opinion
When Your Family Is the Victim
of Antisemitism
BY BENJAMIN KERSTEIN
R ecently, and at long last, the
antisemite who has been vandalizing
my family’s business in a Jewish suburb of
Boston for nearly a year was caught.

My family owns a small store that sells,
among other things, Israeli products.

A sign hung from the store’s awning
advertises this fact. Over the past year,
this sign was repeatedly stolen, torn
down and defaced by an unknown rac-
ist. Finally tired of replacing it, my fam-
ily installed security cameras. The next
time it happened, the criminal’s face and
license plate were captured as he com-
mitted the crime, and the police tracked
him down.

The self-righteous fiend told the police
that his crimes were justified because he
found the sign “extremely offensive.” The police
were forced to inform him that this did not entitle
him to break the law. The question now before us
is what the next step will be.

The police want to settle things privately, with
the criminal paying some kind of restitution. My
father wants compensation paid, but also wants
to meet with the criminal and require him to attend
an educational course given by a group like the
Anti-Defamation League. He feels that an overly
punitive reaction may only intensify the criminal’s
antisemitism. I, on the other hand, want the criminal prose-
cuted and punished to the fullest extent of the
law. (In my darker moments, I also want to see his
legs broken in multiple places with a baseball bat,
preferably wielded by myself.)
For the most part, however, this entire ordeal
has forced me to recognize a gaping divide
between me and the rest of my family on the issue
of antisemitism in general. A divide that, I believe,
may be emblematic of a larger divide within the
Jewish community itself.

I have lived in Israel for 20 years. I am a Zionist
and make no apologies for it. I believe that when
faced with racism and/or violence, the Jews should
respond in the most punitive manner available in
order to achieve justice and create deterrence.

I do not believe antisemites can be educated,
changed or cured. They won’t stop unless they
are stopped — until they are made to understand
that the cost of hating the Jews is higher than its
sadistic benefits.

Even more telling is the emotional divide
14 JUNE 16, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
some kind of relatively painless solution
to the issue. The protection of the law,
in this case, appears to have worked.

Perhaps it is better to let it go.

Perhaps. But for myself, I can only see
the gaping divide between us. And this
divide, above all, frightens me. It fright-
ens me because I am painfully aware
of certain facts: A terrifying percentage
of the progressive left and the Muslim-
American community holds antisemitic
attitudes and is prepared to act on them.

And antisemitic violence, if not checked,
always escalates, as it did last May, when
Muslim-American and pro-Palestinian
thugs attacked Jews across the United
States. To me, this criminal and his van-
dalism were not an aberration — they are
the new normal. And this normal has now
struck frighteningly close to home.

I also know that, perhaps when Israel
fights its next war, it will happen again. And this
time, it will likely be much worse. There is a very
good chance that it will end in a murder — per-
haps many murders — and I fear that the attitude
taken by most American Jews cannot stop such
a terrible eventuality. I also know that, when this
happens, my family will be vulnerable to such
violence, and so will the entire American Jewish
community. This is because the police, however well-mean-
ing they may be (and they are), cannot be every-
where and cannot act until the thing actually
happens. And at the moment, most American
Jews have no other options. With a few local
exceptions, usually in Orthodox communities, they
have no security or defense force of their own.

When it happens, there will be no one there to
protect them. And even if local law enforcement
takes action to secure Jewish sites and busi-
nesses after the fact, this means the Jews will be
forced to live their lives under continuing siege. All
of this is unacceptable to me.

So, I am forced to look across the divide at my
loved ones, hoping that despite my misgivings,
they will turn out to be right. I wish very much that
this divide could be bridged, and that the larger
divide between Jews like me and most American
Jews could be bridged as well.

At the moment, this appears unlikely. And so, I
am forced to worry, and know that I will continue
to worry for a very long time. JE
between me and the rest of my family. They
appear to be inclined toward something like mag-
nanimity, while I am comfortable with the fact that
I hate those who hate the Jews. I have never met
the criminal himself, and I do not care to. But I hate
this person. Hate him. My family, perhaps to their
credit, does not.

My family are American Jews. For the most part,
they have always lived in America. And I think
that their attitude is emblematic of that of the
vast majority of American Jews. They believe that
antisemitism can be fought by nonpunitive means
— education, reconciliation and dialogue. They
believe that antisemitic incidents should be dealt
with in a moderate and measured way.

When one of my father’s friends compared the
vandalism to Kristallnacht, my father felt he was
going a bit far. The rest of my family has not said
as much, but I sense that they would agree with
this. They don’t feel the sense of urgency that I do.

