I fully support Israel’s right to self-determination as a Jewish state, always have. Since October 7th I have stood in support of Israel’s war of self-defense. I have spoken out publicly and in private against the genocide libel and other slanders about Israel, even at personal and professional risk. I’ve lost friends—or discovered they weren’t friends to begin with. But here’s the thing: I’m not Jewish. The people who insist that the solution is for 7 million Jews in the diaspora to make Aliyah are delusional. The solution is for non-Jews to stand up for what’s right.
This is beautiful and warms my heart. It is not easy to stand separately from the crowd and speak your truth. I would be curious to know why so many non-Jews are not able to view Israel just like any other nation state? I'm not talking about millenials or Gen Z. I mean Gen Xers like me.
I think a lot of the Gen Xers are professors in colleges teaching post-Colonial theory and indoctrinating students through Middle Eastern Studies programs funded by Qatar. And the college students who worship them like academic rock stars hang on every word, and *those* students end up teaching in Liberated Ethnic Studies in K-12 education, bringing all their indoctrinating disinformation into classrooms throughout the US. I work as a Curriculum Specialist tracking what’s happening on college and K-12 campuses, so this is my focus and Gen Exers have a LOT to do with this shitshow. It’s UNRWA level, and needs to be stopped.
That’s as may be. This Gen Xer has nothing to do with it. I’d suggest looking up some of the great articles that Norman Podhoretz wrote for Commentary on leftist opposition to both Israel and the US.
Dear Leigh, I do not know anything about you, obviously but all I can say is that in my 77 years I have never seen a non Jew view us or Israel as anything but something of a curiosity. Although they admit they do not understand us they will never take the time to learn about us and come to accept us. I feel part of the problem is all the negative indoctrination they get from birth. The world's churches are of no help. For all their talk they spew hate as if it were gospel. I do not expect or even hope that this will change as there is very little we can do. It is only when the leadership of the churches decide to change their view of us can things change. As long as they look at us as a competition against them and not as a coexistence this will continue. The only thing I have ever found is to live by your own values and when faced with opposition the harder they push the harder I pushed. You can respect me or we can be enemies but I never gave up or ever gave them quarter. I have had my share of fights. My share of hard feelings that did not go away but in the end when I was myself and championed for me I got more respect than trying to make them see that I was no different than they. When it comes to Jews the world has a blind spot and once they realize we are not going anywhere and you either learn to live with us as just another person or you are going to have a fight most will give up and go away. The few who have their own independent maturity become friends the rest that is their problem. The more I stood up for myself the more respect and cooperation I got. If it was a fight they wanted they got that too. It did not matter win or lose when a Jew delt out pain as well as he received it they understood and at least I got a truce sometimes even some respect. This is my personal thing I do not feel it can work for all but trying to blend in has never worked they only see that as a sign of weakness and that is when they pounce. But if they know they are going to get what they give they are not as eager to attack. That is my take for what it is worth. Shalom Dan
Thank you so much for sharing such a candid reflection. I particularly resonated with what you said about the futility of trying to blend in. There is a specific kind of respect that only comes when we stop trying to be "no different" than everyone else and instead embrace our own path. I appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective with me. It is a reminder that there are many ways to hold the wheel.
I don’t really know why either. It always seemed very straightforwardly true to me Israel is a state like any other, with better reason for existing than most. Maybe it’s because I grew up in west Africa. The idea of a recently formed state didn’t seem unusual.
The Diaspora has been always a guest, sometimes more tolerated than other times. The Jew hatred rears its ugly head when the host is experiencing an upheaval. Sometimes it is financial, cultural or political. We are still the canary in the coal mine.
How is it that we are guests in other countries while those same countries simultaneously tell us we are colonialists inside Israel? It's obvious they just want us all dead, period, or at the very least to completely reject our identity.
Barry, absolutely. Looking back, I think I was simply born in a "golden age" for Canadian Jews in the late 70s when people still felt guilty about the Holocaust and Canada was so underpopulated. Today looks very different.
