Never Again: Antisemitism's Alarming Resurgence

One of the hallmarks of Jewish education is studying the history of persecution inflicted upon us over the millennia. We learn about the ancient people that sought our demise: Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. We learn about the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition and the pogroms in Europe. But none of them command more of our attention than the Holocaust. Starting from a young age and continuing through college, we ingrain ourselves in the atrocities that befell our people at the hands of Nazi Germany.

Our investigation is thorough. We interview Holocaust survivors for school projects. We watch an array of documentaries, bracing ourselves for the black and white scenes of mass extermination: Hitler ferociously shouting to deranged masses; wooden bodies withering on wooden bunks;  hopeless throngs trapped behind barbed wire; meatless corpses bulldozed into pits; freezing cattle cars packed with people ignorant of their destination; billowing smoke stacks coated in human soot. We hesitantly recount the horrors of Dr. Mengele and his grotesque experiments unfathomable by even the most sadistic minds. We discuss writings from those who escaped and those who didn’t; Elie Wiesel and Anne Frank and Viktor Frankl and Edeth Eger. We visit museums with relics of genocide like shoes of toddlers gassed long ago. We learn about how it all started. Mein Kampf and Kristallnacht and yellow stars patched to coat sleeves. Silent and complicit neighbors. Ghettos. We celebrate those who risked their lives to help: Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, and many others. We count the dead: 6 million souls that evaporated in hate. Above all, we learn to repeat the most important words in Jewish history: “Never again.”

In spite of this regimented education, I always found those words to be distant, if not overplayed. My family lived in America for generations. I didn’t have relatives who went through the Holocaust. Both of my grandfathers served in the American military, one having earned a purple heart in North Africa fighting in WWII. In America, we had constitutional rights and freedoms. We had a safe and civil society and a democratic government. Jewish communities practiced across a spectrum of religious ideals without interference or a second thought. Sure, we still dealt with the occasional slur slung out a car window or graffiti scrawled on a Jewish School or cemetery, but it all seemed very isolated. Because of all this, “Never Again” often felt more like a slogan than a warning to be heeded with care.

My grandfather, Abe Muscoplat, fighting for the American army in WWII.

Now, that naive sense of security rapidly withers away by the day. Over the course a few weeks, Jews across the world went from feeling generally safe and secure to feeling a sense of collective dread not familiar to our generation. What began on October 7th, 2023 as the largest massacre against Jews since the Holocaust has festered into the largest display of antisemitism since the Holocaust. For the first time in my life, I am truly scared to be Jewish.

Unfortunately, I am not alone. As I talk to Jewish friends, family members, and co-workers it is clear that the feeling is collective. It doesn’t matter how religious we are, if we keep Kosher or Shabbat or to what degree we believe in God or if we have or have not been empathetic to the Palestinian cause - if we are identifiably Jewish in any way, we worry for our safety. Fear intrudes at night as we sleep. It churns in the back of our minds as we try to put on a smile at work. It lingers as we walk down the street to our synagogues or to dorm rooms on college campuses. It stirs when we drop our kids off at school (both Jewish and public schools). It draws us in to every toxic media source. Scrolling. Refreshing. Scrolling. Refreshing. It percolates under the surface at all times and leaves a nagging feeling in our stomach or shoulders or the back of our necks.

Why are we afraid? Because when we look at history, which we have studied quite carefully, and we compare our notes to the present, we can’t help but start to check off the familiar boxes. Disillusioned masses, a justifying doctrine, a common cause, complacent or silent onlookers, propaganda machines, willingness to use violence, collectivism, pre-existing prejudices, and disproportionate attention on the Jewish people.

It started with 1,400 of our people (men, woman, children, elderly, babies - almost all civilians) were mercilessly and sadistically slaughtered on camera. Thousands more maimed and injured. Hundreds more kidnapped. In our desperation and despair we sought comfort and support from those around us. While many people spoke out against evil or checked in on us, so many have remained silent. Friends and co-workers who spoke out quite vocally in the face of other past injustices in our country (as did we) now stand by with sealed lips. Alongside the silent are the vocal mobs - angry at Israel for their response to the worst attack on Israeli civilians in history; antagonists burying condemnation in “what-abouts” or justifications or even simply denying the atrocities committed against us. Embedded and welcomed within their groups are those calling for the destruction of Israel, and many even calling for genocide against Jews. Across the world, words and sentiments have turned into actions against Jews as we are harassed in streets, accosted on school campuses, beaten at protests, and even attacked in our homes. Each day presents a fresh assortment of hatred.

