There are no words Eve. My parents generation knew antisemitism and knew what it was like to be a Jew in America. My Dad used to say he hated when school ended because he had to run like crazy to avoid the “Irish kids.” If they caught him, they’d beat the hell of him because he was Jewish. He was raised in the Bronx.
So he and Mom moved us to a Long Island community that was 95% Jewish and then I went to Boston University which was 30% Jewish. I used to tell my Dad, that the days of Jews getting beat up because they were Jews were over. Of course,he laughed and told me I was just sheltered. He was right of course.
Now what? We do what our ancestors did. 5,000 years of this crap but we continued to cling to our Jewishness, our traditions, our pride in all Jewish accomplishments. The only solace is our people will be here long after these anti-Semitic, hateful people. Karma will find them.
Hang in there Eve. I support you 100% and all my NY Jewish friends do too.
The "ideological shift" Ben mentions is generally called woke ideology, and alas, it is the prevailing ideology in the left, including the LGBT community. This ideology, I argue, is poisonous. It arbitrarily defines "oppressed" and "oppressor" according to immutable characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, and sexual orientation. It takes no account of human agency or free moral choice. Ultimately, it is Marxism with a veneer of identity politics. It is illiberal, and meant to undermine the West. Ben and Eve have been redefined, categorized, and declared "guilty" simply for being born Jewish. This ideology is indeed racist and bigoted. Confidential to Ben, sorry for being a Yenta, but I hope you find the man of your dreams, and he should only have the moral clarity of a Douglas Murray.
We must win this war, and then all of this nonsence will go away.
We must be proud of being Jews of today, the winners, the warriors, gay, straight and otherwise.
Our jewishness, our national character is what defines us, as long as we are united around our Land of Israel and her allies. There should be no room for cowardice.
I remember a conversation we had in my high school history class in 1968 about the attitudes of Southerners that led to the Civil War. The question was, since only a very small percentage of Southerners actually owned slaves, why did the whole South support the war? It was my teacher's contention that the rich slave owners in the South had to conjure up racial hatred among the South's poor to get them to support slavery. Poor white people, she opined, had much more in common with poor black people than with rich white people, and hence the power structure in the South had to convince poor white people to hate black people in order for them to support slavery.
I thought she was foolish. Groups of people don't need encouragement to despise and distrust other groups. It's as natural to human beings as breathing. Any out-group in society will either be subsumed by the greater culture, or hated. For those who don't know, when hundreds of thousands of Irish people came to the US to flee the Great Famine, it was common to see signs in big cities reading "Irish need not apply" and "No dogs or Irish allowed." And during that same period, Italians who emigrated were not considered to be white and faced similar discrimination. But eventually they both fully integrated with the culture, and now Irish names for babies top lots of "favorites" lists.
But the Jews have always been a separate people. And therefore a target.
Before World War II, many prominent Americans openly espoused hatred of Jews. People like Henry Ford and T.S. Eliot were very frank about their Jew-hatred. Then we learned the awful truth about the Holocaust, and voicing anti-Semitic opinions became shameful and antisocial. That's the era I grew up in. It was a time when more and more information about the Holocaust was still reaching the public, and when the media were beginning to grapple with the reality of it.
In our home, as in millions of American homes (and my father was a Republican Party committeeman for our precinct) you simply didn't make anti-Semitic comments. A woman I was dating in my twenties referred to someone as a "Jew-boy" and I broke up with her on the spot.
But it's been 80 years since the Holocaust ended. And now Marxist identity politics have made it okay to hate Jews openly again. Jews are different. Jews are Other. And we love to hate the Other.
You're so right. Bill. I'm French Canadian. My people have been taught first by the church, then their schools to hate the English, to this day. Interestingly this hatred of "the English" coincides with the Irish famine when many Irish settled in Montreal and the rest of the province. I went to English schools and spoke French so I straddled the "two solitudes" and I can assure you, it wasn't the English who were attacking the French kids after school, it was the opposite! Today we hear the CEO of Air Canada could be fired because he made a statement about the tragic Air Canada flight at LaGuardia in English and only said bonjour and merci in French. It's a tempest in a teapot, we're really good at crying over spilt milk while our country burns! That's another issue entirely but just to underscore how easily some are encouraged by people who have no moral compass to hate others. I suppose it makes them feel better about and overcome their feelings of inferiority over those who are clearly more intelligent, successful, and yes moral, than they and most of their brethren are. Instead of working together some prefer to tear eachother apart. We don't evolve. We just spin in circles and keep coming back to the same place without learning anything in the interim. A never ending Greek tragedy.
