Opinion: American Jews now facing political ‘homelessness’
A swastika. A blood-soaked Star of David. These were the symbols I saw on signs held by protesters at the Penn State University gates. These were signs, not of a far-right, extremist, white supremacist group, but of a progressive group calling out Jewish organizations on campus. They were held next to a Palestinian flag. The swastika replaced the “Z” in “Zionist.” The Star of David was atop a sign calling Penn State Hillel and Chabad “RACIST” in large, red, capital letters.
I, a proud Jewish man, stood looking at the signs, my jaw agape. One of the older men must have seen the expression on my face. He began to shout, “it’s all true, by the way, it’s all true!” I turned to him, barely able to speak, but full of rage. I said, “you used a swastika?” Then the other protesters joined in, shouting slurs, hurling insults. I was called, among other things, a “heretic” and “a [expletive] Jew.” A professor at Penn State — who, by the way, is horrified by the violence in Gaza — a father and an active member of the community, none of that mattered to them. I was, again, just “a [expletive] Jew.”
Another local example: a State College friend of mine, also Jewish, was sent graphic images of maimed, disfigured, bloodied Palestinian children on Facebook. They were followed by the words, “I blame you.” The sender, also local, has since tried to have my friend removed from conferences and professional engagements.
Not merely in State College, but everywhere after the October 7 pogrom, Jews have been harassed and excluded, sometimes verbally, sometimes violently. These are, again, not attacks of the right, but of leftist groups. As a result, I and many other left-leaning Jews have found ourselves politically isolated from those with whom we typically unite in solidarity.
The issue is that Jews like me find no solace among those on the right, either. It is more than merely ideological difference, and it is more than the very troubled association of the far right with anti-Semitic violence. It is that they have expressed an increasingly strident defense of Christian nationalism, thereby threatening to undo the religious tolerance that has made America a home for generations of Jews. The harder it becomes to tell the difference between a conservative agenda and a Christian nationalist one, the harder it is for any Jew to associate politically with them.
All this is to say that the extremism found on both sides of the political spectrum has hit Jews particularly hard. It has left them experiencing a familiar, frightening, portentous kind of “homelessness” in the political sphere. For this exclusion bears resemblance to the kind of homelessness occasioning the so-called “Jewish Question” of 19th and 20th-century Europe: the matter of where, in the context of political nationalism and the modern nation-state, Jews were meant to belong. It was this very question that begat a series of violent pogroms throughout the continent, culminating in the Holocaust.
My claim is that, with a political right increasingly interested only in white Christians, and a political left barely containing its hatred, the question faces American Jews anew: where, indeed, do we figure in this political landscape? And if the answer is as it seems: that we do not figure at all, then what does that mean for our place in America, generally? Who will represent and defend the interests of the 21st century Jew?
It matters that Americans, and not just Jews, grapple with this question. For the most cherished elements of the American spirit — the free exchange of ideas, the openness to and acceptance of diverse cultures and worldviews — are impossible without the inclusion of Jewish voices. And words like “inclusivity,” “belonging,” “freedom” and “democracy” — in short, the words that define 21st-century America — are at best empty if we cannot accommodate and accept Jewish views, without hatred, without prejudice.