My #JewishPrivilege: I’ve never spent a night hungry. There was always a roof over our heads. Never went to jail or onto food stamps. First cousin froze to death escaping Babi Yar. Attended the top school in Los Angeles. My cousins Eva & Miriam Kor were a Mengle Twin experiment.
Our Bombay family’s tiny & vulnerable Jewish Community had the honor of defiantly celebrating Chanukah as sitting ducks at the Gateway of India with our 6 & 3 year olds, days after anti-Semitic Pakistani terrorists targeted Chabad killing Rabbi Holzberg & his pregnant wife Rivka.
Never went to synagogue without checking the exits. Went to two Ivies. Threatening graffiti scrawled on my son’s Jewish day school. Grew up in a well-to-do LA neighborhood...Around neighbors that hated & bullied us and had restricted “convenants” to keep us out. #JewishPrivilege
One college Grandparent. Became well known. Constantly deluged by antiSemitic messages & comments, many threatening. Have a steady job. Have anti-Semitic stalkers, some who have showed up at my work place and who threaten my wife/children w/ explicit bodily harm. #JewishPrivilege
My father proudly attended MLK’s March on Washington. My grandparents stood for Coal Miners against their murderous slaver bosses. My mom as a kid proudly shook the enormous gentle hand of the Great Paul Robeson. My brother gave up an Ivy League education to defend Black women.
Come from Seamstresses & Used Clothing salesmen. One grandmother Rose escaped Pogrom in Mogilev Podolsky. Grandfather Schmelik escaped execution by spooking a Cossack’s horse. Great grandma Becky left Vladimiretz before they would have killed her in the 1934 pogrom pictured here:
So, if you want to know where this cashes out: We have *finally* become mildly well to do. Precarious, but more fortunate than many.
The word “Privilege” makes me laugh however. Every person who has Jews they know and love, knows the truth: we are always simply between pogroms.
The word “Privilege” makes me laugh however. Every person who has Jews they know and love, knows the truth: we are always simply between pogroms.
Anyone who refers to Jews as having “White Privilege” as in “above the real problems” is either:
A) Ignorant of history and one book away from understanding the honest error.
B) An idiot.
C) An out and out anti-Semite.
Yes, some of us are now doing ok.
Yet it’s never for long.
A) Ignorant of history and one book away from understanding the honest error.
B) An idiot.
C) An out and out anti-Semite.
Yes, some of us are now doing ok.
Yet it’s never for long.
And this is why so many of us Left leaning Jews are so confused by our black brothers and sisters. We see your pain. We see the invisible bigotry against you. We saw the FBI’s war on your community. We fought along side you based on your reasoned grievances. For almost 100 years.
But as you see we are open that things have gotten much better for us. As they have for you. Yes 1865 is more recent than others imagine. So is 1945. Yes lynchings are horrific. So are pogroms. You face structural oppression. So do we. Your pain is invisible to many. Ours too.
Cards on the table: I‘m in awe of Black *achievement* and am shocked by desires to tell others like us that we‘re all fine because we are pink and may finally have 2 sheckles to rub together. Our two communities don’t belong in the oppression Olympics. We‘re both superachievers.
Why do I oppose #BlackLivesMatter when I am committed to Black Lives Mattering and an end to structural oppression? Because you can’t call a community more vulnerable than even Blacks “genocidal” in your platform. Israel has issues, but “genocide” is like modern blood libel.
So let’s cut the crap. We have a deeply flawed country to fix & you can count on my support. But it isn’t as bad as it once was for Blacks or Jews & money doesn’t do as much as folks think in the face of murderous rage. Let’s all ease up on “Privilege” as a way of avoiding this.
So why did I write this? Because there are communities who have lost more & have done so even more recently that are actively targeted by BlackLivesMatter. And frankly the Yazidis are worse off than both of us. As were the Arabs Murdered in Sabra and Shatila. So let’s be real.
And as an American Jew, I‘ve every right to speak my mind to say this truth. That‘s #AmericanPrivilege. I love my country despite many wrongs it did & continues to do to my family & community because of what it has done & now does *for* all of us.
So I’m done tearing it apart.🙏
So I’m done tearing it apart.🙏
