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Jewish advocates demand policy changes to combat antisemitism at NYC public high schools
(New York Jewish Week) – About three weeks after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, a parents’ group that advocates for New York City public high school students unanimously passed a resolution condemning the attack and demanding support for students and staff facing antisemitism.
The resolution by the Citywide Council on High Schools came in response to the Hamas attack and subsequent reports of swastikas in schools, but the bigotry it condemned did not seem to abate. Ten days later, a pro-Palestinian student walkout saw young people shouting epithets against Jews and Israel, and chanting in support of an intifada. Then, on Nov. 28, an unruly protest targeting a Jewish teacher at Hillcrest High School in Queens sparked an uproar.
“It clearly showed that that resolution wasn’t strong enough and that those resources were not being provided,” said Rachel Fremmer, the council’s second vice president. She added that the resolution, which passed on Oct. 30, had garnered a lot of pushback in public comments.
So last week, the council tried again: It passed another resolution, by a vote of 7-1, demanding more concrete measures. Those include antisemitism training for school employees; a task force including representatives of Jewish groups that will monitor efforts to fight antisemitism; a hotline to report antisemitic incidents; data collection on in-school hate crimes; and the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which includes some criticism of Israel.
The council, which acts as an advisory board of sorts to the city’s public school system, is one of several advocacy groups raising the alarm about antisemitism in high schools as anti-Jewish hate crimes have spiked citywide in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack. While public discourse on antisemitism in schools has largely focused on college campuses, a series of activists say that the same trends are manifesting in New York City’s high schools, and that City Hall has been slow to respond.
Hard data on antisemitic incidents at New York City public schools is not available, but concern about the issue is not limited to volunteer groups or parents. On Nov. 30, the federal Department of Education’s civil rights office announced that it would investigate New York City Public Schools over allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia — a step it has generally reserved for college campuses.
“We’re hearing from parents and families daily about the hate that their children are facing in schools and they’re scared,” said Tova Plaut, a staff member for Manhattan’s District 2 school district, who helps train teachers and plan curricula. Plaut is a co-founder of the New York City Public School Alliance, a group formed in the wake of the Hillcrest incident to combat antisemitism in the city’s schools.
“They worry about the future,” she added. “Not just the future of their children in the school system but also the children who are graduating from the school system with these ideologies.”
New York City Public Schools Chancellor David Banks has acknowledged that antisemitism is a problem at the schools he oversees and told CBS earlier this month that “we have to take action.”
“Many of the adults in our schools also shy away from these kinds of politically fraught topics because no one wants to be accused of being anti anything, and yet we have a responsibility to our kids that we do this,” Banks, whose department declined New York Jewish Week requests for an interview, told CBS. “People are treading very lightly here but they’ve got to know that you can’t put your head in the sand. We’ve got to have those conversations for everyone.”
Banks said he was considering setting up a hotline for students and teachers and was scheduled to hold a press conference on countering antisemitism earlier this week, but the event was canceled. A spokesperson for the school system said Banks would instead be engaging with stakeholders directly, and did not respond to a request for further information.
That engagement appears to be happening. Banks said he has met with school administrators to discuss antisemitism and the New York Jewish Week has confirmed that Banks or his office have discussed antisemitism with a series of Jewish organizations and public officials. Those include the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the Jewish Education Project, Plaut’s group, acting Israeli consul general Tsach Saar and the New York City Council’s Common Sense Caucus, a group of conservative city lawmakers.
Several of those groups said the chancellor had been supportive of Jewish students and understanding of their concerns. Others are hoping for more from the city’s education department. Plaut said the canceled press conference and the “lack of a proactive response raises serious concerns regarding his commitment to eradicating antisemitism in our school system.”
Her group has demanded that the school system adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, take a zero-tolerance policy toward antisemitism and restructure how schools address diversity and inclusion so that those programs cover antisemitism and Jewish heritage.
