Before Shabbat

It’s the first Before Shabbat blog of 2020, and I have to speak about antisemitism; again. Antisemitism was the central subject of my Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur day sermons. I talked about it at length, reviewing the origins and the impact of antisemitism in America and in our own greater Boston community.

My motivation for those sermons was multifaceted. Some of it came from the terrorist killings in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and the Chabad synagogue in Poway, CA. These awful scenes of violence shook us all at our very core. It created a sense of fear and vulnerability where before there had been little to none.

When in our own community, a swastika was scrawled in a Newton middle school hallway, the impact was dramatic. That incident spurred me to think deeply about where we were in this challenging and turbulent time.It’s not stopping. And now, I am trying once again to come to terms with the latest violent attacks on Jews in America. It is confusing and harrowing to see this pattern of hatred playing out the way it has for centuries.

As David Nirenberg, the dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago said recently, “I think that, in every moment in which anti-Semitism really becomes an organizing principle in society, and anti-Judaism starts to do a lot of work in society, it is because of political polarization, economic stresses, et cetera, which make that language of anti-Judaism so useful as a system of thought. Every context is different, every period is different, but the reason that anti-Semitism can be put to work in so many contexts and periods is that anti-Judaism is such an integral part of the ways we have learned to imagine the challenges we face in the material world.”

Over and over, it’s “The Jews did it.” We crucified Jesus. We poisoned the wells and caused the Black Plague. We produced the financial collapses in every kingdom, fiefdom, and nation in the world. We are the capitalists set on taking it all. We are the communists set on taking it all. We participate in the blood libel.

The infamous images of hooked-nosed Jews with money bags are still recirculated from time to time, images that pre-date Nazi Germany by centuries. The claims that “Jews are rich,” or “Jews are smart,” still cause resentment. Those stereotypes, in turn, create hatred and envy towards Jews, which in turn, feed into the notion that if something bad is happening, it’s all because of the Jews.

This the madness of antisemitism. It is the ancient repetition compulsion that emerges from the darkest, ugliest, most paranoid crevice of Western culture. It is a dormant virus that is over 2000 years old.

Oren Segal, the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said, “We’re definitely in a different era, and it also looks like we’re seeing more assaults. A substantial proportion of these hate crimes involve brutal physical attacks on Orthodox Jews who are easily identifiable. Today anti-Semitism and ignorance about the Holocaust have simply become broadly acceptable, and that is reflected in the increasing number of assaults and diversity of offenders, who now also tend to be older. We are in an environment in which conspiracy theories seem to be in the news every day, and they’re not necessarily anti-Semitic conspiracies. But conspiracies are the lifeblood of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is becoming normalized. Most of the attacks are not done by extremists, but by your average Joe and your average Jane.”

You may be wondering what happens next. I wonder, too. How do we cope with this phenomenon? What are we supposed to do? I reviewed several options in my Yom Kippur sermon. But there is no strategy for “curing” antisemitism, no clear way to help people stop hating us.

Moving forward, we must be resolute when it comes to identifying antisemitism and hate crimes and then seek the full exercise of the law to prosecute the perpetrator to the fullest extent possible. We must neither hide nor barricade ourselves behind walls. We must be a safe and secure temple, even as we continue to be a place of openheartedness and community. We must be proud of who we are as Jews in America and hold fast to our freedom, a freedom we will not curtail, even if we are threatened.

None of these things is easy. But they are all vital components of how we will move forward. We are blessed to live in America, and we are cognizant, as never before, not to take our citizenship for granted. It is with a heavy heart that I submit my first Before Shabbat all about antisemitism. Again. I hope – and I will work for the possibility that we will yet achieve a time when it is calmer and safer for Jews, and for all others who are beaten and abused because of their race or religion or ethnicity or beliefs. It’s up to all of us to stand tough.