 5780 SECTION E PAGE 24
Over Pittsburgh and Poway, American Jews scream. Over Jersey City, American Jews are silent. This is dangerous.
Color us not only angry and sad but perplexed. Eleven Jews are murdered in Pittsburgh, and the American Jewish community is discom- bobulated. Memorial events are held across the country, including in Denver. Non-Jews speak up in denunciation, as do politicians. One Jew is murdered in Poway, California. The same massive reaction. Last week, two Jews and two non-Jews are killed in New Jersey. Where is the reaction? The community memorials? The expressions of solidarity? The shock. The anger. The sadness. Where are they?
Are we now inured to such events? Do we assume that American Jews are no longer safe, get used to it? Do we actually think that these murdered Jews were not the object of anti-Semitic hatred? Is that a defense mechanism, an attempt to hide behind the truth so as to protect us from the reality? The mayor of Jersey City said the attack was anti-Semitic. It was a kosher store, a publicly identifiable Jewish place, that was attacked. And this Jewish place was right next to another Jewish place, a Jewish school.
What essential difference is there between this kosher store and the one in France that was attacked, or the shul in Halle, Germany that was attacked, or the synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway that were attacked? Do we really think a racist rant on social media prior to a mass murder is now a requirement, a sina qua non, for determining whether every murderer of Jews in an identifiably Jewish place is anti-Semitic? Did it make a difference that in the New Jersey incident it was not liberal Jews who were murdered, or that the murderers were not white supremacists, but people of color?
We do not believe that there is an anti-Semite lying in wait behind every bush. We do not seek to blow up misguided expressions, such as those of high school students in Newton, Mass., into major anti-Semitic dangers. We do not believe that anti-hate efforts are pointless. We do not relish victim status for American Jews. We do not make a big deal out of every anti-Semitic sentiment uttered. But we are also not blind. It is its own danger for American Jewry not to acknowledge major anti-Semitic violence as such. The four murders in New Jersey last week were just such an example of anti-Semitic violence.
It is also its own danger not to acknowledge that the rise in anti-Semitic violence around the world is a pertinent context for life in these United States today. When Jews cannot safely wear a kippah in Paris, cannot safely speak Hebrew on a train in Germany, cannot avoid repeated anti-Semitic incidents in Britain’s Labour Party, cannot know that a Holocaust memorial in Brazil is safe from daubed swastikas, life in the United States is affected. Not only in anti-Semitic policies in a New York town that would bar chasidic Jews from fair housing, not only in cities from one coast to the next that witness a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents, not only on college campuses across the plain and in Canada, too, but also in tossing the term “Nazi” at Israel, then calling it legitimate criticism of Israel rather than anti-Semitism.
Against this background, the murder of four people in Jersey City should elicit a much deeper reaction than mourning for the innocent Jewish victims; or gratitude to, and sorrow for the loss of life of, the non-Jew who was killed when he acted to save one of the Jewish customers in the kosher store.
It is not enough when people get along. By all accounts, the owners and customers of the kosher store in Jersey City got along just fine with their African American neighbors. By all accounts, there was no friction between the synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway and their surrounding communities. By all accounts, rare indeed is the case in which anti-Semitic sentiment or violence springs from poor judgement or behavior by Jews. It therefore becomes ironically irrelevant when we hear this refrain from leaders in communities affected by anti-Semitic violence: “This is not who we are. We are proud of our diversity.” Such well meaning, and perfectly true, refrains are not enough. Anti-Semitism is bigger than its individual expressions.
There was no rational reason for the hatred of the ancient Syrian Greeks for the Jews of the Chanukah story. There was no meeting of the minds to be had between Jewish leaders of the day and the Syrian Greek leaders. There was no common language. No mutual commitment to religious freedom or human rights — unknown concepts at the time. But today, these concepts are known, honored and enshrined in law. The only way to combat anti-Semitism today, besides buttressing Jewish integrity internally, is to insist that every anti-Semitic act of violence be fully acknowledged both within the American Jewish community and without, fully prosecuted by the law and fully, publicly, communally mourned.
Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News
