Antisemitism today - The Jewish Standard

Some weeks, it’s hard to figure out what to write about in an editorial. Somehow nothing gells. Nothing seems important enough, or uncontroversial enough to balance the tension between boring and enraging, to write about.

But this week has a theme. A terrible one.

Antisemitism.

Those of us old enough — and I’m starting to think that means those of us lucky enough, the magical technology of this century notwithstanding — to have grown up in the 20th century remember a time when everything was getting better. It just was. The Holocaust — even to kids born just after it ended — was ancient history, the fight for civil rights was long ago and far away, and the world was shiny and bright.

Antisemitism was so over, we thought. If we thought about it at all. Which we didn’t.

But now, like so many other monsters that we thought were dead but only were wounded, it’s come back, as many of our stories this week show us.

The stories we hear from campuses are terrible. (To be clear, not all campuses. Many of them do not suffer from this scourge. But too many do.) And the weaponizing of antisemitism, to turn it into a sword against others, is not only wrong but also profoundly dangerous. When those others are cut down, it’ll be turned on us.

Remember — yes, this is a cliché, but that’s because it’s true — history doesn’t repeat itself, not exactly, but it does rhyme. We might not have seen antisemitism used exactly in this way, but certainly we’ve seen it used, and it’s never been good for us. Not ever.

But there’s something good going on now too, and it’s not Pollyanna-ish or graveyard-whistling-y to point it out.

The Jewish people do have defenders. They’re young Jews. Brave college students. Brave just-out-of-college students. Brave young people. And brave young non-Jewish allies. If we’re going to be okay, it’ll be mainly — not entirely, but mainly — because of them.

So thank you. Yasher koach. Please keep going.

—JP

Opinion

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