My Experience with Anti-Semitism
Iris Pritchard (they/them)
Even as a person with Jewish heritage, I didn’t give much thought to anti-semitism. No one ever talked to me with malicious intent, though I had heard phrases like, “I jewed them down” or saw middle schoolers throw change on the floor behind my Jewish friends.
It wasn’t until last summer that I realized the extent to which anti-Semitism exists in the highly progressive neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Contrary to popular belief, the anti-Semitism in our society does not strictly come from the right. In fact, the anti-semitism I have faced has been from those who are so far left, Karl Marx would look at them and say, “Wow, dude, calm down.”
I had just finished a long week of work as a summer camp counselor and I was dropping off tables I had borrowed from a close family friend, someone I considered an uncle. We were discussing how frustrating kids can be when he said something that horrified me. Maybe I should do a day camp too. I’ll send the kids to the back and call it camp Auschwitz.
At first, I didn’t even register what he had said and I responded with an uncomfortable laugh. I honestly don’t remember what I said next- just him responding with, “Oh don’t have such a stick up your ass, it’s just a joke.”
When I challenged him, he doubled down. Yeah, it’s just a joke, Iris. It’s funny like this: How many Jews can you fit in a Volkswagen? Two in the front, two in the back, and one million in the ashtray. Somehow I picked myself up and left in tears.
A couple of weeks later I went back over to his house and asked him if we could talk. I told him I could forgive him if he agreed to learn and change. He rolled his eyes and scoffed, You're just milking this, the Holocaust was 75 years ago, you need to get over it. I am not going to be judged by a 14-year-old bitch.
I didn’t speak to him for a month after that. I couldn't make sense of anything I was feeling – hatred, depression, resentment but most prominently fear and guilt. For the first time, I truly understood why my father told me not to list Jewish when I was handed forms that asked for my background. I wasn’t exactly afraid of him, but I was haunted by the revelation that if I hadn’t seen it in someone so close to me, how many other people I knew harbored the same views? I also felt guilty, guilty for still caring about him. It’s an impossible feeling to still care for someone who disrespected you on so many levels. I do not understand why people feel they have the right to make jokes about a genocide in which families were torn from each other and killed in the most inhumane ways.
It was incredibly helpful for me to talk with older Jews about their experiences. One conversation that resonated with me was with Senon Williams, a black man whose maternal grandmother survived the Holocaust. He said that because he doesn’t look stereotypically Jewish people tend to make anti-Semitic jokes around him and then try to walk it back when they find out he’s Jewish. “People need to go from knowing what's right, to feeling what's right,” Senon said.
In truth, I almost didn’t write this article. I procrastinated because I feared it wouldn’t be good enough to persuade people to listen. That it would be just another think piece that sits on a coffee table until another memoir never to be read takes its place. Many people have shown me time and again that they do not want to listen to the experiences of others, they just want to chime in with their throw-away, Twitter-like reactions.
If you are committed to understanding anti-Semitism at more than just a surface level, don’t let this be the last article you read. We have so much information at our fingertips; go learn from people who know more than me. Learn about other people's experiences and instead of reacting, try to tap into a situation where you have felt marginalized and imagine that you carry that expectation that it will happen again.
Some would say the oldest Jewish tradition is fear – fear of being enslaved, fear of being killed. But to me, it’s not – it’s resilience.
