I'm not Jewish. I say that, and am still scared. No one has ever pushed the business end of a gun into my face. Well, once, coming out of a night club at 3 am. I raised merry hell and they scarpered. But, it shook me enough not to want it to happen again. Suppose, if it did happen, to a Jew I was with: would I look on and stay stumm? Risk analysis is a flighty, fleeting process in such a moment. I hope I would act with appropriate honour. And pray forgiveness if I failed.
Many years ago, I wrote within the gay community that we must look to our laurels; that the rights conferred in the wave of liberalism that swept the world in the decades that followed WW2 can never be taken for granted. Simply: that which overlords have given can just as easily, by overlords, be taken away. (Like their sheep.)
The brash outings of the anti-semitic voice are gaining in currency. The sentiments it expresses are outrageous and, in times past, would have incurred wrath. In parts, it does so now but the voice, to use your word, is unabashed. Unabashed is how the world is getting. Unabashed at being anti-semitic; at being anti-gay; at being anti-abortion; at being anti. The permissive society - such as it ever was - is not a society that can be controlled for profit. Really, ask any businessman, they'll tell you the same. There is a storm on the horizon and we would all be best advised to batten down the hatches. Because, in the wake of unabashed words, there will come unabashed acts; some, even, unabashed reactions to put down unabashed protest.
I like that, but "others" is indefinable. If I'm gay, are the others bisexuals, or straight, or transsexual? Or are they all coal miners? If I'm a worker, are the others management? If I'm Republican, are they Democrats? If I'm Flemish, are they Walloon; English, are they Welsh? Here's a little piece I wrote on "The Others": https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/anarchy-in-the-uk-raine-pondering
This is so well written and stated, Lauren. I’m a disabled elder, a well-adjusted survivor of polio. The same Nazi ethos that prosecuted Jewish people would have had me eliminated as a “weak undesirable” had they the chance. As Michelle said, if we are not ALL safe, none of us are safe.
Unless we’re all safe, none of us is safe. Thank you for this post Lauren. I’m saddened & angered by the shit you have to endure to bring us your important work.
I am also Jewish. I have hundreds of family members who were gassed in WWII, mostly in Auschwitz and Sobibor, the closest relative being my great grandmother, who was gassed on the day she arrived there from Amsterdam, a week after papers were signed granting her release. My grandparents had their homes confiscated by the Germans because "Jews should not own property." I learned at about the age of 9 (story to come in my Substack) not to tell people I'm Jewish. I was a member of a Jewish youth group called Habonim and we were doing jobs in our community to raise funds for kibutzim. I was mopping the floor in a milk bar, for a gentleman by the name of Gorinski. While I was doing the job, his son, who went to my school asked why I was mopping their floor. The answer was "I want to see the dirty jewboy cleaning up my mess." Until that day, I didn't know that there was anything 'wrong' with people knowing I was Jewish. I'm not religious, but you can't escape your genes, as our families learned. I will post about that and some other experiences one of these days. I have heard many stories from people in New Zealand including the manager of a business I worked for not long ago about 'The Jewish Problem', and how the Jews control all the money in the world. I want to know where my share is, because my parents were a rung below middle class. I am Jewish, and I also want to honour my forbears. I didn't get to choose to be Jewish.
This country isn't safe for most vulnerable populations.
The police killed another unarmed Black man. Cities are quietly outlawing homelessness. Florida and Texas are inching towards criminalizing homosexuality. Anti-Asian hate crimes are spreading. Voter suppression laws are rampant. Abortion laws are growing more egregious by the day. Trans hysteria is completely out of control. SCOTUS is utterly lawless (disregarding facts and stare decisis), and reeking of dark money.
Meanwhile, in the most important election in modern history, Democratic turnout was down, GenZers (who will inherit this nightmare) only turned our 27% of their voters, Hispanic and Asian-Americans continue to drift away from the Democrats (as though voting Republican will save them...It doesn't work that way). Wealthy GOP Jews won't be protected (it doesn't work that way).
No one has learned from history...if we had, every minority and vulnerable community would put aside their differences and unite to push back on the rising tide of fascism. But they won't...just as we're ignoring climate change as it's literally ravaging our country, we'll all stand by and watch our rights continue to erode.
I don't understand this country and I don't understand Americans. We applaud Ukranians who sacrifice their lives to defend their freedoms, teenagers in Iran who are executed for wanting the slimmest reeds of freedom. We watch quasi-democratic cities in Afghanistan be rolled back to the Middle Ages, Israel turn into an apartheid state, and so many Americans can't even be bothered to vote.
