Being a Jew in Trump’s America
It’s a conflicting time to be a Jew in America. We’ve never had it as bad in the United States as some.
Since the third or fourth grade, I studied the Holocaust and hated it. Not because it was an abhorrent tragedy that shouldn’t have happened — I understood how wrong it was the moment the death toll number hit me in the face — but because I was just tired of hearing about it. Every year until I graduated, either in Hebrew school or in the regular classroom, I learned the mindset of German voters. I studied the economic conditions that led to World War II. Nazis were the super villains in every movie and TV show. And as I read Elie Wiesel, I grew exhausted. All I could think was that Jews were digging into their own pain, unnecessarily bringing up this abomination over and over again.
It’s a conflicting time to be a Jew in America. We’ve never had it as bad in the United States as some. It’s always been easy for us to shed our religion and hide amongst the white cloak of our Christian peers. Like the Italians and the Irish before us, we weren’t considered white, until we were.
There were warning signs for me that this wasn’t always the case, of course. During my childhood in Kansas City, the Westboro Baptist Church protested my Synagogue’s Sunday service. My senior year of high school, a man came and shot up the very Jewish Community Center I was raised in, before proceeding to the Jewish retirement home in which my grandparents resided, and finally getting caught on my elementary school playground. My public high school, Blue Valley North, known for its Jewish population, was nicknamed “Jew Valley North.”
Yet all of these instances were blips in the scheme of my life. I had never once personally experienced discrimination at the hands of others. I had been near it, and heard about it, but it didn’t feel like that experience was mine. No one threw dimes at me and told me to pick them up. Even when the shooting occurred, I was scared, but not because I was Jewish. I simply contextualized the experience within the American Mass Shooting Epidemic.
As I entered film school at Chapman University in California, right next to a KKK stronghold in Anaheim, I continued to feel the same way. Jews needn’t worry about representation in the film industry, and I found that even at my previously Christian college I could still find a thriving Jewish population complete with a Hillel and weekly Shabbat services. While my friends fled the KKK at the University of Missouri, I marveled at the Jewish High Holy Days’ ability to decrease my commute in Los Angeles traffic. The human population’s increasing secularization had worked well on me.
I grew up in a Jewish household. My grandparents and parents on both sides were Jewish, and because this included my mother, I was a true Jew. This made me automatically eligible for Birthright (our free trip to Israel that I’ve still yet to take at 22 years old). I didn’t keep kosher, but had family friends who did. One of my aunts had transitioned from the reform Judaism that we practiced to full Orthodox, moving to Israel and everything. Her eldest son was put into an arranged marriage, and my high school girlfriend was Catholic. I attended summer camps at the Jewish community center, and traveled there after school every day until I was old enough to stay on my own. I attended Sunday School and post-Shabbat services every Sunday, and Hebrew School every Wednesday, where I learned to read Hebrew letters and words that I can only pronounce off a page but not translate to English, and with vowels that most native speakers don’t use.
I identify with Bernie Sanders in somewhat arguing against the relevance of my own religion
When I turned 13, I was Bar Mitzvah’ed. The coolest part about it for me was that I got a laptop computer. Ironically, it was through that computer’s internet access that I began to discover deism and atheism. I clung to deism for a while, and eventually began to realize my own agnosticism. I still had to show up to the same Synagogue where I fasted for Yom Kippur and celebrated Hanukkah, this time for Confirmation. It seemed redundant to continue studying, and I had felt cheated after being told my whole life that Judaism was “the one right path” despite there being a multitude of others practiced right in front of me.
I pushed back hardest against the Holocaust and was so vocal in my conviction that I knew it, that I actually managed to get my Temple to take it off the curriculum for a year. At one point, I was told by my Rabbi, desperate for me to understand the cultural implications of my identity, that Hanukkah and Passover were myths. My Rabbi actually acknowledged that they were only held up by emotional proof and disputed by the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was used in an argument to carry on the traditions of Judaism even if I didn’t believe in them, for Jews have always been a people defined by persecution, from biblical times to their expulsion from Spain in 1492, to FDR’s rejection of the USS St. Louis.
To this day, I identify with Bernie Sanders in somewhat arguing against the relevance of my own religion. (The fact that Sanders was even able to win a Democratic primary is a testament to how far Jews have come in the U.S.) I clash with my fellow Jews by condemning Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and advocating for the better treatment of Palestinians. I insist that Israel is very hypocritical in its claims to peace. Meanwhile, Jews who wield the Star of David, which is also on the Israeli flag, are being excluded from LGBTQIA+ events. They can find common ground amongst Conservatives who view Israel as the only democratic stronghold amongst Sharia Law. Yet my fellow Jews will rightfully argue that the country only exists, after all, because of the Holocaust.
Here’s a sentence you’ve heard before from your neighbor or Facebook friend or even me in another think-piece that’s so common these days: On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected President, and for the first time, I became afraid. It’s a sentence written and uttered so much it’s become a cliché. For many, to read it is to make one’s own eyes glaze over.
And there were Jews that voted for him, too. In liberal California, some were members of Chapman’s Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.
Around that time, a famous excerpt from Martin Niemöller’s WWII-inspired poem began its recirculation:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
CNN’s Van Jones and others framed Trump’s election as a “white lash.” His election was also framed as the war on women, Muslims, immigrants, and even Science. Evangelicals and white men and women rallied behind him, despite others asking what part of Jesus they saw in him. Some Republicans voted for him believing they had no other choice, citing their own economic interests over the pleas of safety from fellow citizens.
