The terrifying chat room - The Jewish Standard

When you’re old and you chat with young people, oftentimes they humor you. This doesn’t shock me. After all, I was once a young person myself, and I rarely went to my elders to hear their opinions or seek advice. There’s this pretty pervasive feeling that really old people, people like me, are well past their prime, and while you should be respectful of them, it’s clearly a waste of time to be mindful of their thoughts. What could they know?

This philosophy may be entirely correct. I grew up in a different milieu than people 60 or more years my junior. I undoubtedly have a different take on most topics than much younger folks. A recent pair of discussions with young people I know convinced me of this. At issue, however, is that while I was not sufficiently persuasive to change their minds, they were similarly clearly incapable of changing mine.

Both of these chats were with young men I know who are twentysomethings, well educated Jewishly and otherwise, who grew up with every amenity, attended exceptional Jewish day schools, fine camps, fine synagogues, fine universities, and were raised in religiously observant Jewish homes. Hence the respect piece of this. They were not crude or mean or abusive. They were polite and tolerant, in spite of my seeing the world, and its future, which is now really more theirs than mine, radically differently. Each chat was private and serendipitously unplanned. Neither knew what I was discussing with the other, or even that there was another discussion. Neither was official or documented. Neither was with a family member. They were casual interactions. But at each conclusion I found that both discussions terrified me and forced me to try to reconcile what went wrong with what went right. This I didn’t succeed in doing.

In each case our discussion started with Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, who both of these men support and voted for. That alone was enough to make my skin prickle and set my nerves on fire. How could two brilliant young Jews, who had spent a huge part of their growing-up years in Israel, in many different capacities, who had been inspired at their camps and in their schools and homes to be proud, fierce Zionists, have voted for the virulent Mamdani? How? Not wanting to appear naive, I am, naturally, aware that many of their significantly older NYC Jewish peers also voted for Mamdani. This I find to be irreconcilable. Simply put, how could they?

It’s a matter of interpretation. In my view Mamdani is an avowed antisemite, making his arguments under the broad cloak of being anti-Zionist. To many, antisemitism is far more menacing than anti-Zionism. Mamdani and his ilk protect themselves by loving Jews but despising the movement that saved many of them from the gas chambers and brought them back to their own ancient homeland. It’s not the Jews, they proclaim, it’s the Israeli government that should be criticized and punished.

Thus, both of my young debaters connect with the progressives and oppose the standard bearers, the old-timers who continue to support and even romanticize the Israeli state. It’s not the Jews. It’s the influencers, the voters who elected Bibi, the far right. Does it surprise them to learn that I am an opponent of those groups as well? Maybe, but maybe my opinion is valueless. They see the future in rosy pink, safe and secure and minus antisemites. I see the birthing and breeding of more and more Jew-haters under the mantle and terminology of what they insist on calling opposition to genocide. How can our opinions be more different? It’s a momentous chasm, an enormous schism, a grand canyon of really catastrophic climactic divergence.

I have never been one of those who sees an antisemite under every rock. I have lived my life as an American with people of unlimited differences, religiously, racially, and in every other way. But when these young men argue that Mamdani is not a racist, not an antisemite, I cry for their ingenuousness, for their naivete, for their total lack of the necessary dosage of paranoia that most of those in my generation wear as a second skin. It’s incongruous that you and I can live with divergent people, peacefully and in friendship, and still maintain the simple ability to sniff out an antisemite. I suppose that accounts for the difference between me, us, and the young guys I debated with. They lack the simple cynicism that they need. They believe it when someone tells them that he’s not an antisemite, case closed. I, on the other hand, do not. My mantra is don’t tell me. Show me.

Hence I fear for the Jewish future. If young people like these I reference believe that Mamdani is someone to trust, despair is the emotion I must deal with. If these recent boys, now men, grew up singing the passionate songs of our nation, and learning of its endless struggles and still then can vote for a Mamdani, my heart breaks and I have nothing to assuage my fears.

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of 12. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com

Opinion