There was a time, not too long ago, when the very notion of having to hide your Jewishness in America would have seemed unfathomable. Kind of. I mean, we have a good 150 yers of hiding our Jewishness here in the United States, changing our names, shedding our rituals, folding our kippahs neatly into our pockets. But (I think) we (many of us?) have felt like proud Jews. Even if it was on the inside
Yet, nearly half of American Jews (46%) say they changed their behavior at least once out of fear of antisemitism this past year, according to American Jewish Committee’s just-released State of Antisemitism in America 2023 Report.
And we don’t need their report to tell us what’s happening on the ground. Our Jewish Federation office has received dozens of phone calls in the past few months asking them to stop delivering our local Jewish Press to condo lobbies, where addressee and religion are open to public view.
But still….maybe this is just a coincidence, a paranoid response on the part of a few individuals? Where’s the reality? What’s really happening?
Art by Sephira Lightstone
It hurts to say but if I honestly look around me and consider what is happening every day…. maybe this is precisely the story of my life in America.
My life in 2024 feels different because of exactly all the little and not so little incidents, what some in the “woke” might call “micro-aggressions” and “not-so-microaggressions” that are happening all around me.
Yesterday I had lunch with a museum friend. She asked me why our local news does not report on the uptick of antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents. Now that’s a great question.
Large incidents like graffiti messages sprayed on the exterior of theThe Florida Holocaust Museum make the news. But not the security and safety concerns of those of us who recently attended the St Pete city council meeting….
For example….an incident connected to the City Council meeting of a couple of weeks back. Remember? The one where an opportunistic council member who has hung his political hat with the wretched “squad” in Washington pushed a resolution demanding a cease fire in Gaza. Well the resolution didn’t pass, at least in the format he presented….but….
It was not reported in any news source I know of that police/city hall security had to pre-emptively escort one speaker, the Chair of the Board of the Florida Holocust Museum, back to his office a few blocks away. Huh?
A group of speakers imported to S Petersburg specially for this event, each of whom had had their three minutes to recite lies about Israeli apartheid, the wisdom of the world court on the bogus charges of genocide, and the peace loving mission of Hamas(!!!) had gathered on City Hall steps. They appeared to be filming speakers and declaring victory for their social media audience. When they saw one speaker, the Holocaust Museum board member, who had presented comments about the definition of holocaust, leaving the building there were heckles. Fortunately police stepped in before a potentially dangerous escalation. They insisted that it was unsafe at 8 pm for an adult to walk unescorted a few blocks through downtown St Petersburg, FL.
This is 2024.
I am still processing what happened at that city council meeting. I still have a lot to process.
When I spoke up at the city council I read the room carefully. I felt pierced by the hostility in the room. In the halls of civil discourse I listened to lies upon lies. Israel was called an apartheid state by most anti-Israel speakers.
These people who spoke of the hurt and pain of Gaza but advocated inflicting pain on Israel as noble. This has gone on in city after city across the United States. Only today I read of a similar, more dramatic, and blood-stained event of this sort that occurred in Evanston, Illinois, where Sam grew up. In the 70s he marched for “open housing,” an anti-racism legislation that would allow anyone anywhere in formerly segregated, lily-white Evanston to buy property.
Today the New York Times and NPR coyly report on the demise of the Jewish-Black political alliance. People we’ve been duped. History has been hijacked. There are real consequences!
Before I heard who those who came to the destroy Israel posture, before I saw the victory news creating event on the City Hall steps, before that police escort, I would have said “none of this applies me.” Now I know it does.
These changes in our personal environment and in the communities we have always felt were safe have now given way to not feeling safe. It has been a more insidious progression than I ever could have imagined and now we find ourselves in a less safe America.
I feel like there has been a turning point. I hear about new incidents in my community almost every day.
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