Is It Happening Here?

From kosher restaurants in Los Angeles to the streets of South Florida, the site of flag waving pro-Palestinian caravans confronting Jews mirrored the reports of Yidden being assaulted on the streets of Brooklyn and in Manhattan’s diamond district. Marauding groups screaming, cursing, and threatening Jews from Europe to the United States put fear into the hearts of Jews everywhere.

This past year, it felt very much like we were in galus. The visual of enraged kaffiyeh-clad thugs attacking defenseless Jews simply because they are Jews, with the police nowhere to be found, is embedded in my memory. It created a new fear, one that younger generations really never felt personally but grew up hearing so much about. “Is it going to become impossible for the lone Jew to walk on the streets?” “Are our children safe walking home from yeshivah or shul?” The concerns were palpable.

We grew up hearing about the pogroms of Europe, the atrocities of pre-war Nazi Germany in the late 1930’s culminating with Kristallnacht, and then of course, the Holocaust itself. I’ve always heard the whispered question, “Could it happen here?” Frighteningly, that question is no longer whispered and has been replaced with, “Is it happening here?”

We sadly learned that if law enforcement stands down and ignores rampaging mobs or the threats of a lone wolf anti-Semite, the life we’ve come to take for granted here is really only a mirage. Where does that leave the always vulnerable Jewish community — identifiable and otherwise?