When I listen to the news I am horrified and also terrified, but it's a quiet, oddly calm terror, because I feel like I'm watching news from 1938 in Germany, so it's like I'm a spectator watching from far away, and surely it can't be real now. Even though I know it's real and I know it's happening and I know it's in America and I know what I was watching was unfolding in New York City, which I thought of as one of the safest places for Jews in the world, so it does terrify me, even though all of that: I still somehow--I guess it is a survival mechanism, so that the terror won't totally immobilize me--have some kind of denial in place, so that it feels like I'm watching a movie. Yes, I'm terrified, since I know it isn't a movie, it's real, yet the "no, this just can't be" factor counteracts that with "Just stay calm. Live your life. Take care of your fur kids. Get up and go to work tomorrow and act like everything is fine."
Yet I saw what I saw on the evening news last night. Hate-filled antisemites taking over a subway train, demanding that "Anyone who is a Zionist, raise your hands!" "This is your chance to get off now." "No one?" "Good, no Zionists here!"
😮
Did that just happen in America? In New York City? On the subway I've probably ridden on, and that friends of mine ride on, and could have been on?
I had to think last night: would I have raised my hand? I had to hope that I would have. And that I would have said "Yes, I'm a Zionist." And also followed that with "But no, I will not get off this train." Not in America. I can ride the train. ...Can't I?
