Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 23, 2020

Abe Foxman and Rabbi Shalom Baum talk about anti-Semitism being on the rise and incidents of hate and bias increasing in America at Congregation Keter Torah in Teaneck on 02/23/20. Video by Mitsu Yasukawa. NorthJersey

We are not yet in the midst of a civil war.

But we are ina war of civility. And that's troubling enough, says Abe Foxman, director emeritus of the New York-basedAnti-Defamation League.

"There was a firewall, a consensus of civility," Foxman told the audience that had gathered early Sunday morning for a special meeting at Congregation Keter Torah in Teaneck. "There was an understanding of what's good, what's bad, what's acceptable."

Not any more as we all know.

Racism, xenophobia andanti-immigrant prejudice arenow flaunted openly. Bias crimes in New Jersey reached a 24-year high in 2019, according to the state Attorney General's Office.

Especiallytroubling,to this audience, is the rise of overt, sometimes violent, anti-Semitism: whether it's white supremacists chanting "Jews will not replace us!" at a Charlottesville rally in 2017, or the horrific synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018 that left 11 dead, or last year's targeted shooting at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City that left five dead. On Friday, New Jersey'sOffice of Homeland Security and Preparedness declared that homegrown not foreign extremism is the biggest terrorism threat to the state.

"All the taboos today are broken," Foxman said. "There's nothing today you can't do, you can't say, you can't act."

At Congregation Keter Torah, there has been discussion about whether members should be armed, or whether there should be a SWAT team posted every week, said Rabbi Shalom Baum.

"Anti-Semitism in America What's Next?" was the topic of the talk,moderated by Baum, that might have seemed almost unthinkable just a few years ago.

"For all these years, anti-Semitism has been much worse in Europe than it was here," Foxman said.

He, of all people, has reason to sound the alarm.

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For 30 years the director of the Anti-Defamation League (he stepped down in 2015), Foxman is a child of the Holocaust, with a particularly fraught history: His Jewish parents left him to be raised as a Catholic by a nanny, in Vilnius, Lithuania, while they were forced to go to the ghetto.

"They made this horrific, horrendous, magnificent decision, a decision that saved my life and their lives, because a family unit of three with an infant, the chances of survival were less than zero," he said. "My nanny baptized me, raised me as a Catholic, gave me her identity, and for years risked her life to save me."

After the war, thisheroicnanny fought his parents for custody of the child. So he's well aware of the complicated mixof good and bad, decency and selfishness, that can motivate even the best of us.

"Each of us has to develop a rationale to survive," Foxman said. For him it was to bear witness: "not only to the bad, but the good."

The America he came to, at age 10, had its own history ofhatred, prejudiceandoppression. Certainly, that includesanti-Semitism.

"It was, is and will be," Foxman said.

"It is a virus," he said. "A virus without an antidote, without a vaccine After Auschwitz, if the world didn't come together to create a vaccine, it never will."

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Through the decades that the Anti-Defamation League, the anti-bias group formed by theIndependent Order ofB'nai B'rith in 1913, has been trackinghate, there's been plenty to track.

"Throughout the years, the amount of anti-Semitic incidents have varied from 1.300 to 1,800," Foxman said. "That's on theaverage of threeto fivea day, around the country It's probably more than the numbers reported, because some people don't report."

But America seemed to have, until recently, what are called "norms." Prejudice was frowned on. It was contemptible. It was not the "American way." And that, to some extent, kept the lid on.

He cites the example of Mel Gibson, Hollywood's sweetheart until, in 2004, he released "The Passion of the Christ," widely seen as reviving old canards about Jews as Christ-killers. That,at least for a while,put the kibosh on his career.

"All of a sudden, he expressed himself as an anti-Semite, and boom!" Foxman said. "It was the expression, of our society, that anti-Semitism is not acceptable."

Now, of course, Gibson is back (his "Hacksaw Ridge" won two Oscars in 2017). And prejudice, of all stripes, seems to be thenational pastime. Thanks to the internet, slanders and rumors and mad conspiracy theories are now shouted across the world the way they used to be shouted across backyard clotheslines.

"It's become a superhighway to present bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism," Foxman said. "What used to be transmitted on a brown paper bag is now transmitted in a nanosecond around the globe."

The Internethas done something else that isespecially insidious, Foxman says. Many states at least 18 have "anti-masking" laws, created in response to the Ku Klux Klan. These laws make it a crime for haters to conceal their faces. But the anonymity of the internet has upended all that.

"It was the anti-mask law that put a price on bigotry," Foxman said. "You want to march as a bigot? Take off your mask When you removethe mask, you remove the courage, the chutzpah. The internet put the mask back on the bigot."

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So what's the solution? Education? Perhaps but as we recede in time from the Holocaust, from the horrors of refugees and death camps, they seem to become less real to many. Visits to Holocaust museums, even Auschwitz and Dachau, may not register the way they once did.

"Kids have said, 'We've done Europe so many times, this is just another box to check,' " Baum said. " 'We've seen so many movies about the Holocaust.' It seems to have less impact."

So is the solution to be found at the voting booth?

A loaded question, that since some in the audience might trace this outbreak of intolerance directly tothe current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., while others see the Trump-Netanyahu relationship, and the 2017 relocation of the capital of Israel to Jerusalem, as reasons to cheer.

How to split the difference?

"We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time," Foxman said.

"Because of Jerusalem, are we supposed to embrace this immigration policy?" he said. "We have to learn to say, thank you, Mr. President, and no, thank you, Mr. President."

The important thing,Foxman said, is not to be anybody's political tool. "We should not be in anybody's pocket," he said. "People ask me all the time:Who should we vote for? I have a very simple answer: Ask what's good for America.

"At the end of the day, Jewish security depends on democracy."

Jim Beckerman is an entertainment and culture reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access tohis insightfulreports about how you spend your leisure time,please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email:beckerman@northjersey.comTwitter:@jimbeckerman1

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Hatred and anti-Semitism are becoming the new normal. What do we do about it? - NorthJersey.com

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