When Jews Turn Anti-Semitism against Their Orthodox Brethren

During the intermediate days of Sukkot, young Chabad Ḥasidim, off from school or yeshiva, can be seen on street corners asking passersby if they are Jewish and, if the answer is yes, offering them a chance to perform the ritual waving of the four species, an integral part of the holiday. Ben Cohen, on the streets of Manhattan’s heavily Jewish Upper West Side, witnessed a woman berating one such ḥasidic boy, who appeared about thirteen:

Once I was in earshot, the first thing I heard her say was, “there’s enough anti-Semitism around without you people making it worse.” I hadn’t planned to interject, but I couldn’t let a remark like that (“you people”) go unanswered. So I faced her and said, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you should know that Jews are never responsible for causing anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is a non-Jewish problem.”

Arching her eyebrows at me, her first response was to say, “I’m Jewish.” [And then], her commentary became a whole lot worse. The young boy she was yelling at wasn’t wearing a mask, and this was the source of her displeasure. Was I not aware, she asked me, that “these kids are coming up here from these communities in Brooklyn where none of them are vaccinated and they don’t wear masks?”

Leave aside that this encounter took place in the open air and the ḥaredi kid was standing about ten feet away from the woman, so it wasn’t technically necessary for him to wear a mask. What she articulated, as I told her directly, was a malicious lie. . . . [Moreover], the blanket assertion that “none of them” have been vaccinated, that “none of them” wear masks, and that they shouldn’t be walking around the city freely as a consequence, is rooted in prejudice, not reasoned appraisal of the facts.

That a Jewish individual should react in this way is shocking and certainly heartbreaking. The woman’s willingness to use ostensibly reasonable concerns about public health as an excuse to berate a child in public was an unmistakable sign that she was driven by a primal dislike of ḥaredi Jews, rather than a desire to bolster that community’s acceptance of the vaccine; . . . in her view, these Ḥaredim were outsiders who had taken over the streets, poisoning a close-knit community in the process and thereby making life unnecessarily difficult for those Jews who are, well, much more like everyone else.

The vast majority of violent anti-Semitic attacks in the U.S., it should be noted, are directed at ḥaredi Jews.

Read more at JNS

More about: American Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Coronavirus, Haredim

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF