Prompt Images
Today is the second day of the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah. Yeah, we get two full days of New Year’s celebrations, which only seems excessive until you remember we do 8 nights of Hanukkah and that Target already put up a Christmas display.
The Lord really does work in mysterious ways.
We Jews are on year 5778. And unlike with the rebooted, Americanized, Jenny McCarthyism in Times Square version of THE NEW YEAR™—brought to you by SONY, Rosh Hashanah is not a day of champagne toasts, college football playoffs, midnight kisses, and paying $100 to drink at the same bar that is free to get into 364 nights a year. And while resolutions are also a part of the Jewish new year, we Jews tend to spend more time looking back. And it’s not just because we’re neurotically paranoid or excessively petty.
We take the turning of the calendar as a time to review our past year, what we have done right, what we can do better, and who we have become. Resolutions are important, but they have to be grounded in the reality of where we have been and arrived over the past year.
So in my annual review, I came to the somewhat privileged realization that 5777 (or as most know it, September 2016-September 2017) was the worst year we American Jews have had since the time many of us “relocated” here during World War II.
5777: A Crummy Year to Be a Jew
The most blatant and obvious reason for this assessment is that neo-Nazism in America has never been louder and more publicly present. Charlottesville may have grabbed the spotlight, but anti-semitism was already on the rise throughout the country (up 86 percent according to the Anti-Defamation League) since approximately November 9th, 2016 at 1:34 A.M. You know, give or take a few seconds.
And while, this time, one man cannot be blamed for all of the vitriolic hate spewing from his constituents, we have a president who took three attempts before fully denouncing the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis after last month’s violent rallies. That is sad, scary, and depressing.
I have friends who had anti-semitic flyers posted in their neighborhoods and others who belong to Jewish Community Centers that were subject to bomb threats. Jewish cemeteries in multiple U.S. cities were defaced. And while I went a full year without being called a racial epithet (#humblebrag), I have seen more swastikas in the last year than I can ever remember.
David Duke, Richard Spencer, and other human garbage specimens consider the president a friend because they haven’t been told otherwise. Losers from across the country can march under Nazi banners because their actions don’t draw the same police scrutiny as a minority traffic violation.
And with the advent of technology, it’s even easier for hatemongers to find each other and spread their hate.
Despite Facebook’s disingenuous attempt to convince me to celebrate an International Day of Peace, I’m still hung up on the recent finding that Facebook allowed advertisers to target content towards “Jew hating,” “How to burn Jews,” and “History of why Jews ruin the world.” (Though I have to admit, that third choice sounds like a must watch Mel Brooks film—especially compared to the first two options). This contempt isn’t coming from Breitbart or Daily Caller, but the site our moms use to find pictures of our friends’ kids.
Nice cover, guys. It almost worked.
Meanwhile, back at Mission Control…
The White House and Trump administration trumpet how much they care for and respect Jews, parading Ivanka and Jared Kushner around as if they represent anyone outside their own family. Jared, the dubious real estate magnate with no diplomatic or government experience, was tasked with solving peace in the Middle East. Ivanka became a top advisor to a president who tweets incoherent word salad in the middle of the night. Two unsolvable roles, set up for failure. These are supposed to be our people?
Move over, Ruth Bader Ginsberg!
And literally hundreds of thousands of more befitting Jewish women. Because CNN called Ivanka the most powerful Jewish woman in America. A woman whose professional duty is to advise her father while simultaneously saying it’s not her job to moderate him. A Jewish woman with a Jewish husband and Jewish children, whose father took two days to rebuke neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and who wouldn’t disavow David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the KKK.
It seems so long ago already, but don’t forget that it was Sean Spicer, the first press secretary of this administration, who suggested that Hitler didn’t sink to the lows of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who used chemical weapons against his own people. At the time, Spicer may have seemed mostly incompetent, but that same man later referred to concentration camps as “Holocaust Centers.” There’s simply no excuse for a blind spot that large. But there is a message: Jews are not “their people.”
Trump didn’t once mention Jewish people on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Later the White House explained the omission was because other groups were killed too. It seems there was always violence on many sides.
Upon reflection, 5777 really was a who’s who of neglecting the Jewish plight and ignoring enemies of the Jewish people.
On our walk to services yesterday, my friends and I spoke about how antsy we felt. Generally as Jews in society, but also specifically and tangibly, with looming security concerns outside temple that day. That kind of fear has been paramount to the Jewish history, but until very recently, those feelings seemed consigned to past generations. Yesterday that fear followed us and loomed over us on a day we look to the past and reflected.
And so now that we’re on to 5778, I want to look forward and be optimistic, even in the face of mounting evidence against it. I’m not exactly confident or hopeful in where we’re headed. But I’m resilient. Because we always have been and always have to be.
RELATED
