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The Year American Jews Woke Up

(New York Times) Bret Stephens - American Jews were aware, before the pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023, that antisemitism was once again a problem in our collective life. We were aware. But unless we had been directly affected by it, the antisemitism didn't feel personal. The calls were in the news, but not quite in our lives. After Oct. 7, it became personal. It was in the neighborhoods in which we lived, the professions and institutions in which we worked, the colleagues we worked alongside, the peers with whom we socialized, the group chats to which we belonged, the causes to which we donated, the high schools and universities our kids attended. The call was coming from inside the house. At some point, an awakening occurred for many American Jews. I've called them the Oct. 8 Jews - those who woke up a day after our greatest tragedy since the Holocaust to see how little empathy there was for us in many of the spaces and communities and institutions we thought we comfortably inhabited. It came with a realization that American Jews should not expect reciprocity. Few minorities have been more conspicuously attached to progressive causes than American Jews: in labor unionism, feminism, gay rights, civil rights, and human rights. But whatever we poured of ourselves into the pain and struggle of others was not returned in our days of grief. In an era that stresses sensitivity to every microaggression against nearly any minority, macroaggressions against Jews who happen to believe that Israel has a right to exist are not only permitted but demanded. This isn't going to end anytime soon because anti-Zionism has a self-righteous fervor that will attract followers and inspire militancy. It won't end because politics in America are moving toward a view that the world is neatly divided between the oppressors and the oppressed - that is congenial to classic antisemitism. And it won't end because most Jews will not forsake what it means to be Jewish so that we may be more acceptable to those who despise us. In 2013 the ADL recorded just 751 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. In 2023 it counted 8,873 incidents, an increase of over 1,000%. That included over 1,000 bomb threats to Jewish institutions, thousands of acts of vandalism and harassment, the desecration of graves and more than 160 physical assaults. In the last two or three generations in tolerant America, we had mostly forgotten the visceral understanding that, despite most outward appearances, we were and would always be different. That there will always be those who hate us. That nothing we can do - whether through acts of religious renunciation or cultural erasure or conspicuous achievements or abundant generosity - would ever entirely ease that hatred. To have been born a Jew is the single most fortunate thing that ever happened to me. It is a priceless moral, spiritual, intellectual and emotional inheritance from my ancestors, some of whom were slaughtered for it. It's a precious bequest to my children. It means to embrace the great, complicated, essential project of a Jewish state. To imagine we can do without it is to forget how close we came to extinction before it was born.
2024-10-06 00:00:00
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