Hard hitting piece this from Ben and I think it goes to the very heart of the matter when he says "the rejection of even the possibility of coexistence". That's it, that is the core theme of all the protests, rallies and crap we have seen since October 7th which by the way is getting worse every single day.
I have found that at my childrens' colleges, Hillel has been an amazing source for the gay community. They are having a LGBTQ seder next week, as well as other denominations. I pray that young Jews can find those types of groups into adulthood. We all need community right now that we feel comfortable with.
Eve, what you sacrifice for your honesty is breathtaking. You fight for us all and never surrender. Western civilization is on the precipice of extinction. We must all keep fighting.
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill.
Fantastic, if incredibly sad and disheartening, column. We Jews have always been “othered”, but what has happened to Ben (and you) takes it to a whole new level. 💔
I used to think it was terrible that people would say such hateful things to Jews, that even before you exchange names they've insulted you. Now I think that the speed and virulence with which that hate rose up shows that it had been there all along and the fact that they feel entitled to flaunt their hate means they save you a lot of time. We no longer have to spend one, two, three, thirty years building a relationship with someone before they inadvertently let slip that deep down they loathe us and hold us responsible for all evil on the face of the earth. Now we know immediately because they declare themselves. So much time saved. The emotional hit of being attacked from all sides by strangers is not as bad as the betrayal of being attacked from all sides by the people who you love and who have told you they love you. I don't believe that suddenly the world is covered with antisemites. They were always there. It's just that now they're out of the closet.
These are the same people who say Jews are clannish, they stick together. We Jews stick together when everyone else we know proves they are not safe. We need to get over the deeply-ingrained shtetl codes that say lay low, be invisible, be quiet, it will blow over, because now there are cameras everywhere, there is the tracker called your phone, your location is everywhere known, especially in cities, and if it gets to the point where the eradication urge gets pinpointed —and it will — you will not be able to hide. And it will not blow over, we're looking at the "Hitler had a point and he didn't finish the job but we will" crowd, that is not just on the right, it's probably more virulent now on the left. An Islamonazi is still a Nazi. Jews must either make Aliyah and help support Israel or Jews must band together in the Diaspora, learn how to defend themselves, expect the police not to help, expect that the courts may not help. Recognize there is one law for other people and none of its safeguards apply to Jews, or if they do now, they won't for long. Recognize that the Diaspora is in the process of being colonized by a people who live to eradicate us, and that the first stage of colonization, the hearts-and-minds stage, has already mostly succeeded.
You need Jewish community. Find it. Defend it. It is time to be a warrior, because there is a world war against you, and out in the Diaspora, people would love to hear you scream.
Now I think I understand goysplaining, when a non-Jew tells a Jew what Zionism is.
As a straight Jewish man, I find it very sad that one group of oppressed people feels compelled to attack another group of oppressed people rather than joining together to fight people who would destroy them both. But then, I am old, too, so I don't understand modern politics.
Should a gay Jew support Trump, who likes Jews and hates gays, or Ilhan Omer, who likes gays and hates Jews?
Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, is gay. So was the first openly gay American ambassador (I'm old too, his name isn't coming to me!), who Trump installed during his first term in office. There are far likely many more.
As a gay American Jew in his 40s, I can tell you there’s a generational divide here. While gay antisemitism isn’t new, it’s absolutely raging amongst young men in their 20s.
Most of them have grown up with rights that many of us never had at their age. Far too many have rewarded the dividends of the fight for equal rights by embracing the most contemptible forms of hatred… while convincing themselves that it is virtue.
Then they wonder why they’re so lonely and their lives lack fulfillment.
I’m tired of ignorance. Gays for Palestine! What a joke! Let them go and see what will happen. All these fools who know absolutely nothing but jump to judgment and send Ben hateful messages because he shows a Star or Israeli flag. Do we hate all Catholics bc some of their priests abuse children? Or because we disagree with the policies of the Pope and the Vatican? Why do ppl feel free, in their ignorant and cruel way, to troll Jews just bc they are blindly following conspiracy theories and have swallowed the kool aide of lies. Mob psychology writ large. But the problem is that it has gone beyond trolling on the internet. It’s become violent. These cretins have guns, knives and bombs. It’s deadly now.
Old joke from show catskills on Broadway...did his show and when done asked the students age manager on the theater in baton rouge Louisiana where does a Jew. Hang out. .the stage manage opened. The rear door of. The theater and said from that big old oak tree over there
There are no words Eve. My parents generation knew antisemitism and knew what it was like to be a Jew in America. My Dad used to say he hated when school ended because he had to run like crazy to avoid the “Irish kids.” If they caught him, they’d beat the hell of him because he was Jewish. He was raised in the Bronx.
So he and Mom moved us to a Long Island community that was 95% Jewish and then I went to Boston University which was 30% Jewish. I used to tell my Dad, that the days of Jews getting beat up because they were Jews were over. Of course,he laughed and told me I was just sheltered. He was right of course.
Now what? We do what our ancestors did. 5,000 years of this crap but we continued to cling to our Jewishness, our traditions, our pride in all Jewish accomplishments. The only solace is our people will be here long after these anti-Semitic, hateful people. Karma will find them.
Hang in there Eve. I support you 100% and all my NY Jewish friends do too.
Hashem yevarech et ha'am ha'yehudi
The "ideological shift" Ben mentions is generally called woke ideology, and alas, it is the prevailing ideology in the left, including the LGBT community. This ideology, I argue, is poisonous. It arbitrarily defines "oppressed" and "oppressor" according to immutable characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, and sexual orientation. It takes no account of human agency or free moral choice. Ultimately, it is Marxism with a veneer of identity politics. It is illiberal, and meant to undermine the West. Ben and Eve have been redefined, categorized, and declared "guilty" simply for being born Jewish. This ideology is indeed racist and bigoted. Confidential to Ben, sorry for being a Yenta, but I hope you find the man of your dreams, and he should only have the moral clarity of a Douglas Murray.
We must win this war, and then all of this nonsence will go away.
We must be proud of being Jews of today, the winners, the warriors, gay, straight and otherwise.
Our jewishness, our national character is what defines us, as long as we are united around our Land of Israel and her allies. There should be no room for cowardice.
I remember a conversation we had in my high school history class in 1968 about the attitudes of Southerners that led to the Civil War. The question was, since only a very small percentage of Southerners actually owned slaves, why did the whole South support the war? It was my teacher's contention that the rich slave owners in the South had to conjure up racial hatred among the South's poor to get them to support slavery. Poor white people, she opined, had much more in common with poor black people than with rich white people, and hence the power structure in the South had to convince poor white people to hate black people in order for them to support slavery.
I thought she was foolish. Groups of people don't need encouragement to despise and distrust other groups. It's as natural to human beings as breathing. Any out-group in society will either be subsumed by the greater culture, or hated. For those who don't know, when hundreds of thousands of Irish people came to the US to flee the Great Famine, it was common to see signs in big cities reading "Irish need not apply" and "No dogs or Irish allowed." And during that same period, Italians who emigrated were not considered to be white and faced similar discrimination. But eventually they both fully integrated with the culture, and now Irish names for babies top lots of "favorites" lists.
But the Jews have always been a separate people. And therefore a target.
Before World War II, many prominent Americans openly espoused hatred of Jews. People like Henry Ford and T.S. Eliot were very frank about their Jew-hatred. Then we learned the awful truth about the Holocaust, and voicing anti-Semitic opinions became shameful and antisocial. That's the era I grew up in. It was a time when more and more information about the Holocaust was still reaching the public, and when the media were beginning to grapple with the reality of it.
In our home, as in millions of American homes (and my father was a Republican Party committeeman for our precinct) you simply didn't make anti-Semitic comments. A woman I was dating in my twenties referred to someone as a "Jew-boy" and I broke up with her on the spot.
But it's been 80 years since the Holocaust ended. And now Marxist identity politics have made it okay to hate Jews openly again. Jews are different. Jews are Other. And we love to hate the Other.
You're so right. Bill. I'm French Canadian. My people have been taught first by the church, then their schools to hate the English, to this day. Interestingly this hatred of "the English" coincides with the Irish famine when many Irish settled in Montreal and the rest of the province. I went to English schools and spoke French so I straddled the "two solitudes" and I can assure you, it wasn't the English who were attacking the French kids after school, it was the opposite! Today we hear the CEO of Air Canada could be fired because he made a statement about the tragic Air Canada flight at LaGuardia in English and only said bonjour and merci in French. It's a tempest in a teapot, we're really good at crying over spilt milk while our country burns! That's another issue entirely but just to underscore how easily some are encouraged by people who have no moral compass to hate others. I suppose it makes them feel better about and overcome their feelings of inferiority over those who are clearly more intelligent, successful, and yes moral, than they and most of their brethren are. Instead of working together some prefer to tear eachother apart. We don't evolve. We just spin in circles and keep coming back to the same place without learning anything in the interim. A never ending Greek tragedy.
We're still cave men, but now we have much better weapons than rocks and sticks.
Hard hitting piece this from Ben and I think it goes to the very heart of the matter when he says "the rejection of even the possibility of coexistence". That's it, that is the core theme of all the protests, rallies and crap we have seen since October 7th which by the way is getting worse every single day.