Religion is emotional. Ignorance is intellectual. If you allow your emotions to override reason--you can leave yourself open to bias and bigotry. Bigotry relies on ignorance as well . It relies on bias. It relies on lies. Scapegoatism is the favorite ploy of bigots-- and Jews and Israel are lumped into a tidy little "hate" package. Bigots are people who are insecure, unhappy with themselves, feel inadequate and slighted by humanity. They feel "oppressed" by "the OTHER"and they've been told it's "The Jews" who are "the OTHER" . They see Jews as successful, wealthy, and exclusionary. The term "Chosen" (oft misconstrued as somehow superior to others) is not helpful either!
To scapegoat Jews is convenient--unfortunately the media's propaganda has fanned those convenient flames. Have you read Dana Horn's book essentially say the only Jews they like or "forgive" are dead Jews?
I always knew I was an outsider. I was never comfortable with my non Jewish friends. I may have lived in a cooler environment but I knew my place and it was not with my non Jewish friends as that friendship was conditional. I am sorry you were sold a bill of goods but I have always known that I did not belong that I was one of those people but that is OK. When they come to stab you in the back friend or not I am not surprised and I am prepared.
Daniel, sounds like we grew up in different countries. :) I guess it's better to be told the truth to your face from the get go instead of being duped like we were...
Or it's a new generation -- a generation taught that assimilation is bad, diversity good, the oppressed must be championed, the oppressors punished.
As a schoolteacher for almost forty years beginning in the late 1970s, I saw it happen. English courses became multicultural courses, afterschool activities became segregated by affinity groups, faculty meetings were devoted to ferreting out our identities.
In the mid 1980s I gave an assembly talk about my summer doing archaeology in Israel. Can you imagine a presentation like that today? Lily-white students in keffiyehs would walk out; or my speech would be strictly vetted. Maybe I'd be put on leave if I sneaked in the truth.
It's been over forty years now of Marxist-Islamist infiltration of schools. The Edward Saids everywhere were slobbered over. The students who learned their lies 20-30 years ago, or even 10 years ago, are now running all the shows.
My experience of elementary and high school in Vancouver Canada in the 1960s (Boomer here) was closer to Daniel’s than to Leigh. Not a day went by in high school I wasn’t reminded that I was a Kikester, a Heb, by classmates.
Oddly the derogatory slurs depended on other things as well, popularity, athletic and academic ability, etc. But the resentment was always there. The message was clear, you’re a Jew and you don’t belong. I kept a low profile and didn’t make myself a target.
It's so interesting how it changed from one generation to the next, and then back again. At least in your generation, your classmates were being honest to your face!
Has anyone taken notice that the Jew haters are finally showing up on substack? It is only a matter of time before we will be hounded off of this site. Watch your back.
Toronto in the 1980's and 1990's was very good, especially in North York with mayor Mel Lastman. There was freedom and a rich Jewish cultural life. But it seems that we were just tolerated and not accepted by the other minorities living in greater Toronto. I feel very sad about the moral decline in Toronto's society. Thank you for your well written article (I left in the 1990's for Europe, but now perhaps have to leave to Israel.)
Indeed, I remember the Mel Lastman days! It was much better back then. I have to say I don't know how my family and friends still live there. People are always asking me if I am safe over here in Israel, but I am just as worried about everyone's safety in Toronto. I am sorry to hear you feel like it's time to leave Europe. Here you are welcome. :)
Excellent article and I completely relate to it. Never in 1 million years did I imagine that my place in the US was conditional or at risk, I was an American Jew. But I’ve become acutely aware in the past few years that our place in the US as Jews is absolutely precarious. It’s a tough awakening.
Thank you so much for sharing that. It truly is a tough awakening. We were raised on a version of the dream that felt permanent, didn't we? It is a specific kind of grief to realize that the 'home' we loved had conditions on our belonging.
President Clinton said multiculturalism is our great strength. In reality it is our great weakness and danger. U.S.A. is headed toward becoming a 3RD world population and country based on the low birth rate of whites. Imagine what America will be like for Jews and non Jews when European white people are a minority.
P.S. How could Trudeau believe that having no national identity was a virtue and progress Where is his brain?
You’ve hit on the core of the issue: when there are no shared values to bind us together, we end up with 'segregated diversity' rather than a true community. Regarding Trudeau: it seems he mistook a lack of identity for 'inclusion,' but as we are seeing, a house without a foundation struggles to stand.
