(Atlantic) Gary Rosenblatt - How do we explain Jews being shot to death at Shabbat prayer in their synagogue by hate-filled white nationalists in Pittsburgh and Poway, California; and visibly Orthodox men and women violently attacked in Brooklyn and Monsey, New York, and shot down next door to a synagogue in Jersey City, New Jersey? In a new study by the American Jewish Committee, 35% of American Jews said they had experienced anti-Semitism in the past five years, and 1/3 reported concealing outward indications of their being Jewish. In nearly 50 years of reporting on the American Jewish community, I never encountered such a level of palpable fear, anger, and vulnerability among American Jews as I do today. Are Jews to accept that the new normal in the land of the free is that they must hide signs of their identity, avoid synagogues, and downplay support for Israel, as in much of today's Europe? The writer is editor-at-large of the New York Jewish Week.
2020-03-20 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive