The ADL just published a report that antisemitic incidents in the US are up 360% since the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack. [1] Full statistics are not in for 2023, but it promises to be a worse year than 2022.
If we look at the early 1930s — almost a century ago, but not that far away — antisemitic rhetoric was on the rise. Yes. Germany. But also in the US. The Nazi party used antisemitism as a tool in its rise to power. Phillip Roth, in his book The Plot Against America, posits a counterfactual in which Charles Lindbergh becomes President using the same dynamics. Jews are rounded up.
One of the problems with living through such events is the “boiling frog” issue. If you try to throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out. If you put the frog in cold water, add a bit of heat, the warming water will kill the frog into a sense of torpor. The present feels numbing and there is no sense of impending doom.
In the US, our pot of water is, paradoxically, the pleasant and comfortable lives that Jewish people have been able to live, for generations, with some bumps in the road. This was true for Jewish Germans, who had a long history in their country.
How do we wake our own inner frogs? That is the existential question. Especially in 2024, which will, in my humble opinion, be a year that will form the basis for hundreds of PhD dissertations in the 22nd Century. The year it all happened.
Wandering Jew 