The Israeli consulate said it had pushed for a zero-tolerance policy for antisemitic incidents and for education on topics including the Holocaust, antisemitism and the modern history of Israel.
Republican New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, an outspoken critic of anti-Israel activism and a member of the Common Sense Caucus, said City Council members had also demanded repercussions for teachers and students engaging in antisemitism. She added that they want to see educational programming to address the issue, including lessons on the Holocaust, citing polls showing widespread ignorance about the Holocaust among young people in the United States.
Vernikov said antisemitism in schools was something she had “been hearing about for a long time,” and added, “Jewish students are getting bullied.”
For years, Holocaust education has been the centerpiece of the education department’s effort to combat antisemitism among New York City youth. In 2020, the public school system piloted a program that brought groups of eighth and 10th graders on tours of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, a Holocaust museum in Lower Manhattan.
That program is ongoing, with approximately 5,000 students visiting the museum every month, the museum told the New York Jewish Week. Educators from the museum also visit classes in 20 schools and accompany them on their visits, the museum said.
Richard Carranza, who headed the city’s public schools from 2018 to 2021, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2020 that the student tours of the Museum of Jewish Heritage were about “understanding that symbols have meanings.” Referring to swastikas, he said, “Don’t use these kinds of symbols if you don’t know what they mean.”
The museum told JTA that since Oct. 7, some teachers had reached out ahead of visits to tell the museum that students had been making antisemitic comments. In response, the museum is creating a glossary of antisemitic tropes and terms with historical context. It will also give future groups of visiting students anti-bias and de-escalation training.
“We know we cannot teach them everything they need to know in a single visit, but the hope is we spark something in them to continue to learn,” the museum said in a statement.
Now, some Jewish educational professionals say schools should address antisemitic incidents by discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more directly. Sharon Jacker, the director of the New York Education Initiative at the Jewish Education Project, said the massive scale of New York’s school system — with 1 million students in over 1,800 schools — makes system-wide changes difficult.
She encouraged individual schools and teachers to tackle the subject, though New York State education standards do not include guidelines on the modern geopolitics of the Middle East. Jacker said she’s found that teachers are reluctant to engage such a fraught topic, and two public high school students told the New York Jewish Week that none of their classes discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Instead, said the students, who asked to remain anonymous, their peers formed their opinions based on social media and conversations at home.
“Teachers are smart and they see around them that this is a can of worms, it’s fraught,” Jacker said. “And if you don’t have to open a can of worms and get a parent upset or a student upset or an administrator upset, it’s just much easier not to.”
Jacker, who has met with Banks since Oct. 7, said teachers should discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in class and use primary sources that explore the conflict from “a really balanced, nuanced point of view.” She recommended materials from the Institute for Curriculum Services, an affiliate of the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Relations Council that provides educational resources on Jewish history.
Teachers may already be addressing the conflict in their classrooms. A Jewish teacher who has taught at city public schools for two decades, and declined to give her name for fear of professional repercussions, said that since Oct. 7 her colleagues have worn keffiyehs, or traditional Palestinian headscarves, to work; put up pro-Palestinian messaging in school and worked the narrative into classes such as literature and social studies.
“I can tell you they won’t look at me anymore. My colleagues won’t talk to me anymore. Not all of them, but some of them,” she said, adding that she has not expressed support for Israel while at school. “I don’t wear any pin of Israel, I don’t have a flag. The only thing is I’m Jewish.”
School policy bans teachers from engaging in political activity in school, but the rule wasn’t being enforced, she said.
“They’re getting very skewed information,” she said of the students. “I don’t know if other people are not aware of it, I don’t know if they’re looking the other way.”
Rabbi Rena Rifkin, who works with about 250 middle and high school students as the director of youth education at the Reform Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan, said that Oct. 7 had “opened the floodgates,” and made students more aware of persistent antisemitism, but that school hasn’t given them tools to cope with it.
“I’m concerned that our students don’t have a safe haven to process what they’re seeing and hearing, and what that means for them to feel so targeted,” Rifkin said.
To find that space, some students are turning to extracurricular Jewish groups at their schools and beyond, some of which have themselves had to contend with antisemitism. The Orthodox Union’s Jewish Student Union, which has chapters in 30 public high schools in the New York City area, said two of its clubs in Brooklyn had been harassed with anti-Israel rhetoric. The group sent JTA a photo of a swastika drawn on a stairwell of one of the schools. A member of another club was bombarded with hate messages on social media.
Most clubs have around 30 students attending on a weekly basis, said the group director, Rabbi Yossi Schwartz, who added that they saw an uptick in attendance after Oct. 7. Schwartz said he prefers to focus on the way participants are expressing their Judaism positively — by lighting Shabbat or Hanukkah candles, for example.
“We mourned, we not understood, but processed, what happened, and now we need to move on to the next thing,” Schwartz said. “Yes, it’s a scary world out there, there’s no question about it for a Jewish person, but we don’t fight back by hiding.”
Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz runs programs at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue that teach teens about Israel, criticism of it and philanthropy. While a range of voices are calling on schools to more proactively address antisemitism, Kaplowitz cautioned that Jews should not depend on the education system to provide care for students’ Jewish identity.
“If we rely on the media, public schools, private schools to deliver what should be a part of our kids’ Jewish education, they’re going to do a terrible job at it,” she said. “And they’re going to leave our kids lost.”
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The post Jewish advocates demand policy changes to combat antisemitism at NYC public high schools appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters
An overturned auto in a car crash flipped on its roof landing on a mother and her three children, killing two children on March 29, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
A Brooklyn woman denied killing anyone when she appeared in court on Thursday, less than a week after a Jewish woman and her two daughters died when she crashed her car into them at a crosswalk.
Miriam Yarimi, 32, appeared in Brooklyn Criminal Court via a video stream from her room in NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, according to the New York Daily News. She is undergoing a psychological evaluation at the hospital following Saturday’s deadly car crash.
After the crash, Yarimi told first responders she was “possessed” and believed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was following her. She has made similar claims about being pursued by the CIA on social media several times in the past, The Algemeiner previously reported.
Yamini, who is also Jewish, faces a slew of charges that include three counts of second-degree manslaughter, three counts of criminal negligent homicide, and four counts of second-degree assault.
“The devil is in my eyes. I am haunted inside. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. Prove it. Show me the proof. You have no proof,” Yarimi said in a statement after Saturday’s crash, according to Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Nocella. “I need CT scans in my eyes. I need to get the scanning done now … Where’s my daughter? My daughter’s always in my heart.”
“People are out to get me,” added the single mother. “I need CT scans on my entire body. F— you. I need a whole work up to get whatever is in my body out of it. I did not hurt anyone. All the evidence is on my phone.”
Nocella called Yamini a flight risk and asked the judge that she be held without bail due to the “nature and severity” of the allegations, as reported by the Daily News. Judge Jevet Johnson agreed with Nocella and ordered Yamini to be held without bail. Nocella said prosecutors are prepared to present grand jury indictment on the manslaughter charges.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his administration is “committed” to taking more action to prevent traffic violence and deaths following the fatal car crash that killed Natasha Saada, 35, along with her daughters Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5. Saada’s 4-year-old son Philip was injured in the crash and is still being hospitalized in critical condition.
Adams’ office announced on Wednesday that there were 41 traffic deaths during the first three months of 2025 — 24 fewer than last year and the second fewest since they started being recorded by the city. Despite the decline in traffic deaths, Adams admitted that more work needs to be done to keep New Yorkers safe on the streets, as evident by Saturday’s deadly car crash.
“In order to make New York City the best place to raise a family, we need to be safer at every level — including on our streets,” he said in a released statement on Wednesday. “Our administration’s investments in intersection safety improvements, treating traffic violence as the serious crime that it is, and our expanding automated camera enforcement are all helping ensure we’re leading the way toward a safer future for all New Yorkers — whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorists.”
