Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 21, 2021

Schimmel is a human rights lecturer and researcher at University of California Berkeley. He lives in Berkeley.

Since May, dozens of attacks on Jews have been documented globally and in San Diego, where two women vandalized the Chabad House at San Diego State University. Many of these have been violent assaults targeting Jewish people eating at restaurants, going to synagogue for prayer, gathering to celebrate life events and holidays, at home, walking around their neighborhoods or simply existing and being a part of society. I have found myself deeply pained by the lack of solidarity with and support for Jewish people.

Nazi swastikas have been painted on Jewish communal centers and Holocaust memorials in one state after another, a rabbi was stabbed in Boston, and Jews have been assaulted from Los Angeles to New York. Abuse of Jews is becoming normalized.

Social media is replete with hate speech against Jews, some of it invoking the Holocaust in the most violent and vicious ways, seeking to demean, devalue and dehumanize Jews. Jews are routinely attacked online in ways that deny their human rights, dignity and history.

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Yet here in the United States and in Europe as well, Jews have been overwhelmingly abandoned by progressive activists, particularly at the grassroots. The same community of conscience I marched with and supported to advance social justice and human rights is not coming together to defend my rights quickly, forcefully, passionately and unapologetically, or to take anti-racist action in defense of the human rights of Jews.

Is it because many progressives do not take racism against Jews as seriously as other forms of racism? As Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minnesota, tweeted on May 24, Ill say the quiet part out loud; its time for progressives to start condemning antisemitism and violent attacks on Jewish people with the same intention and vigor demonstrated in other areas of activism.

Is it because increasingly Jews are denied the right that progressives recognize for other minorities to articulate and define their identity including their collective identity and to defend their collective rights as a people, including their right to political self-determination and the freedom, safety and equality such self-determination confers? The pursuit of political self-determination has been fundamental to every anti-colonial struggle and basic to international human rights law, yet it is often denied to Jews by illiberal progressives.

Or is it because despite having spoken for years about our experiences of anti-Jewish abuse, Jews are routinely denied the right to define anti-Jewish racism for themselves and are condescendingly told that others must define anti-Jewish attitudes and actions for us and belittled when we speak out about our experiences of anti-Jewish racism?

The reasons for this illiberal progressive exclusion of Jews from the promise of solidarity and equality are multiple, complex and intersectional.

We need to analyze those reasons and change and correct these hurtful and harmful behaviors.

But right now, and in the months ahead, what Jews in the U.S. and globally need urgently is substantive solidarity and support for their fundamental human rights, their freedoms and their security.

We need allies to stand by us. To eat with us at kosher restaurants and restaurants with many Jewish clientele and to shop at kosher grocery stores. To visit and show support for Jewish schools and synagogues and cultural centers.

We need self-reflection, self-criticism and self-correction on the part of those who have shown indifference and abandoned us to ask themselves why and how in language and ideology Jews have experienced rejection and exclusion that is now enabling a dangerous global wave of anti-Jewish attacks and increasing anti-Jewish discrimination and hate.

For many Jews deeply involved in social justice and human rights work, we have struggled for years with our voices and experiences being marginalized by some in the progressive community. We have experienced a lack of willingness to show empathy for our history and heritage, perspectives and memories, concerns and suffering.

We are tired of covering up who we are. We are tired of having to hide our identities and deny them. We are tired of having to explain all the ways in which we experience discrimination and persecution, both historically and today. We are tired of being doubted, of the ignorant comments that reflect a lack of knowledge of Jewish diversity in color, ethnicity and background.

We are experiencing escalating attacks on our bodies, our freedoms, our ability to gather in community, our identity and our heritage. We deserve active solidarity, and serious soul-searching as to why we are so alone, not the parsimoniousness of spirit, silence and exclusion we are now experiencing.

More:

Opinion: The Jewish community is being abused and assaulted. We need allies to stand by us. - The San Diego Union-Tribune

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