In 2011, Benjamin and I travelled to Spain. We chose Spain for the soccer, since Benjamin wanted to watch Cristiano Ronaldo play. I remember enjoying Spain from a trip I took with my mom in January 1982, when the two of us backpacked through Europe, after my first year living in Jerusalem. We arrived in Madrid on a very rainy January day, and tired of being soaked, we had a great idea: how about going to a movie theater? We looked around and found a theater that was showing the movie, “History of the World – Part I” by Mel Brooks. We were familiar with his movies (his previous movies had been a hit in Brazil), so we paid the entrance fee, sat down, and got ready to watch the movie. We, and everyone around us, were enjoying the movie. People were laughing, and having a good time. And then…the inquisition segment started. My mother and I continued laughing—until we realized we were the only ones laughing at that segment. The theater was otherwise silent. We followed suit—and from then on we marveled at how the theater slowly recovered from that segment, and how the public went back to laughing again.
Every time I remember that story, I remember how I felt at that moment: I was disturbed that after almost 500 years a joke by an American Jew felt like open criticism to the regular Spaniard movie goer. I also admired the way in which Mel Brooks felt free to joke about the inquisition. This was a level of chutzpah that I, a Brazilian Jew, could never imagine having.
On that trip, we visited the small city of Toledo, where we decided to visit the Jewish Museum. The building was not well kept, there wasn’t anything particularly interesting to see, especially after coming from Israel and visiting the amazing Synagogues in Tzfat, with the richness of kabbalah and Sephardic and Mizrahi presence. We were told that this museum would undergo renovations soon. I remember enjoying the city, and when Benjamin and I decided to go, I started planning a day visit to Toledo. We travelled there by train from Madrid, and got a half day tour that would end at the Jewish quarter. We arrived at the newly renovated museum and started our self-guided tour. Experiencing this museum at that point of my life left me with a very uneasy feeling—I felt like a relic.
The building had housed a synagogue before the 1492 expulsion, and now, without a bimah, a Sefer Torah, or even a single bench, there was an odd void. Something was amiss; why was there nothing that showed the richness of the poetry, liturgy, and scholarship that was created there, which is so present in my life nowadays? Where was the acknowledgement of the inquisition, of the seizing of Jewish property, and of the expulsion? As I proceeded through the rooms, the realization of what was making me uncomfortable became clear. All the captions that explained every room we entered, and every artifact we saw, described a vanished civilization. In reading the Spanish captions, they all sounded to me as “Once upon a time there were these people here in Spain called the Jews. We kicked them out and looted their possessions, and now we present you with a sterilized version of what happened here.”
From then on, in defiance because of my experience in Toledo, every museum and castle I visited in Spain brought up the thought: “Yeah, you kicked us out and took all we had, took many of our lives to finance your conquests, and now you are one of the poorest and most indebted countries in Europe. We have flourished in other places and helped other places, and you are not a world power anymore.”
This feeling of being a relic is brilliantly explained in Dr. Dara Horn’s new book, People Love Dead Jews. She writes:
“There is a tourist industry concept, popular in places largely devoid of Jews, called Jewish heritage sites. The term is a truly ingenious piece of marketing. Jewish heritage is a phrase that sounds utterly benign or, to Jews, perhaps ever so slightly beautiful, suggesting a place that you surely ought to visit. After all, you came all this way—so how could you not? It is a much better name than “property seized from dead or expelled Jews.” By calling these places Jewish heritage sites those pesky moral concerns about, say, why these sites exist to begin with evaporate in a mist of goodwill. And not just goodwill, but goodwill aimed directly at you, the Jewish tourist. These non-Jewish citizens and their benevolent government have chosen to maintain this cemetery or renovate this synagogue or create this museum purely out of their profound respect for the Jews who once lived here and who, for unstated reasons, no longer do, and out of their sincere hope that you the Jewish tourist might someday arrive. Still, you cannot help but feel uncomfortable and finally helpless as you understand what happened: instead of traveling the world and visiting Jews, you are visiting their graves.”
I am reminded of these experiences as I grapple with an increase of anti-Jewish sentiments in America. I am not alone. According to the Pew Research Center 2020 study of Jews in America, 9 out of 10 Jews are concerned that there is a lot or an uncomfortable amount of antisemitism nowadays. In the same study, 68% of American Jews feel that people are freer than ever to say more antisemitic things, and 50% of American Jews feel less safe being Jewish in America. The FBI reported that in 2020, 60% of all religious hate crimes in the country were perpetrated against Jews and Jewish institutions. The Anti-Defamation League has reported an uptick of hate crimes against Jews. After admiring Mel Brooks for what I interpreted as a symbol of the comfort American Jews felt in their land, I thought that America was the place where we would finally only have to deal with the memories of a painful past, not with challenges to our own being.
