In the Face of Hate, Love Being Jewish

On Thursday protestors outside a Queens synagogue shouted their support for Hamas. And on Saturday, Jackson Mississippi’s only synagogue was destroyed by an arsonist. Nearly every day we are confronted by antisemitic hate. And every week we read of hate-filled attacks.

Jackson’s mayor, John Horhn, offered words of support after Saturday’s arson and said, “Acts of antisemitism, racism and religious hatred are attacks on Jackson as a whole and will be treated as acts of terror against residents’ safety and freedom to worship. Targeting people because of their faith, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation is morally wrong, un-American and completely incompatible with the values of this city.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani responded to Thursday’s protest and said, “The rhetoric and displays that we saw at the demonstration are wrong and have no place in our city. Chants in support of a terrorist organization have no place in our city.”

And while I am grateful that these mayors rightly labeled these acts as wrong, their words feel inadequate. We are too afraid to be mollified. We don’t know from which direction the next attack might come. We begin to ask ourselves, “Is this street safe? Will our town protect us?” Words of support feel too late. It seems as if we are being squeezed between hate mongers on the right and Hamas sympathizers on the left. Like the Israelite slaves our “spirits are crushed.” (Exodus 6)

How many days can we read of such attacks? How many times can we watch as our streets are filled with hate and venom?

Antisemitism has accompanied us throughout our history. In fact, Jackson’s Beth Israel synagogue was bombed by the KKK in 1967. It was rebuilt then and it will be rebuilt now. (If you would like to support these efforts visit bethisraelms.org.)

At times antisemitic hate was ferocious in its deadliness. Every Jew carries these wounds. My grandmother escaped the Cossacks’ rampages. Others survived the Holocaust. Some recall how their families fled from the Spanish Inquisition. Every Jew carries these traumas. We worry if our generation will be swallowed up by another murderous rampage. Such pains have lain dormant. Until now.

Few are old enough to remember such antisemitic attacks. For the majority of us it was the stuff of history books and religious school lessons. It happened over there, but never here. It occurred then but not now. When it did happen here and now, as at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, we thought it to be an aberration. We did not want to believe that history was once again bending toward hate.

We are unaccustomed to such vitriol and violence. We do not know how to respond.

In 1988, I spent a year serving another Congregation Beth Israel. It was in Clarksdale, Mississippi. I was then in my second year of studies in rabbinical school and flew there once a month to serve this dwindling congregation in Mississippi’s Delta. I had no idea what I was doing or how to be a rabbi, but they welcomed me with open arms.

They were so excited to have a rabbi. On Saturdays I would walk down Clarksdale’s main street and visit all my congregants’ stores. They loved to introduce me to their friends and neighbors. “This is our rabbi,” they would say. And I would demur, “I am not really a rabbi. I am not a rabbi yet.” They would respond, “Shh. You are our rabbi.”

They were proud Jews. They loved being Jewish. They did not hide their identities.

That has always been our response. It remains the only answer we have.

This is the reason we have survived. Despite millennia of antisemitic hate, we did not arrive at 2026 because of the benevolence of one ruler or the support of another leader, it is instead because we held fast to each other and held tight to our Jewish identities.

Love being Jewish.

It is the only answer. It is also the best.