So, you're not really Jewish, said a literary man, who came up to chat after a book event.
As is so often the case when Jewishness comes up, I was at a loss for words. It's complicated. My father was a Polish Jew. My mother was a Kiwi Catholic, as
gentile as it gets. Orthodox Judaism says I don't qualify. Reform Judaism says I do. But I'm not religious. Neither was my father. And the Nazis didn't ask my family about their religious practice before murdering them. Being Jewish is my connection to them. I'll take it, if that's okay with the non-Jewish literary guy. I did wonder if he would have mansplained my ethnic status to me had I been from any other minority group.
There's also what isn't said. Some people I've known for ages go silent if I mention unease at the rise in anti-Semitism from, seemingly, all sides. When I was writing my memoir about my family history, it would have seemed far-fetched that five years later people eating sushi in Los Angeles would be asked if they were Jewish, then attacked. Or that the occupants of a convoy of cars would be shouting "F*** the Jews, rape their daughters!" in London streets.
In other news, the BBC is investigating an employee who tweeted anti-Semitic posts, including, "#HitlerWasRight" in 2014. There was a CNN contributor who tweeted, "The world today needs another Hitler." Silence over these things from the end of the political spectrum I gravitate to and could count on to call out racism is painful.
But criticism of Israel isn't anti-Semitism, people say. No argument here. The trick is noticing when it is. See the case of the Google diversity head's now-deleted blog about Israel-Palestine. He wrote, "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defence of myself … I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering [of] others." Not criticism of Israel but of Jews. It's not that hard.
