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Social Studies 2024: Phobe Maltz Bovy’s year in nine big vibe-shifts
What happened in the past 12 months? Rather a lot! So to pare it down, I’m limiting this end-of-year recap to things that kept popping up on my own finite radar, with an emphasis on those with relevance to Jewish Canadians. I will not ask whether I missed anything; assume that I have missed—or skipped over—a ton. These are just a handful of the stories about our society I see as relevant going into 2025 and beyond.
Campus protest culture camps out
The encampment trend that took hold at Columbia University and wound up all over the place—including at numerous Canadian schools—became the big story of 2024 for Jewish media and points beyond, the bold, in-your-face sign that the next generation of cultural elites had made Palestine their cause. Or a sign of something else? Not all the student protesters were students; some were professors, others unaffiliated. And the students not on board with the goings-on were very possibly more likely to demonstrate this by going to class than by organizing a counter-demonstration, although the Jewish professor at least temporarily banned by Columbia showed up at the University of Toronto.
Columbia University temporarily banned Jewish Israeli professor-turned-activist Shai Davidai from campus.
Here, he speaks at the University of Toronto rally about antisemitism in academia and beyond.
His presence was denounced by local pro-Palestine groups.#cdnpoli #Toronto… pic.twitter.com/GjwoyWgsf9
— Caryma Sa’d – Lawyer + Political Satirist (@CarymaRules) October 22, 2024
Literary world is purging ‘Zionists’
First, a small magazine called Guernica had a meltdown when an Israeli writer, Joanna Chen, wrote an arguably pro-Palestinian essay, but did so while being, you know, Israeli. Chen had refused to serve in the IDF, but she was still too Zionistic for the pages in question. Next up, author Joshua Leifer tried to do a book event for his Tablets Shattered, but a Brooklyn bookstore employee cancelled it just as it was about to start.
I wrote this book to explore debates within American Jewish life, which of course includes many people who identify as Zionists. My biggest worry was about synagogues not wanting to host me. I didn’t think it would be bookstores in Brooklyn that would be closing their doors. pic.twitter.com/tcUOcXw2Ge
— Joshua Ort-Leifer (@joshualeifer) August 21, 2024
Why was this critical-of-Israel book a problem? The interlocutor was going to be a liberal Zionist and one can’t be having that. The books-and-essays world, once a place where Jewish authors once felt reasonably comfortable in North America, now had spreadsheets identifying authors based on indicators of their relationship to Israel.
Searching for signals of antizionism
Look, Diaspora Jews have gone off Israel! No, wait, they’re all-in on Israel, and that’s why they’re buying guns and going to vote for Donald Trump! But then we learned that Jewish Canadians—like our American counterparts—arevirtually unanimous in the belief that Israel should exist as a Jewish state.
79% of jews voted for Kamala Harris.
Trump received the lowest proportion of jewish votes in 24 years.
Why cater to people that HATE you? pic.twitter.com/pI4nykVI1q
— Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) November 6, 2024
(And in similarly shouldn’t-be-surprising news, American Jewish voters overwhelmingly preferred Kamala Harris.)
Tradwives are totally taking over
Her picture-perfect life as a Mormon farm wife has made Hannah Neeleman, the woman behind “Ballerina Farm,” a social media star and a lightning rod for every kind of opinion about how women should live. https://t.co/dpnzZa8KaU
— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 3, 2024
The concept went from a niche online subculture to mainstream news and just incessant critical coverage. Tradwife this, tradwife that, all to the bafflement of actual traditionalist brides, Jewish and otherwise, if they were even online enough to notice, that is. A tradwife, for the uninitiated, is a social media influencer who posts content wherein she performs being a gender-role-conforming old-school housewife. She’s in something low-cut and she serves her man, but to own the libs, not (allegedly) to titillate straight men of any which politics.
Challah baking has become political
Some baked it to connect with fellow Jews througn established community channels, while others took, shall we say, a different tack.
Hamas has used the inverted red triangle to mark Israeli targets for murder & has also been used by sympathizers to show support.
So when a writer in @Chatelaine posed with the symbol, it was a warning sign that her piece would be an anti-Israel diatribe.https://t.co/aETX9zq68K
— HonestReporting Canada🎗️ (@HonestRepCanada) November 29, 2024
Yes, 2024 was the year Chatelaine, a Canadian general-interest women’s magazine, published, then quasi-unpublished, an article about baking challah to free Palestine. In an awkward twist, the personal essayist wore an inverted red triangle in the accompanying author photo. This—combined with the content of the essay in question, an essay that didn’t merely criticize Israel’s response to Oct. 7 (which, fair) but erase the fact that Oct. 7 even happened—suggested that maybe it was one of those red triangles. One gesturing at, perhaps, a spot of friendliness towards Hamas.
