October 7th: How It Changed My Life As An American Jew

I’m a journalist so I won’t bury the lead: I no longer feel confident that America will always be a safe place for Jews, and more specifically, a safe place for my young Jewish children.

It’s not because of the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7th. It’s because of everything that’s happened here in the United States since October 8th. 

Thousands of years of Jewish history in the Diaspora has shown the same sad pattern: Jews go somewhere, assimilate, reach a certain level of success, and then are persecuted against, expelled or killed. [See: The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, Russian pogroms, The Holocaust, The Jewish expulsion from the Arab world…]

America was supposed to be the exception: a land of immigrants, a melting pot.  

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Sure, Jews have faced discrimination in the US. In the 1920s, national heroes like Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford told anyone who’d listen about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion aka “the Jewish plot for global domination”– a blatant antisemitic trope straight from Russian propaganda. 

Even until the 1970s there were quotas for Jewish enrollment at some elite colleges. Jews were barred from certain social clubs and fields of employment. (Ever wonder why so many Jews work in Hollywood? Jewish immigrants literally invented it in the early 1900s, and through their movies, created an idyllic version of an America that they themselves were not allowed to be part of.) 

After the Holocaust, Jews in America faced less discrimination and gained more acceptance and success. Described by some as a “Golden Age” of sorts. Not without its warts: My mom, an art teacher, still talks about students, who upon hearing she was Jewish, asked to see her horns. My dad, a long time basketball player and coach, has countless stories about anti-Jewish taunts thrown at him and his players. 

But for me, growing up in the ‘90s on Long Island in a primarily Jewish community– with Seinfeld the number one show on tv and Andrea Zuckerman accepted into her “90210” crew– anti-Jewish hatred in America seemed like something that existed only in the history books. 

No more.  

I’m not a historian or an academic. I’m just a journalist whose job it is to cover the news. I follow countless accounts on social media and talk to different types of people in the real world. I try to look for trends. Sadly, they’re not good.

It’s 2024, and for an emboldened far right, Jews are non-white race-polluters. See: The Great Replacement Theory. People with millions of followers on social media talk openly about how the white race is under threat of extinction, orchestrated mostly by the Jews. Their posts get hundreds of thousands of likes and shares. And no, they’re not all bots. 

It was this kind of thinking that led a man to open fire on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, the deadliest attack on a Jewish community in America. 

For an emboldened far left, Jews are TOO white. We can change our names, get nose jobs (yes, this is seriously part of the discourse), take off our yarmulkes and Jewish stars, “pass for white,” take advantage of “white privilege,” and still try to play the victims. 

Question: would you tell someone who’s gay and could pass for straight that that’s a privilege? To live in a world where they must hide their true identity to feel safe?

In the world of “intersectionality,” in which multiple forms of discrimination and oppression are linked, Jews are viewed as part of the white, colonizing oppressor class– regardless of how distorted and incongruous this is with our actual history.

In a recent Harvard Caps Harris poll, 67% of 18-24 year olds said they think that “Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated” as such.

For far too many young Americans, the war in the Middle East is binary, seen in black and white. Jews and Israelis are white oppressors and bad (even though half of Israelis are technically “people of color” and about 20% of the country is Arab). Palestinians, including the US-designated terrorist group Hamas, are the oppressed and good. So is Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Islamist group responsible for killing hundreds of Americans. 

There is no room for nuance on TikTok and social media, where so many kids are first learning about this conflict— one that goes back literally thousands of years and is nothing if not nuanced and complicated. 

No wonder, every week, middle and high school kids across America are etching swastikas into their school’s bathroom stalls. 

On the most elite college campuses, protestors block Jews, rather “Zionists,” from entering certain buildings. They gather outside Hillels, the center of Jewish life on campus, to intimidate students celebrating Jewish holidays. They vandalize buildings, statues, and even the homes and offices of Jewish officials, with upside down red triangles, a Hamas sign that indicates a military target. 

In the professional world, surveys of HR workers show more than a quarter are less likely to hire a candidate who’s Jewish. There are actual lists of “Zionist” authors whose books shouldn’t be bought and whose talks are canceled at local bookstores.

I still have nightmares about the masked protestors on a crowded NYC subway chanting: “Raise your hand if you're a Zionist… This is your chance to get out.” 

By the way, what IS a Zionist? It’s basically someone who thinks Israel has a right to exist. That’s it. Many “Zionists” are extremely critical of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far right government. Israelis themselves march by the hundreds of thousands to protest the war and demand a ceasefire. 

But it doesn’t matter. 

The right to free speech and to protest is ingrained in our Constitution. But far too often, that free speech has turned to hate speech and protest has turned to anti-Jewish racism. 

Take BDS Boston’s Mapping Project— which MIT students handed out at their orientation this year. It’s a literal map with the physical locations of hundreds of Jewish organizations and individuals who they say should be targeted for “the colonization of Palestine.” On the list: a Jewish school and a Jewish teen group. Even the faintest link to Israel is enough to put a target on their backs.

Here’s what really worries me: What happens when the kids drawing swastikas in high school bathrooms, or the college students swarming Hillels on campus, and the MIT students handing out maps at their orientation of Jewish locations to target, run for office themselves? When those maps– described by the Boston Globe as a “Jewish Hit List”—  become actual government policy?

The year is 2044. You belong to a synagogue, and that synagogue once raised money to plant trees in Tel Aviv. By their illogical logic, you are a legitimate target. 

It’s easy to dismiss the far left and far right as “fringe” (a common enemy makes strange bedfellows) or to say they’re kids and will grow out of it. 

But polls have shown that the only form of racism that is more prevalent amongst young people as compared to older generations is anti-Jewish hatred. 

I hope I’m wrong. I hope America really is that “shining city on a hill” and the exception to the rule. But thousands of years of Jewish history would prove otherwise. 

Pretty depressing, I know. 

A couple of antidotes that have provided me with comfort in the face of mounting antisemitism and what feels like impending doom: support and solidarity from many non-Jewish friends and social media followers (truly, thank you), and leaning in to my Jewish roots. 

I now light Shabbat candles every Friday night with my family, something I never did as a kid (or as an adult for that matter). I literally tear up watching my six-year-old daughter belting out the Shabbat prayer in Hebrew and helping rip apart the challah. 

It’s a tradition I hope she’ll be able to continue one day with her own children and grandchildren— in the open, in America.

When I meet new people I find myself subconsciously slipping into the conversation that I’m Jewish. By their reaction, I find out right away if I want this person in my orbit. 

And I’m trying to teach my young children to keep their heads high, be proud of who they are, and something that was NOT required of me growing up in America in the 90s— to be resilient and tough freaking Jews.