Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on December 18, 2019

This is the pernicious nature of anti-Semitism: It emerges in many different forms, from all sides of the political spectrum. It is impossible to name a single enemy responsible for the apparent recent spike of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States; Jew hatred easily shape-shifts to fit the purposes of many ideologies. Many Jews feel scared by anti-Semitic violence and discrimination, and yet they disagree about its source and cause. Thats why yesterdays kosher-grocery-store shooting is so complicated to explain, and yet so straightforward: As Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, told me in an interview today, Jews are being shot in the supermarkets where they shop, simply for the crime of being Jewish.

Details of the Jersey City shooting are still emerging, but Mayor Steven Fulop has said that the shooters clearly targeted a small kosher grocery store in a shoot-out that killed a police officer, a shopper, a store employee, and Mindel Ferencz, who owned the store with her husband. This is just the latest act of deadly violence against Jews: Last spring, a shooter murdered a woman at a synagogue in Poway, California, and a year ago, another gunman killed 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Read: Will anyone remember 11 dead Jews?

People are concerned here, and people are concerned all over the country, said Moshe Schapiro, the rabbi of the Chabad Hasidic community in Hoboken and Jersey City. Schapiro said he spoke with Moishe Ferencz, the grocery-store owner whose wife was killed, after the shooting. Like other members of their community, Schapiro said, he asked for prayers and good deeds.

Law-enforcement officials have told reporters that at least one of the shooters was apparently linked to the Black Hebrew Israelites, a fringe group whose followers espouse anti-Semitic views and sometimes deny that white-skinned Jews are truly Jewish. Black Hebrew Israelites do not fit neatly into Americas left-right political divide. The main thing they share with white nationalists such as Robert Bowers, the alleged shooter in the 2018 Pittsburgh attack, is a brand of conspiratorial thinking that blames Jews for all manner of political and social ills.

This is the twisted logic of anti-Semitism: Jews are blamed for bringing immigrant invaders to the United States while being simultaneously smeared as white supremacists. Jews are the targets of conspiracy theories and stereotypes, and yet Jewish vulnerability is constantly questioned and undermined by people who perceive Jews to have outsize cultural power. Visibly identifiable Jews, including those who might shop at kosher grocery stores like the one in Jersey City, are often targets for violence. At todays press conference, Niederman, the Satmar rabbi, referred to an old article in The New York Times that asked whether Jews are safe in New York City. Unfortunately, we see now that we are not safe in the New York metropolitan area, he said. Its remarkable that he has come to believe this about New York, of all places: An estimated 1.7 million Jews live in the metropolitan area, the highest concentration of Jews in America.

Read more:

American Jews Are Terrified - The Atlantic

Category: Hasidic
Tags: