Antisemitism is at the dark heart of the 20th century. Mao’s killing of 65 million of his fellow Chinese and Stalin’s responsibility for the deaths of at least 20 million of his countrymen notwithstanding, no other religious group was targeted simply for its beliefs to the same degree as the Jews. One-third of the world’s Jewish population died during World War II.
What’s been the shock in it all — at least to some of us non-Jews who thought antisemitism faded after World War II and who observed Germans spending decades repenting for the Holocaust — is that the real thing is back, deadlier than ever. Jews tell us this horror never went away, and Oct. 7 showed the non-Jewish world the truth of that in living color.
What are Jews here in America saying at this point? Is it time to flee to the hills? Was this a sort of Kristallnacht, the famous “night of broken glass” on Nov. 9-10, 1938, when Nazi troops plundered German synagogues, Jewish businesses and homes so badly that the streets were littered with glass?
All of this pain is forcing questions that lead to valid news stories. In a way, many Jews, in different parts of the world, are asking — right now — if it is time for them to flee their own versions of 1938 Germany.
Many Jews are saying that they are realizing who their friends are — and aren’t. Has this made it into headlines?
Here is an article from The Tablet, in which Katya Kazakina laments to silence of the art community in America’s post powerful city. This was reprinted from Artnet Newspro:
In New York, the home of the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, not a single major museum has so far expressed its official support for the Jewish state and, by extension, the Jewish people. Not one major gallery chose to send a message of empathy and take a public stand against the slaughter of Jewish civilians despite, by now, the widely reported grim toll: the estimated 1,400 Israelis killed, including babies, women, and the elderly. …
As a Jewish woman, who’s been writing about art, artists, galleries, museums, auction houses, foundations, fairs, lawsuits for more than 17 years, I feel a mix of pain, disappointment, rage, and fear. Why are the Jews being slaughtered and the art world turns a blind eye — and goes on shopping at Frieze London as if nothing happened?
I have reached out to museums including the Met, the MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney; galleries including Gagosian, Pace, Hauser & Wirth, and David Zwirner; auction houses Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips. It’s been radio silence.
However, 8,000 artists signed a letter of solidarity with Palestinians published by Art Forum magazine, she added.
On the who-their-friends-are side, The Forward has this piece focusing on how Orthodox Jews, long a community that supports the GOP, have been pleasantly surprised at President Joe Biden’s show of public support for Israel in the opening days of the Hamas attacks.
Shlomo Schorr, associate director for Agudath Israel of New Jersey, a Haredi umbrella group, listed the warships sent to the Mediterranean Sea early in the war and the $14 billion aid package for Israel Biden requested. “I think all that combined is leaving people, like, ‘What more could he do as a U.S. president?’”
The Tablet has published features about the WASPs funding antisemitism,” including one piece on the Tides Network, one of the most influential funder of ideas in America and one of the least-reported-on groups ever. (I first heard of Tides when I was researching funders of abortion rights some 20 years ago).
The Tablet’s point seems to be that current forms of antisemitism are now woven into “an elite nonprofit complex,” including Tides, which it calls “a Democratic dark-money group funded by Peter Buffett and other progressive billionaires, on the board of which sit several former Obama officials.”
Before we go further, here is a paper — produced by the American Jewish Committee — offering a contemporary definition of antisemitism and a list of practical examples. Here is an excerpt:
Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:
* Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
* Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
* Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
* Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
There’s more, of course.
Perhaps alone among the print media, Variety magazine sponsored a summit on antisemitism covered by the Jewish Telegraph Agency.
“We’re very proud to be able to do this,” Variety CEO Michelle Sobrino-Stearns told JTA. She pointed out that her magazine has also published a special section of 28 articles on antisemitism, penned by Jewish influencers, celebrities and others, some of whom participated in the summit.
In the first celebrity conversation of the day, award-winning actor Julianna Margulies said “it is shocking” how few members of her industry have spoken out against antisemitism.
“The last thing I thought in my life is that I would be the one actress speaking up for Jews,” she told Eller during their chat. “But I’m proud to be here and I hope to inspire other people to speak up.”
Lilith, the Jewish feminist site, ran a video of a stirring sermon by Los Angeles Rabbi Sharon Brous aptly titled, “We’ve lost so much. Let’s not lose our damn minds” (see the video at the top of this post).
Many are saying: It’s hard not to lose one’s mind. In response, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency ran a fascinating piece about a Tel Aviv press conference that showed gory videos of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. The reason for this event? The sponsors were attempting to attack a Holocaust-denial-like phenomenon casting doubt as to how bad those atrocities actually were.
Many attendees gasped in horror at difficult elements of the footage, and some chose to exit the theater before the screening had finished. (French reporter Roxane) Runel said her personal “limit” was reached when listening to an audio clip of a call on WhatsApp between a Hamas terrorist and his parents, made via the stolen cellphone of an Israeli victim.
“He tells them on the phone — with a voice that is so ecstatic — he sounds like he’s out of his mind,” she said. “He was repeating the same thing over and over again, ‘I killed 10 of them.’ He was saying this as something he was really proud of and he wanted his parents to check the Whatsapp” to see videos he sent of the massacre. The man’s father reacted with praise, while his mother begged him to return home.
