By continuing to celebrate all that the far right attacks us for, we will stand strong against antisemitism
As a child, I thought little about the security team stationed outside my north-west London Jewish primary school. I didn’t spend much time asking why there were guards at each entrance to our synagogue every Saturday, either. Seeing my mum stood with a walkie-talkie, patrolling the front gates through the classroom window didn’t seem out of the ordinary; my dad leaving the Shabbat service halfway through to stand outside and keep us safe felt run of the mill.
Granted, much of this was the innocence of childhood, but in recent years the threat of violence towards the Jewish community has felt increasingly real across the world. The number of antisemitic incidents across the US as a whole rose 57% in 2017; In Britain, the Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 727 antisemitic incidents in the first six months of 2018 – the second highest figure recorded in more than two decades. When news broke of the vicious slaughtering of congregants in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Jews all around the world weren’t only shaken by the violence. We were shaken because we all know how easily it could have been us targeted.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Avt24b
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