The Year American Jews Woke Up

 

American Jews were aware, before the pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023, that antisemitism was once again a problem in our collective life.

We were aware, if we belonged to a synagogue or worked out at a local Jewish Community Center or sent children to Jewish day schools, that squad cars were often present outside and that the security procedures and budgets of Jewish institutions kept growing. We were aware that, in Williamsburg and other Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Jews were being routinely shoved and sucker-punched by local bullies. We were aware of the white supremacists chanting “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville, Va., and of the far-right murderers who stormed synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, Calif., and of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s obsession with Rothschild space lasers, and of Donald Trump inviting Kanye West to Mar-a-Lago after the rapper had threatened to go “death con 3” on “JEWISH PEOPLE.”

We were aware of the antisemitism that infected the leadership of the Women’s March and of the enduring popularity of Louis Farrakhan within influential segments of the Black community. We were aware of the F.B.I. statistic, from 2021, that Jews were the victims of more than 50 percent of all religiously motivated hate crimes, despite being barely one-fiftieth of the overall population. We were aware that a British Muslim man traveled 4,800 miles to Texas to take hostages at a synagogue — and much of the news media chose to ignore the plainly antisemitic angle of the story.

We were aware. But unless we had been directly affected by it, the antisemitism didn’t feel personal. The calls were in the news, but not quite in our lives.