You Know The Talk Black Parents Have With Their Sons; You Never Heard Of The One Jews Have
By now you have likely heard how most Black parents warn their sons that one day they may have a run-in with police and that they will be more likely to end up hurt or dead because of the color of their skin. Black parents will instruct their sons to minimize conflict and confusion, so that nothing in the interaction gets escalated. It must be terrifying for a young Black boy to understand what he may be up against one day.
I didn’t grow up knowing about this horrible phenomenon, but it is important for the world to understand the Black experience so we can be more sensitive to it and find ways to reduce any inequality that exists in something as mundane as driving a car. Our world moving towards more understanding and compassion is a wonderful thing. Much of that begins when people who have experienced hardships because of their race, religion, ethnicity, etc. share their stories firsthand.
But I realized recently, with the uptick in antisemitic attacks and anti-Jewish content being promoted online, and the tepid response the world has to it (despite being outraged when any other minority is mistreated), that many gentiles don’t understand the Jewish experience well enough. And perhaps it’s because we haven’t properly explained what it’s like to be a Jew.
The confusion seems to be how Jews could be considered a minority and protected from hate speech when we seem to be doing pretty well. I recently touched on this issue when I wrote about the DeSean Jackson antisemitism scandal. I was speaking to a non-Jewish Black man about shared experiences of Jewish and Black people. We were explaining and listening. It was a very moving and meaningful conversation. And any time either of us spoke about something the other had experienced, there was a sense of building bridges and deepening our understanding of one another.
But he said there is one thing he just can’t figure out, “how could the Jews who pass as white have any oppression in the world today?” This is not the first time this question has come up, and perhaps it’s why there is less empathy for the Jewish experience if it seems like it is the “white experience.” In fact, in both white supremacist circles and the far left/pro-BDS circles, there is a canard of “Jewish privilege” and “white Jewish privilege.” Our enemies on both sides agree that white-passing Jews have it best. I explained that our lack of privilege is not in our skin color or our education or socioeconomic status – it’s in our security – or lack there of.
Which leads me to the talk that many Jewish parents have with their children, but no one ever discusses. I don’t mention this to claim that this experience is exactly like the Black experience – it’s not. But it is crucial that we explain it because it is not openly spoken about and it my hope that by sharing more about our firsthand experiences, more understanding will come about.
I had never even thought about it before as a thing because it was part of my knowledge for as long as I can remember, but after writing about how insecure we Jews feel in our position in the world, and seeing how many readers personally reached out to me to say this point struck a chord with them, I realized that I learned this information at a young age and it was verbalized to me in a conversation with my mother. I spoke to some Jewish friends who told me their mothers had a similar talk with them. It went something like this:
We are hated. We have always been hated. We have been thrown out of, persecuted, and murdered in almost every place we have ever lived. Things may be good here for now, but things were good at other times too and that changed. When Jews are hurt, we stand alone because Jewish blood is cheap.
Other people told me the talk included having passports ready at all times, in case we have to flee on the turn of dime. For Jews who are raised Orthodox, the talk includes being extra vulnerable due to their their dress and the Jewish institutions they frequent. Parents discuss what escape plans they can consider. For more modern Jews, a yarmulke can be replaced with a hat. For Hasidic Jews, there is no way to blend without making a drastic change. This is the most targeted group and members of this group have been attacked with increasing frequency in the last few years.
From an early age, I knew I was different, and I was called out for those differences by non-Jewish classmates, even though I went to public school and looked the same and dressed the same as everyone else. Today as a religious Jew, I feel a target on my back and on the backs of family and friends, as attacks on Jews who dress Jewishly and visit Jewish institutions have been climbing for the last many years and seem to be picking up again this week, with an assault on a man in New York and the mugging of 4 teens in Baltimore.
