Vos Kan a Yid Ton…?

In Yiddish, the equivalent of “what can you do about it?” literally translated to, “what can a Jew do?”

I often find myself using this phrase in English endlessly.

(Other gems that I tend to throw in from various languages: “hetkinen” from Finnish [one moment], “sussa!” from Greenlandic [not worth it, I don’t care, no matter], “absolut”, best known from Swedish, “hejsan” / “heisan” / “hejsa” from assorted Scandinavian, and trailing “oder?” at the end of the sentence as in German. Interestingly, no Hebrew words. Possibly because I spent most of my developing life treating Hebrew as solely a liturgical language. How atypical this was of my Jewish upbringing. Moving on…)

At no time do I find myself asking this question more often when I encounter threads of Internet commenters on Jewish websites or even on Facebook pages, railing hateful remarks about pretty much every single country on earth with the exclusion of the United States, Canada, and Israel.

An Israeli friend of mine from Heidelberg told me that this vitriol wasn’t the norm in Israel nor would it be the norm in North America. Thankfully, according to my experience at JTS (and in much of the rest of the world), it turns out that he is right. Or so it seems.

Do you know how many times I’ve gotten the “how could Jews ever live in Europe again?” deal from anyone in JTS or anyone in New York?

ZERO.

Nowhere in my real life settings do I encounter anything close to the venom I encountered online and continue to see on a daily basis. (Even with Slovakia’s apology in the past week, even with Angela Merkel’s declaration against anti-Semitism, it still surfaces as the norm among the commenters).

You can imagine what the disconnect does to me…it causes me to think, “well, maybe everyone in my peer group thinks that but they’re all hiding it from me!”

Interestingly even in Stockholm (where people tend to be very hidden about many things, except when it isn’t campaign season, as proven by watching my News Feed leading up to yesterday’s Swedish elections), people didn’t hide any of their negative opinions about various European countries. Some of them were fair criticism, others were not acceptable for classroom discourse. This was the norm pretty much everywhere I’ve been, and the strongest I felt it was among Americans in Jerusalem.

I just remembered my rules. Be diplomatic. Be fair. Be open-minded. Ask questions. And for the love of all that is holy, don’t use any disagreement as an excuse to destroy friendships.

Now…where was I…

“Well, maybe everyone’s just hiding their thoughts that all [French/Hungarians/Croatians/Balts/fill-in-the-blank] are beastly hateful anti-Semitic beasts. There is no way that there is such a disconnect between these comments and what I see around me…”

And then this:

“Well, obviously you’ve been in places where, if they had negative thoughts about a nation, they would tell it to your face. You have good reason to continue with your project but maybe showcasing your stories in New York City is like preaching to the converted (difficult metaphor to use?)”

And then this:

“My blog has been running for nearly a year. I’ve been convincing people, and I know that, based on the conversations that I’ve had in my circle. But what on earth do I do about the hateful comments on, let’s say, ‘Jewish People Around the World’ on Facebook?”

(If you want to have a look right now, brace yourself. You have been warned.)

And then this:

“I’m not going to change anything. The ones who are powering the negative energy have all the money and I’m a student playing backseat moderator to Jewish Civilization from the comfort of his Manhattan apartment. And no one’s reading my blog, anyway…”

And then this:

“So you’re just going to let them win like that, aren’t you? Remember your dream, Jared, of peaceful understanding and a Jewish Civilization powered by bridges and positive understanding and hearts and flowers and all that jazz. Sometimes you see that, yes, but often you really don’t. You see it enough for you to question your relationship with your Judaism, wondering if it is really for you…”

“You walk in Stockholm’s Djurgarden, in Berlin’s Tiergarten, on the Planty in Krakow, on the Philosophenweg in Heidelberg, in the Old City of Jerusalem, by the waters of Hania, in Helsinki’s Market Square, and in Central Park, and all this time…you wonder… ‘is my love of the world, its cultures, and all that is in it…is it compatible with my Judaism? Will others think that it is compatible with their Judaism?”

My answer is yes.

I will that the answer is yes.

The next generation will unequivocally answer yes.

And the folly of those hateful comments will be forgotten, deemed as very “un-Jewish” indeed.

I don’t know if that victory will come, but if I stop now, the chances of that victory coming may be absolute zero.

This is who I am. This is why I work. This is I go forward.