The best headline about trends on the political and cultural left comes from the Jewish Journal: “The World is Freaking Out Because Its Favorite Victims Suddenly Become Human Butchers.” A sample:
October 7 has become the biggest wake-up call in modern Jewish history because the level of the horror reached unbearable proportions. October 7 is the worse of the worse of the worse. It is impossible to find a word in the dictionary that goes too far to describe the horrors.
That’s why I’ve seen Jews from the left who usually instinctively take the Palestinian side go eerily quiet. They’re numb. They’re dizzy. They’re disgusted. Every time they want to tweet about Palestinian rights and Palestinian lives, they see another video of the carnage.
Outside the Jewish community there’s been more coverage of this wake-up call among liberal Jews who can’t believe their ears and eyes as they see erstwhile friends supporting Palestine.
Although this New York Times piece is a bit long, stick with me on this:
Interviews with dozens of liberal Jewish leaders and voters, and a review of social media posts, private emails and text chains of liberal Jewish groups, reveal a politically engaged swath of American Jewry who are reaching a breaking point. They have long sought an end to the Israeli government’s occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza, supported a two-state solution and protested the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
But in the Hamas attacks, many saw an existential threat, evoking memories of the Holocaust and generations of antisemitism, and provoking anxiety about whether they could face attacks in the United States. And they were taken aback to discover that many of their ideological allies not only failed to perceive the same threats but also saw them as oppressors deserving of blame.
(According to one recent count by researchers with the Anti-Defamation League, more than 250 rallies around the country have celebrated, glorified and legitimized Hamas attacks since Oct. 7.)
“I am in such a state of despair — in my generation, we have been warned how quickly people would turn on us and we just thought no way,” said Nick Melvoin, 38, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School Board who is now running for Congress and keeps a framed picture of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his office. “Now we see, this is how that happens: When you dehumanize the group. This indoctrination that many of us have been warned about hit us like a ton of bricks.”
The most rattling episodes have occurred on college campuses or on social media, where statements from small organizations have been amplified across the globe. But during a worldwide conflict, those statements have taken on totemic status, heightening fears that they are a precursor to a more treacherous and lasting shift in the standing of Jews in America.
The same soul-searching is going on in Germany, which is especially sensitive to the matter considering its leaders oversaw the deaths of six million Jews 80 years ago. According to Politco.eu:
For many in the country’s Jewish community — which in recent years has grown to an estimated 200,000 people, including many Israelis — the conflagration in the Middle East has made fear part of daily life… Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, several homes in Berlin where Jews are thought to live have been marked with the Star of David.
“My first thought was: ‘It’s like the Nazi time,’” said Sigmount Königsberg, the antisemitism commissioner for Berlin’s Jewish Community, an organization that oversees local synagogues and other parts of Jewish life in the city. “Many Jews are hiding their Jewishness,” he added — in other words, concealing skullcaps or religious insignia out of fear of being attacked.
This is the only news publications I’ve seen do the following — Politico.eu goes on to allude to the massive immigration of Muslims into Germany in recent decades, producing what some, even on the left, now fear might create a fifth column against the nation’s Jews.
There is a practical question here for journalists to continue pursuing: If Jews are beginning to make changes in how they are living their lives, how is this happening and where?
Fears within the Jewish community were particularly prevalent after a former Hamas leader called for worldwide demonstrations in a “day of rage.” Many students at a Jewish school in Berlin stayed home. Two teachers wrote a letter to Berlin’s mayor to express their dismay that, as they put it, the school was nearly empty.
“This means de facto that Jew-haters have usurped the decision-making authority over Jewish life in Berlin,” they wrote. The teachers then blamed Germany’s willingness to take in refugees from war-torn places like Syria and Lebanon. “Germany has taken in and continues to take in hundreds of thousands of people whose socialization includes antisemitism and hatred of Israel,” they wrote.
I’ll end with this truly fascinating NBC piece about Jews buying guns. Featured in the story is a Hollywood, Fla., synagogue that I used to report on way back in my days of covering South Broward County news for the now-defunct Hollywood Sun-Tattler.
The deadly terrorist attack in Israel and the torrent of social media threats that followed have forced many American Jews to reconsider their long-held stances against owning or using guns.
Firearm instructors and Jewish security groups across the country say they have been flooded with new clientele since Hamas assaulted Israel on Oct. 7. And gun shop owners in Florida say they have seen more Jews purchase firearms in recent weeks than ever before.
“We’ve definitely seen a tremendous increase in religious Jewish people, Orthodox people, purchasing firearms,” said David Kowalsky, who owns Florida Gun Store in the town of Hollywood, and also offers firearms training classes. “I’ve seen a surge in interest in individual training as well as group training.”…
“The majority of Jews in the country historically have been liberal on the left, pro-gun reform, pro-gun control, opposed to personal gun ownership,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran New York-based political strategist who is also an Orthodox rabbi. “Jews with guns were always seen as an odd event.”
But now, Sheinkopf added, it seems the long-held view — of the U.S. being the “one place in the world where Jews are safe — is coming to an end.”
There’s a big shift in which some on the traditional Jewish left are taking steps to the right in ways they never thought they would.
All this is reporting gold. Hopefully more reporters will follow up on it.
FIRST IMAGE: Memorial scarf — Never Forget October 7 2023 — for sale at RedBubble.com