A heartwarming letter from a concerned neighbor.

And what about the cultural conditions that may allow for repetitions of history’s darkest moments? We find ourselves in a deteriorating political system in the midst of a collapsing world order. Angry zealots on all sides seek retribution for perceived intolerances and inequalities, seeing guilt in every corner. Dictators around the world yearn for diversions that may allow them to pursue their power-hungry plans. Ideologies that might serve as pretext for our persecution abound: Islamism’s fundamentalist interpretations of the Qur’an or the far left’s binary oppressor/oppressed classification system or the far right’s institutional distrust and conspiratorial worldview - any one alone would be reason enough to fear. 

Spanning these doctrines is a new label meant to pigeon-hole our people into a single package: Zionism. This code-word comfortably shelters the antisemitism of the past. What was once a term used in the specific political and nationalist approach to creating a state is now simply a catch-all for anyone supporting the state of Israel. Certainly those using the term understand that over 85% of American Jews consider caring about Israel to be an important part of being Jewish. This should surprise no one considering that Israel holds most of our monuments, historical artifacts, countless references in religious and historical texts, is mentioned in most prayers, is the birthplace for many of our most important historical figures, contains all of our holy sites, and is the focus of many of our holidays. By conflating Zionism, the political and national movement, with general support of Israel, antisemites can once again collect the majority of Jews across all religious spectrums into a single bucket, and charge us with whatever they desire to justify their hatred.

Of course, As with all antisemitic rhetoric, their charges are draped in hypocrisy and double standards. They deem us colonialists by the imperfect means in which our nation was founded, as their own nations’ imperfections could as easily be measured by tenfold. When Jews (along with Israeli’s and other nationals) were brutalized and massacred on their own internationally recognized soil, they deem the “Zionist” response unjust and demand a ceasefire with nothing to say about the return of hostages. They ask Jews to live in terror as the perpetrators who proclaim their desire to repeat their offenses live on their border. They make all of these demands while bloodthirsty nations across the globe initiate bloodshed on scales that dwarf the worst of their accusations of Israel. Syria, Russia, Nigeria, China, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Myanmar and on and on - all committing open atrocities (even against Muslims) in plain sight. They pay no mind as Zionism commands their full attention.

Israel certainly has many flaws (and we must admit this and aim to improve them), but when it comes to the Jewish state, they demand perfection. They have no capacity for discussion around our nation’s history, with all of the complexities and nuances around the actions, decisions, and errors made by both sides leading to the present. They only point one finger. They propagandize the entirety of the narrative and serve it to the minds of the masses, who have no real context or connection aside from finding it to be useful outlet for their own anger and hatred. On top of this, and even more perverse, they hijack our past by accusing Israel of committing the worst tragedies in history (and in the history of mankind). They use terms like Nazis and genocide, robbing these terms of their meaning in an attempt to erase the brutality inflicted on us and change the world’s narrative.

When we call attention to any of these experiences and rightfully wonder if it might be antisemitism, they attack for playing victim in the most epic form of gaslighting in human history.  

And so here we are, all eyes on the Jewish people in the middle of a crumbling and angry world with an array of pretexts at its disposal and generations of accumulated prejudice. Suddenly the warnings from our ancestors that we once acknowledged with a smile and a nod now confront us with a disappointed look that says, “I told you so.” The line that might connect the points on a path to something terrible is being drawn before our eyes. Just 75 years after the worst of many tragedies in our history, Jews once again find ourselves back in a cycle we can’t seem to escape. We are witnessing, in real time, the unraveling of our safety and comfort - of our sense of belonging. Now, more clearly than ever, we hear the voices of our ancestors. They scream at us - at the world - Never Again! I pray the world listens.

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer