I am sick of the amount of anti-Semitism in the country I live in and the planet I live on. Last year I made a post in which I noted that while I had experienced relatively little direct anti-Semitism in my daily life, I had nonetheless assimilated the idea that being a responsible Jew in a majority non-Jewish society meant pretending the whole thing was a non-issue unless a non-Jew happened to mention it, in which case it was permissible to agree politely before turning the conversation to some other, non-Jewish axis of marginalization which was actually valid and worth combating, as opposed to some guilt-tripping specter of the oppression Olympics that everyone knew had magically melted out of existence with V-E Day. I concluded that was pernicious bullshit. That hasn't stopped a great many of my fellow Americans from behaving, whether from belief or opportunism, as though it's true. I believe it was around the time of the Chicago Dyke March that I had the thrilling first experience of being told in so many words by some white dude on Facebook that Jews forfeited the right to participate in public discourse when they engaged in genocide, which he followed up by calling for the death of Israel. I'd have gotten it sooner, and maybe on a daily basis, if I were on Tumblr or Twitter. This isn't even the conspiracy theories and the hate crimes; this is just the second-order gaslighting. It didn't happen. It doesn't happen. And if it should happen, well, you deserved it.
James Agee had mixed feelings about Gentleman's Agreement (1947). That's all right; I have problems with it myself. But I have mixed feelings about his mixed feelings. He praises the film's writing, directing, and acting; then he acknowledges that while "[m]uch of its more serious stuff, about Anti-Semitism, is very good and very heartening too . . . [i]n a way it is as embarrassing to see a movie Come Right Out Against Anti-Semitism as it would be to see a movie Come Right Out Against torturing children." If he means that it's embarrassing because it's clumsily done, I might give him that. I don't remember the movie being subtle, and it is the particular kind of earnest Hollywood unsubtlety that, if you are already aware of the problem, can leave you feeling well-meaningly whatever-the-broader-social-justice-equivalent-of-mansplained-is at. But if he means that it's embarrassing because everyone knows anti-Semitism is wrong in the same way that everyone knows child-torturing is wrong and therefore it is unnecessary to educate anyone about how wrong it is, in fact not everyone does know either of those things, and some people are extremely invested in not finding out. They have become especially vocal in the last couple of years. They have become especially active.
I tell people that just because one of their friends got hit by a freight train doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt that they got hit by a car. In the ongoing conversation about sex and consent, I don't find it controversial to say that a lot of things can be not assault and still not be acceptable. Just because we haven't reached the worst-case scenario doesn't mean that everything is fine. So we aren't experiencing Shoah 2.0; it's still not all right that we have an Illinois Nazi about to win the Republican primary. (He will almost certainly get wiped off the map by his Democratic opponent, but it's still setting a precedent.) It's not all right that I no longer have to tune my ears to dogwhistle frequency to hear the rising levels of Jewish conspiracy in public and private speech. It's not all right that I'm still afraid every time I post something alluding to the existence of anti-Semitism that some friend-of-a-friendlist stranger will wander by and give me grief for it, or worse, people I know and trust will tell me to stop being so sensitive. Or I'll say something about Pesach and get asked how I can take pride in being Jewish when Israel, which has also now happened to me, thrillingly.
This post brought to you by encountering in quick succession first the news that the president of Poland has signed into law the bill criminalizing acknowledgement of his country's complicity in the Holocaust and then an internet critic complaining that Alden Ehrenreich's Han Solo looks too Jewish. I think most people who aren't trawling for an excuse for Holocaust denial can agree that the first of these things is a problem. The second looks as though it should be dismissible; first of all the critic's conception of Han Solo as a "casual-frat boy-with-an-attitude" looks more like projection than canon and secondly Harrison Ford, parent and original of that scoundrel swagger, is, don't even bother to wait for it, Jewish. But since what the critic is actually saying is that the identifiably Jewish Ehrenreich is thereby insufficiently manly to play as iconically masculine a character as the implicitly gentile (in a galaxy far, far away) Han Solo, it's not any more dismissible than other racist complaints about casting, like Noma Dumezweni's Hermione ruining Harry Potter forever.
I have no clever conclusions. I am sick of things getting worse. And I am sick of the manifestation of things getting worse that tells me that I'm not allowed to say so. Pain is not a zero-sum game.
James Agee had mixed feelings about Gentleman's Agreement (1947). That's all right; I have problems with it myself. But I have mixed feelings about his mixed feelings. He praises the film's writing, directing, and acting; then he acknowledges that while "[m]uch of its more serious stuff, about Anti-Semitism, is very good and very heartening too . . . [i]n a way it is as embarrassing to see a movie Come Right Out Against Anti-Semitism as it would be to see a movie Come Right Out Against torturing children." If he means that it's embarrassing because it's clumsily done, I might give him that. I don't remember the movie being subtle, and it is the particular kind of earnest Hollywood unsubtlety that, if you are already aware of the problem, can leave you feeling well-meaningly whatever-the-broader-social-justice-equivalent-of-mansplained-is at. But if he means that it's embarrassing because everyone knows anti-Semitism is wrong in the same way that everyone knows child-torturing is wrong and therefore it is unnecessary to educate anyone about how wrong it is, in fact not everyone does know either of those things, and some people are extremely invested in not finding out. They have become especially vocal in the last couple of years. They have become especially active.
I tell people that just because one of their friends got hit by a freight train doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt that they got hit by a car. In the ongoing conversation about sex and consent, I don't find it controversial to say that a lot of things can be not assault and still not be acceptable. Just because we haven't reached the worst-case scenario doesn't mean that everything is fine. So we aren't experiencing Shoah 2.0; it's still not all right that we have an Illinois Nazi about to win the Republican primary. (He will almost certainly get wiped off the map by his Democratic opponent, but it's still setting a precedent.) It's not all right that I no longer have to tune my ears to dogwhistle frequency to hear the rising levels of Jewish conspiracy in public and private speech. It's not all right that I'm still afraid every time I post something alluding to the existence of anti-Semitism that some friend-of-a-friendlist stranger will wander by and give me grief for it, or worse, people I know and trust will tell me to stop being so sensitive. Or I'll say something about Pesach and get asked how I can take pride in being Jewish when Israel, which has also now happened to me, thrillingly.
This post brought to you by encountering in quick succession first the news that the president of Poland has signed into law the bill criminalizing acknowledgement of his country's complicity in the Holocaust and then an internet critic complaining that Alden Ehrenreich's Han Solo looks too Jewish. I think most people who aren't trawling for an excuse for Holocaust denial can agree that the first of these things is a problem. The second looks as though it should be dismissible; first of all the critic's conception of Han Solo as a "casual-frat boy-with-an-attitude" looks more like projection than canon and secondly Harrison Ford, parent and original of that scoundrel swagger, is, don't even bother to wait for it, Jewish. But since what the critic is actually saying is that the identifiably Jewish Ehrenreich is thereby insufficiently manly to play as iconically masculine a character as the implicitly gentile (in a galaxy far, far away) Han Solo, it's not any more dismissible than other racist complaints about casting, like Noma Dumezweni's Hermione ruining Harry Potter forever.
I have no clever conclusions. I am sick of things getting worse. And I am sick of the manifestation of things getting worse that tells me that I'm not allowed to say so. Pain is not a zero-sum game.
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