Apathy, indifference, an absence of empathy, complacency...whatever afflicts Americans is most definitely NOT going to be solved by our hapless AG, or Jack Smith, of any courts.
Future historians will have no words for our refusal to meet the moment.
hw-- I'm a white heterosexual woman. I've had a gun put to my head and have been threatened by a gang in Compton. I teach in Compton and Watts where I've been verbally and physically attacked by students. We are ALL vulnerable to some degree. If you are poor you are vulnerable, if you are gay you are vulnerable, if you are Jewish you are vulnerable. If you are Black you are vulnerable. Our humanity should unite us but instead it has pitted one group against the other. It's so sad that we should live in a developed nation like this and not feel safe.
Some Asian Americans drifted towards Republicans recently because Democrats have thrown them under the bus. This is a wake up call that Democrats need to do better.
Beautiful and terrifying. I can relate. My father was in the army during WW2 and also wound up in a fight with other American soldiers because of their antisemitism. So much of what you wrote here resonates. I know that we are among the groups being targeted. I know we all have to stand with and for each other - Jewish, Muslim, Black, brown, immigrant, LGBTQ (especially trans). United Against Hate.
Another Jew here supporting you. Beautifully written piece. Since the latest data on U.S. antisemitism, I cannot stop thinking about the 85% of U.S. adults who believe at least one trope, which is a 24% increase from 2019. The Twitter dumpster fire of hate is fueling more antisemitism. How do we decrease it? I’m sad, worried, irate, and very scared.
This resonates with me strongly, even though my history is entirely different. I am Jewish because I am religious: that is as an adult I chose Judaism as my faith and Jews as my people, because the ethical principles and focus on sanctifying life of Judaism made more sense to me than the mainstream Protestantism in which I was raised. I am a Jew even though I have no history or ethnic connection to Jews, a Jew by choice. To the haters this makes no difference (as evidence by the vitriol I occasionally gather on Twitter as it descends into the cesspool Musk is encouraging) - or perhaps it is even more reprehensible because I deliberately turned my back on hundreds if not thousands of years of Protestant and Catholic ancestors, to chose Judaism. Regardless of how we come to being Jews, it is clear that we are "other" and they are coming for us if they can.
Your points about the struggle of how to express positions to the community rings true for my own very diverse Reform/Conservative community - because my community draws Jews from an extremely wide (four state: VA, TN, KY, NC) largely rural area it has to meet a lot of diverse needs (which it sometimes fails to do). My conversion was also the year I turned 30, although I had been thinking about it since I was 15 and attended services with high school friends.
I grew up in an unusually Jewish town-had the highest percentage of Jewish citizens in the world (other than Israel) at one time. Attended several Bar Mitzvahs and even learned some of the prayers in Yiddish while watching. In middle school a new student arrived who proved to be just what the doctor ordered when it came to releasing teenage anger and frustration. He was bullied unceasingly the entire year and on into the next until the following April-mostly by other Jewish kids. One day near the beginning of April a Jewish girl asked him why he didn't go home and kill himself, and he did.
I was glad you spoke openly about the plight of the Palestinians. The Jews are people, no more, no less, and have the same faults and fears as any other.
That being said, if more people would be aware of the true origins of the Hebrews, and about the people falsely attributed to be "Egyptians," they would understand what a curse it is to be the "chosen people" and they would also have to ask some pretty hard questions about themselves, as I am now. Great post Lauren-and no answer to this necessary...
All true. And happening right now. In the past week my workplace, a Jewish Community Center, has received 2 threats. At least half a dozen in the past few months.
Israel and the Palestinians are a convenient excuse for overt antisemitism. Nothing would be different for how the world feels about Jews if Israel didn’t exist.
I’ve never been afraid to be a Jew in my own country before now. Lauren, you said it perfectly, I’m so sorry to say.
Very sorry for what you, others, and even those like me are going through. Your work is valued and all we can do is to continue doing good work, and trying out best to tip the scales of the world in a better direction, despite the odds.
My family are Chan Buddhist philosophers (non-religious). When we pass and reincarnate into a new life, we could be reborn as any skin color, any gender, in any family and country. Therefore, to care for all people (and living beings) is what I believe in and today I send out my thoughts and compassion to you and all others.
This is a philosophy worthy of attention: that life continues after death. My brother, a non-practising Christian, like me, talks of this life as “passing through”. Aside from a uterus, he doesn’t dwell on how he entered it to do this passing through. Nor does he contemplate, nor do many us particularly, the means by which he shall pass out of it.
