This week a friend’s son in Toronto posted a video after a terrible antisemitic incident he had while simply walking his dog. He was really shaken up from it. A man coming towards him with no provocation suddenly smashed him into a fence shouting profanity-ladened words about him as a Jew, and ending with “Free Palestine”.
Every day it is more, every day it escalates– from the stabbing of a Chabad rabbi in Boston to a swastika carved into an elevator at the State Department in Washington, D.C.
As I shared before, whenever I would go to any country pre-pandemic I would ask them about the state of the local antisemitism. They would always say it wasn’t good, but then quickly would point to another country and say it’s worse “over there”. And then the conversation would end with different variations of: “Thank G-d we have Israel because we can always get on a plane.”
And I would respond: “Don’t you think the planes can stop flying?” And then they did.
I do believe that all of this is happening as a huge wake-up call for us personally and collectively as the Jewish people. Few that I know are going back to “the way it was”, because we can’t. We are living history and we must make the most of the opportunity in front of us to rise and change. We must ask ourselves, based on all that we see, where do I fit in? What can I contribute to the Jewish people at this critical time?
Jews died in Jersey City, in Monsey, in Pittsburgh…. Our rabbi always said, “When you know what you’re willing to die for, now you know what you’re willing to live for.”
Let’s live to be Jews. Am Yisrael Chai!
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