Every Jew Is in This

Every Jew Is in This

David Rowe | Long Beach Hillel Class of 2021

This is a seminal moment in Jewish history. That idea was raised during the Community Vigil for Israel at the Alpert JCC on the Weinberg Jewish Long Beach Campus in October, and I’ve only just begun to understand the gravity of its meaning. We are history’s witnesses to a terrible assault on Jewish life that will be remembered for generations.

For anyone born after the Holocaust, this is a new feeling. Even through numerous wars and brutal acts of terrorism, the horrors we witnessed last week struck a very different note. A note that makes eating a chore. A note that keeps you up at night. A note that haunts your mind and gnaws at your soul, making it impossible to focus on anything but those kids slaughtered at that festival and the mother burned alive in her home, holding her child tighter and tighter as the flames grew around them.

And in an awful way, this massacre of Jews has connected us with our history. The pogroms that led to my family’s departure from Ukraine no longer seem like a distant chapter in a long line of anti-Jewish violence. The Holocaust no longer seems implausible. Antisemitism has reached new heights as people justify the murder of babies in cribs, so long as that baby was born in the world’s only Jewish state. These realizations have shattered the isolation from violence that the historical gap had previously afforded to younger Jews. These acts happened in our world, and the people defending them are our classmates, coworkers, peers, and even friends.

It isn’t difficult to see how we got here. Antisemites who seek cover for their hatred by attacking “Zionists” have been dehumanizing and demonizing us for decades, with campus activism as their preferred method of delivery for anti-Jewish rhetoric.

During my time as president of Beach Hillel a few years ago, my fellow Jewish students and I kindly asked students holding an anti-Israel demonstration to remove certain antisemitic images from their hateful “apartheid wall” display. We were specific in our requests, and we explained why phrases such as “Zionism=Racism” and images depicting classic blood libel tropes were deeply offensive and worrying. Our requests were denied, and the protest went on as scheduled, antisemitic messages and all.

My fellow Jewish students were extremely distressed, and many feared for their safety, but it seemed like we were screaming into the void.

It took a monumental effort to get CSULB’s student government to condemn antisemitism on campus. No other marginalized group would face such hurdles. We realized that we are all we have.

Many of those same anti-Israel students have revealed themselves as pro-Hamas agitators. Jews, and especially young Jewish students, can no longer afford to be disconnected from the threats and challenges we face collectively. Coby Shuman, a current Beach Hillel student at CSULB, expressed this point in his own words.

“What happened last week doesn’t feel like it happened to other people far away,” he explained. “This event is happening to me.”

The connection between anti-Israel activism and growing antisemitism can no longer be denied. Jewish students are on the frontlines of a relentless attempt to strip Jews away of their humanity and paint us as evil colonizers who deserve a fate worse than death. Students must remain strong and proud of their Jewish and Zionist identities now more than ever, and they must always know that the wider Jewish community has their back.

The choices we make now will determine the Jewish future, both in Israel and around the world. Everyone has a part to play.