The rising stigma of being Jewish: How antisemitism resurfaces after Oct. 7
What are the chances that Democratic presidential hopefuls J.B. Pritzker, Rahm Emanuel, or Josh Shapiro, all Jews, will succeed in winning their party’s backing?
Are today’s booksellers really trying to avoid showcasing books about Israel? Are Jewish students systematically being ostracized on their campuses? Have academics purposely stopped inviting Israeli colleagues to speak? And are they being turned away from available teaching posts?
These are the allegations put forth in a recent article by Gil Troy, “Defeat the ‘silent intifada’” (August 27), all of which attest to a troubling stigma of being Jewish.
The phenomenon, although new to some, is not unfamiliar territory to the Jewish people, whose history has been rife with periods where their ethnicity became a great liability for them.
Jews have experienced it all – everything from being forbidden from land ownership in Medieval Europe to the disgraceful quota systems that prevented Jewish admissions into elite American universities, fueled by antisemitic attitudes.
October 7 has now become the latest catalyst for a revival of those feelings. As people consider the loss of customers or possible backlash if they are perceived to champion Israel, they now have to think about the possibility of those consequences.
That stigma is real and meant to disqualify Jews from positions of influence. Of course, it has an economic, social, and political impact as it significantly lessens their ability to engage in many aspects of life, just because of who they are.
History has shown us that when this type of discrimination begins, it doesn’t end until devastating results have taken their toll. That’s what happened in the 1930s, as Jews gained the reputation of becoming unwanted members of society. Slowly, their businesses were boycotted, their presence was sidelined, and their influence came to a halt.
Jewish children were no longer welcomed in their schools, and their parents, in top professions – doctors, lawyers, accountants, and bankers – were alienated by the public. It’s the reason why many fled as they saw their future potential dry up.
Although things may not yet have degenerated to that level, it’s hard to see a sudden reversal of where this same sentiment is rapidly heading. Think about the political forecast as the upcoming American 2028 elections draw closer.
What are the chances that Democratic presidential hopefuls J.B. Pritzker, Rahm Emanuel, or Josh Shapiro, all Jews, will succeed in winning their party’s backing, given the growing Israel hostility of a sizeable segment of their constituency?
Growing segment viewing Jews as oppressors with white privilege
Sadly, a growing segment of Democrats has also adopted the woke philosophy, viewing Jews as oppressors with white privilege. So, when taking those problematic leanings into consideration, where will that leave Jews who have serious political aspirations?
What about Jewish academics who earn their living, either from the lecture circuit or Jewish professors seeking to be hired by prestigious universities with a large anti-Jewish student body and faculty? Already, a number of Jews on staff at some of these institutions have suffered unjustified persecution, even though they have no connection with Israeli policy.
This issue has also affected Jewish retail businesses. In June 2024, Holy Bagels & Pizzeria, a kosher restaurant in Miami, was covered with graffiti. Another eatery, owned by the same person, was vandalized on three separate occasions. The same thing happened at a kosher restaurant in Athens, Greece, where spray-painted messages read, “No Zionist is safe here” and “Israel Death Forces – rapist, torturers, murderers,” as reported by the Forward.
Still, it’s not just the many Jewish-owned restaurants that have been vandalized or boycotted since the October 7 massacre. The accounts are endless of vicious reprisals against Jewish individuals, sites, and anything associated with Israel.
An extensive list, reported by Reuters in May of this year, outlines the killing of the two Israeli embassy staffers, a deliberate car crash into a barricade near the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo, a Jordanian national who attacked American businesses over their perceived support for Israel, a Pakistani citizen living in Canada who planned a mass shooting at a Jewish center in Brooklyn, the Denmark shooting at a unit of Israeli defense electronics firm Elbit Systems, the attack of two Chicago students at a pro-Israel demonstration, and the setting on fire of two cars and vandalizing of a Sydney home previously owned by a senior Jewish community leader. The list doesn’t stop there.
ALL OF these statistics translate into massive jumps in antisemitic acts, as they grow at alarming rates. In the US, just during 2023, an increase of 140% was reported by the Anti-Defamation League. In Australia, antisemitic acts, recorded from October 1, 2023, to September 20, 2024, reportedly showed a 315% increase from a year earlier.
If this doesn’t represent a worrying trend in how Jews are being stigmatized, then what does? It goes without saying that Jews worldwide have had to moderate their dress, remove jewelry with Jewish symbols, and opt for baseball caps instead of the more traditional skullcaps worn by observant Jewish men.
Many homes in Europe have chosen to remove the mezuzahs from their doorposts, signifying that a Jewish family resides there. That is because such obvious attention, drawn to one’s ethnicity, can now result in a serious threat to that dwelling, not to mention its inhabitants.
All of these very disturbing developments, when considered in the aggregate, point to a growing wave of singling out Jews as those who wear the stigma associated with their race. First, they are discredited and then pronounced guilty. After that, doing business with them or helping to promote them in any way is done at one’s peril.
It seems as if the goal is to make it frightening and uncomfortable to be supportive of Jews. If people feel that patronizing Jewish businesses has a risk attached to it, why would they continue to do so? It’s a strategy that could easily be employed to marginalize Jews by portraying them as people who should be avoided at all costs. After all, it was successful 80 years ago.
Although it’s tempting to reject the concern that history seems to be repeating itself, because things are not quite as bad, we cannot completely ignore an eerily familiar pattern of the same stigma of being Jewish, which led up to Europe’s Holocaust of the late 1930s.
This article originally appeared on the Jerusalem Post and is reposted with permission.
A former Jerusalem elementary and middle-school principal who made Aliyah in 1993 and became a member of Kibbutz Reim but now lives in the center of the country with her husband. She is the author of Mistake-Proof Parenting, based on the principles from the book of Proverbs - available on Amazon.