“We understand there is more work to do, as evidenced this past weekend’s tragic crash in Brooklyn because one lift [sic] lost to traffic violence is one life too many, but our administration remains committed to reducing traffic violence as much as any other form of violence,” Adams added.
On Saturday afternoon, Yarimi crashed her car into an Uber and then slammed into four members of the Saada family as they were trying to walk across the street at an intersection on Ocean Parkway in Midwood.
Yarimi was speeding at the time of the incident, “probably doing close to twice the speed limit,” and “ran a red light” just before the crash, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez revealed on Wednesday while speaking to Eyewitness News. Yamini was also driving on a suspended license and has accumulated almost 100 parking and camera violations, including 21 speed camera tickets and five red light tickets.
“It actually exceeds just being reckless, it’s almost being wanton, we’re not going to tolerate that,” Gonzalez told Eyewitness News. “Her vehicle had been ticketed many times by red light cameras and speed cameras, that car was a frequent violator of both speed laws and red-light laws, and there is no excuse for running a red light.”
Saada and her daughters were buried in Israel this week. Four-year-old Philip remains at the hospital for his injuries and is facing “tough straights,” Gonzalez said. “We expect him to make some kind of recovery, but it’s going to be a long road for him.”
The boy lost one of his kidneys during treatment at Maimonides Medical Center, according to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “It’s heartbreaking,” Lander said after he visited the home of the Saada family, according to the New York Post. “He’s still in critical condition. He lost one kidney but they are hopeful about his prognosis.”
Five people in the Uber hit by Yarimi’s car suffered minor injuries.
Supporters of a proposed state law that would stop repeat super speeders in New York have rallied together since the car accident on Saturday, calling for the passage of the bill that they said could have prevented the crash. The legislation would require speed limiters to be installed on vehicles owned by repeat reckless drivers, like Yarimi. The device automatically limits the vehicles to within 5 mph of the legal speed of the road. The “Stop Super Speeders” bill was sponsored by New York State Assembly Member Emily Gallagher and Senator Andrew Gounardes.
The New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander, supports the bill and criticized Adams for not already implementing such measures.
The post Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hungary Announces Withdrawal From ‘Political’ ICC as Netanyahu Visits Country, Defying Arrest Warrant
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks to the media next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Budapest, Hungary, April 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo
Hungary on Thursday announced that it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the country welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the capital city of Budapest, defying an ICC arrest warrant against him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.
Despite Hungary’s status as a signatory of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, Netanyahu was not taken into custody upon his arrival in Budapest. Instead, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban welcomed his Israeli counterpart with full military honors.
GREAT meeting with a GREAT friend, @PM_ViktorOrban. Together, we’re making the GREAT alliance between
and
even stronger! pic.twitter.com/Svphzb61Gn
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) April 3, 2025
Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary, which is scheduled to last until Sunday, is his first trip to Europe since the ICC issued an arrest warrant against him last year. In February, he made his first foreign trip altogether since the ICC’s decision to the United States, where he met with US President Donald Trump.
As Orban and Netanyahu met to discuss regional developments and bilateral cooperation, Hungarian Minister Gergely Gulyas released a statement announcing that “the government will initiate the withdrawal procedure” from the ICC, which could take a year or more to complete.
After their meeting, Orban said he believes the ICC is “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”
“I am convinced that this otherwise important international judicial forum has been degraded into a political tool, with which we cannot and do not want to engage,” Orban said during a press conference.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised Budapest’s decision to withdraw from the international court, highlighting the country’s “strong moral stance alongside Israel and the principles of justice and sovereignty.”
“I commend Hungary’s important decision to withdraw from the ICC,” Saar wrote in a post on X. “The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defense.”
I commend Hungary’s important decision to withdraw from the ICC. FM Péter Szijjártó and I dealt with this matter extensively. The so-called “International Criminal Court” lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for…
— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 3, 2025
In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which until a recently imposed blockade had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war. Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
After the court issued the warrant against Netanyahu, Orban rejected the decision by inviting the Israeli leader to Budapest and accusing the court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.”