For every Jewish person reading now and thinking “What’s she talking about? My parents never sat down and formally told me this,” I’m going to prove 80% of you wrong. 80% of Jews attend a seder each year. A seder exists so that the story of the Jewish people can be passed down from parent to child. In fact, the seder is laced with all sorts of random things: like some fathers wear a kittel (a white robe) just so kids will ask why, we wash our hands before eating a vegetable (karpas), just so kids will ask why. There are the four questions recited by the kids themselves – to get the kids asking questions. The idea is to engage the younger generation so they know where they come from, and this is the lesson the children are told:
“in every generation [our enemies] stand [against] us to destroy us…”
We have been strangers in a strange land over and over again. First we were enslaved in Egypt, and then in every generation, our enemies try to destroy us: over and over and over again. So whether you got a formal talk like some of my friends and I did, or if you just celebrated a single Passover in your childhood, you got the talk. You knew that we were different, that we were hated, and that our position has never been secure and would never be secure in exile.
People may not realize this, but as Jews, we live with the constant anxiety and fear that we or one our loved ones could be subjected to a random antisemitic attack at any time, as well as the notion that while the U.S. has been a safe and gracious home for us for hundreds of years, one day, yet again, the tides will turn, and we’ll have to flee.
As the world continues to correct the mistakes of the past, learn about the atrocities many minorities have had to endure, they should be sure to include Jews on the list. While many of us appear to be well-off now, we have been carrying this insecurity about our safety for thousands of years. We hope the good people of the world will make the effort to understand that while we may not fit the minority narrative they’re used to, that it doesn’t make our pain or fear any less valid.
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My father immigrated to the US from Israel as a teen. He is a 7th generation Yerushalmi.
He loves the US and Israel. He is proud to have served in the US Army. He thinks Jews should be free to live anywhere in the world, and should absolutely focus on living here in the US as a bastion of freedom and with the ideals of equality and justice…
But he is also a pragmatist… He did give me the talk about having a passport or 2, and being ready to leave in an instant just incase things went south here… He did have to deal with going to the brig for celebrating Yom Kippur…
And while he may not have needed to give me the talk about police with the same urgency as a black parent would to their child, I did get that talk too, about keeping your hands visible, keeping calm and not doing anything that might escalate a situation with the police…
I have often referred to the idea of “Schrodinger’s Jew”… A play of the absurd hypothetical story Schrodinger’s Cat, about the weirdness of the quantum universe…
Schrodinger’s Jew states that Jews are in a weird superposition of being both white and non-white… Our whiteness is determined by the observer, and whichever narrative is worse for us at that moment…
“Schrodinger’s Jew”… I like that. I’m going to have to remember that one. Thank you, Daniel Jacobovitz.
I got this talk from my oldest son when he enlisted in the IDF. No Jew is safe unless all Jews are safe, and he feels the need to do what he can to make it happen.
“Be strong, and let us strengthen each other”
I took my brother to Yeshiva every day on 3 sbways from the West side to the Lower East side. I made him wear a baseball cap, keep his Tzizit hidden till school, and was hyper-aware of everyone standing or sitting around us. I lived in constant knowledge that I was not safe because I was a jew. Mr. Mann is right about its not being the same, but he minimizes history for his arguement.
Thanks for your comment, Dvorah. The point wasn’t to say the experience is exactly the same. It was to say that there is something Jews can relate to and people need to understand that we are not just “white.” We carry a fear and insecurity from our childhood on.
Jews can pass for white only in this country because a Jew can be mistaken for any Southern European: Italian, French, Greek, Spaniard, Armenian or even Arab. But in Eastern Europe? I can always recognize my fellow Jew, and I am rarely mistaken. Even in this country a combination of looks and last name is often a giveaway. But perhaps one has to have grown in places like the Soviet Union to have a “Jewdar”. In that country it was necessary because certain topics of conversation were never brought up even with non-Jewish friends, only with fellow Jews.
We can “pass” on a superficial level until they find out we’re Jewish. I heard two (white male) bankers where I was doing a transition say to each other, “That’s Mrs. ROSEN (they did everything but wink).”
