A Lifetime of Antisemitism

The dominant non-Jewish White person's relationship to Nazism and antisemitism has always been symbolic and rhetorical.

— Sarah Hamburg (@sarahrhamburg) November 27, 2016

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I'm a Buddhist now, but I was raised Jewish. And I still identify that way culturally. So when the tweet up there showed up on my timeline (retweeted by April Hathcock), something started to bubble up inside. I'm guessing, if demographic statistics are anything to go by, that most of the people reading this post are not Jewish. In the past I know that my gentile friends are astonished at the experiences I've had, but it's important to know these things, so I decided to share a sampling of my experiences with antisemitism. I'm going to share small ones and big ones, because Sarah Hamburg is right - most people don't encounter real, live antisemitism.

Small: In high school, I was called "kike" by the younger brother of one of my closest friends. He thought he was being funny, and other people laughed. I know I didn't cry, and I'm pretty sure my friend made their younger sibling apologize, but I knew I could never trust that person - or anyone who laughed - again.

Large: The synagogue I attended when I was a child, the building where my father's funeral service was held, was desecrated with swastikas. I felt so safe, so loved, in that building when I was young. The rabbi and his wife embraced me and my family when we joined the synagogue, and it's one of the few places where I've ever felt like I actually belonged and was welcome. Those swastikas took that from me.

Small: When I was 7, my parents bought a house in a nice suburb of Boston. I immediately set out to make friends with kids in the neighborhood - I'm a gregarious person, after all - and I ended up meeting a girl close to my age right next door. Success! However, a couple of weeks later, the little girl who lived in the house next door yelled at me when she found out we were Jewish: "I never would have wasted macaroni and cheese on you if I'd known you were a Christ killer!"

Large: If I want to visit my father's grave, I have to contact the board that is in charge of the cemetery because they have to keep it locked up with a chain link fence. They have to do this to keep people from desecrating the graves because it's a Jewish cemetery. And to drive the point home: he's buried north of Boston, in Massachusetts, where people are supposedly liberal and open and accepting.

Small: At a previous library, I was told I was over-reacting, and that a work party wasn't just Christmas, because they played "White Christmas" (which was written by Irving Berlin, who was Jewish). I don't know if the person who said this to me actually believed what they were saying, but I'll always remember that almost nobody else spoke up to correct that person.

Small: I've been called "[word]-nazi" multiple times in my life. "Grammar Nazi" mostly, and some "Table Nazi" when I worked in a restaurant. It's ridiculous to compare anyone to a fascist, genocidal regime for things like a predilection for correcting grammar or wanting the tables to be done according to spec at the end of a shift, but it stings extra hard for someone who is Jewish.

As hard as this all may have been for you to read, please know that this is only a sampling of things I've experienced. Never mind the ever-present micro-aggressions - things that are easily brushed off by people who aren't on the receiving end.

One other thing: I didn't publish this to make you feel bad. I published it to let you know that racism, sexism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate, have always been a part of the culture in the US. It's going to be worse now, so you need to believe people. And you need to speak up when you witness this kind of hate.

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Just for Fun: Buddhism

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Sure, people say that you shouldn't bring up politics or religion in mixed company. But I've written about my politics on LtaYL in the past and had not a jot of backlash, so I decided to tackle religion. Besides, just as my politics inform my librarianship, my religion is part of who I am and to be anything less than up front about it feels dishonest.

As you may have guessed from the title of the post, I'm a practicing Buddhist. I have been for about three years now, although I've only been comfortable labeling myself as such for the last two. I spent the first 40-ish years of my life in varying degrees of Judaism. My parents and I were somewhat desultory when it came to attending services regularly, but I was bas mitzvahed at 13 and we went to our synagogue on the high holy days. I even had a personal relationship with our rabbi and his wife. Judaism informed the person I am today, but it has been my culture instead of my identity for a long while now.

A series of things happened in my mid-late thirties, major life changes, that had me revisiting religion. I looked back at Judaism. Considered paganism. Then a friend introduced me to the work of Pema Chödrön, and something clicked. She's an American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun, and her books showed me a way to take the negative in my life and translate it into something positive. That's the basis of lojong, a series of tenets or aphorisms that are guideposts for taking our ingrained habits of negativity and using them for growth. The slogans give you practical ways to make mental room for the world as it is and not just as we see it through the filter of experience.

I may be light-hearted at times about it, but I do take my study of Buddhism very seriously - especially since I see it as something that informs my day-to-day. However, I was having a hard time keeping my studies on track, with all the other things in my life. I actually started another blog to help me keep up (crazy talk for someone who is as busy as I am, I know, but it made sense at the time). If you're interested, it's Lojong Ruminations: Musings of a Nascent Buddhist with Equal Parts Naiveté and Skepticism. I go through phases where I stick to a weekly schedule, but I sometimes go for weeks without writing. Each post considers one teaching/tenet/slogan. I share the research I did and the understanding I've gotten. Usually, since it is still me, I attach it to something popular culture oriented - such as the recent post where I pulled Bugs Bunny into the mix.

As I mentioned above, talking about my Buddhism has been a somewhat uncomfortably personal thing to discuss publicly. I've taken a lot of comfort from the fact that posts at Lojong Ruminations are left alone in relative obscurity, especially when compared to LtaYL. Most get 20-30 hits on average, and the most popular post only has seventy-something views. 

Like I said above, though, I thought it was time to bring Buddhism to my library blog. It's like when someone told me “you’re not fat” so I got angry and wrote a post about size acceptance. Recently, someone challenged my Buddhism and I find myself angry and feeling compelled to  go on the record on a topic of personal importance. It's just time to be more public about my Buddhism.

Namasté.