Whilst passing through, however, our conduct is guided, or trammelled, according to taste, by precepts that start with the Bible’s “Love others as you love yourself” or “Do unto others as you would be done by” and go all the way to the prospect of judgment before the Lord, followed by either acceptance into the Kingdom of Heaven or damnation to Hell, a cute illustration of which can be found in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. On the way, we have proverbs such as “chickens coming home to roost” and the “boot on the other foot”.
Your philosophy sounds at first blush twee, but, I suspect, proffers an admonition greater than all of these: the prospect that you shall reincarnate but with no guarantee of “as who”. Nonetheless, and this is why I believe it worthy of attention: the unknowing (interim) destiny that awaits believers such as yourself could have as its portent the possibility of a good man returning to existence as an evil one, and not necessarily as a good one; and do the evil return as evil ones, or are they given a lease of life as a good man?
Without levelling any judgment, simple observation tells me that this philosophy is in fact true in practice: when the USSR invaded Afghanistan, the West armed the Mujahadeen, who then, after repulsing the USSR, became a thorn in the side for the West; South Africa, egged on to repel apartheid, was freed and now will be performing military manoeuvres with China and Russia – just practising, I suppose. And, those who struggle in poverty and finally get a big break to become rich and powerful occasionally forget the penury from which they started out.
Your philosophy is at its most attractive when, adopted by all, it ensures that evil is expunged from existence, at which point it doesn’t matter a whit what anyone is reincarnated as, because the equality that obtained in one life is not impinged on when one returns in the next. As an ideal, therefore, it is most attractive. Has it ever been realised, however?
Under Man’s law, those who do wrong will be punished – if they’re caught. Under God’s law, those who do wrong will be punished – guaranteed. Under Chan Buddhism, those who do wrong may do wrong again, or may do right; and those who do right, likewise. It cannot be that simple, so attention is what I shall be giving it.
I'm not Jewish. I say that, and am still scared. No one has ever pushed the business end of a gun into my face. Well, once, coming out of a night club at 3 am. I raised merry hell and they scarpered. But, it shook me enough not to want it to happen again. Suppose, if it did happen, to a Jew I was with: would I look on and stay stumm? Risk analysis is a flighty, fleeting process in such a moment. I hope I would act with appropriate honour. And pray forgiveness if I failed.
Many years ago, I wrote within the gay community that we must look to our laurels; that the rights conferred in the wave of liberalism that swept the world in the decades that followed WW2 can never be taken for granted. Simply: that which overlords have given can just as easily, by overlords, be taken away. (Like their sheep.)
The brash outings of the anti-semitic voice are gaining in currency. The sentiments it expresses are outrageous and, in times past, would have incurred wrath. In parts, it does so now but the voice, to use your word, is unabashed. Unabashed is how the world is getting. Unabashed at being anti-semitic; at being anti-gay; at being anti-abortion; at being anti. The permissive society - such as it ever was - is not a society that can be controlled for profit. Really, ask any businessman, they'll tell you the same. There is a storm on the horizon and we would all be best advised to batten down the hatches. Because, in the wake of unabashed words, there will come unabashed acts; some, even, unabashed reactions to put down unabashed protest.
It's a pleasure to join you here, Lauren.
As a bisexual woman, I’ve been very aware of all the “others” I fit into, so thank you for your perspective.
I like that, but "others" is indefinable. If I'm gay, are the others bisexuals, or straight, or transsexual? Or are they all coal miners? If I'm a worker, are the others management? If I'm Republican, are they Democrats? If I'm Flemish, are they Walloon; English, are they Welsh? Here's a little piece I wrote on "The Others": https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/anarchy-in-the-uk-raine-pondering
This is so well written and stated, Lauren. I’m a disabled elder, a well-adjusted survivor of polio. The same Nazi ethos that prosecuted Jewish people would have had me eliminated as a “weak undesirable” had they the chance. As Michelle said, if we are not ALL safe, none of us are safe.
Thank you for your witness.
Thank you.
This, you will know:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.
Your dad is right it has never stopped..it is alive and thriving in the U.S. and in Congress..Well done! I am Sam Urdank and I am Jewish..
Unless we’re all safe, none of us is safe. Thank you for this post Lauren. I’m saddened & angered by the shit you have to endure to bring us your important work.
I am 73 and disabled and know what was done to the disabled. I am " other".