War of the sexes (cont’d.)
The latest discourse began with the revelation that young men world over are veering to the right, young women to the left. Had women all gone off men? No. But a bunch gestured at plans to do so once Trump won a second go at the U.S. presidency.
Use the promo code PHOEBE to get a month’s free access to Dan Savage’s podcast empire… including the Sex and Politics episode I was just on! https://t.co/GAMzhivZ63 pic.twitter.com/53zFn9deDF
— Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz) December 20, 2024
And as someone who recently finished writing a book about straight women (to be published by Signal, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada), I have been kept plenty busy.
Reviving the concept of ‘shiksa’
As a busy woman, I play many roles: writer, podcaster, teacher, dog mom, Aquarius. But my most important role is and has always been shiksa and I was thrilled to speak my truth as a guest on @TheCJN‘s @BonjourChai with @BovyMaltz and Rabbi Avi Finegold. L’Chaim! https://t.co/Rd3K88eOzL
— Meghan Daum (@meghan_daum) October 11, 2024
Yes, the Netflix series Nobody Wants This offered a heartwarming rom-com treatment of the extremely adorable scenario of a Jewish man finally being spared the ghastliness that is Jewish women when a bubbly blonde comes his way. Can an ambiguously-Reform rabbi date a woman played by Kirsten Bell? In 2024, anything was possible.
The new death of wokeness
We are now officially living in the post-woke era.
I believe it ended just after October 7, 2023. But since November 6, 2024 it’s not up for debate.
— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) November 8, 2024
Left-wing illiberalism of the sort that brought us cancel culture is officially passé according to enough big thinkers out there.
Wokeness ain’t actually over yet
There’s also enough evidence to suggest ‘woke’ didn’t go anywhere, but rather transformed and migrated. The transformed bit goes like this: In lieu of a series of current things—individual social-justice concerns that were suddenly the only thing that mattered, only to be displaced by a different one five minutes later—there’s now the omnicause. You can plaster your backpack or coffee shop window or social media bio with a potentially endless set of concerns, as long as they all align, omnicausally speaking.
Welcome to the Omnicause. If you protest one thing, you protest everything—intersectional inanity, writes @andykesslerhttps://t.co/YzaJRtm2Tq
— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) June 24, 2024
The migrated one: In a sense, there may have been some geographic migration. Maybe you can’t be cancel-cultured in the States as much as was once the case, but in Canada there are still good old-fashioned campaigns to shut down literary magazines for purity-politics reasons. But when I speak of migration, I mean primarily virtual. Twitter begat X, which in turn begat Bluesky. In layman’s terms, a social media platform that had once been the preferred gathering space of journalists, academics, and sui generis social-media pundits ceased serving that function once Elon Musk took over in October 2022, not all at once but in stages. X, what Twitter is now called, because nigh unusable, a pay-to-play scheme wherein right-wing rage-bait rules the day.
So a bunch of old-Twitter’s so-called power users (dubious honour) migrated, no, fled to a Twitter clone called Bluesky. I wrote a less than rave review of it in the Globe and Mail, which caused the Good folks who love love love Bluesky to anoint me main character. I was even parodied by Canada’s persistent cousin to The Onion with the assumption that the readership understood who they were referring to.
Opinion: Bluesky is a dangerous echo chamber because no one wants to hear from me, specificallyhttps://t.co/FjHVW5l7La
— The Beaverton (@TheBeaverton) November 22, 2024
Shortly thereafter, everyone mad at me forgot about this, as actually prominent people arrived on Bluesky and became the source of fury that made what I elicited look like small potatoes (or perhaps I mean smol beans).
The CJN’s opinion editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at pbovy@thecjn.ca, not to mention @phoebebovy on Bluesky, and @bovymaltz on X. She is also on The CJN’s weekly podcast Bonjour Chai. For more opinions about Jewish culture wars, subscribe to the free Bonjour Chai newsletter on Substack.
The post Social Studies 2024: Phobe Maltz Bovy’s year in nine big vibe-shifts appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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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.
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Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must
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.