The World Economic Forum chose him to be the leader, along with Macron, Rutte, Gavin Newsom and their other pet prodigies around the world. His qualifications were to have a good head of hair, a vigorous appearance, an ability to handle the press, a lack of moral convictions, and a willingness to comply fully with the WEF's global agenda.
I'm not Jewish, but on Oct. 7th I definitely felt like I had been violently shaken from a dream I'd been having that we all understood that Israel represents a lot of the values and mindset of the West, and that we all understood that much of the Middle East wants to see it destroyed.
Instead on Oct. 7th I awoke to a world in which, to paraphrase Sam Harris, we are all Israel now, but many of don't know it yet.
I stand very much with Israel, and all of my Jewish friends. God Bless, many of us are with you.
Productive, assimilated, law-abiding Jews are unwelcome in Canada. Yet muslims who won't assimilate and constitute a physical and civilizational threat are welcomed with open arms. Unreal.
Wonderful writing and post. I’m a Canadian and live in BC. Even here I am floored at what I see on a daily basis. We are in a sad state in this country and I pray a change of course. I’ve always said I would feel most safe in Israel just because I believe I would be protected. The last two years have made me see that this is the truth. I’ve always found the governments wishy washy approach here - especially under Liberal governments - concerning. I’m not sure what the answer is. I just keep advocating, standing up and educating. I am choosing this vs fear. And I am a fierce protector of my own family, faith and rights.
I appreciate you sharing your experience. You’ve hit on something so important: the contrast between a 'wishy-washy' approach to national identity and the solid ground of knowing where you belong. It is heartbreaking to watch the country you love struggle to find its course, but your decision to keep standing up and educating is where the real resilience lies. And it's a Mitzvah! Stay strong out there in BC.
A poignant lament, painful to read. And so sad to be forced to acknowledge how little it takes for the nice gingerbread house of multiculturalism to collapse.
No, actually, multiculturalism as practiced nowadays didn't and doesn't look sweet. Assimilation was the right thing. Jews, Italians, Greeks -- they worked hard, kept their food and religion, but became Americans.
From where I sit here in Brooklyn, a grandchild of turn-of-the-last-century Greek immigrants, the refusal to assimilate has always stuck in my craw.
My family and families like mine, proud and grateful to be in America, assimilated. My father volunteered for the navy after Pearl Harbor.
No, I don't want women to look like black-hooded assassins. No, you look stupid wearing sandals in the snow beneath your Pakistani-beige tunic. Sorry, you're from Jamaica, you like your music blasting, but you're an uncivilized lout with no idea that you're invading your neighbors' homes. (Or maybe you do know.)
In Brooklyn, we used to be used to quiet, clean streets. Now a new generation believes rioting in front of synagogues is virtue, that Brooklyn was "always gritty," and some neighborhoods were "always black."
Always? These young people hate gentrification (dare I say civilization?), but to people like me it's just a return to the way neighborhoods -- built for the gentry -- used to be: safe and clean and civilized. And populated by people who do not behave like a fifth column.
We agree completely that it turned into a mess. But I don't think the premise or the promise was misguided. The Starship Enterprise sailing through the galaxy was a noble ideal that allowed people of different races and cultures to work together. And America from the seventies to the end of the century was a very cool place to live and work.
What I think we didn't see was that multiculturalism offered a soft-underbelly to the Red/Green scumbags who were looking for a way to bring down the USA. While we were celebrating the new culture beyond racism and prejudice, they were like rats gnawing on the cords, hoping to collapse the whole big tent on our heads. And they came very close to ending America as we know it.
In Germany before it all happened. German Jews were so involved with the life flow of their country that they thought themselves to be Germans first and Jews second. Hitler made them acutely aware of where there place was in German society. When we do not keep our own identity and our own security and are at the wishes of the country we happen to reside in we are at their call. Anytime they grow tired of those Jews we get slaughtered. This has been the pattern through the ages. You only own the ground you are standing on and even that is conditional. In the end in every country we are "allowed" to live in when the time is right they will grind us up and use us for fertilizer. I know how hard those words are. I realize most will not agree but when they come for us again and that time is fast approaching you will fully understand how and what the Jews of Germany had to face. The only difference is the Jew of today will not go quietly into the gas chambers today we will fight. They might still win as there are more of them than us but it will cost them dearly in the lives of those who come for us.