Thank you for your voices for so clearly expressing what so many feel. For representing decency and moral courage so clearly.
I have found that at my childrens' colleges, Hillel has been an amazing source for the gay community. They are having a LGBTQ seder next week, as well as other denominations. I pray that young Jews can find those types of groups into adulthood. We all need community right now that we feel comfortable with.
Eve, what you sacrifice for your honesty is breathtaking. You fight for us all and never surrender. Western civilization is on the precipice of extinction. We must all keep fighting.
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill.
Fantastic, if incredibly sad and disheartening, column. We Jews have always been “othered”, but what has happened to Ben (and you) takes it to a whole new level. 💔
I used to think it was terrible that people would say such hateful things to Jews, that even before you exchange names they've insulted you. Now I think that the speed and virulence with which that hate rose up shows that it had been there all along and the fact that they feel entitled to flaunt their hate means they save you a lot of time. We no longer have to spend one, two, three, thirty years building a relationship with someone before they inadvertently let slip that deep down they loathe us and hold us responsible for all evil on the face of the earth. Now we know immediately because they declare themselves. So much time saved. The emotional hit of being attacked from all sides by strangers is not as bad as the betrayal of being attacked from all sides by the people who you love and who have told you they love you. I don't believe that suddenly the world is covered with antisemites. They were always there. It's just that now they're out of the closet.
These are the same people who say Jews are clannish, they stick together. We Jews stick together when everyone else we know proves they are not safe. We need to get over the deeply-ingrained shtetl codes that say lay low, be invisible, be quiet, it will blow over, because now there are cameras everywhere, there is the tracker called your phone, your location is everywhere known, especially in cities, and if it gets to the point where the eradication urge gets pinpointed —and it will — you will not be able to hide. And it will not blow over, we're looking at the "Hitler had a point and he didn't finish the job but we will" crowd, that is not just on the right, it's probably more virulent now on the left. An Islamonazi is still a Nazi. Jews must either make Aliyah and help support Israel or Jews must band together in the Diaspora, learn how to defend themselves, expect the police not to help, expect that the courts may not help. Recognize there is one law for other people and none of its safeguards apply to Jews, or if they do now, they won't for long. Recognize that the Diaspora is in the process of being colonized by a people who live to eradicate us, and that the first stage of colonization, the hearts-and-minds stage, has already mostly succeeded.
You need Jewish community. Find it. Defend it. It is time to be a warrior, because there is a world war against you, and out in the Diaspora, people would love to hear you scream.
Now I think I understand goysplaining, when a non-Jew tells a Jew what Zionism is.
As a straight Jewish man, I find it very sad that one group of oppressed people feels compelled to attack another group of oppressed people rather than joining together to fight people who would destroy them both. But then, I am old, too, so I don't understand modern politics.
Should a gay Jew support Trump, who likes Jews and hates gays, or Ilhan Omer, who likes gays and hates Jews?
Trump doesn’t hate gays and Ilhan Omar does hate gays.
100%
Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, is gay. So was the first openly gay American ambassador (I'm old too, his name isn't coming to me!), who Trump installed during his first term in office. There are far likely many more.
Ric Grennell
Thanks!
As a gay American Jew in his 40s, I can tell you there’s a generational divide here. While gay antisemitism isn’t new, it’s absolutely raging amongst young men in their 20s.
Most of them have grown up with rights that many of us never had at their age. Far too many have rewarded the dividends of the fight for equal rights by embracing the most contemptible forms of hatred… while convincing themselves that it is virtue.
Then they wonder why they’re so lonely and their lives lack fulfillment.
I’m tired of ignorance. Gays for Palestine! What a joke! Let them go and see what will happen. All these fools who know absolutely nothing but jump to judgment and send Ben hateful messages because he shows a Star or Israeli flag. Do we hate all Catholics bc some of their priests abuse children? Or because we disagree with the policies of the Pope and the Vatican? Why do ppl feel free, in their ignorant and cruel way, to troll Jews just bc they are blindly following conspiracy theories and have swallowed the kool aide of lies. Mob psychology writ large. But the problem is that it has gone beyond trolling on the internet. It’s become violent. These cretins have guns, knives and bombs. It’s deadly now.
Hated: How dare you tell me how to live as a gay, Jewish woman. Love ya, u know.
Old joke from show catskills on Broadway...did his show and when done asked the students age manager on the theater in baton rouge Louisiana where does a Jew. Hang out. .the stage manage opened. The rear door of. The theater and said from that big old oak tree over there
Big huge FAIL for a “ community” i helped build disgusting and insanely duped so EASILY thats the question HOW EASY WAS IT TO GO JEWHATE?