Antisemitism On The Rise: Religious Symbols Being Hidden

As Gaza conflict triggers antisemitism, some US Jews hide religious symbols

SHIRA HANAU, BEN SALES and RON KAMPEAS

When Ricki moved into her new ground-floor apartment in New York City less than a year ago, she felt perfectly comfortable placing a mezuzah on the front door for all who passed through the lobby to see.

Today she feels less sanguine about that choice.

Ricki hasn’t removed the mezuzah, but she has asked the building’s management to put bars on her windows. And she’s still considering taking down the Jewish symbol.

“When I put it up I was really proud of it,” Ricki said, declining to use her last name due to privacy concerns. “I’m not embarrassed of being Jewish, I knew when I put it up that people would see it. But I really didn’t think twice about it.”

She’s not alone in having second thoughts now.

This week, Jews across the United States have been attacked because of the fighting in Israel and Gaza. In Los Angeles, pro-Palestinian attackers threw punches and bottles at diners at a sushi restaurant. In New York’s heavily Jewish Diamond District, protesters of Israel threw fireworks from a car amid a violent street altercation.

As footage of those attacks and others spreads online, American Jews say they are feeling a renewed anxiety around identifying themselves publicly as Jews. Some are taking off their kippas or Star of David necklaces. Others, like Ricki, are considering the removal of their mezuzahs. Some are mulling whether it’s safe to walk into synagogue.

That anxiety has long been familiar to Jews in Europe and elsewhere in the world. At times it has reared its head in the United States, like in 2018 following the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. A survey last year by the American Jewish Committee found that nearly a quarter of Jewish respondents avoided wearing or displaying something that would mark them as Jewish at some point in the previous two years.

This week, American Jews feared they could be targeted due to an association, real or imagined, with Israel and its actions regarding the Palestinians. For some American Jews, that fear is manifesting in decisions to tamp down their public displays of Jewishness as a way to protect themselves.

“On the one hand I want to be a proud Jew and express to the world that that’s something I’m passionate about,” said Drew Feldman, a theater director and writer who has taken to wearing a baseball cap more often in recent days rather than his kippa due to the tension he feels around the conflict in Israel. “On the other hand, the Torah says we have to put life above all else.”

Feldman, who spent the past several months living in Tennessee, first started wearing a kippa regularly in 2015 as he became more interested in his Judaism and more observant. He recently called his rabbi to discuss whether it would be appropriate to stop wearing it for a while.

More...