Spoiler: The mob does not pause for complexity |
Years ago, I had a homeroom teacher from Eastern Europe who quietly wept when she learned I was Jewish — just like her.
For me, it was casual. Matter-of-fact.
For her, it was a secret.
She told me not to tell anyone.
I remember the bewildered wonder in her face because I was so visible.
Loudly, casually, unapologetically Jewish.
Not religious in the way people often imagine. I have tattoos. I say inappropriate things at solemn moments. I have a complicated relationship with God and an uncomplicated relationship with bagels.
But abroad, I wear my Jewish star openly because I want the world to know which tribe I come from — a small but mighty and seldom tidy tent.
I’m the kind of Jew who spots another visibly Jewish person across the street and immediately feels like we’re distant cousins who survived a shipwreck together.
No, we don’t have space lasers.
We have “Good Shabbos” exchanged like a password on Friday afternoons.
We have old women wrapping extra slices of cake in napkins for strangers.
We have inherited trauma, digestive issues, and a deeply suspicious relationship with authoritarianism.
We have a peoplehood that somehow survived every empire that tried to erase it.
And maybe that’s why this moment feels so disorienting.
Because my daughter just turned eighteen, and she’s traveling to a European capital with a long and particularly rotten history of Jew hatred.
And while her father and I disagree about many things, it turns out we both gave her the exact same briefing:
Don’t speak Hebrew in public.
If someone asks, say you’re American.
Show your American passport first.
I hate that the language our........