#JEWISTHENEWBLACK

As the Park East attack last night confirms, the rules of racism can no longer exclude Jews; get ready for Jewish versions of "The Talk"— and Hebros packing heat!

Earlier this year I published a piece in Commentary Magazine titled “How America’s Jews Became America’s New Blacks.” In it, I described how the current wave of antisemitism across the United States has resulted in a condition where America’s Jews — despite being what many would call “White” — are enduring the types of systematic and institutionalized discrimination that now borders on the racism African-Americans have experienced for centuries. (Full Disclosure: I am both Jewish-American and African-American — I know what I am talking about!).

The world’s oldest hatred get’s a decidedly 21st century make-over.

The piece is centered on the long-held progressive dictate that “Black people cannot be racist” because we lack the formalized institutional power that racism has always demanded. But in the piece I posit that the counter notion — that white people cannot experience racism — is no longer valid, at least when it comes to American Jews in this post-October 7th moment.

“We are living through a moment when Jews are being chased, pogrom-like, through the streets of Amsterdam, placed on “anti-Zionist” lists preventing them from earning a living, denied the ability to attend university classes at their own schools, and having their homes and businesses menaced and vandalized simply because they are Jews—so what else can we call this but racism,” I wrote in the piece. What’s more, each of these examples — and more — have occurred with either the support of the very institutions that are supposed to protect Jews, or because such institutions have tacitly failed to do so.

The piece ends with me pondering whether in the face of increasingly violent antisemitic attacks across America, will Jewish parents now be forced to have “the talk” with their kids as they ease into their teenage years and face the world on their own.

“As I think about the ways in which American Jews have become the focus of the nation’s new racist tide, I can’t help thinking about my own sons, who via unexpected twists of genetics are far lighter-skinned than myself. They’re unlikely ever to experience the type of racism I’ve known my entire life—including from Jews. Nor might they face the risk of violent (if not deadly) police encounters that have led most African-American families to have “the talk” with their children about how to comport themselves around law enforcement.”

In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s shocking win as New York’s next mayor — along with the increasing codification of anti-zionism and antisemitism among the Democrat’s extreme left fringe — I’m once again thinking about “the talk.” How could I not. Only last night dozens of violent, unruly agitators swarmed outside of Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue to protest an event hosted by Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization which encourages Jewish immigration to Israel.

The scene outside Park East last night…..

As has been so often the case, the protestors were unruly, confrontational and violent. They blocked entrances, intimidated attendees and made clear everyone understood that they were hell-bent on globalizing the intifadeh. I was home a mile north looking after my twins. But I instinctively understand that an attack on Jews anywhere is an attack on Jews everywhere.

Even though most folks rarely identify me as a Jew, I know that these attacks will ultimately impact me one day, just as they will every Jew — everywhere. Which leads me back to “the talk.”

As I wrote in Commentary nearly a year ago, my mother never sat me down and gave me the talk. “Perhaps because my mother is white—or maybe because I was just preternaturally obedient as a teen—we never had that conversation in my home, and I’ve managed to reach far into adulthood without ever tussling with the cops,” I wrote at the time.

“Still, I am certain I will sit down soon with my boys for our own type of “talk.” That talk will not be about how to handle themselves around police officers. Rather it will center on how to emerge unscathed from the equally dangerous encounters that many American Jews will now inevitably endure as they face anti-Semitic racists.”

Although I suspect the average Jewish-American family has likely never even heard of “the Talk,” it’s high time they did. And fast. The Park East horror lays clear that Jews — like Blacks before them — are now under attack not because of anything we might do, but simply because of who we are. And Jewish parents must prepare their kids accordingly.

It doesn’t matter if we’re pro- or anti-Zionist; secular or religious; Sephardic or Ashkenazi. Just look at two of the world’s highest-profile “I’m not that kind of Jew” Jews — the insipid and odious faith-traitor Peter Beinart, along with Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum.

Both are Jewish and both have anchored their political and public personas by distancing themselves from support of Israel — along with many of the totems of conventional diaspora Judaism.

Words matter…….

And yet as both learned over the past two weeks, Jews can try to opt out of Zionism and Judaism — but the antisemites and anti-Zionists will never truly let them. “Puta Judia” — “Jewish bitch” was what Sheinbaum encountered outside of the Supreme Court Building in Mexico City, which was convulsed by raucous anti-government protest which had nothing to do with Israel and Judaism — and everything to do with entrenched corruption and narcotics cartels.

The same week, Beinart — one of the most ardent anti-Zionist commentators working today — was blasted by the pro-Palestinian crowd he so gleefully champions simply because his response to seeing swastikas emblazoned on Brooklyn buildings wasn’t sufficiently pro-Palestinian enough. Spoiler Alert people — for the “dismantle Zionism” crowd, nothing you say and nothing you do will ever be enough!

I just want to be loved — by the people who want to slaughter me…….

And so here we are, six weeks or so before Mamdani’s inauguration and Manhattan streets are once again ablaze of kaffiyah-clad marauders committed to preventing Jews from doing the most basic Jewish thing of all, entering their houses of worship.

Just a few hours after the Park East shanda, Abe Greenwald, Executive Editor at Commentary and a whip-smart fellow Hebro suggested on X that it’s high time for us Jews to fucking fight back, Malcolm X-style: By Any Means Necessary. And this might even mean Jews packing heat:

Conceal-carry licenses aren’t as hard to obtain in NY as they once were. You can’t carry on the subway, but you can carry at shul — Abe Greenwald

There are few things I am more opposed to than guns — they tend to wind up shooting people who look like me more than others — but Greenwald is probably onto something. As I wrote two years ago in The Forward, “The ‘politics of respectability’ must end now for American Jews.” Eighteen months later I echoed these sentiments in The Jerusalem Post with the piece “Jewish Timidity Must End: Lessons from October 7th and Beyond.”

Fuck respectability — fuck timidity; no one is coming to rescue us, people!

As Greenwald observed so presciently late last night, even before Mamdani assumes office Jews in New York cannot count on our authorities to protect us from the folks who want to harm us. It reminds me of my own father and aunt, who were raised under segregation in the South and were among the first Black kids to integrate their segregated schools.

Both endured violence and resistance from the hands of white-supremacists, violence and resistance often aided — or certainly not prevented — by the institutions tasked with doing so. Today we would call that “racism” and no one would dare to question us. Now as Jews endure the same indignities, we must call out this racism for what it is as well.

Because nothing less is the ultimate proof of the new scourge of racism — racism against Jews — that so many for so long insisted was an impossibility.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER: Jews defending Jews is a revolutionary act — be revolutionaries.