According to Rabbi David Saperstein, the Director Emeritus of the Religious Action Center, we are witnessing both old and new antisemitic tropes coming from those on the right and on the left. The far-right repeats the classic ideas of anti-Semitism, accusations that Jews are untrustworthy foreigners, unpatriotic, and money/power hungry. We witnessed that in the words chanted by the marchers in Charlottesville in 2017, in the words of the murderers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and at the Chabad in San Diego in 2019, in the Instagram feeds of the shooters in a kosher supermarket in New Jersey, and in the cries of the man wielding an axe at a private Hannukah party in New York in 2019. When all these crimes happen, I can feel my epigenetic memory taking over, viscerally reminding me of all the times in Jewish History when these same words were said. Did my ancestors in England, or in Spain, or in Poland, or in Russia, or in Germany hear things like that and feel that what had happened in the past would never happen again? Did they think, like I want to do, that they were living in a different era, that they were more (fill in the blanks) than Jews in other places and times? Rabbi Saperstein also points out the different versions of antisemitism that comes from the left. An example is the Boycott of, Divestment from, and Sanctions against Israel, known as the BDS movement. This is a very disturbing and barely veiled form of antisemitism. By insisting on depicting Israel only as a racist, fascist, and totalitarian country, without recognizing the existential threat posed by constant attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah, these perpetrators demonize and defame Israel. That gets translated in American college campuses and in some institutions as a virulent form of antisemitism which makes American Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government. It is unfair to be held responsible for actions of a government that we do not elect.
And once more that epigenetic memory takes over, reminding me of all the times and all the places in our history where Jewish property was taken, justified by bogus claims.
All of these contemporary examples leave me puzzled and afraid. My thoughts about the past race in my mind. The well-integrated Jews of early 20th century Germany could never think that they would be in grave danger. The Jews who were in favor of the Bolshevik regime could not imagine that in just a few years they would be deemed to be counterrevolutionaries, and that they would pay for their allegiance with their lives. And maybe my comfort in America should be tempered by the historical fact that the borders were closed to Jewish refugees right before and during WWII, or by digging into the history of Jewish quotas in Ivy league institutions, or the signs in restaurant doors stating that Jews and dogs were not welcomed there, and other such examples. I am afraid of antisemitism. I am afraid to end like so many Jewish communities around the world that now are only sites of Jewish Heritage tours.
So, what are we to do with this fear? How can we try to avoid the foreboding feelings that arise from our reality? How can we diminish antisemitism in America?
Rabbi Saperstein advises that we must be attentive to the rhetoric stemming from both the right and the left. Jewish Americans are not safe in one extreme or the other. Jewish Americans are not safe when we try to mask evidence of antisemitism instead of facing it. He also suggests that we concentrate our individual efforts in strengthening the ties to our local communities, building alliances and coalitions in our local governments as well as in our neighborhoods.
I have two other suggestions.
First, we must engage in Jewish learning throughout our lives. Our texts witness the continuity and the vibrancy of Jewish thought. When we do a deep reading of the Hebrew Bible, we connect with the ways in which our ancestors build a theological literature that advocated for the poor, the immigrant, and the marginalized, as well as for justice, for love, and for peace. When we study the Talmud, we engage with thinkers of different eras talking with each other, creating a multi-faceted and multi-generational approach to life in community. When we study our history, we bring the past alive and we connect with the gift of memory. When we study our liturgy, our mysticism, our theology, and our literature, we bring alive the memory of teachers who have searched for a strong connection to the Eternal, as we are doing right now. When we learn the Hebrew language, we bring to life the Jewish past and connect with the present.
The second suggestion is that we learn from the gift of Yir’ah.
This time of the year, this period between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur is called the Yamim Norayim. I usually translate these Hebrew words as The Days of Awe. The root of the word Norayimcan also be understood as fear, instead of awe.
The answer to the question of what to do with fear is to transform our paralyzing anxieties into the kind of fear that is tinged with awe. Yir’ah as awe is an attitude that requires openness, for we need to be attuned to what is happening around us so we can respond to the Mystery with the fullness of our being. Yir’ah as fear can keep us stuck, unable to move, and therefore vulnerable. I suggest, that armed with the thousands of years of Jewish history and civilization, we hold our Yir’ah as a feeling of awe, being attentive, nimble, and keeping our options open.
As I wrote in a recent column in this blog, Rabbi Avraham Abulafia (13th century, Spain) suggested that we engage in the process of tikkun hanefesh in order to limit the aspect of fear and boost the aspects of reverence and awe in our Yir’ah. Tikkun Hanefesh is a meditative practice centered on combining the letters of the Name of God in different ways. There are a few readymade diagrams for this meditation, but we can simplify it by seeing in our mind’s eye the Hebrew letters yud, hey, vav, hey, and let them dance and combine in different ways. With that practice Rabbi Abulafia believed that we are able to highlight the aspects of awe and reverence and keep at bay excessive fear.
Our approach to dealing with antisemitism must be multi-faceted. Engaging in the building of strong local communities, in the study of our texts, and in personal meditation can be an avenue to feeling less vulnerable to this age-old form of racism. I wish us all a sweet and peaceful New Year, filled with the gift of Yir’ah, with reverence and awe for the Divine and for our fellow human beings, with learning and unity in our Jewish community, with communal engagement, and being attentive, nimble, and prepared for all the challenges we might face in the future.