I grew up in New Mexico, Chicago, and Bay Area CA. Now live in Los Angeles. I’ve experienced Antisemitism in each place. Told not to tell anyone that I am Jewish for safety in each place for different types of Jew haters. New Mexico it was the Catholics saying we killed JESUS, in Chicago I was sent home from a playmates home. I heard her father say, “Send that girl home. You can’t play with her. She’s a Jew.” In Bay Area I was told not to tell anyone I was Jewish because of the “Red Necks”, and my black friends there because of the Muslim brotherhood. There are still people I went to high school with that think I’m Italian or Puerto Rican. I’ve been displaced since I was 13 leaving home. I’ve never felt security as a Jew anywhere. In LA there used to be a sense of security a bit because the large Jewish community. Except now the woke left are trying to cancel, and attack anyone who is Zionist. I never identified as Zionist before now. But, I’m proud and loud. Thank you for writing this. BH
I was born in New York and made aliya to Israel 38 yrs ago. When i grew up in New York we didnt experience a lot of anti semitism it was there but not like today. Thank God i live in Israel, i walk the streets proudly knowing this is our country, not having a fear of antisemitism , never had to tell my children to be afraid of the fact we are Jewish, i am sad for the Jews that dont live in Israel, not knowing true freedom.Living here is the greatest gift you can give your family, the greatest pride a Jew can feel, our country, our army, our police , our land , our people our nation protected miraculously by God. This is where we all should be. America is not what it was. It was a great haven for the Jewish people after WWII, but now the haven for the Jewish people is here in Eretz Yisrael!
True,i left sweden at the age of 17.israel is my home and the only place i feel free.
I live in Israel and after childbirth was only allowed to be realease from the maternity ward with baby sized gas warfare protection. In the US second Iraq war I had to explain to my 5 year old how (and why) to wear her gas mask if nessary. Each one of my kids has asked why are we hated so much? I agree that its definatly an issue. And anywhere in the world where a Jew is persacuted because he is a Jew it means you.
There’s a fear even now making this comment. You asked for our name and email to do so. You realize you are compiling a list of Jews if I post here my name is on a list of Jews… the fear is overwhelming. I turn down FB request to Jewish groups because my profile picture would be associated and they might come for us again. They always come for us. But the reason I came here to comment was the right of passage we call the nose job. Yes it may seem like privilege to afford plastic surgery. But as a young child it wasn’t even a choice I was given. I was raised with “ your father promised at our engagement he would pay for a nose job.” My mother had been brutally teased for her Jewish nose and she would not accept my fathers marriage proposal until he promised to pay for nose jobs for their future children. At 16 I was given one without question if I liked my face. My parents thought they were helping spare me from my identifying Jewish feature.
I think the author forgot that Black Jews exist.
Thanks for your comment, Benjamin. We have featured Black Jews numerous times on this site. The question that this non-Jewish Black man posed to me was “What could Jews who pass as white possibly have to complain about in today’s day and age?” So his question I believe is a very important one. It’s one that forgets that a Jew can be hated and be unsafe even if he has white skin and is economically and educationally in a good place. Jews have been written out of the intersectionality equation for this reason I believe and it’s not right because there still is real danger and real feelings of insecurity.
My earliest memory is my Holocaust-survivor parents showing me my hiding place “when They come.”
One of mine is that my father kept a gun in every closet of the house.
He emigrated from Ukraine with his parents in 1922. Grew up trying to be American. Served in WW2 (AAC) and then reupped for Korea.
He told me that if I needed to shoot someone, that it would most likely be the police. He never lost his fear of “authorities” seeking to round people up.
As for me, growing-up in the Soviet Union, I had that talk all the time! “My son, understand: you’re Jewish. It means that in order to achieve as much as your classmates, you need to be much better than them. For showing the same level of knowledge, you will get B- and they will get A+. This is unfortunate, but that what it means to be a Jew”…
My older sister attempted to get into an university. To get enrolled, one needs to pass 3 exams. She got A- on first two. While arguing with admission department why she was purposely made to fail 3rd exam, after about an hour of arguing had of admission spilled the bins: “We accepting 90 students to that class and we have a quota of only 6 Jews to be accepted. She is over quota!”
