All the Ways We Deny Antisemitism
I’ve served as a congregational rabbi for a decade or so. My leadership has coincided with an ominous rise in antisemitic incidents from vile online threats to the killing of 11 Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. During that time, I've listened to hundreds of conversations detailing real life encounters of antisemitism. I’ve heard diverse opinions and a wide range of experiences about its nature in the present day—from a swastika drawn in the bathroom of a school to microaggressions in the workplace and everything in between. But nearly every conversation I hear about antisemitism has one, surprising thing in common: in every instance where an antisemitic act has been committed, our culture—and conversations surrounding these hateful acts—tend to diminish or even deny antisemitism.
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I’ve heard this tendency to diminish antisemitism in my own life many times. We tell ourselves that today’s antisemitism is nowhere near as bad as the violence our grandparents and great grandparents encountered. So is it really worth mentioning? Or we tell ourselves that other forms of repugnant hatred—racism, misogyny, homophobia—are exponentially worse problems than antisemitism, so maybe we shouldn’t even raise antisemitism as a concern at all. We tell ourselves that antisemitism is not so bad (or not as bad as), and so we say nothing, or we doubt ourselves.
I, myself, am not immune to this propensity to disbelieve that antisemitism is real and pervasive. In the summer of 2020, amidst the Black Lives Matter Protests, someone with a baseball bat attacked the glass door of my synagogue; hitting the reinforced glass repeatedly until it cracked. It's not antisemitism, I told myself, it's part of a larger social justice movement. No one would attack my synagogue with any particular intention, I thought. Right?
We have a cultural problem accepting that antisemitism exists, persists, and thrives in America. But it does. Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. are at an all time high, according to a March 2023 report by the Anti Defamation League (ADL). Schools and synagogues are growing targets of this horrific hate. Jews are less safe in the U.S. than we have ever been before. So it’s worth asking: why do we shy away from calling out this hate? Why do we allow this practice of antisemitism denial to continue?
There are lots of reasons, actually.
https://time.com/6309354/calling-out-antisemitism-essay/
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It emphasizes how low the status of anti-Semitism is, even to those claiming to be committed to diversity and understanding. Of course, it sadly has to be mentioned that more than a few Jews are also engaged in this bullshit. Gaslighting? Worn down by years of anti-Semitism? Buying into the dominant, majority narrative? I think it depends on the Jew, but it is damaging nonetheless, even more so when said Jew is propped up with "See?! SEE?! This can't anti-Semitic because THIS Jews says so!"
