Last summer, during a nice break in the pandemic just before the Delta variant really peaked in New York, Dana* and I met for dinner. It was so good to see her, to be out, to socialize, and to have someone to talk to not through a computer screen. After we did a bit of catching up on our families and careers, we arrived at the standard - pleasantries are done so let’s talk tachles - “Nu, how are you doing?” question. Dana seemed to be doing pretty well. She had thrived with routine, was really good about self-care and keeping busy, had been promoted in her already thriving career, and her spirits were up.
This “being fine” thing of Dana’s did not compute for me. I had spent the last weeks and months laser focused on the latest round of Israel vilification and obsession as a result of the May war between Hamas and Israel. I cried repeatedly during that time. I asked my husband, my parents, and my friends how Jews could feel safe living in this country given the stratospheric rise in antisemitic attacks. I railed against the Squad and posted umpteen articles on my Facebook page about all of the above. I feared for the future of the Democratic party and how I felt there was no safe political home for Jews in the U.S. To me, the Republican party had gone so far off the rails it was unrecognizable, but it seemed just a matter of time before the DSA took over the Democratic party. I repeated all of this to Dana.
I asked Dana if she knew about the “Jewish on Campus” account on Instagram. (Another way Dana is smarter than me is that she almost never uses social media.) She said no, and I told her it was an account that documented incidents of antisemitism on college campuses. I told her how scared I was for our children to go off to college in a few years given the toxic climate for Jewish students.
After I finished what felt like a rant, I looked at her. I desperately wanted to know her secret. How was she able to go about her life unaffected by the same events which to me formed an existential crisis for Jews in America? Dana was much smarter than me, having graduated from the crème de la crème of universities in this country. She is extraordinarily accomplished. Perhaps she knew something I did not? Perhaps she was able to understand something about the situation that my brain could not? I felt jealous of the fact that she had been even-keeled these last few months while I had been a wreck.
Dana took a sip of water as I looked at her, waiting for her to impart some kind of wisdom - to tell me that I did not have a reason to feel that way - to give me something to hope for. After an awkward glance between us, she smiled sheepishly. All she managed to say was: “I don’t disagree with anything you just said.”
More silence. I was sure her statement would be followed with a “But - “
But nope. Dana had nothing more to say.
I laughed nervously and then decided to just bite the bullet. “If you don’t disagree with me, why don’t you feel as depressed about this as I do? Tell me how you are coping with it, because I want to go about my life as unbothered as you do each day! What is your secret?”
“Well,” she paused. “I keep my head in the sand.”
* * *
At lunch with Jane* about a month after my dinner with Dana, invariably I went on my rant again (I told you, I could not stop thinking and talking about it, plus these were the first two times I had actually dined at restaurants since the pandemic, so I was desperate for human interaction). Jane had been to Israel on a Jewish women’s trip a few years ago which she really loved, but she still felt like she had no understanding of Israeli history, because the trip had been geared more towards the religious aspects of Judaism as they related to family life. She acknowledged her lack of knowledge and also asked me if I could recommend any books for her son, a high school sophomore, to read. She told me that he saw a lot of celebrities railing against Israel on Instagram during and after the May war, and he was being influenced, thinking that if so many of them said the same thing, maybe it was true.
I made a book recommendation immediately. Thank you, Noa Tishby.
* * *
A couple of months after my lunch with Jane, my friend Susan* called me. Her son, a middle-schooler, had decided he did not believe in God, and wanted to know if he could still be Jewish if he did not believe in God. This son had attended Jewish summer camps for the past 6 years and loved it, and really enjoys celebrating Jewish holidays, and was concerned.
I explained first that part of being Jewish is wrestling with God, and that anyway, being Jewish was not just about religion, but that we are actually a “people,” an ethnicity. Susan seemed relieved - she didn’t know how to answer her son’s question and either did not know, or realize, that to be Jewish was not just about religious practice, but was about our origin story, and how we all came from the same place back thousands of years ago.
To Susan’s credit, she also asked me to meet her for coffee one day to teach her more about Israel. She acknowledged that her opinions had mainly been formed by her parents, very liberal American Jews who had been loyal and daily readers of the New York Times for probably 60 years, if not more.
* * *
About a month ago, I presented to a group of eighth graders over Zoom. The topic was my grandfather’s (z”l) story of Holocaust survival. I talked to the students about how my grandfather never experienced antisemitism in his small village until the day he was told he could not return to his public school, was forced to wear a yellow star, and his friends stopped playing with him. I described how his father was dragged by the beard out of the family store and beaten, and how shortly thereafter they were rounded up at their home and taken to a ghetto. I described the cattle car experience on his trip to Auschwitz, the selection upon arrival that was to be the last time he ever saw his mother and baby brother, how he lost his father hours later, and how he went on to survive three concentration camps. I talked about how he passed out shortly after liberation because he weighed less than 100 pounds and was suffering from typhus.
I concluded my talk by describing how his return to Eastern Europe post-war was very difficult because it was still not easy to be a Jew there at that time and the people who took his house in 1944 refused to give it back. When he saw an advertisement to join the IDF for the newly minted State of Israel, he entered the training camp in Czechoslovakia, where he met my grandmother. Together they journeyed to Israel, where the IDF paid for their wedding, and he fought for the brand-new country.
I began to tell the students how approximately 10 years later, he brought his family to the United States, but a student put her hand up before I got more than a few words in. I paused and invited her question. I noticed that she was the only student in the class wearing a hijab, and was happy that she was engaging in my presentation. Because it was Zoom and she was in the back of the class, I couldn’t hear her question, so she walked to the front of the room to get closer to the camera and repeated it. She asked me why my grandfather fought for the IDF since the Israeli army is doing the same thing the Nazis did.
I. Was. Shaking.
I quickly responded that I did not agree with that statement whatsoever despite it being a narrative that I knew to be circulating. I was briefer than I wanted to be, but really felt frozen in terms of what I could say. I suggested that we keep questions related to the facts I was presenting about my grandfather, and she went back to her seat. I felt flabbergasted. I could not react the way I would to an adult saying this to me. This was a student - a middle-schooler! - we were on Zoom, and the teacher was conveniently absent that day, so the only adult in the room was a tech aide. My directive was to tell my grandfather’s story as a representative of an organization of grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and here was a student spewing antisemitic tropes about the Israeli army (not just my opinion; see the IHRA definition).
I was disturbed and extraordinarily agitated about this interaction for days. When I advised a contact person at the organization about what had happened (and also advised him that making comparisons between the IDF and Nazis is antisemitic pursuant to the IHRA definition), he contacted the social studies coordinator at the school. I thanked him for doing so and asked if the coordinator was upset at all by the student’s statement. The contact person responded by email to me: “Not upset, but curious and wanting to know more, and interested in how best to use this as a teachable moment.”
That response inspired no confidence whatsoever in me that the coordinator really understood the gravity of that “question” by the student. The fact that a social studies coordinator could not acknowledge that the statement was antisemitic, or have any kind of emotional reaction to the fact that the student said that, was extremely troubling. I have no idea what that social studies coordinator will do or say as a result.
What if one of the children in that class was Dana, Susan or Jane’s child? Do you think that child would have been properly educated to know how to respond to the classmate’s equating of the Israeli army to the Nazis? Would a Jewish child today even know that making such a comparison is antisemitic? I doubt it!
Dana, Susan and Jane are all amazing, highly educated, salt-of-the-earth, good-hearted women with impressive careers. Yet, I would bet that none of their kids would have had any idea of how to respond to that comment.
Would your child know what to say if a peer told them that the Israeli army was doing the same thing the Nazis did?
Would you know what to say?
I can only guess where that student learned that trope. The options seem fairly limited: her home, a CAIR rally, her mosque? Maybe Al Jazeera? Or Rashida Tlaib? She’s being taught lots of things that are hateful. Why aren’t we teaching our children so that they have the right responses when they hear things like that? We need to stop pretending like this isn’t a huge problem.
Accordingly, this is me setting off the proverbial fire alarm.
Parents!
We need to level up.
To Dana, Jane, Susan and to all of my GenX friends who are among the 90% of American Jews that feel a connection to Israel, I say this with love: get your heads out of the sand. Learn Israeli history. Teach your children. Prepare them to respond to antisemitism as it is found on college campuses today.
The People of Israel can only continue to thrive and grow if we take pride in our history, culture and people. We owe it to them to live out our ancestors’ wildest dreams for us.
Am Yisrael Chai.
*Names have been changed.
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