gonna be bold and say that kids who grew up going to jewish day school are more likely to excuse casual antisemitism, a thread:

a few disclaimers:
1) this does NOT apply to violent antisemitism. i’m not claiming that any members of the jewish community excuse violent attacks because i just don’t think that’s true. only microaggressions.

2) in no way does this apply to all jewish day school kids. i’m an exception to this myself lol. i’m just saying why it would be easier for them to excuse casual antisemitism and what that means for how antisemitism is viewed.

3) i’m not talking about anything politically-motivated here. everyone has their political biases and excuse antisemitism for that reason (hate to see it), but this is about casual antisemitism in general on all sides of the political spectrum (bc there’s antisemitism on both!)

i’ve found that a lot of jewish day school kids (i’m gonna use JDSK for convenience) are also involved in other jewish organizations (camp, etc.), probably because their parents have enough money to send them to these institutions and they end up w little to no contact w non-jews

and in only jewish spaces, Holocaust jokes and other ironic antisemitism is pretty regular. jokes about jewish noses or anything about gas chambers isn’t a big issue because obviously no one is going to inflict violence on jews for being jewish if they’re jewish themselves...

it becomes a problem when it’s normalized to the extend when JDSK don’t know how bad it is when a non-jew does it. non-JDSK might have actually experienced antisemitism at their schools and know what it’s like to feel separate or even unsafe at school.

but JDSK don’t. the first time a non-jew told me a Holocaust/casually antisemitic joke, i didn’t know how to react. i think i just laughed awkwardly, but i wish now that i had said something. (if you want to know what the joke was, it happened when i was at theater camp, one of-

my only experiences not being surrounded by jews, and we were doing footloose. in footloose the reverend (? i don’t know christianity but he wasn’t a priest bc he had kids) banned dancing from the very christian town. i asked the guy who played him if there were any jews in the-

town (which i forgot the name of), and he said “no, we got rid of all of them.” i was kinda like ‘i don’t think hes supposed to say that but it just felt so lighthearted...’ so then i just awkwardly laughed! but telling a jew a joke about getting rid of all the jews... wtf.)

anyway, since JDSK don’t have much exposure to non-jews, especially if we spend all our time at jewish summer camp or a jewish youth group, when we finally do get that exposure we might think that antisemitic jokes are just normal. we don’t actually know how non-jews act.

i feel like part of the reason why i’ve become so strong on fighting antisemitism is because i run a jewish meme account (lolll) and ive received comments and DMs that are explicitly and sometimes violently antisemitic that targeted my page because it has “jew” in the username.

also, in being involved in other forms of activism, i understand how microaggressions contribute to the larger problem of hate against whichever group and leads to violence.

so how does JDSK accepting casual antisemitism manifest in conversations ahout antisemitism? (mini-disclaimer: i’m just speaking from my personal experience.) for example, at a high school in my county, a student made his senior quote “88”, which stands for HH (H being the 8th -

letter of the alphabet), which stands for heil h*tler. someone who goes to the school brought it up in a group chat with mostly non-JDSK, but one of the people who was going easier on the student was a JDSK.

the student claimed that he was referring to the 88th street park (which no one calls the 88th street park) and that he didn’t mean to offend anyone. he was also known for being homophobic and racist so i wonder why he would be praising h*tler and making a joke out of it...

the JDSK that i’m talking about was kind of defending him, saying stuff like “what if he actually didn’t mean it that way?” in fact, the very phrase “88” was invented to have a way for n*zis to be n*zis without people being able to tell easily, so i’ll bet he wanted people to-

think “what if he actually didn’t mean it?” regardless, i think he did mean it, and the schools screening process for senior quotes somehow didn’t detect a quote that was on ADL’s list of hate symbols. they also haven’t sent out a replacement page for it. https://www.change.org/p/hudson-county-schools-of-technology-superintendent-lin-rodriguez-and-the-hcst-board-of-education-address-the-hate-symbol-in-the-high-tech-high-school-yearbook-9312a1df-3adf-443e-bb45-d4242c5e1ead

aside from that incident, i feel like i see non-JDSK posting on social media about antisemitism a lot more. it makes sense, bc (a) they have an audience of more non-jews,(b) they probably experience more antisemitism, and (c) antisemitism isn’t as addressed in non-jewish spaces.

also, i am speaking about this from what i’ve seen along my peers, who are in high school (like myself). i would hope that JDSK stop excusing antisemitism once they get to college and encounter more of it themselves.

onto the consequences this has for the jewish community: members of any group who don’t acknowledge that groups suffering are easily tokenized. i would hate to see non-jews take advantage of jews who havent experienced much antisemitism just because they don’t speak out about it.

no one can ever speak on behalf of their whole group. so it’s dangerous when a JDSK gives the impression that anyone who thinks something is antisemitic is overreacting bc they’ve come to that conclusion based on their personal understanding of antisemitism, which differs a lot.

i’m not trying to blame all JDSK, but i will blame those who are ignorant. my definition of antisemitism could be different from yours, but don’t invalidate mine (or a non-JDSK) because yours is different and comes from a place of privilege.

anyway, this is the end of the thread. it would be great if you could scroll back up and sign the petition to get rid of the hate symbol in the yearbook, but the school has pretty much already given a terrible response to it. i can talk about that more if you want :)

this is an update to the petition where they said that the yearbook would be reprinted but don’t acknowledge the hate symbol. what kinda goyish bs is this. the student also has connections with the school board hmm wonder how that happened... they’re also making excuses h8 2 c it

okayyy one more thing. i realize that non-JDSK can also be desensitized to antisemitism due to fear of calling it out and experiencing so much of it. whether or not their dismissal of it extends to them truly believing something is not antisemitic, i don’t know.

i just made this thread to point out that i do think products of jewish day school education can consider less stuff antisemitism bc of all the reasons i named. but no generalizations are going to be 100% accurate, obviously, and i hope it was clear that that wasn’t my intention.