This is what was happening there until 1991… For the black people in America it also existed, but it is over since late 70’s! Jews in America, Israel or most of other countries did not experienced it either for last 70-80 years…
Yep, that’s the talk I had. I ended up going to railroad engineering college because they took everybody. Thanks to that, I now have college friends here in the US and Israel.
I was born and grew up in Israel. I’ve learned at school about antisemitism, and like almost any Israeli, had relatives who had perished in the Holocaust as well as survivors; but for me and my generation, that was all ancient history. The Nazis are gone where the Romans had gone, and the Babylonians before them.
While working in high-tech, I had the chance to live in the US for a few years — an open and diverse society. Surely most of the population is Christian, but in the US, religion is a private thing; I didn’t have to face it in any way (well there were these crazy evangelists on the far side of the channels on cable TV…) One of my co-workers was a Mormon, but then one was black, another one a Vietnamese — people in high-tech are pretty much color-blind.
Then one morning, a big swastika appeared on a wall across the street. This was not a Jewish neighborhood, there were no racial or any other tensions at the time, just a quiet suburban street and some bored teenagers painting graffiti. I’m rather sure that whoever did this did not know what it was and where it came from, he only did it because he knew it annoys some people.
But intentional or not, I suddenly realized that yes, such things do still exist.
The Jewish Federation did a survey about Jewish employment here in Columbus. 25% worked for non-Jews. 25% worked for themselves. 50% worked for other Jews. Anti-semitism is rampant and unacknowledged by the general population.
Strangely, I take comfort in this piece. I always thought I was the only one — the only one worried enough to tell youngsters, “you are hated for having been born”, the only one to catastrophize or try to make my kids aware of their status as outsider. I thought I was just over reacting. I think that there are many Jews out there who think that they are the only ones who think like this and whisper to their children that they have to find a way to balance their pride in their identity with a realization that others resent them simply because they exist.
The notion of having one day to flee this country (or any country, but especially this one, which is know to be safe haven for immigrants of all kinds) is just too demoralizing to be taken at face value. Yes, it seems to have some religious merit, but please tell me where in the Torah we’re commanded to be prepared to leave every single place of our residence. I mean, we are warned that this kind of an outcome is in store if we misbehave and get exiled, but I’m not aware of a mitzvah to be prepared to move (or to actually move). Especially if we’re talking not about gathering in Israel under Moshiach, but about fleeing from oppressors. Other minorities – Blacks, Muslims, Asians, Latinos, you name it – are entitled to feel at home in both Europe and North America. So, before demanding the European and American societies to treat us fairly, how about stopping to apply double standards to ourselves. Yes, we’re not “at home” here. But neither do other minorities (or even the white majority, if look from the historical perspective).
The Torah tells us that exile will mean that we’re constantly being chased. It’s pretty clear. The Haggadah tells us enemies will rise up in every generation to destroy us.
Come home to israel you will free forever. Yes ther will be stragels but here you have neitghbors that allways will be ther for you. Ther are wars here but god is present here allways. Come come home
My parents were survivors and I attended Orthodox yeshivas. I have never heard from my assimilated, secular Jewish friends any mention of their parents sitting them down and giving them the Jewish version of “the talk.” On the other hand, people like me didn’t need any talk. The Holocaust was in the marrow of my existence from the time I was born, and every yeshiva boy who wore a yarmulke knew that it was a bad idea to walk past a Brooklyn Catholic school yard or on any streets where there were Black boys congregated. It was also a given that if a bunch of Catholic school kids or Black teenagers got on your subway car – time to go.
The Jews most vulnerable to anti-Semitism don’t need a talk. They know the deal from time they’re small children.
First off, anyone doing a seder got “the talk.” That’s like 90% of Jews. In terms of being told separately, beyond the seder, that we’re hated, that things could turn one day – I didn’t verbalize this to anyone until I was around 40 years old. And this is one of our most shared articles ever. Because it resonates.