Jews Occupy a Lonely Place

“You can be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. You can be anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic.”

I am speechless about last night. As I understand the facts, men who rallied for Palestinian liberation and to protest supposed ethnic cleansing and genocide attack Jews at dinner at a Japanese restaurant. Jews some of whose families fled religious and ethnic persecution abroad and have made full lives state-side, enjoying another culture’s fare, in total and utter peace — ostensibly the American Dream.

This happened around 10:00 last night. As of the time this story was first posted, several hours the following day, LA Times didn’t cover it. New York Times didn’t cover it. As if, either nothing happened, or as if nothing wrong happened.

Between 1880 and 1914 — decades before the Holocaust, before Hitler rose to power — Eastern and Central European Jews became caught up in changes in Tsarist Russia, changes that spelled sporadic anti-Jewish violence. Jewish national consciousness as we know it, as a modern political idea started then and there.

We all know of Herzl. Leon Pinsker is another. Pinsker saw pogroms and understood what I think many Jews in Los Angeles today feel, that I feel. Pinsker’s idea of Jewish nationalism is that Jews cannot be assimilated, it is impossible. Jews are a people unto themselves, dispersed but distinct. If ever Jews came too close, as we did in Germany during the Haskalah (again, traceable to the 1740s), there would be dire consequences sooner rather than later. Pinsker’s ideas inspired others, like Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a more militant, self-defense-themed Zionist whose ideas survive in Israel and beyond.

The same wave of violence that gave Pinsker clarity about Zionism inspired Asher Ginsberg, whose pen-name is Ahad Ha’am. Ginsberg’s Zionism was more cerebral, less about practical things like land and agriculture than it was about Hebrew language and Yiddish culture. Ginsberg was one of the earliest Zionists to wrestle with the problems underneath Zionism’s core ambition, that although landed Arabs were transacting away parts of modern-day Israel, Arab and Muslim society itself was divided, and swaths would not accept the reality of Zionism or a Jewish People. Modern Jews are heirs to both strands of Zionism.

There might be some ethereal, pure reality where someone could be Anti-Zionist or Anti-Israel without being Antisemitic. It’s just not the reality we live in. Last night’s events prove as much. I am tired of people who are good, and smart, succumbing to the false histories and the charged rhetoric, who choose to be snide and dismissive rather than thoughtful or honest. I wonder if any one of those assailants — or anyone posting about human rights and proportional responses — thought for a moment why there are so few, if any, Jews left in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Morocco, Iran, etc.? Hint: ethnic cleansing and genocide.

This is not an exhaustive take-down, it’s not meant to be. My point in writing is only to observe that even in Los Angeles in 2021, as we have been for centuries, for millennia, Jews are alone. Pinsker’s insight holds up. But so does Ginsberg’s. Today, align with the right’s patriots and you find yourself in bed with proto-Nazis; align with the left and you find yourself condemned or cancelled. Go to dinner and you find yourself a target.

It’s our unfortunate inheritance to confront hate but also to wrestle with ideas and impulses that sometimes conflict. The impulse toward self-defense cannot quash our own need to resolve the conflicts that exist within Israel and the Jewish community. But those ideas also cannot get in the way of self-preservation, cannot blind us or the world from the very real threat of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran’s Khomeini, the list goes on. Stories have nuance, ours is no exception. This story about Sushi Fumi has none. Jews won’t be intimidated, not in Israel, and not in America. It’s an odd thing, but whatever chill I feel from the fear of knowing Jews were attacked here in Los Angeles, there is little else that steels my resolve and invigorates my Judaism.