Posted September 26 2007
Fear and Loathing in Passaic, NJ
Rachel Krich’s recent post regarding swastikas and other Nazi paraphernalia showing up in upper class Manhattan neighborhoods inspired me to pay more attention to the kind of event that usually leads me to merely shake my head and keep my thoughts to myself. But this year, the emergence of National Socialist enthusiasts has touched far closer to home: my own brother, rabbi of a small congregation in Passaic, NJ and Regional Director of New Jersey NCSY, has had his synagogue vandalized. Now, his home, his place of worship, and the home of the president of his congregation are being watched by police as he wonders whether it’s safe to let his three small children play outside on a beautiful fall afternoon. As a holiday that primarily consists of sitting outside begins tonight, the question becomes far more than merely academic. It becomes a matter of life and death, while so many in this and other countries still consider hate crimes things that happen in other places, where the victims shouldn’t be surprised.
People in America, realizing that there were still actually people in the world who believed that all Jews should have ended their existence in the gas chambers of Poland and Germany, are constantly shocked, no matter how many times the hate rises again. My own surprise at their naivete changed several years ago as I got to know Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, the Dean and Associate Dean of the Simon Weisenthal Center in Los Angeles, respectively. While they had been family friends for well over two decades, it was only when I was old enough to understand what they were telling their audiences that I realized how prevalent Nazi-era levels of anti-Semitism still are, not only in America but all over the world. While I was not surprised that it happened - “Even here in America? How could it be?” - I also thought of it as something that was once in a while, in only far off places where people couldn’t be expected to know better. Sorry, Northerners can be racist, too. But whereas once it was an abstraction, now it seemed real - or at least, more real than most other fantasies, like communists plotting to take over the United States or Elvis, alive on a South Sea island with JFK.
Douglas Adams put it best: “You might think that no one in their right mind would ever engage in such behavior. But there are always a significant number of people who are not in their right minds. And it is by this narrow margin that such industries survive.” Well, the problem with people who are not in their right minds is that they are often far more dangerous than those that are. They are willing to act on their beliefs while the “silent majority” - called so because they lack the courage to actually perform the actions their convictions require - sits, as their name suggests, silently by. The crazies and extremists and fringes and skinheads have no homes or families to worry about, no risk or loss to calculate their activities against. How do we fight that?
I have no idea. But awareness is a good first step. This is, for me, no longer something that happens to other people. This is something that happens to me and mine. So how far am I willing to go to protect what I believe? Am I willing to damage property if someone comes after me because of who I am or what I wear on my head? Am I willing to hurt another person? To cause horrible injury?
I don’t know.
But I suspect that some of us may be forced to decide.
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