STAND UP
TO
JEWISH HATE
I am an ordained interfaith minister. All people have the human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in whatever country you live in because it is God given, not humanly derived. Hate masking as honor, integrity, and truth thrives in environments of lies, conspiracies, and insane ego. Do not follow the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
If you are hating others unlike yourself because of what you believe, you are following the wrong “god” home.
The State of Antisemitism in America was assessed in the year 2022, by the American Jewish Committee, https://www.ajc.org/AntisemitismReport2022, showing hate and violence against Jewish people is at a much higher rate than first thought.
With antisemitic rhetoric on the rise, it’s important to not to ignore hateful comments when you hear them. In many instances, people who make these types of comments or jokes are unaware that what they said was problematic. When this happens, it is recommended to immediately inform the person so they know that what they said was antisemitic. This allows everyone to see the issue with what was said, and shows victims of the statement that they have an ally.
FCAS is the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. Their mission is to win the hearts and minds of non-Jews and Jews through powerful positive messaging and partnerships, motivating and equipping them to be defenders of and upstanders for the Jewish community.
Robert Kraft has demonstrated a longstanding commitment to social equality and support for vulnerable populations. Through his lifetime giving in excess of over a half billion dollars, Kraft has sought to help provide equal footing, equal access to opportunities and equal respect for all people, especially those who are disadvantaged, overlooked or oppressed.
How did our human evolution devolve into resurrected and archaic beliefs?
Let us never forget accurate history as age discrimination, racism, prejudice, homophobia, and antisemitism resurface from the dregs of the cauldron of ignorance as if one brand of human being was better than another version of God’s glorious creation of human life.
Book banning, and any attempt at rewriting history books as if slavery of all kinds of people never happened is the first mark of the devil incarnate. Ignorance is not bliss.
On July 10, 1933, nearly a decade before the Holocaust, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, was on the front cover of TIME Magazine, stating “THE JEWS ARE TO BLAME!”
In the years that followed, millions of Jews across Europe were terrorized, hunted and murdered by Nazis, their collaborators and those coerced by them. While the Holocaust was unique in the systematic, industrial means it employed to annihilate the Jewish people, large scale persecutions and killings of Jews did not start with the Nazis. They have happened during other times and in other regions. Indeed, hatred of Jews existed for millennia before the Holocaust and did not end with the murder of the six million. We must remember that the warning signs leading up to even the most lethal of social epidemics are typically far from immediate or obvious. And so today, it is our collective responsibility to recognize the patterns of hate-based prejudice, how this mindset takes root and even more so how it operates.
While antisemitism has sometimes escalated to violent or genocidal levels, it more often appears in subtler ways, such as insensitive remarks that are brushed off, or negative stereotypes that go unchallenged. We must never normalize even seemingly harmless forms of hate-based prejudice; this is what strengthens dangerous social attitudes, which can erode the values of even the most just society. Silence and complacency in the face of biased remarks or actions permit others to internalize harmful messages, making such messages commonplace. Antisemitism is unique in many ways, but, like other forms of hate, it grows in silence and blossoms in acquiescence.
And yet it is not always easy to recognize and combat antisemitism. For example, while knowledge of the Holocaust helped banish overt antisemitism in many contexts in the postwar decades, surprising numbers of young people today are unaware of the most basic facts about what happened to Europe’s Jews during World War II. According to a nationally representative March 2018 survey, commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, only 36 percent of millennials* (ages 18-34)* in the United States knew that six million Jews perished during the Holocaust.
- Point of clarification: In 2018, millennials were ages 18-34. Currently in the year 2023, millennials are considered to be ages 27-42, being born between 1981-1996.
As survivors enter their final years and society moves forward, the Holocaust recedes from public memory, making Nazism appear almost other-worldly, like a historical impossibility. Moreover, many of those who truly are familiar with the history of the Holocaust or other massive anti-Jewish atrocities are unable or unwilling to recognize subtler manifestations of antisemitism, envisioning many contemporary Jews as a privileged group that is not sufficiently vulnerable to warrant significant concern or action. These and other factors explored below have contributed to a decrease in the previous stigmatization of antisemitic attitudes and a tendency not to take warning signs seriously.
Antisemitism has commonalities with racism, anti-Muslim bias, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and other forms of hate and discrimination. It also has certain unique characteristics as a specific set of ideologies about Jews that has migrated across discourses. In almost every part of society, this hatred has been conjured and adjusted to suit the values, beliefs and fears of specific demographics and contexts. We cannot fight antisemitism without understanding how it is both intertwined with other forms of prejudice and how it is unique.
This report will help to identify what antisemitism is and how it manifests, from the ancient past to the present day. With a long history as a distinct minority group living in exile, Jews in various contexts across the globe have been misunderstood and subject to harmful characterizations that have endured through the ages. Accordingly, Jews often have found themselves wrongfully scapegoated, reviled, persecuted, expelled and murdered. They have been an easy target from all sides, sometimes attacked for remaining “too different” from dominant majority cultures or conversely for blending in “too well” within these same societies. Despite the diversity of Jewish people and of Judaism as a religion, antisemitism understands Jews as an unchanging, negative force in the world and draws on a deep reservoir of lies and propaganda to support that faulty understanding.
While antisemitism obviously harms and worries Jews, we must also be mindful that it threatens democracy and is an indicator of the health of a society as a whole, of a society’s capacity to think reasonably and behave humanely. Antisemitism attacks Jews specifically, but it is the body politic that is ultimately impoverished by it.
We face complicated challenges in today’s world. The lack of simple, straightforward answers emboldens those who seek an easy culprit on whom to blame those problems. The hateful myths and conspiracy theories levied against Jews throughout history offer accessible templates for such blame. Cultures of silence and complacent attitudes have helped antisemitism to gain new currency in the United States and around the world. Without the requisite knowledge to recognize this evil, we are at a disadvantage to stop it.
In the link below, the history of antisemitism is examined in order to understand its roots and how it has been linked with wider narratives and power structures and, thus, to debunk the acceptance it has increasingly been granted. You can read about and examine seven of the most common antisemitic myths. These tropes have been repeated knowingly and unknowingly, too often leading to violence. For each myth, we offer context and examples to help identify it.
With mounting threats against marginalized communities on today’s global stage, there is urgency. In this environment, it is imperative for each and all of us, Jewish or not, to understand and speak out against the so-called oldest hatred and preempt future acts of violence such attitudes might encourage. We have to know what antisemitism is, to be able to see it in practice, and to be willing to oppose it now.
For more information, check out: https://antisemitism.adl.org/.
Namaste