And there were Jews that voted for him, too. In liberal California, some were members of Chapman’s Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. Some were members of the same one at the University of Kansas. Some were members of my Synagogue. Even one of my childhood friend’s parents, who is Jewish and did not vote for Trump, downplays the racial nature of his campaign to this day.
Jared Kushner, the man who is in charge of everything from Domestic policy to the Middle East, is also Jewish. So is his wife, and Trump’s own daughter, Ivanka. They serve in the same administration that contains the likes of Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller. The same one that was endorsed by David Duke.
Under this administration, that didn’t even acknowledge the Holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day, white nationalist protests are thriving. Ending in violence, and causing officials to declare a state of emergency, there are “Zieg hiel”s amongst the masses and on Twitter. We evens saw glimpses of what was to come during the campaign with the parentheses around our names on the same social network. And when the vandalism came to the Jewish cemeteries in the early days, I was shocked at having to remind myself how “normal” all of this was.
It is difficult to describe just how conflicted this really makes me feel. If I could sum it up in an equation, it would be equal parts guilt, anger, sadness, and befuddlement. Guilt for my own ignorance of the persistence of anti-Semitism, anger at my fellow Jews who do not realize what has occurred the way I have, sadness that the world has trended backward, and befuddlement at those who discriminate against me. Me, the one who appeared to be on the same side as those who fight political correctness. The Holocaust did happen, I’ve never denied it, but surely it didn’t need to be constantly dragged back into the spotlight?
I cried when I saw the video from the protests. I guess the Neo-Nazis got what they wanted in that regard, but that’s where I am. Like the rest of America, I am torn between old and new. Tradition and change. Conservatism and progressivism. Left and right. Black and white. Democrats and Republicans. Citizens and immigrants. Men and women. Straight and gay. Cisgender and transgender. Science and religion. Judaism and agnosticism.
Now more than ever, I don’t feel welcome amongst Trump supporters. Of course not all of them feel this way, but when they voted for him, they showed these behaviors were acceptable. I’ve advocated for empathy amongst polls that state both sides of the aisle view each other as dangerous for this country. But now, I don’t quite know how to do that anymore.
As the evidence mounts of global catastrophe from our planet’s increased warming to the prospect of nuclear war with North Korea, I find my cynicism entrenching itself into my brain. Americans love optimism, but how can you be optimistic about this? My generation has its faults, and we may be more progressive than previous ones, but this feels grim. How can we fix a world that doesn’t want to fix itself?
Ironically, both sides would argue that I’m not really contributing to the conversation. The right would say I’m complaining and playing the victim, and the left would ask me if there’s more I can be doing besides writing think-pieces that leave no answers.
On August 4th, 70 AD, Titus ends the siege of Jerusalem after destroying Herod’s Temple, also known as the Second Temple, which was dedicated after the first, which became the basis for the Jewish Festival of Lights, known as Hanukkah. The temple was destroyed, but the circumstances surrounding it and the true nature of the Maccabees are debated amongst historians. Nevertheless, the holiday will become a key part of identity for Jewish Americans who will live in a country where Christmas is a federal holiday.
The man will be endorsed by the KKK, and his rhetoric will be responsible for inciting violent white nationalist protests that lead to the death of 3 people and the injury of 45 others.
On August 4th, 1944, a tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to diarist Anne Frank and her family in Amsterdam. They are captured and placed in concentration camps, were they later die. Anne’s father, Otto, the family’s sole survivor, publishes her diary. It will be read and used as an educational, first-person account of the horrors of the Holocaust, and the house in which the family hid will become a permanent museum as part of their legacy.
On August 4th, 1961, Barack Hussein Obama II, is born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Raised by his white grandparent, in 2008, he will be elected the 44th President of the United States and the country’s first black President, following centuries of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. After governing for two terms, Obama will be succeeded by a white man who questioned the legitimacy of his election and citizenship on the basis of his race, and campaigned upon rhetoric of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and fear. The man will be endorsed by the KKK, and his rhetoric will be responsible for inciting violent white nationalist protests that lead to the death of 3 people the injury of 45 others, in addition to countless of other hate crimes. Most of the events will not even be aimed at Jews, but some will.
On August 4th, 1995, I am born to a Jewish family in Kansas City. I will be raised Jewish and grapple with my cultural identity in the face of my agnosticism. I will openly sing Christmas carols and keep the secret of Santa Claus safe from my peers as I openly celebrate Hanukkah. At the same year as my Bar Mitzvah, I will witness Barack Obama become President. After studying the Holocaust and debating its importance, I will visit the Anne Frank House in January 2016. This will be at the same time Donald Trump is vying for the Republican Party’s nomination. When he wins on November 8th, I will watch alongside my fellow American citizens with puzzlement as to what went wrong. Eight days after my 22nd birthday, I will witness violent protests and question how much I fit into the American dream.
You can look at these dates and cynically assume that I’m cherrypicking them to ascribe whatever meaning I wish.
Well know that I mean this:
Trump Supporters, your vision of America will not win. You will learn to swallow your “economic interests” if it means combating discrimination. You will acknowledge that what is happening right now is not okay, will not be tolerated, and will be condemned. I am done advocating for empathy toward your side, because it has never been a two-way street.
Being Jewish in America is complicated, but it shouldn’t be complicated to know whose side I’m really on.
