New York rabbi: Why I lied to my mom when she asked if I felt safe
(RNS) — I lied to my mother yesterday. She asked if I felt safe after yet another attack last week on two residents, one of whom was Jewish, in New York City. I told her yes. I don’t even feel bad about lying. That is what this moment has done to Jews like myself in New York and around the country.
Attacks against Jews are on the rise. Nearly 70% of faith-driven hate crimes in the U.S. are directed against Jews, and we make up only about 2% of the population. About 50% of all hate crimes — faith-driven and otherwise — in NYC this year have targeted Jews, who are only 10% of the city’s overall population. Anyone who thinks there isn’t a problem, frankly, has a problem.
Anyone who thinks that the 91% of American Jews who feel less safe than they did 12 months ago are simply out of their minds is grossly insensitive, at best — and complicit in setting the conditions for things to get even worse by accepting or even excusing these circumstances.
My mother’s fear for her kippah-wearing son is neither unfounded nor irrational. So I lied and assured her that I was wearing a cap when out. I do not. I wear my kippah openly as I always have.
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield (Photo courtesy of The National Jewish Center For Learning and Leadership)
I lied because I could not tell her not to worry and expect her to believe that. We live in unacceptable circumstances, which no one should have to tolerate. I did not want to suggest that her fears are illegitimate. So I chose to protect her, rather than reassure her with a truth that I don’t fully believe.
I do believe I am generally quite safe in New York. In spite of the disturbing, unacceptable statistics, I feel okay about living in a business-as-usual way. I do not feel under siege on a day-to-day basis. Jews aren’t confronted by hate constantly or even regularly. The lie I told my mom reflects how I hold both truths at once: that something is genuinely wrong and unacceptable, and yet I am, most days, okay.
Jews in America live in times that are more dangerous than they have been in some time, and Jews in America are also safer than Jews have been in most places over the course of the past 2,000 years. Not only can both of those realities be true, both of them are true, and the ability to embrace that “both-ness” holds at least part of the key to making things better.
Minimizing the rising dangers faced by Jews, rationalizing the current situation as an understandable, or even justifiable, response to the linkage between Judaism and Zionism or assuming that the end is near for American Jews, which are the three most common approaches I see to the current reality, all make the problem worse. Each treats the crisis as a proof point for what the advocates already believed; rather than problem solving, it substitutes pious handwringing.
Last week, a man was accused of stabbing a Jewish man and an Asian man in New York City while allegedly shouting “Allahu Akbar.” The phrase, Arabic for “God is great,” recited by Muslims for centuries in contexts sacred and mundane, has also, in recent decades, become words associated with the detonation of a bomb, firing a gun or stabbing a victim. That fact is uncomfortable — but it should not be ignored. It may also be true that the person shouting it is mentally ill. Both things can be true.
Would that those who quickly dismissed the attacker’s religious call to violence as rantings of a madman had instead admitted that there is a serious problem that disproportionately impacts Jews — regardless of the victims’ or attacker’s politics. Leaders who fail to appreciate that are setting the stage for more such attacks.
At the same time, those who know that Jews face more danger in America than in decades are wrong to immediately assume that this attack had nothing to do with mental illness. Focusing so much of our attention on antisemitism, as real as it is, risks suggesting that it is the new American norm. It isn’t. Most of the time, in most places in the U.S., it is perfectly safe to be publicly Jewish.
What needed to happen last week was for political leaders, including the mayor, not to jump to mental illness as the explanation and to acknowledge the reality of the faith-based hate in their city. We also needed Jewish leaders to reassure residents that the attack on New York’s Upper West Side was both unacceptable and an aberration, not the norm. Making people increasingly fearful is not a great plan for creating community or building healthy identity. As galvanizing as combating antisemitism is, it is no substitute for living proudly as a Jew, however each of us may define that.
Ultimately, we need people who are afraid to live less fearfully. Not naively, but with less fear. As a famous Hasidic teaching says, “the whole world is a narrow bridge, and the main thing (to living on that bridge well) is to live fearlessly.”
Equally important, we need the least afraid, those who are quick to explain away why these things happen — mental health, political realities, religious misunderstandings, etc. — to be more fearful. We need them to ask themselves where they are failing all of us, whether we are Jewish or not. After all, nobody ever got calmer from being told to “calm down,” but they often do calm down when they feel that others take their fear and pain seriously, rather than explain it away.
That’s ultimately why I lied to my mom. It was the only way I could take her pain and fear seriously from 2,500 miles away. It’s why I continue to wear my kippah, not in defiance, not because I am so brave, but because we all live on a narrow bridge and life never gets better when governed by fear. But it can and will get better when everyone acknowledges the full picture of what is happening — especially when it feels uncomfortable to do so.
(Brad Hirschfield is a rabbi, author and President of The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL). He also is founding editor of The Wisdom Daily. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)