Growing up Jewish means that, among other things, you get used to a passive but everpresent dread that the rest of the world will eventually want to see you dead. Passover is about that one time the Egyptians enslaved all of the Jews, and despite trying to kill us, we survived. Purim is about that one time a Persian minister tried to have us all killed, but we survived. Hannukah is about the time the Greeks destroyed our holy sites and tried to have us all killed, but we survived. Tisha Be’Av. Holocaust Remembrance Day. Tzom Gedalia. It’s gotten to a point where we commonly joke about how 90% of our holidays are just “they tried to kill us, they didn’t, let’s eat.”

If it was merely historical, that’d be one thing, but this sort of fear is far from merely being a story passed down by your elders. My great grandma’s entire family was burned alive in the Pogroms. My uncles were beat up for speaking up about antisemitism. My brother was bullied relentlessly in school for being circumcised. “Generational Trauma” is the correct term to define this, but I do think it’s important to highlight how every generation re-experienced this trauma. Luckily, I haven’t experienced this sort of violence yet¹ beyond some dickheads online, but I don’t believe this’ll stay the case for much longer.

I want to be clear that despite this all, I’m not pessimistic about my future as a Jew or of the Jewish People as a whole; I’m a hopeless idealist, whether it’s about individual life choices or about broader political change in general. We’ve made it this far, I don’t think we’ll be taken out that easily, and we can certainly build a better world without having to hide in a gilded cage of our own making. But holy shit, have I heard some concerning things from people recently.

Antisemitism is no longer the Cain’s Mark it used to be. Saying this I now realize that it never was this sort of mark it was made out to be, but atleast while I was growing up, it felt like it was atleast socially unacceptable to be openly against the Jews. In the past few years I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that even if this was the case, it very much no longer is, and the past few months had this process exacerbate significantly.

You guys have heard about the Houthis, right? Paramilitary organization in Yemen, not the official government but controls enough of the country that they function as the government, been blocking trade through the Red Sea as of the time of posting? Those guys. Their logo has “A Curse Upon the Jews” written in big red letters. There is no other way to read that sentence, it is very explicit. Seeing people cheering for this group openly on social media made me somewhat uneasy, both for the… well, the antisemitism, and also that this group is infamous for its blatant human rights violations, including but not limited to bringing back chattel slavery. So, I brought this up to people.

I was expecting some sort of shock, right? Even if they fundamentally believe blocking the red sea is good, that they’d readjust their position on the group itself. “I think it’s a cool thing to do, but wow what assholes.” I shouldn’t have to explain why antisemitic slave owners are bad guys, right?

Right??

The sheer amount of people who responded with one justification or another for why it’s actually totally fine blew my fucking mind. “Oh, it’s not actually slavery, they’re treated very well.” “Well, they don’t really mean they hate the Jews.” “It’s just a different cultural form of labor!” “Well, when you have a country like Israel oppressing your people-“

Yeah I think I should probably address the elephant in the room real quick. Israel, and its fascist-adjacent government, has nothing of relevance when someone brings up the issue of worldwide antisemitism. Antisemitism has been thriving for years now. If you open a map Yemen is nowhere near Israel. There’s certainly a conversation to have about Israel’s abhorrent treatment of palestineans in the west bank and gaza, no doubt, but, frankly speaking, that’s not the goddamn conversation we’re having right now, and I feel the need to specify this because I’ve had multiple people derail such conversations consistently. If your first response to someone talking about antisemitism is to bring up Israel, for the love of god reexamine your biases.

Antisemitism has been growing, a lot, and we’re scared. According to polls, 7% of the US thinks that the holocaust did not happen, with these numbers increasing to 20% if you sort the results to only the 18-29 age group and 9% of Americans think it’s acceptable to hold neo-nazi views. Trust me, I wish these numbers were flukes, but I have seen these same numbers in multiple polls by numerous sources in the past 5 years.

7% of the US is about 23.2 million people.

There are only 16.2 million Jews in the entire world.

You, do not, have to justify antisemitism, I fucking promise you.