Ye or Nay? I Say Nay.
I was going to write about Sukkot this week, but Kanye West had other plans for me...
By now, you must have heard about Kanye West's antisemitic tweet about going "death con 3" on Jewish people, and his Tucker Carlson antisemitic rant. In summary, he promoted Jew hatred to his following of 30mil people (double the amount of Jews in the world), Jamie Lee Curtis got weepy, Bella Hadid's birthday was ruined, white supremacists cheered him on, and his company was dropped by JPMorgan Chase. What a week.
I don't want to give him any more attention. I'm writing about this because I want to use this as a platform to talk about the importance of calling out antisemitism.
If you get anything out of this blog post, take this with you: Jews are .2% of the world population. In the U.S., we're a little over 2% of the population, but are the largest target of religious hate crimes, with over 60% of incidents attacks against Jews. If someone is mentally ill, it's okay (and imperative!) to call out their antisemitism. No matter what someone's skin color is, it's okay (and imperative!) to call out their antisemitism. Just like how everyone should stand up for oppressed groups, Jews are not the exclusion. Antisemitism anywhere, especially on a popular platform with a huge following, is dangerous because of how easily it spreads. "And that people are stupid bigots." - Professor Lapides (me, not my father)
There is SO much more to say on this topic but I promised I'd keep these short-ish. But next time you hear of something antisemitic or off-color about Jews and stay silent, whether on social media or IRL, ask yourself, "Why do I feel the need to stay silent about Jews? What makes them different from any other marginalized group?" You might think, like I did naively years ago, "Well I already learned about the Holocaust. And we have Israel now so we're good." But looking at history, antisemitism repeats and manifests itself, usually through the form of scapegoating. You can tell we're in a wave of new antisemitism by its recent rise, and how Jewish college students feel unsafe. Not to mention haters on the left and the right of us. But that's for another blog post/newsletter... Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach, friends ❤️
"And if we aren't reacting, who are we?" - Jamie Lee Curtis