We are shocked, but we are not surprised.
How could we be surprised? The novelist Rebecca West once said that Jews, having suffered so much, have an “unsurprisable mind”. Did we think that we, the American Jewish community, could splash blood upon our communal door and thus ward off the twin angels of hatred and death?
When we witnessed the madness in Charlottesville – “The Jews will not replace us!” – could we not have imagined that this could happen?
“We are shocked – but, if we are surprised, it is because we American Jews have had so little actual experience of lethal anti-Semitism – despite the increase in anti-Semitic acts.”
This Shabbat, American Jews drank from the bitter cup of tears from which other groups have already sipped. Blacks. Blacks praying in churches. Sikhs. Muslims. LGBTQ.
Anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred in history. It might also be the oldest “ism” in history, the oldest living ideology. It is the only cultural thread that binds our civilization to that of the ancient Egyptians, and the ancient Persians, and the ancient Greeks, and the ancient Romans, and the early Christians, and to medieval Christians, and to Islam, and to modern scientific racist theories. It is the one thing that all of those cultures have in common.
As Gavin Langmuir, in his book History, Religion, and Antisemitism, writes: “anti-Semitism is the hostility aroused by the irrational thinking about ‘Jews.’”
We are shocked – but, if we are surprised, it is because we American Jews have had so little actual experience of lethal anti-Semitism – despite the increase in anti-Semitic acts.
Consider the American Jews who have died – simply because they were Jews.
• Leo Frank, the factory manager in Atlanta, who was falsely accused and lynched for the murder of a young factory girl, in 1915.
• Alan Berg, the Denver talk radio host, killed in 1984 by members of the white nationalist group The Order.
• Yankel Rosenbaum, killed during the Crown Heights riots in 1991.
• Ari Halberstam, 16, riding in a van of Chabad students, shot to death in 1994 on a ramp, which has been renamed in his memory, leading to the Brooklyn Bridge.
• Pamela Waechter, director of the Seattle Federation annual fundraising campaign, who was shot to death in the Seattle Federation offices in 2006.
Yes, there were also non-Jews who died in attacks aimed at Jews, Jewish institutions or places that evoke Jewish memory.
According to my estimate, the total number of Jews killed, before yesterday: five.
Which means – that the death toll in Pittsburgh immediately tripled the number of American victims of lethal anti-Semitism. Saturday was the worst day in American Jewish history.
Read the essay by Jeffrey Salkin on Sight Magazine.