Daisy's Amazing Jewish Blog

Patrilineal Jews, Jews of Color, Non-Orthodox Jews: well maybe if you weren’t actively trying to advocate that we weren’t Jewish, or that we are “less Jewish” than you….

Various Institutional Jewish organizations: ………

Today, after yet another shooting against Jews for being Jews where Lori Kaye, Z’’L, was murdered, many of us who are familiar with the refrain “Never Again” are instead saying “It keeps happening.” It happened in Pittsburgh last October. It happened last January with the murder of Blaze Bernstein, Z’’L. It happened during the Unite the Right rally in August of 2017 when white supremacists marched past a synagogue, shouted “Jews will not replace us,” and ended with the assault of DeAndre Harris (by anti-Black, white supremacists) and the murder of Heather Heyer, Z’’L. It happened in 2014 with the shooting at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and Village Shalom, which ended with the deaths of three people. It keeps happening, and none of us feels safe. None of us feels safe because it feels like we have to prove our pain to everyone else to be taken seriously. Our pain and deaths and experiences are not enough in and of themselves. And even then, the validation is fleeting and temporal at best.

It should be enough for us to tell you about our pain. It should be enough to see us killed for being Jewish. It should be enough to remind people that the Shoah happened within living memory. It should be enough for us to tell you that something is antisemitic. But it never is. It never is for us, and it never is for other minorities, and it never is for those of us who hold multiple identities.

Today we mourn for the six million (at least) of us who were murdered because they were Jewish and therefore judged as not worthy of dignity, humanity, or compassion. Today we mourn while knowing that antisemitism and white supremacy are not relics of the past, but are living ideologies that continue to hurt, oppress, and kill us.

Today I can’t say “never again,” but I can say something different. I can say we’re still here. I can say that while we remember what Amalek continues to do to us, we have still survived. I can say Hitler is dead and we’re still here. I can say Am Yisrael Chai, the Jewish people lives.