I loved your essay and shared it on FB. I got over 1300 comments on it. Most very sympathetic. Some thought it was MY experience. And sadly it also attracted bigots--per usual nowadays.
Thank you for the well-said heartfelt piece YOU wrote!
The last sentence of your essay is chilling. Particularly "waiting for the optics to be acceptable before someone decides you are worth protecting."
They are missing something in their complete ignorance. "People who wait for it to be acceptable for them to protect Jewish people from being harassed, beaten up or murdered are Criminals."
"The moment you function in the world without being concerned about what is happening to life around you, you are a Criminal," says the Indian guru Sadhguru.
The mayor of Los Angeles, the prime minister of Australia and the UCLA students who prevent UCLA Jewish students from attending their classes are Criminals. They don't get it. Criminals and their supporter accessories are convinced that all humanity is composed of themselves. So if that's true, antisemitic criminals ultimately pose a danger not only to Jewish people but to the mayor of Los Angeles, the prime minister of Australia and the antisemitic UCLA students. They probably won't realize what danger they will be in until it's too late. Appeasement in any form is a brilliant recipe for the extinction of oneself and almost everyone else. In fact extinction of all life itself, actually.
At the end of the day, criminal antisemitic people believe they themselves are the only one's worth protecting.
Agree, indifference is not a neutral act. History shows us that once a society decides some people aren't worth protecting, that rot eventually spreads to everyone. Thank you for reading and for your clarity.
So naive- from the time the Jews accepted the holy Torah on Mt Sinai-Esav soneh et Yaakov- Jews are hated-what was always just below the surface is now coming out of the ugly depths.
I fully support Israel’s right to self-determination as a Jewish state, always have. Since October 7th I have stood in support of Israel’s war of self-defense. I have spoken out publicly and in private against the genocide libel and other slanders about Israel, even at personal and professional risk. I’ve lost friends—or discovered they weren’t friends to begin with. But here’s the thing: I’m not Jewish. The people who insist that the solution is for 7 million Jews in the diaspora to make Aliyah are delusional. The solution is for non-Jews to stand up for what’s right.
This is beautiful and warms my heart. It is not easy to stand separately from the crowd and speak your truth. I would be curious to know why so many non-Jews are not able to view Israel just like any other nation state? I'm not talking about millenials or Gen Z. I mean Gen Xers like me.
I think a lot of the Gen Xers are professors in colleges teaching post-Colonial theory and indoctrinating students through Middle Eastern Studies programs funded by Qatar. And the college students who worship them like academic rock stars hang on every word, and *those* students end up teaching in Liberated Ethnic Studies in K-12 education, bringing all their indoctrinating disinformation into classrooms throughout the US. I work as a Curriculum Specialist tracking what’s happening on college and K-12 campuses, so this is my focus and Gen Exers have a LOT to do with this shitshow. It’s UNRWA level, and needs to be stopped.
That’s as may be. This Gen Xer has nothing to do with it. I’d suggest looking up some of the great articles that Norman Podhoretz wrote for Commentary on leftist opposition to both Israel and the US.
Dear Leigh, I do not know anything about you, obviously but all I can say is that in my 77 years I have never seen a non Jew view us or Israel as anything but something of a curiosity. Although they admit they do not understand us they will never take the time to learn about us and come to accept us. I feel part of the problem is all the negative indoctrination they get from birth. The world's churches are of no help. For all their talk they spew hate as if it were gospel. I do not expect or even hope that this will change as there is very little we can do. It is only when the leadership of the churches decide to change their view of us can things change. As long as they look at us as a competition against them and not as a coexistence this will continue. The only thing I have ever found is to live by your own values and when faced with opposition the harder they push the harder I pushed. You can respect me or we can be enemies but I never gave up or ever gave them quarter. I have had my share of fights. My share of hard feelings that did not go away but in the end when I was myself and championed for me I got more respect than trying to make them see that I was no different than they. When it comes to Jews the world has a blind spot and once they realize we are not going anywhere and you either learn to live with us as just another person or you are going to have a fight most will give up and go away. The few who have their own independent maturity become friends the rest that is their problem. The more I stood up for myself the more respect and cooperation I got. If it was a fight they wanted they got that too. It did not matter win or lose when a Jew delt out pain as well as he received it they understood and at least I got a truce sometimes even some respect. This is my personal thing I do not feel it can work for all but trying to blend in has never worked they only see that as a sign of weakness and that is when they pounce. But if they know they are going to get what they give they are not as eager to attack. That is my take for what it is worth. Shalom Dan
Thank you so much for sharing such a candid reflection. I particularly resonated with what you said about the futility of trying to blend in. There is a specific kind of respect that only comes when we stop trying to be "no different" than everyone else and instead embrace our own path. I appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective with me. It is a reminder that there are many ways to hold the wheel.
I don’t really know why either. It always seemed very straightforwardly true to me Israel is a state like any other, with better reason for existing than most. Maybe it’s because I grew up in west Africa. The idea of a recently formed state didn’t seem unusual.
The Diaspora has been always a guest, sometimes more tolerated than other times. The Jew hatred rears its ugly head when the host is experiencing an upheaval. Sometimes it is financial, cultural or political. We are still the canary in the coal mine.
How is it that we are guests in other countries while those same countries simultaneously tell us we are colonialists inside Israel? It's obvious they just want us all dead, period, or at the very least to completely reject our identity.
Barry, absolutely. Looking back, I think I was simply born in a "golden age" for Canadian Jews in the late 70s when people still felt guilty about the Holocaust and Canada was so underpopulated. Today looks very different.
Religion is emotional. Ignorance is intellectual. If you allow your emotions to override reason--you can leave yourself open to bias and bigotry. Bigotry relies on ignorance as well . It relies on bias. It relies on lies. Scapegoatism is the favorite ploy of bigots-- and Jews and Israel are lumped into a tidy little "hate" package. Bigots are people who are insecure, unhappy with themselves, feel inadequate and slighted by humanity. They feel "oppressed" by "the OTHER"and they've been told it's "The Jews" who are "the OTHER" . They see Jews as successful, wealthy, and exclusionary. The term "Chosen" (oft misconstrued as somehow superior to others) is not helpful either!
To scapegoat Jews is convenient--unfortunately the media's propaganda has fanned those convenient flames. Have you read Dana Horn's book essentially say the only Jews they like or "forgive" are dead Jews?
Sherrie, not yet but I heard Dana Horn speak on a podcast and her book is on my reading list!
😂 emes…. or as you say fully “ASS-simulated” - truth. Yet, we didn’t loose our sense of humor.
I always knew I was an outsider. I was never comfortable with my non Jewish friends. I may have lived in a cooler environment but I knew my place and it was not with my non Jewish friends as that friendship was conditional. I am sorry you were sold a bill of goods but I have always known that I did not belong that I was one of those people but that is OK. When they come to stab you in the back friend or not I am not surprised and I am prepared.
Daniel, sounds like we grew up in different countries. :) I guess it's better to be told the truth to your face from the get go instead of being duped like we were...
Or it's a new generation -- a generation taught that assimilation is bad, diversity good, the oppressed must be championed, the oppressors punished.
As a schoolteacher for almost forty years beginning in the late 1970s, I saw it happen. English courses became multicultural courses, afterschool activities became segregated by affinity groups, faculty meetings were devoted to ferreting out our identities.
In the mid 1980s I gave an assembly talk about my summer doing archaeology in Israel. Can you imagine a presentation like that today? Lily-white students in keffiyehs would walk out; or my speech would be strictly vetted. Maybe I'd be put on leave if I sneaked in the truth.
It's been over forty years now of Marxist-Islamist infiltration of schools. The Edward Saids everywhere were slobbered over. The students who learned their lies 20-30 years ago, or even 10 years ago, are now running all the shows.
It would take Noah's flood to flush them out.
My experience of elementary and high school in Vancouver Canada in the 1960s (Boomer here) was closer to Daniel’s than to Leigh. Not a day went by in high school I wasn’t reminded that I was a Kikester, a Heb, by classmates.
Oddly the derogatory slurs depended on other things as well, popularity, athletic and academic ability, etc. But the resentment was always there. The message was clear, you’re a Jew and you don’t belong. I kept a low profile and didn’t make myself a target.
It's so interesting how it changed from one generation to the next, and then back again. At least in your generation, your classmates were being honest to your face!
BRAVO!
Same and thank you for saying this.
Has anyone taken notice that the Jew haters are finally showing up on substack? It is only a matter of time before we will be hounded off of this site. Watch your back.
Yes, I just caught a few nasty messages today...
Man's inhumanity to man is only exceeded by Man's inhumanity to animals and nature.
Toronto in the 1980's and 1990's was very good, especially in North York with mayor Mel Lastman. There was freedom and a rich Jewish cultural life. But it seems that we were just tolerated and not accepted by the other minorities living in greater Toronto. I feel very sad about the moral decline in Toronto's society. Thank you for your well written article (I left in the 1990's for Europe, but now perhaps have to leave to Israel.)
Indeed, I remember the Mel Lastman days! It was much better back then. I have to say I don't know how my family and friends still live there. People are always asking me if I am safe over here in Israel, but I am just as worried about everyone's safety in Toronto. I am sorry to hear you feel like it's time to leave Europe. Here you are welcome. :)
Excellent article and I completely relate to it. Never in 1 million years did I imagine that my place in the US was conditional or at risk, I was an American Jew. But I’ve become acutely aware in the past few years that our place in the US as Jews is absolutely precarious. It’s a tough awakening.
Thank you so much for sharing that. It truly is a tough awakening. We were raised on a version of the dream that felt permanent, didn't we? It is a specific kind of grief to realize that the 'home' we loved had conditions on our belonging.
President Clinton said multiculturalism is our great strength. In reality it is our great weakness and danger. U.S.A. is headed toward becoming a 3RD world population and country based on the low birth rate of whites. Imagine what America will be like for Jews and non Jews when European white people are a minority.
P.S. How could Trudeau believe that having no national identity was a virtue and progress Where is his brain?
You’ve hit on the core of the issue: when there are no shared values to bind us together, we end up with 'segregated diversity' rather than a true community. Regarding Trudeau: it seems he mistook a lack of identity for 'inclusion,' but as we are seeing, a house without a foundation struggles to stand.
The World Economic Forum chose him to be the leader, along with Macron, Rutte, Gavin Newsom and their other pet prodigies around the world. His qualifications were to have a good head of hair, a vigorous appearance, an ability to handle the press, a lack of moral convictions, and a willingness to comply fully with the WEF's global agenda.
The pretty boy stage of political leaders... after the fashion of Obummer...
Yes, apart from the close-cropped hairdo, he fits the bill perfectly ;-)
Israel is the historical indigenous homeland of the Jewish people.
You are welcome to make Aliyah and stand with us ✨️ against our detractors and hate mongers.
I am already here and loving it! :)
I'm not Jewish, but on Oct. 7th I definitely felt like I had been violently shaken from a dream I'd been having that we all understood that Israel represents a lot of the values and mindset of the West, and that we all understood that much of the Middle East wants to see it destroyed.
Instead on Oct. 7th I awoke to a world in which, to paraphrase Sam Harris, we are all Israel now, but many of don't know it yet.
I stand very much with Israel, and all of my Jewish friends. God Bless, many of us are with you.
Thank you so much for your support. It means a great deal to know that the values we share are still being defended by friends like you!
Productive, assimilated, law-abiding Jews are unwelcome in Canada. Yet muslims who won't assimilate and constitute a physical and civilizational threat are welcomed with open arms. Unreal.
Wonderful writing and post. I’m a Canadian and live in BC. Even here I am floored at what I see on a daily basis. We are in a sad state in this country and I pray a change of course. I’ve always said I would feel most safe in Israel just because I believe I would be protected. The last two years have made me see that this is the truth. I’ve always found the governments wishy washy approach here - especially under Liberal governments - concerning. I’m not sure what the answer is. I just keep advocating, standing up and educating. I am choosing this vs fear. And I am a fierce protector of my own family, faith and rights.
I appreciate you sharing your experience. You’ve hit on something so important: the contrast between a 'wishy-washy' approach to national identity and the solid ground of knowing where you belong. It is heartbreaking to watch the country you love struggle to find its course, but your decision to keep standing up and educating is where the real resilience lies. And it's a Mitzvah! Stay strong out there in BC.
A poignant lament, painful to read. And so sad to be forced to acknowledge how little it takes for the nice gingerbread house of multiculturalism to collapse.
It looked so sweet and solid from the outside, didn't it?
