The Vanishing Jew

A European perspective on American Jewry

I have never felt more like a European Jew in America than I did this past week. The weak reaction of the Jewish community to the Whoopi Goldberg suspension left me feeling confused, embarrassed and alien. Cries of “this is not what we asked for!” when ABC announced that Goldberg was being taken off air for a two week time-out after she spread misinformation about the Holocaust and expressed ignorant prejudice towards Jews on their show The View, and later that same day on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, deeply surprised me. They are not the responses that would have come – or did come during such incidents – from Jews in the UK, where I’m from. It made me wonder how America would have reacted to, eg, the treatment of Wiley in the press and by the music industry following his 48-hour antisemitic rant in 2020. It made me think of how America might have voiced their thoughts after the Labour party lost the leadership in a landslide victory for the Conservatives in 2019.

In the UK, in the immediate aftermath of Wiley, us British Jews led a grassroots campaign “No Safe Space For Jew Hate” and worked doggedly to get it covered on national TV and trending on Twitter, making so much noise about it that it couldn’t be ignored by non-Jews of all political and ideological persuasions. Were it not for the bullishness of British Jews, there would have been no independent report published by the EHRC after a thorough investigation into the inner workings of Corbyn’s Labour leadership; a report that categorically proved the Jew hate that had been mishandled for years, and one that showed once and for all to Labour apologists or still-confused voters that they were lied to. (The dye-in-the-wool Corbynistas, of course, ignored it and doubled down). British Jews didn’t pander to the wider conversation to curry favor, or hang onto the non-promise of others’ allyship. British Jews didn’t have an establishment to take care of them or respond on our behalf. We grabbed an opportunity to counter and we did not relent.

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The lack of bite for American Jews to seek repercussions for Goldberg’s antics caught me off guard. The prioritizing of protecting Goldberg over our tribe was quizzical. The certain assertions from so many that we shouldn’t “make an enemy of an ally” were illogical. What evidence is there that Goldberg is a friend of the Jews? I don’t yet see it. With many advocates banging their heads into the wall trying to demand inclusion of Jews in the diatribe during a time when Critical Race Theory is being adopted into education systems, the workplace and beyond, here was a moment to show exactly why we have to have a seat at the table, for these are the consequences of that development continuing without our resistance. Many took offence that I suggested this response was rooted in trauma and fear. I’m not here to please anyone. It’s how I see it. It’s also how Ben M Freeman, author of ‘Jewish Pride’, sees it. Freeman is currently working on his sequel to ‘Jewish Pride’, which will focus specifically on internalised anti-Jewishness. In a discussion about this, we agreed.

“There’s an inability to defend Jewishness,” said Freeman. Freeman explains that it’s a subject that requires being handled with kit gloves, but essentially the lack of strong response is a manifestation of internalized anti-Jewishness. “American Jews have absorbed non-Jewish ideas of Jewish identity and experience, and have been socialized into not being fully able to defend the specificities of Jewishness, less they be accused of prioritising their Jewishness over their Americanness.” Simply put: American Jews aren’t ready to go into battle as Jews for Jews.

In a conversation I had with my friend and scholar David Hirsh early one morning on Zoom, I began to unpick the empirical differences between my upbringing in the UK and my long-haul visit to America. I was raised in Glasgow, Scotland. It was a small community but a tight-knit one. If you know one Glasgow Jew, you know all of us. We share a particular brand of traditional Jewish chutzpah and grit. People ask me often: when was the first time you experienced antisemitism? There are so many points in my life in which I experienced a social ostracization or expulsion. Yes, I was called a “kike” on the bus in high school. Indeed, I was bullied at university over Israel/Palestine. In media jobs in London, I found myself battling my personal position with the anti-Israel politics tangential to the titles I worked for. The experience I’ve had in LGBTQ+ spaces is one many of us share: a lust from our so-called friends and chosen family to save us and convert us to antizionism, lest we be sidelined and all but forgotten. But these experiences of antisemitism are not the sum total of what inspired the call to act in me. That came from somewhere else.

I grew up with my Jewish world slipping through my fingers. I would watch Fiddler On The Roof and the town of Anatevka felt real to me. Not just because my great grandparents came from those places, but because — like the fiddler — Anatevka always teetered on the brink, danced too close to the edge, could disappear at any moment. When I was born, there were around six active, thriving synagogues in Glasgow. One of which, Queen’s Park, was the synagogue we attended across town. By the time I was six, we had moved to our closer synagogue of Giffnock, because Queen’s Park was desolate, and likely to close (not long after, it did). Giffnock was a rabble in comparison. I was thrilled that there were so many kids to hang out with. I remember the Rabbi (Moshe Rubin) always shushing the congregation because the noise was so loud; the boom of a vibrant, proud community.

It wasn’t long, however, before Giffnock began to get quieter. As the years went by, the children grew up, and moved away from Glasgow to study. The writing was on the wall that Glasgow was not a growing community but a dying one. It wasn’t that the Jews there had over-assimilated. It’s that they left. They left and there was no longer certain Jewish businesses in the city because there weren’t enough customers to justify them. I remember there was once a Kosher butcher’s in Newlands, Glasgow. Heaving with women, because it was the only one. It also eventually shut, and the women had to get their meat delivered from Manchester every week instead. Manchester Tony would come up in his van, with everyone’s orders, and the prime cuts and chicken eggs were always first come first served.

By the time I left Glasgow at 17-years-old, there were only two active synagogues remaining: Giffnock, and the reform shul. Both were terribly quiet. We held onto one small deli. Bit by bit, the things you take for granted as a Jewish community can vanish, seemingly overnight, and witnessing that leaves an impression on your soul. Seeing how the non-Jewish world can break up our hubs and ecosystems, whether violently or passively, instills a bittersweetness in a young proud Jew, and a determination to hang on whatever the cost.

When I arrived in America, I often joke that I felt like I’d made aliyah the second I walked into a CVS in Studio City, California and saw a Menorah in the window. I actually gasped. That was not the experience I had in Glasgow. In Glasgow, my Jewishness was something that lived at home, and travelled with me on my chest under my shirt in the form of a ‘Chai’ necklace I received in Israel just before my bat mitzvah. I never knew what it was to be surrounded by so much Jewishness, at least not in wide open spaces. The delis, the restaurants, the butchers, the SUPERMARKETS MY G-D. Synagogues after synagogues (or ‘temples’, but that word has always felt uncertain in my mouth). Jewish signs of life everywhere. In culture, in museums, in conversations I’d overhear in coffee shops. It felt almost excessively Jewish to me living in America.

And talking to Hirsh, I wondered: is it that American Jews aren’t close enough to the feeling of loss? Is it that American Jews are spoiled by a certain illusion of security? Is it that American Jews are too removed from their European cousins and experiences of less successful assimilations? Perhaps it’s easier for me to challenge a host country’s antisemitism because I grew up understanding that my Jewish world was disintegrating, that I had to keep moving, that the building of a Jewish life requires an agility about where you go, who you befriend, and what ideas you do and don’t accept. It is the preparedness to wander that keeps us alive, not the trembling desire to maintain a host who treats us badly.

Kennedy @KennedyNation

Here is @Eve_Barlow talking about how #Whoopi got it all wrong on the Holocaust. #Kennedy