Thread by @mohashim

A few years ago, I helped bring some community members together and a really prominent and successful Jewish woman made a comment that struck me very deeply. She roughly said, ‘for me to truly have trust, I would need to believe that you would hide me’. thread 1/10

This community leader whose name I won’t share was quite wealthy and for a second I thought, hold on, you could literally buy an entire island and fortify it and you worry about who would hide you here in Toronto??? 2/10

I mentioned that exchange to another Jewish friend of mine and she also told me she wondered who would hide her if things got really bad for Jews. And then another and another. 3/10

‘Who would hide me?’ Has never been a thought I have had. But it is one that many of my Jewish friends have had. 4/10

When a people have lived through a Holocaust, and pogroms, and attacks, so frequently and repeatedly through time, it kind of makes sense that a having a sense of safety deep enough to never have to think about ‘who would hide you’ is not a naturally attainable thing. 5/10

Especially when you know there has never been a time for your people when the next existential threat has not materialized. Because it has always come, in one form or another. 6/10

And it kind of makes sense that every time there is an attack on the community that that sense of safety is once again shaken and been a reminder to be on guard. Again and again and again. 7/10

As we think about the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and #weremember I’d ask you to think about how this world would look like if you were to think you may need to be hidden to preserve yours and your family’s lives. Just pause on that for a second. 8/10

When I think of that, the world sure does look very frightening. And I’ll remind you that that outlook is alive in many of our friends’ minds. The legacy of the Holocaust cannot be forgotten, because for many the pain has not left and threats are also still very much alive. 9/10

Antisemitism has been around for a long time and we must not only be aware of its growth but be there for those who feel it’s impacts today, here and now. 10/10