{"source_url": "https://blogs.timesofisrael.com", "url": "https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/times-up-for-american-jews/", "title": "Time\u2019s up for American Jews", "top_image": "https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2019/12/2545957167_84e91ae5e2_c.jpg", "meta_img": "https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2019/12/2545957167_84e91ae5e2_c.jpg", "images": ["https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2019/12/000_1NC937-e1577695315726-240x150.jpg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2018/10/AP_18284562163629-e1539362874590-240x150.jpg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/users/peter-fishkind1567868148-200x200.jpg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/images/toi_logo_white.svg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/images/toi_logo_blue.svg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/salamandra/images/footer_rgb_black.svg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/users/toi-profile-photo1575978766-200x200.jpeg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/salamandra/images/footer_sala_black.svg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2018/05/000_14W536-240x150.jpg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2019/12/20191229-20191229_untitled_01456-240x150.jpg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/users/Nathan-G-Fishman-1530953024-200x200.jpeg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2019/12/2545957167_84e91ae5e2_c-640x400.jpg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2019/12/2545957167_84e91ae5e2_c.jpg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2019/12/Untitled-1-6-480x300.jpg", "https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2019/10/000_1KY8PX-240x150.jpg"], "movies": [], "text": "Anti-Semitism is back. Truth is, it never really went anywhere. It\u2019s like cicadas repopulating or a dormant virus reactivating. A herpes of the soul, if you will. Apt as the metaphors may be, all this risks the obvious: anti-Semitism is flourishing in ways, and in places, we could hardly have imagined just years ago.\n\nThere is, however, a distinction amid the difference. In addition to crude anti-Semitism \u2013 the anti-Semitism of physical violence and vandalism\u2013we\u2019re also seeing the parallel emergence of a cultural and, in some cases, official indifference toward the specter of anti-Semitism. On an official level, this symptom presents as willful inaction or, in more advanced cases, in the form of apathy-as-policy.\n\nWitness, for example, the idle, coffee-sipping response of the Seattle city council to the desecration of a Jewish cemetery and the harassment of Jewish mourners. The city seems quite bashful about the unpleasant need to stand up for its Jewish citizens. It appears it would rather stand up to its Jews.\n\nWhen you consider the cultural context, however, this is quite understandable. The Post Millennial reports that the Jewish man who dared assert his rights as an American citizen \u2013 one entitled to the extravagances of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, free from religious persecution \u2013 was intensely harassed, threatened and intimidated for his audacity.\n\nHere\u2019s where the intersection(ality) of policy and culture becomes so painful. Around the time of these incidents, Seattle branches of the ACLU, along with the NAACP and the Women\u2019s March (long-since hijacked by anti-Semitic \u201cvoices\u201d) co-sponsored an event entitled \u201cIntersectional Dialogue on Weaponizing Charges of Anti-Semitism.\u201d The subtitle to the event could, or maybe should have been: \u201cHow to Keep Uppity Jews Exactly Where They Belong.\u201d\n\nShortly after the ethnic hazing of the Jewish man in Seattle, a stabbing rampage took place in the home of a New York rabbi. Shortly before that, a mass murderer killed six people in a kosher supermarket in New Jersey. New York\u2019s mayor has assured Jews that people who murder and terrorize us will face justice, which squarely implies that, in New York City, terrorizing Jews is a prerequisite for justice.\n\nThe response by the Jewish establishment in America has been to write op-eds, pen a book or two, hold some panel discussions, and launch freshly funded organizations. Racially motivated lunatics will surely be deterred by big idea nonfiction and very carefully thought-through tweet threads!\n\nTo quote Jack Nicholson\u2019s (anti-Semitic) character in \u201cAs Good As It Gets,\u201d it\u2019s time for American Jews to \u201cthink white and get serious.\u201d The Jewish establishment in America is in a defensive crouch. As violence expert Tim Larkin points out, when confronted by violence while caught in a victim mindset our tendency is to attempt the most ineffectual of all possible options: reasoning with the assailant.