Jews in the US are so often conflated with both whiteness and power, that when we cry Anti-Semitism, it rings hollow to most. While there are some very powerful Jews (who don’t in fact run the global conspiracy), Jews worked very hard for decades to take on the mantle of whiteness in this country. Never fully succeeding, but almost. Just enough. Enough that we can’t be viewed as vulnerable. Enough that a discussion of our oppression is a distasteful centering of a privileged experience, because we don’t believe that Jews experience poverty. Or structural disenfranchisement. The reality is that Jews are between 1-2% of the US population, and that at least 20% of Jews live in poverty, and that number is growing every year.

But all this is beside the point. Almost every day of Chanukah there has been an antisemitic attack in NY. A few weeks ago, Jews – and those who stood next them – were murdered in a kosher grocery store for being Jewish. 5 people were stabbed at a Chanukah party last night, and two are in critical condition.

I say this first of all to share my pain. This hurts. I’m afraid. I don’t want this to be my reality of being Jewish in America.

I say this to say that racism, xenophobia, and hatred affect all of us. ALL OF US. Whatever our color, creed, nationality, orientation, or gender identity. As a Jew I join in the experience of oppressed communities who live with fear. I often feel other oppressed communities don’t see us as standing among them. Not with them in solidarity – among them. The line is, we are powerful, privileged, white. This is a historical irony that would be laughable if it weren’t chillingly familiar. Neither are we worthy of sympathy when we are murdered (we can’t be victims if we run the world), nor can we live in power as enfranchised in whatever country we find ourselves (think, “Jews will not replace us”). It is these tropes that led to the Dreyfus affair. The expulsion of Jews from Spain. Yemen. Iran. The pogroms that made homicide the number one cause of Jewish deaths in Russia. Poland. Germany. And too many other crimes to mention.

Anyone who has lived for long enough in America as a Jew knows how your muscles tense, when someone asks, “are you Jewish?” It could be a harmless question. Or you could be next. Those of us who look visibly Jewish – like my husband. My children. Like me. We live with that tension every day. Will it be my synagogue? My children’s school?

Whatever. I guess I write to say don’t look at us and cluck your tongue at Anti-antisemitism, but go on believing the myth that Jews are all powerful and white and therefore our oppression is just a shame. Not an injustice. Not the seeds of racism and hatred. See us for who we are – a race, a people. Defined by our tribe, and not the constructs of whiteness, or brown-ness, or blackness. Stand with us. Stand among us.