During Thursday’s news conference, Netanyahu commended Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC, calling it a “bold and principled action” as “the first state that walks out of this corruption and this rottenness.”
“The ICC directs its actions against us fighting a just war with just means,” Netanyahu said. “I think [this decision will] be deeply appreciated, not only in Israel but in many, many countries around the world.”
After the Israeli leader was welcomed in Budapest, Hamas issued a statement calling on the Hungarian government to reverse its decision and extradite Netanyahu to the ICC to stand trial, calling the decision an “immoral stance that shows collusion with a war criminal who is running away from justice.”
In a post on X, Israel’s top diplomat reiterated his support for Hungary’s decision, arguing that Hamas’s statement only proves the country is taking the correct stance in this matter.
“Whoever needed further proof as to how justified, moral and necessary Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC is: Hamas just condemned it,” Saar wrote.
“Hamas is defending the politicized and twisted so-called ‘International Criminal Court.’ And that’s the whole story.”
Whoever needed further proof as to how justified, moral and necessary Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC is: Hamas just condemned it.
Hamas is defending the politicized and twisted so-called “International Criminal Court”.
And that’s the whole story.— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 3, 2025
After the ICC’s decision to issue the warrants, several countries, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.
US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2o23.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
The post Hungary Announces Withdrawal From ‘Political’ ICC as Netanyahu Visits Country, Defying Arrest Warrant first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must
The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
During the events of Purim, Haman approached King Xerxes I and said, “There is a certain race of people scattered through all the provinces of your empire who keep themselves separate from everyone else. Their laws are different from those of any other people, and they refuse to obey the laws of the king. So, it is not in the king’s interest to let them live.”
Queen Esther’s solidarity with her dispersed people in Persia, and her profound loyalty to her Jewish identity, saved them from Haman’s genocide and secured their self-defense when she courageously revealed her heritage to Xerxes I.
Today, Israeli Jews are once again fighting for their Jewish and Zionist survival. Since Oct. 7, 2023, this Jewish Armageddon has extended anew to Diaspora Jews, who have felt the past’s chilling draft. Antisemitism has reawakened, infecting non-Jews and Jews alike. Few people contribute to antisemitic attitudes more than “self-loathing” Jews. These “self-loathing” Jews, who cynically reveal only the negative aspects of their Jewishness, believe they can avoid antisemitic attacks if they condemn Israel. But they achieve only self-betrayal, gaining neither acceptance nor respect from those who hate all Jews. Jews are a nation of people who question, not people who answer.
Questions pervade the Jewish mind to such a degree that the adage, “two Jews, three opinions,” has become a common characteristic of Jewish identity. Moreover, the pursuit of an answer often serves as a springboard for further inquiry. For us, as Jews, the ultimate answer, akin to the messianic ideal, remains a distant, undefined future. This traditional perspective has granted Jews a sort of perpetual license to disagree. Jews enjoy engaging in debate with others, but they sometimes find particular delight in debating amongst themselves, which allows their intellects to roam and their sardonic wit to playfully engage with each other’s vulnerabilities, finding humor without causing offense.
This love for discourse, for questioning everything in sight, including Hashem himself, is by no means the only puzzle that makes up our Jewish identity. Another crucial element of our makeup is solidarity. In times of major upheavals, we have always stood together against the masses who rose against us. To our enemies, we Jews — atheists, nihilists, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Haredi, religious Zionists, non-religious Zionists, or undecided — look, taste, and feel the same. They care nothing for our ingrained liberalism. Our enemies seek cracks within our communities in order to break us apart and cause irreparable damage.
Years of relative peace and prosperity since the Holocaust have allowed us to gather again and engage in countless polemics over the fate of Israel, Jews, Judaism, and Zionism. However, we have failed to notice that we are at war again, and that our enemies eagerly exploit the divisions within a nation that comprises only 0.2% of the world’s population. These enemies — radical Islamists and progressive Western leftists who view Jews and Israel as white oppressors and colonizers — avidly listen to Jewish internal squabbles and criticisms of the Israeli government.
