‘Nazi!” a short bearded man called me as I waited in line Sunday night for security to check my ID to enter the 92st Y for The State of the World Jewry address, given by Bari Weiss, the former New York Times editor who founded The Free Press.The man was holding a sign calling Weiss a “Zionist” and “Narcissist” (other protesters’ signs called her a “Genocidal Maniac” and “Nazi Propagandist”), and he was chanting, “We are committing genocide!” giving away what I suspected: he is a Jew.“Kapo!” I wanted to scream back at him. My blood was boiling. I’ve reported on antisemitism, the plight of Jewish college kids on campus, and even attended a pro-Israel rally at Columbia University, but never have I experienced what they have: being called a Nazi to my face.
Even working for AIPAC when I was in college decades ago, I never experienced what University of California, Berkeley, students suffered on Monday night, when 200 “Bears for Palestine” protesters shattered the glass windows, broke down doors, threatened students, and forced organizers to evacuate a lecture by an IDF soldier.I was so incensed in line Sunday night that I wanted to climb the barrier and tackle the Jewish protester. I wanted to rip the sign out of his hand, slap his face into reality, shout, “What is wrong with you?!!” and then maybe lead him away more gently and have a conversation with him about how he’s on the wrong side of history.
Antisemitism taking root
“IT WAS very clear after October 7 that I wanted Bari to speak at the Y,” Rabbi David Ingber, the senior director of the Bronfman Center at 92NY, who joined the stage later, told The Jerusalem Post.“Bari has been spot-on naming things as dangerous – and she was right,” he said, referring to her 2019 prescient book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism.He said that in the 150 years of 92Y, there had never been a protest like this.“It was an expression of the democracy that many of us cherish: that even the most aggressive protesters were protected by the police department and given the space outside the Y is what it means to be free in this country. For Jews, this democracy and those protections are imperiled,” he said. “It’s emblematic of the times.”Weiss opened the lecture by thanking the 92Y and the NYPD for ensuring the event happened “despite cowardly but unsurprising threats,” she said. “That this talk, originally open to the public, had to be made invite-only on the advice of the NYPD is painfully emblematic of our moment, one in which we American Jews, having lived as if immune from history, find ourselves in the belly of the beast once more. It is a moment in which the realities that seemed reserved for Jews of other times and other places are now, all of a sudden, very much our own.”Weiss quoted her friend Alana Newhouse, the editor of Tablet magazine: “The only thing worse than a dumb Jew is a surprised Jew,” she said, noting that even though she saw it coming, she was one of the people still in a state of shock. “I knew antisemitism had seduced educated people in other eras, but I did not expect a wave of antisemitism to originate with them in ours.”As someone who visited her synagogue, Tree of Life in Pittsburgh, after a shooter killed 11 congregants in 2018, Weiss said she knew evil existed, but “I could not imagine how mainstream and shameless – even proud – that hate would become.”Weiss said she had believed America was a different kind of Diaspora, where we were immune from Jew-hatred. Though it was present, she thought it would never take root.She was wrong. Due to our abundant blessings, she said, American Jews have had a “holiday from history,” but now “we learn to live in history once more.”Weiss said “we are at a hinge moment” in history, and there is no going back.
HOW CAN we fight it? What can we do?Like the Jews at Mount Sinai who worshiped the golden calf, we must give up false idols, Weiss said. We should stop caring where our children go to college, stop funding schools that treat Israel as a pariah, and detach from institutions and friends who treat us as second-class citizens.“It’s time to go to war for our values,” she said. She said to fight for freedom.“Where liberty thrives, Jews thrive,” she said. “When people turn against freedom, they turn against us.”Though she said she does not know what will come next for America or for the Jewish people, Weiss said the first step is to stand up to the lies against us, the lies against history, for other people’s freedom – but not when it means ending your own – and to be courageous “even when we are scared.”“What a blessing to be free to choose,” she said. “I know what my choice will be.”