By David K. Shipler
On a December
evening twenty-some years ago, Fern Amper, a Jewish resident of Teaneck, NJ,
made a startling statement to a small group of Jews and African-Americans who gathered
at her home periodically to discuss the issues of race, privilege, and bigotry.
When the Jews spoke of anti-Semitism, the blacks mostly minimized it,
preferring to see themselves as the country’s primary victims of prejudice and
picturing Jews—who were white, after all—as comfortably powerful.
So, to make her point about Jews’ vulnerability,
Amper claimed that they were always poised to flee. “I would venture to say
that there’s no Jew sitting in here—and I’ve never spoken to you about this—who
does not have an up-to-date passport for yourself and your kids in your desk
drawer,” she declared. “Tell me if that’s true.”
“It’s true,” one said.
“Absolutely,” said another. “Absolutely,” said all the Jews in the room.
The blacks were flabbergasted.
“Why? Why?” asked Ray Kelly, an African-American. “Are you really serious with
this paranoia?” A moment of silence followed, then a couple of voices said, “Yes.”
If the scent of perpetual danger
seemed exaggerated in the 1990s, it seems more warranted in the era of Donald
Trump’s winks and nods to the neo-Nazis and white supremacists among us. It is
no coincidence that since his election, anti-Semitic attacks, both physical and
verbal, have soared, culminating in the mass murder of 11 Jewish worshippers in
a Pittsburgh synagogue last Saturday.
As president, Trump has created an environment
favorable to the undercurrent of anti-Semitism that American society has long
harbored. It has surfaced dramatically since his election in 2016. The Southern
Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, counted a rise in the number of neo-Nazi
organizations from 99 to 121 between 2016 and 2017. Murders by white
supremacists have doubled, and the Anti-Defamation League reports “a 258%
increase in the number of white supremacist propaganda incidents on college
campuses.”
In addition, the ADL found that a
57% jump during 2017 in anti-Semitic incidents, defined as harassment,
vandalism, and assault, was the largest one-year increase since the organization
started keeping tallies in 1979. “Schools, from kindergarten through to high
school, were the most common locations of anti-Semitic incidents,” the ADL
reported. Jewish journalists and critics of Trump have been flooded with online
threats, anti-Semitic portrayals, and disinformation, according to a voluminous
study by the ADL.