I am also Jewish. I have hundreds of family members who were gassed in WWII, mostly in Auschwitz and Sobibor, the closest relative being my great grandmother, who was gassed on the day she arrived there from Amsterdam, a week after papers were signed granting her release. My grandparents had their homes confiscated by the Germans because "Jews should not own property." I learned at about the age of 9 (story to come in my Substack) not to tell people I'm Jewish. I was a member of a Jewish youth group called Habonim and we were doing jobs in our community to raise funds for kibutzim. I was mopping the floor in a milk bar, for a gentleman by the name of Gorinski. While I was doing the job, his son, who went to my school asked why I was mopping their floor. The answer was "I want to see the dirty jewboy cleaning up my mess." Until that day, I didn't know that there was anything 'wrong' with people knowing I was Jewish. I'm not religious, but you can't escape your genes, as our families learned. I will post about that and some other experiences one of these days. I have heard many stories from people in New Zealand including the manager of a business I worked for not long ago about 'The Jewish Problem', and how the Jews control all the money in the world. I want to know where my share is, because my parents were a rung below middle class. I am Jewish, and I also want to honour my forbears. I didn't get to choose to be Jewish.
Thanks for raising this subject.
This country isn't safe for most vulnerable populations.
The police killed another unarmed Black man. Cities are quietly outlawing homelessness. Florida and Texas are inching towards criminalizing homosexuality. Anti-Asian hate crimes are spreading. Voter suppression laws are rampant. Abortion laws are growing more egregious by the day. Trans hysteria is completely out of control. SCOTUS is utterly lawless (disregarding facts and stare decisis), and reeking of dark money.
Meanwhile, in the most important election in modern history, Democratic turnout was down, GenZers (who will inherit this nightmare) only turned our 27% of their voters, Hispanic and Asian-Americans continue to drift away from the Democrats (as though voting Republican will save them...It doesn't work that way). Wealthy GOP Jews won't be protected (it doesn't work that way).
No one has learned from history...if we had, every minority and vulnerable community would put aside their differences and unite to push back on the rising tide of fascism. But they won't...just as we're ignoring climate change as it's literally ravaging our country, we'll all stand by and watch our rights continue to erode.
I don't understand this country and I don't understand Americans. We applaud Ukranians who sacrifice their lives to defend their freedoms, teenagers in Iran who are executed for wanting the slimmest reeds of freedom. We watch quasi-democratic cities in Afghanistan be rolled back to the Middle Ages, Israel turn into an apartheid state, and so many Americans can't even be bothered to vote.
Apathy, indifference, an absence of empathy, complacency...whatever afflicts Americans is most definitely NOT going to be solved by our hapless AG, or Jack Smith, of any courts.
Future historians will have no words for our refusal to meet the moment.
hw-- I'm a white heterosexual woman. I've had a gun put to my head and have been threatened by a gang in Compton. I teach in Compton and Watts where I've been verbally and physically attacked by students. We are ALL vulnerable to some degree. If you are poor you are vulnerable, if you are gay you are vulnerable, if you are Jewish you are vulnerable. If you are Black you are vulnerable. Our humanity should unite us but instead it has pitted one group against the other. It's so sad that we should live in a developed nation like this and not feel safe.
Some Asian Americans drifted towards Republicans recently because Democrats have thrown them under the bus. This is a wake up call that Democrats need to do better.
Beautiful and terrifying. I can relate. My father was in the army during WW2 and also wound up in a fight with other American soldiers because of their antisemitism. So much of what you wrote here resonates. I know that we are among the groups being targeted. I know we all have to stand with and for each other - Jewish, Muslim, Black, brown, immigrant, LGBTQ (especially trans). United Against Hate.
Another Jew here supporting you. Beautifully written piece. Since the latest data on U.S. antisemitism, I cannot stop thinking about the 85% of U.S. adults who believe at least one trope, which is a 24% increase from 2019. The Twitter dumpster fire of hate is fueling more antisemitism. How do we decrease it? I’m sad, worried, irate, and very scared.
This resonates with me strongly, even though my history is entirely different. I am Jewish because I am religious: that is as an adult I chose Judaism as my faith and Jews as my people, because the ethical principles and focus on sanctifying life of Judaism made more sense to me than the mainstream Protestantism in which I was raised. I am a Jew even though I have no history or ethnic connection to Jews, a Jew by choice. To the haters this makes no difference (as evidence by the vitriol I occasionally gather on Twitter as it descends into the cesspool Musk is encouraging) - or perhaps it is even more reprehensible because I deliberately turned my back on hundreds if not thousands of years of Protestant and Catholic ancestors, to chose Judaism. Regardless of how we come to being Jews, it is clear that we are "other" and they are coming for us if they can.