Despite the significant progress the Shin Bet and IDF have made in dismantling much of Hamas’s leadership and terrorist infrastructure, destroying its complex network of tunnels and command centers, and weakening Hezbollah, in addition to eliminating tens of thousands of Hamas terrorists, many Jews remain critical of, and disagree with, what Israel represents today. Aware of government problems, Israelis desire improvement. However, their rage and almost addictive pattern of anti-government protests have provided their adversaries with more opportunities to exploit perceived weaknesses.
This has resonated with some Jews worldwide. In New York, some Jewish intellectuals have defended “free-Palestine” and pro-Hamas protesters harassing Jewish students, invoking freedom of speech. They appear to have fallen prey to what they perceive as the lies of progressive anti-Zionist media, which systemically omits crucial facts about Israel. This includes the IDF’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties, and its role in eliminating thousands of Hamas terrorists and dismantling their terror network, which posed a significant threat to Israel (and innocent Palestinians themselves).
These “romantic” progressive Jews also forget that no matter how critical they are of that “brutal” IDF, it is still fighting on their behalf, because it is fighting on behalf of every Jew. Civilian deaths do occur, but they are either unfortunate incidents of war or, more often, a direct result of Hamas’s cruelty, as Hamas terrorists purposefully embed themselves within the civilian population. I once sat at dinner in Israel with a wealthy American Jewish couple who came on a sympathy tour a few months after Oct. 7. Nevertheless, the husband was convinced that the IDF was deliberately killing Palestinian children.
Those were wealthy, educated American Jews who thought they were charitable because they donated to Jewish causes, and therefore, believed they had the right to express their views on everything. This is where I, a Soviet Jew who grew up deprived of Judaism yet targeted by antisemitism, felt differently. To begin with, the husband was completely wrong. Second, in times of existential crisis, we, as Jewish people, must set aside our irresistible urge to disagree and criticize Israel on basic premises such as Israel’s fight to ensure Jews don’t live through a second genocide. The freedom to speak our minds has been ours for thousands of years. We conversed with Hashem, we obeyed Him, we sacrificed for Him, and then we quickly learned to disobey and question Him, even before we began arguing amongst ourselves.
Still, throughout our dotted and punctured history, it wasn’t our tongues or our disagreeable minds that kept our small nation together; it was our solidarity. In solidarity, we walked out of Egypt. In solidarity, tens of thousands of Eastern European Jews came to their promised land as early as the 1920s and began to build from nothing. In solidarity with his orphans, Dr. Janusz Korczak, despite being given the chance to save himself, chose to march with them, hand in hand, through the ghetto to the deportation point, on their way to Treblinka, where they met their final hour. In solidarity with other Jews across the Soviet Empire, Soviet Jews secretly tried to remember who they were, despite years of persecutions and purges.
In solidarity with their Soviet brethren, powerful American Jewry fought for Russian Jews to be able to emigrate to Israel and the United States. One of the main reasons our small nation has not disappeared into the abyss is because, in Diaspora, across oceans, and through impenetrable iron curtains, we never ceased to support one another. We knew we could not afford the luxury of neglecting our faith, traditions, and, most importantly, we could never abandon defending ourselves against our enemies.
Caesar’s “Divide et impera” (“Divide and Conquer”), though a cliché, is particularly relevant here. Seeing fractures within our communities, our enemies have intensified these divisions through incessant anti-Zionist and antisemitic propaganda and violence. Therefore, only as an undivided people, united by a single purpose — eradicating our enemies and protecting our promised land — do we stand a chance of survival. Perhaps only then will the day come when Jewish people gather on virtual street corners to argue and ask questions to which they seek no answers.
Anya Gillinson is an immigration lawyer and author of the new memoir Dreaming in Russian. She lives in New York City. More at www.anyagillinson.com.
The post Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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