\n\nThus, the American Jewish establishment is hoping instead of acting; falling back on a nostalgia for the way things were in the wistful expectation they once again will be. But, as I pointed out in a piece read by precisely no one, American Jewish exceptionalism is over. The option of melting into that gloriously cliched pot is fading faster than the sun on a January Erev Shabbos.\n\nOne of our great Jewish superheroes, Deborah Lipstadt, recently wrote that in Europe Jews are going \u201cunderground.\u201d They\u2019re wearing baseball caps over yarmulkes, refusing to publish prayer times, taking off Magen David necklaces. Though completely natural, this is the path to psychic collapse. (It\u2019s also nothing new.) Without a serious reckoning, American Jews will soon find themselves on that path.\n\nIn the face of this onslaught, Jews need the thing that\u2019s hardest to accept, and to achieve, which is a radical assertion of identity. We need to look to what Martin Luther King Jr. did for his people, and Gandhi for his. Each performed the miracle of tapping the collective energies of a group of hounded, persecuted individuals and transforming them into a united entity. They struck their staffs into the ground and the earth rippled. And they did so on their own terms, in their own languages.\n\nThe questions we need to ask now are ones of accountability \u2013 not accountability of the authorities or of the culture, but of ourselves. For example: Where\u2019s the March for Jews on the Washington Mall? Where are the Jewish pray-ins? What demands are we presenting as a people? Who are we in the midst of this society? And who are we to ourselves?\n\nWe have to accept the harsh reality that standing up for yourself often invites violent confrontation. Don\u2019t misconstrue: I\u2019m not advocating violence as a solution. It\u2019s not. Preemptive or retributive violence will solve nothing, and likely will exacerbate the problem. But in the face of violence designed to intimidate and silence us, Jews need to stand tall with the expectation that racially and religiously-motivated violence is now a part of life.\n\nThe scary thing is that no one else is going to solve this problem. We have to do it alone. Which means we to need to become the kind of people who stick our necks out rather than tortoise them in. But that\u2019s where the opportunity lies.\n\nFor decades, American Jews have had the luxury of ruminating on questions of identity. We could explore the confrontation of the collective self in the privacy of our own intellectual vehicles before opening that confrontation to the world. Time\u2019s up. The public confrontation, the crisis, is here. We\u2019re in the midst of it. As with any crisis, what matters most is not what we think, how we feel, or how we wish things could be, but how, when and why we act.", "keywords": [], "meta_keywords": [""], "tags": ["Anti-Semitic violence", "Anti-Zionism", "American Jewry", "Anti-Semitism"], "authors": [], "publish_date": null, "summary": "", "article_html": "", "meta_description": "At this time, Jews need to stand tall with the expectation that racially and religiously-motivated violence is now a part of life", "meta_lang": "en", "meta_favicon": "https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/images/toi_icon_120.png", "meta_data": {"viewport": "width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0", "msapplication-TileColor": "#ffffff", "msapplication-TileImage": "https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/images/toi_icon_144.png", "theme-color": "#ffffff", "fb": {"app_id": 123142304440875}, "og": {"url": "https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/times-up-for-american-jews/", "type": "article", "title": "Time\u2019s up for American Jews", "description": "At this time, Jews need to stand tall with the expectation that racially and religiously-motivated violence is now a part of life", "image": {"identifier": "https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2019/12/2545957167_84e91ae5e2_c.jpg", "width": 800, "height": 531}}, "article": {"author": "https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/ashley-rindsberg/", "publisher": "https://www.facebook.com/timesofisrael"}, "twitter": {"card": "summary_large_image", "site": "timesofisrael", "title": "Time\u2019s up for American Jews", "description": "At this time, Jews need to stand tall with the expectation that racially and religiously-motivated violence is now a part of life", "image": "https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2019/12/2545957167_84e91ae5e2_c.jpg"}, "outbrain": {"site": "www"}, "description": "At this time, Jews need to stand tall with the expectation that racially and religiously-motivated violence is now a part of life"}, "canonical_link": "https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/times-up-for-american-jews/"}