The Right Response to ‘Unite the Right’ Rally
Violence vs. Civil Disobedience…
Although it occurred about 30 years ago, I still painfully remember my first encounter with anti-Semitism.
As a teenager, I was working one summer on the loading dock of a hardware store carrying inventory off 18-wheeler trucks. A white non-Jewish coworker in his early 20s had just experienced a bad breakup with his girlfriend. She left him in a deep state of remorse.
He was an angry and bitter bully who was ready to lash out. I quickly became his verbal punching bag via religious harassment based on my Jewish faith.
He would say things to me like: “Hitler should of taken care of you people” and “Shut up or I’ll send you to the gas chambers.”
This was quite shocking to a young person growing up in the predominantly Jewish small town of Roslyn, Long Island (NY). But it goes to show that racism and anti-Semitism have no geographic or moral boundaries.
The irony is that my family wasn’t very observant. I did not “wear religion on my sleeve,” per se. But that didn’t matter to the bigot. My last name was all he needed to know.
David vs. Goliath
My family belonged to a synagogue which practiced reform Judaism. This is a form of Jewish worship and rituals aimed at adapting to societal modernism, as compared to Orthodox or Conservative Jewish sects.
Today, I’m secular and spiritual. My wife is Greek Orthodox.
Even though my family belonged to the least observant sect of Judaism, those unprovoked anti-Semitic attacks so many summers ago still sting.
The memories are particularly painful during these turbulent times of racial division and upheaval promoted by President Trump, the USA’s reckless divider-in-chief.
Looking back, I often wonder whether I should have sought revenge against the bigoted bully that summer. However, it would…
