From Israel to Campus: On Antisemitism Today
I used to think antisemitism was just evil people consciously hating Jews. I was wrong.
My first brush with antisemitism happened when I was twenty years old. Some friends and I were taking part in a Secret Santa tradition we’d always do right before winter break, and when it was my turn to open my gift, I was horrified to find out I was holding a copy of Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf.
I stood there for a moment, dead inside, holding a book associated with the slaughter of millions of other Jewish people as a crowd around me erupted in laughter. It was as if I had been transported to an alternate universe where up was down and down was up. Nothing made sense anymore.
Once the shock and anger subsided, as I looked around at all the jovial faces, my emotions began pulling me in another direction. This was my friend group. What if they abandon me if I speak up? Do I really want to make a scene? Wasn’t what was happening now, in a way, my fault for going along with all of those Holocaust jokes beforehand? I was justifying what had happened because I realized that as awful and painful as it was, actually doing something about it was going to be even more awful and painful for me. So like everyone else, I went along with it, my laughter suppressing the…