No, actually, multiculturalism as practiced nowadays didn't and doesn't look sweet. Assimilation was the right thing. Jews, Italians, Greeks -- they worked hard, kept their food and religion, but became Americans.
From where I sit here in Brooklyn, a grandchild of turn-of-the-last-century Greek immigrants, the refusal to assimilate has always stuck in my craw.
My family and families like mine, proud and grateful to be in America, assimilated. My father volunteered for the navy after Pearl Harbor.
No, I don't want women to look like black-hooded assassins. No, you look stupid wearing sandals in the snow beneath your Pakistani-beige tunic. Sorry, you're from Jamaica, you like your music blasting, but you're an uncivilized lout with no idea that you're invading your neighbors' homes. (Or maybe you do know.)
In Brooklyn, we used to be used to quiet, clean streets. Now a new generation believes rioting in front of synagogues is virtue, that Brooklyn was "always gritty," and some neighborhoods were "always black."
Always? These young people hate gentrification (dare I say civilization?), but to people like me it's just a return to the way neighborhoods -- built for the gentry -- used to be: safe and clean and civilized. And populated by people who do not behave like a fifth column.
We agree completely that it turned into a mess. But I don't think the premise or the promise was misguided. The Starship Enterprise sailing through the galaxy was a noble ideal that allowed people of different races and cultures to work together. And America from the seventies to the end of the century was a very cool place to live and work.
What I think we didn't see was that multiculturalism offered a soft-underbelly to the Red/Green scumbags who were looking for a way to bring down the USA. While we were celebrating the new culture beyond racism and prejudice, they were like rats gnawing on the cords, hoping to collapse the whole big tent on our heads. And they came very close to ending America as we know it.
In Germany before it all happened. German Jews were so involved with the life flow of their country that they thought themselves to be Germans first and Jews second. Hitler made them acutely aware of where there place was in German society. When we do not keep our own identity and our own security and are at the wishes of the country we happen to reside in we are at their call. Anytime they grow tired of those Jews we get slaughtered. This has been the pattern through the ages. You only own the ground you are standing on and even that is conditional. In the end in every country we are "allowed" to live in when the time is right they will grind us up and use us for fertilizer. I know how hard those words are. I realize most will not agree but when they come for us again and that time is fast approaching you will fully understand how and what the Jews of Germany had to face. The only difference is the Jew of today will not go quietly into the gas chambers today we will fight. They might still win as there are more of them than us but it will cost them dearly in the lives of those who come for us.
Wonderful post. I used to love visiting Can. No more.
Sad to hear that, but I can totally understand.
I loved your essay and shared it on FB. I got over 1300 comments on it. Most very sympathetic. Some thought it was MY experience. And sadly it also attracted bigots--per usual nowadays.
Thank you for the well-said heartfelt piece YOU wrote!
Thank you Sherrie for sharing, may I see the post? I would love to see the comments. You must have a lot of followers to get over 1300 comments!
The last sentence of your essay is chilling. Particularly "waiting for the optics to be acceptable before someone decides you are worth protecting."
They are missing something in their complete ignorance. "People who wait for it to be acceptable for them to protect Jewish people from being harassed, beaten up or murdered are Criminals."
"The moment you function in the world without being concerned about what is happening to life around you, you are a Criminal," says the Indian guru Sadhguru.
The mayor of Los Angeles, the prime minister of Australia and the UCLA students who prevent UCLA Jewish students from attending their classes are Criminals. They don't get it. Criminals and their supporter accessories are convinced that all humanity is composed of themselves. So if that's true, antisemitic criminals ultimately pose a danger not only to Jewish people but to the mayor of Los Angeles, the prime minister of Australia and the antisemitic UCLA students. They probably won't realize what danger they will be in until it's too late. Appeasement in any form is a brilliant recipe for the extinction of oneself and almost everyone else. In fact extinction of all life itself, actually.
At the end of the day, criminal antisemitic people believe they themselves are the only one's worth protecting.
Agree, indifference is not a neutral act. History shows us that once a society decides some people aren't worth protecting, that rot eventually spreads to everyone. Thank you for reading and for your clarity.
So naive- from the time the Jews accepted the holy Torah on Mt Sinai-Esav soneh et Yaakov- Jews are hated-what was always just below the surface is now coming out of the ugly depths.