Who Am I?

I am angry at my own naiveté; you’d think by now I’d know more.  Anti-Semitism is alive and well.  I admit I had a rather insulated childhood, growing up within a Jewish enclave in Brooklyn.  My schools were predominantly Jewish; the schools were virtually closed on the high holidays.  Catholics were the other religious group I knew, generally the Italian and Irish children of immigrants.  We were never religious, but we were definitely Jewish. 

So what does that mean?  I will digress from my topic for a paragraph and offer definitions:

 Race, as a social construct, is a group of people who share similar and distinct physical characteristics.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]} First used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations, by the 17th century race began to refer to physical (i.e. phenotypical) traits. The term was often used in a general biological taxonomic sense,^[7] starting from the 19th century, to denote genetically differentiated human populations defined by phenotype.  (You should be able to see by this that the term does not refer to anything real in the physical world).

 Ethnicities:  an ethnic group; a social group that shares a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like.

 

Religion:  belief in a god or in a group of gods

·         : an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods

·         : an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group

These terms are frequently use synonymously which clearly should not be the case.  E.g.:  I am Caucasian by the loose definition above; American by ethnicity and essentially do not adhere to any religion.  However, by ancestry I am of Eastern European Jewish descent.  I categorize myself as a “secular Jew” or “cultural Jew” because of my heritage.  My ancestors grew up in Jewish villages in Russia and Poland and experienced the hatred and “pogroms” practiced by the Czars in Russia.  In the late 19^th and early 20^th century many Jews from Eastern Europe immigrated to America because of the dangers and discrimination they experienced in their homelands.

Of course, this is no different from other groups that also came to this country looking for a better life:  Irish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and Germans.  More recently we have had many other immigrants including Hungarians, Cubans, Vietnamese, Africans and those from several Mideastern countries.  Most of the larger American cities are homes to many different cultural and ethnic groups.

Jews, however, remain somewhat distinct in their presence and impact on American life.  They are not from one country, but many.  They are not a distinct ethnicity or race.  Broadly they are of one religion although that varies considerably as well.  The other distinction is that 6 million of them were exterminated over a period of several years by the most notorious political and military regime in the 20^th century.  It was an extension of historical anti-Semitism which painted Jews as horned Christ-killers, greedy merchants and thieves and baby-killers. 

How can it be that there are still those who say it never happened?  There are pictures and testimonies from survivors, soldiers and rescuers; there are psyches damaged by their own and family remembrances and experiences.  In my childhood it was not uncommon to encounter survivors identified by the faint numerical tattoos on their arms and wrists. 

Silly me, I thought that was all in the past.  I have never thought of myself as a serious target of discrimination.  After all, I went to college, graduate school, had decent jobs and lived where I chose.  I have never been profiled by the police or called names (to my face, anyway).  But……

Recently a medical professional told me (in all seriousness) that I must be wealthy because all Jews were.  Someone else told me that she guessed I was Jewish because of my nose.  And, just today, a family member presented evidence of the Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.

It ranks with the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” widely disseminated by Henry Ford in the 1920s and adopted as gospel by Adolf Hitler.  The speech (available on YouTube) is by Benjamin Freedman and is entitled “A Christian View of the Holocaust”.  Freedman was a “successful Jewish businessman of New York City who was at one time the principal owner of the Woodbury Soap Company.  He broke with organized Jewry after the Judeo-Communist Victory of 1945 and spend the remainder of his life, and at least 2.5 million dollars, exposing the Jewish tyranny which has enveloped the United States”.  The speech goes on to give a skewed view of history which paints the Jews and Zionists plotting world domination and essentially causing their own well-deserved destruction.

After I responded to this speech, the family member questioned why someone would turn against his “race” and have his mind so “twisted” to have all this hate (obviously implying that there would have to be a valid reason).  Why, indeed?  Why do people hate the “other”?  Why do people make up stories to support their hate and shower endless stereotypes on those that are different from them? 

I could come with a variety of explanations, any and all of which may or may not apply; most likely, some combination would explain it.  The most likely is what is taught by family and society.  Other reasons include poverty, discrimination, and abuse.  Children who are deprived and unloved tend to be angry and seek a target for their anger.  There is also a statistical correlation between a lower socioeconomic status and prejudice.  That may not totally explain why Adolf Hitler or Benjamin Freedman acted as they did or believed what they did.  That is neither my responsibility nor expertise.

What I must do to justify my own conscience is expose and attack hate, prejudice and discrimination wherever and whenever I find it. 

I’m guilty of overlooking anti-Semitism because I have been focused on the racial profiling and anti-Islamic sentiment that has been prevalent and noted.  Talking about anti-Semitism in no way diminishes that reality.  Like many other middle class Jewish people, I have become complacent about my position in society.  I address and then dismiss the small slights and references in the interest of maintaining my relationships in the community and workplace.  I think it’s time to be louder.

We can’t “agree to disagree” or say it’s “just politics”.  It’s who we are and how we see each other.  Adolf Hitler was not “just another politician”.  Neither is Donald Trump.  I don’t apologize for that comparison; it doesn’t diminish the horror of the Holocaust, but rather brings it home as a real and present threat.