Your points about the struggle of how to express positions to the community rings true for my own very diverse Reform/Conservative community - because my community draws Jews from an extremely wide (four state: VA, TN, KY, NC) largely rural area it has to meet a lot of diverse needs (which it sometimes fails to do). My conversion was also the year I turned 30, although I had been thinking about it since I was 15 and attended services with high school friends.
I grew up in an unusually Jewish town-had the highest percentage of Jewish citizens in the world (other than Israel) at one time. Attended several Bar Mitzvahs and even learned some of the prayers in Yiddish while watching. In middle school a new student arrived who proved to be just what the doctor ordered when it came to releasing teenage anger and frustration. He was bullied unceasingly the entire year and on into the next until the following April-mostly by other Jewish kids. One day near the beginning of April a Jewish girl asked him why he didn't go home and kill himself, and he did.
I was glad you spoke openly about the plight of the Palestinians. The Jews are people, no more, no less, and have the same faults and fears as any other.
That being said, if more people would be aware of the true origins of the Hebrews, and about the people falsely attributed to be "Egyptians," they would understand what a curse it is to be the "chosen people" and they would also have to ask some pretty hard questions about themselves, as I am now. Great post Lauren-and no answer to this necessary...
You stopped my foot tapping, you did.
All true. And happening right now. In the past week my workplace, a Jewish Community Center, has received 2 threats. At least half a dozen in the past few months.
Israel and the Palestinians are a convenient excuse for overt antisemitism. Nothing would be different for how the world feels about Jews if Israel didn’t exist.
I’ve never been afraid to be a Jew in my own country before now. Lauren, you said it perfectly, I’m so sorry to say.
Thank you for your honesty.
Got goosebumps.
Very sorry for what you, others, and even those like me are going through. Your work is valued and all we can do is to continue doing good work, and trying out best to tip the scales of the world in a better direction, despite the odds.
My family are Chan Buddhist philosophers (non-religious). When we pass and reincarnate into a new life, we could be reborn as any skin color, any gender, in any family and country. Therefore, to care for all people (and living beings) is what I believe in and today I send out my thoughts and compassion to you and all others.
This is a philosophy worthy of attention: that life continues after death. My brother, a non-practising Christian, like me, talks of this life as “passing through”. Aside from a uterus, he doesn’t dwell on how he entered it to do this passing through. Nor does he contemplate, nor do many us particularly, the means by which he shall pass out of it.
Whilst passing through, however, our conduct is guided, or trammelled, according to taste, by precepts that start with the Bible’s “Love others as you love yourself” or “Do unto others as you would be done by” and go all the way to the prospect of judgment before the Lord, followed by either acceptance into the Kingdom of Heaven or damnation to Hell, a cute illustration of which can be found in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. On the way, we have proverbs such as “chickens coming home to roost” and the “boot on the other foot”.
Your philosophy sounds at first blush twee, but, I suspect, proffers an admonition greater than all of these: the prospect that you shall reincarnate but with no guarantee of “as who”. Nonetheless, and this is why I believe it worthy of attention: the unknowing (interim) destiny that awaits believers such as yourself could have as its portent the possibility of a good man returning to existence as an evil one, and not necessarily as a good one; and do the evil return as evil ones, or are they given a lease of life as a good man?
Without levelling any judgment, simple observation tells me that this philosophy is in fact true in practice: when the USSR invaded Afghanistan, the West armed the Mujahadeen, who then, after repulsing the USSR, became a thorn in the side for the West; South Africa, egged on to repel apartheid, was freed and now will be performing military manoeuvres with China and Russia – just practising, I suppose. And, those who struggle in poverty and finally get a big break to become rich and powerful occasionally forget the penury from which they started out.
Your philosophy is at its most attractive when, adopted by all, it ensures that evil is expunged from existence, at which point it doesn’t matter a whit what anyone is reincarnated as, because the equality that obtained in one life is not impinged on when one returns in the next. As an ideal, therefore, it is most attractive. Has it ever been realised, however?
Under Man’s law, those who do wrong will be punished – if they’re caught. Under God’s law, those who do wrong will be punished – guaranteed. Under Chan Buddhism, those who do wrong may do wrong again, or may do right; and those who do right, likewise. It cannot be that simple, so attention is what I shall be giving it.