The Ravenna Kibbutz

I had a conversation several years ago with someone I was just getting to know, and had just started to date, about anti-Semitism. Her contention was that it was still a significant problem; my argument, which now seems pretty solipsistic, was that I’d never experienced anti-Semitism personally, so how much of a problem could it be? I even reviewed a documentary, Protocols of Zion, that dealt directly with anti-Semitism and came to the conclusion that the filmmaker was stacking the deck—seeking out the craziest Jew-haters imaginable in order to pad his case. I know that previous generations struggled to overcome prejudice and stereotypes and innumerable barriers to successful life in America, but that’s all over and done with, right?

The anti-Semitism I’ve encountered in Seattle has almost entirely taken the form of ignorance. Someone doesn’t know much about Judaism and so commits a faux pas that had zero malice attached to it, and I recognize the situation for what it is: A blind spot in an otherwise educated person’s bank of knowledge has led to an unintentionally insensitive comment. Yesterday, however, I came face to face with full-on, hateful, completely intentional anti-Jewish sentiment, and it’s proven hard to shake in the approximately 24 hours since. It’s also confirmed something my former girlfriend already knew: When people are angry at something and decide to scapegoat you, they think the deadliest weapon in their arsenal is ethnically oriented hate speech. So they take it out of its holster, point at you, and shoot.

The incident has brought up many thoughts and feelings for me; at some point today, I wondered whether I should blog about it and, if so, where. I chose Jew-ish.com because even though a lot of our content, including what I tend to write, is fairly light, I wanted to make some kind of record of this event, and my response to it. I feel that between my home, the Ravenna Kibbutz, for which I’m supremely grateful, and this site, which has given me the opportunity to explore Jewish ideas as a journalist and blogger, I have the kind of Jewish community I never would have imagined for myself five years ago, or even three. As the musical Avenue Q so helpfully pointed out, everyone’s a little bit racist, and presumably everyone harbors some kind of prejudice they’d rather not reveal, not only because it’s not P.C. but because it’s an unfortunate, even ugly part of the way our minds can work.

I don’t exclude myself from this, of course, and I hope that my close encounter with anti-Semitic speech will help me keep in mind the oppression others go through each day because of their race, gender, orientation, class, disability, and so forth. This may all sound mushy or maudlin, but I think sometimes small things can mean a lot in a person’s life, and being “out” as a Jew in a not-so-Jewish city has clearly exposed me to some bona fide nastiness. Being able to go back to my community and complain about this mistreatment, and get not just sympathy but real empathy, seems important. This may be how even people like me, who have tried to stay out of politics in the past, become politicized. All it takes sometimes is being on the business end of a deeply offensive remark.