I feel like a lot of times when Jews talk about antisemitism the goyim reading the post go âwell thatâs not about me, Iâve never thrown pennies at Jewish people, I eat bagels, I donât deface synagoguesâ, and listen, thatâs good, but those posts are probably still about you.
Because you donât consciously attack us (and listen, we appreciate that) but you still participate in a LOT of behaviors that make us deeply uncomfortable and let us know weâre not welcome.
My whole life Iâve been told âoh gosh I never would have guessed you were Jewish! You donât look it!â, which tells me that 1) you have a clear idea of a stereotypical Jew, and 2) you live your life with the absolute view that unless someone is visibly setting themselves apart that all people in your space are either religiously or culturally Christian.
Iâm not orthodox, or even particularly conservative, and I often get âwell you donât have a Jewish nameâ (I do) or âgosh! You donât act like those other Jewsâ. I get âyou donât keep kosher? So youâre not really Jewishâ or âwell youâre a bad Jew thenâ. I get âwell we all believe in the same Old Testament, right?â
I get told that my hair would look better straightened chemically, because my big Jewish curls are âunprofessionalâ. I get told that my cultural foods are gross by people who gladly eat bagels and babka and rugelach and matzoh ball soup. I get told my patterns of speech are aggressive or impersonal or comical. Iâm told that âall Jews stick togetherâ, and asked about Israel, a place Iâve never been to.
I am told that you are an ally because you watch a lot of documentaries about the Holocaust. Then youâll tell me facts you learned, as though I didnât learn them from the cradle, from the mouths of survivors. Theyâre a fun fact to you, theyâre a warning to me.
In media weâre all rich, or weâre weak, ineffectual, anxious. Weâre a joke. When one of us is great, weâre great, but weâre âfrom a Jewish familyâ, never actually a Jew. When one of us is terrible, though, theyâre a Jew. When something bad happens, itâs a new Holocaust, and when it happens to someone we are told âimagine if it happened to Jews!â as though we donât live that, as though we havenât lived that for centuries.
When we say âthis is antisemitic, we feel uncomfortableâ we are told to shut up and sit down and stop existing in the space because we make people feel uncomfortable, or weâre told that itâs a joke, or itâs made to be a joke. Jewish space lasers, amirite?
So yes, thereâs a very good chance we mean you. All we ask, all we ever ask, is that you listen. We ask you to try. We ask you to pay attention.
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