It Was a Problem, It Is a Problem and It Will Be a Problem …..Antisemitism
In case of a nuclear holocaust 2 things will undoubtedly survive. Cockroaches and antisemitism. Some of us of a certain post WWII age were lulled into thinking that the worst of antisemitism in the world was behind us with the exception of the Muslim world. Certainly, in North America we were safe from the “virus”. We all learned about the holocaust, and we all said never again, and we believed it.
Antisemitism, real kill the Jews kind. was behind us. We were accepted everywhere. We excelled in every field. I remember someone writing a piece long ago addressed to the remaining antisemites that if you wanted to boycott Jews and their products you were free to do so but when you were sick don’t go to a Jewish doctor, don’t use the polio vaccine and if you were in the hospital don’t use the many high tech devices that were invented in Israel. Also throw away your cell phone because part of each device was invented in Israel. You must also not watch most tv or go to most movies because Jews were involved in many of the films. And on and on….
Yes, there was an odd derogatory name call, or still a few parents here and there who didn’t want their kids playing with us, but such cases were rare and frowned upon by the masses of Americans.
When I was a teenager there was a vicious stick fight at an NHL game between Eddie Shack and Larry Zeidel. We didn’t initially know what happened and why until it was revealed that Zeidel, the only Jew then in the NHL was called some disgusting antisemitic name by Shack and the fight began. Zeidel was as hardnosed as they came, and he was extremely proud of being a Jew. His grandparents were killed in the holocaust. The following week on Hockey Night in Canada, the popular Shack was interviewed, and he apologized to Zeidel and all of Canada for what he had said. To borrow from a Yiddish expression, it was a Shanda for the Canadians. It is still in my mind some 60 years later.
When I was in college and was dating what would be my first wife, I got a summer job working for her father. He was a glazer and did commercial properties. I was as unmechanical as is humanly possible, but his daughter liked me, so he gave me a job. Sometimes I worked in his shop and other times I helped on location.
This one morning we were working at a sight inside a pit-like area when one of the bosses came by to give instructions. He barked out orders that had no meaning to me but were directed to the other workers. To understand what happened next you need to know that in the 60’s Toronto was booming and many of the builders were Jewish. Many of the laborers were Italian.
I came to work bareheaded but with my yarmulke in my pocket. I had dark hair and have a darker complexion so especially in that environment everyone assumed I was Italian. After the boss finished barking his orders and left, one of my fellow workers said, “F**kin Jews”. I was shocked and silent and wondered what would happen when it was lunchtime. You see I had a sandwich and had to make a Bracha, a blessing, over the bread. That necessitated a head covering and so out came my yarmulke and my sandwich, and a sudden hush came over the crew. No one talked about it, but everyone felt it and mercifully the next day I was assigned work at the shop and never saw those workers again. It was tense and shocking if only for how rare it was at that stage in my life.
That was the world that I grew up in and while there were occasional antisemitic acts or statements, they were highlighted because of how rare they were and how the non-Jewish world around us would not tolerate it.
In one of my early years at Temple Beth Am on Rosh Hashana someone painted a black swastika on the wall of the shule facing the parking lot. It was the first thing we saw when we got to synagogue. The leadership asked me what to do. I advised them to leave it up there as a message that there are still people who hate us. (The lesson was important I thought because of how complacent we had become)
When we left the services and went out to see the swastika again, it was gone. Some of our gentile neighbors were so appalled by what they saw, they simply came over with brushes soap and water and erased the swastika. That was the United States I thought we were in.
And then Donald Trump was elected president and all the restrictions were lifted. The dog whistles, the good people on both sides, the Tucker Carlson replacement theory that led to marchers chanting, “ Jews will not replace us”, and suddenly we lived in an inhospitable and potentially dangerous United States of America. Synagogues in California and Pittsburgh were attacked and congregants were shot just because they were Jewish. Hasidim could be beaten up in NY because they were obviously Jewish. The virus was unleashed, and the environment was hospitable for its spread. Then this happened.
The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported,
“A public high school in New York has fired its varsity girls’ basketball coach after players on its team uttered antisemitic slurs during a game against a Jewish day school. A student has also been dismissed from the team at Roosevelt High School in Yonkers following the incident during a game against the Leffell School, a Jewish school in nearby Hartsdale, on Thursday.
Yonkers Public Schools and the city’s mayor, Mike Spano, announced the penalties in a statement Sunday in which they said they “sincerely apologize” and called the antisemitic epithets “painful and offensive.” They said an investigation is underway, noting that additional players may be disciplined and that the district would embark on counseling and training in response to the incident.
“Collectively, we do not and will not tolerate hate speech of any kind from our students and community,” the statement said. “The antisemitic rhetoric reportedly made against the student athletes of The Leffell School are abhorrent, inappropriate and not in line with the values we set forth for our young people.”
Bottom of FormOne of the public school players shouted “Free Palestine” and hurled antisemitic slurs at the Leffell players. One player called a Leffell player a “f — ing Jew.” Jewish parents also reported rising anti-Semitic incidents before Oct 7, which has proven to be an accelerant in the spread of hate against Jews.
For perspective I should add that a Jewish girls’ basketball team being called names is not the worst antisemitic acts in the world, but I bring it to your attention because it means the viral infection of antisemitism is deep and lasting and already actively instilled in our youth by the time they are in high school. Youth is our future, if they are infected, we are in serious trouble even here in the United States of America.
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