I am fully prepared to admit that they may be
right. Perhaps it’s better not to overreact. Perhaps
my reaction is somewhat hysterical. Perhaps our
long history of persecution has fostered a certain
paranoia among the Jews, which causes us to
exaggerate and overstate what may simply be the
random acts of distasteful individuals. Perhaps
America really is different, the Jews are relatively
safe there and we must be aware of this in dealing
with the small amount of American antisemitism
that does exist. And perhaps education, reconcil-
iation and dialogue are indeed better than stern
justice. Moreover, the police acted promptly and effec- Benjamin Kerstein is a writer and editor living in
tively to the vandalism, and are trying to arrange Tel Aviv.




opinion
I’m Neither ‘Ukrainian’ Nor ‘German.’
But as a Jew in Germany Born in
Ukraine, I Am Trying to Help
BY IRINA ROSENSAFT
iStock / Getty Images Plus
F RANKFURT, Germany
— I was born in Ukraine
but have never considered
myself Ukrainian. My parents
had immigrated to Germany,
seeking political and economic
stability during the chaotic time of the Soviet Union’s
collapse, and I still live here, in Frankfurt.

Now, as a mother of two with a full-time job, I
spend most of my spare time trying to help the
country my family left when I was 12. Along the
way, I am also finding ways to reconcile my com-
plex Jewish identities.

Until Russia invaded Ukraine in February, I didn’t
think much about my native country.

Instead, I was focused on my family and my
career. My professional background is in con-
sulting and management; I am also a member of
the World Jewish Congress’s Jewish Diplomatic
Corps, a network of people ages 30 to 45 whom
WJC trains to influence Jewish interests through
diplomacy and public policy. Even if I hadn’t been
a member of the JD Corps, as we call it, I would
have followed the war closely and probably tried
to help. As part of the network, however, I realized
that I could do more.

Soon after the war started, I understood that
despite my complicated relationship with Ukraine,
I had absolutely no hesitation about doing every-
thing within my power to help others. And even
though WJC is a Jewish organization — it is obvi-
ously aware of Ukraine’s history of antisemitism —
the group’s leadership as well as my peers in the
JD Corps felt compelled to help everyone.

I plunged into an array of relief work, including
helping people escape Ukraine and find safe
havens that have the medical care and other sup-
port they need. With the help of WJC, I also focused
on procuring medicine, an effort inspired in part
by my mother, who has diabetes. If she doesn’t
have access to insulin, she will not survive. I do not
have a medical background, and I started to use
creative methods to secure medicine and get it into
Ukraine. At first, it seemed like I might not succeed.

It’s almost impossible for an ordinary person to buy
prescription medicine in bulk, let alone transport it.

A pharmaceutical executive told me how to buy
in big quantities, and connected me to her con-
tacts, including sellers. A doctor friend made the
actual purchase. My mother even collected extra
insulin and other medicines from her friends and
the pharmacies she patronizes.

Procuring the drug was only the first step,
however. Insulin must be stored below a certain
temperature. A biochemist who is also a pharma-
ceutical logistics professional advised me on the
logistics of how to best ship it and connected me
to her partner company, which donated a special
box for the journey. WJC put me in touch with a
Jewish communal professional, who helped me
locate a driver to transport the medicine — insu-
lin and other life-saving drugs that would last 80
people between two and three months — to Kyiv,
where the Vaad of Ukraine, the Association of
Jewish Organizations and Communities, distrib-
utes it to their affiliated organizations.

After that first shipment, we did a second one
that was logistically quite different. We soon
learned that finding a viable path one time didn’t
guarantee that it would be there the next. For the
next shipment, we are working to assemble and
transport about 1.5 tons of medicine including
heart, asthma and thyroid drugs. We’d buy the
medicine with the help of Pharmacists Without
Borders and store it in Cologne at a facility owned
by the Blue-Yellow Cross, a new organization that
collects and transports donations for Ukraine.

All this talk of storage temperatures and phar-
maceutical logistics might make this work sound
very clinical, but for me, it isn’t. It’s centered in a
web of feelings and memories and questions that
connect my past and my future, and me to family,
community and country.

Of course, I’ve been troubled by anxiety and
guilt related to my children. I’ve been online and
on the phone constantly despite their need for
attention. I have sent them to play, telling them
I needed another three minutes when I knew
that I would probably need a half-hour to finish a
phone call, and that I would then need to make
another one. I didn’t attend our community’s
Purim celebration because I received a call from
a refugee who had no food and no money. When
our second shipment was en route to Ukraine, I
stayed online on Shabbat in case there were any
problems. Yet during this time, I’ve also realized that I do
have a connection to the country of my birth.

I have remembered my hometown, Zhytomyr,
the fields full of sunflowers, the black seacoast of
Crimea. I love the Ukrainian songs of Sofia Rotaru,
and I wore vyshyvanka (an embroidered shirt
that’s part of the national costume) to sing them
as part of the school choir. I loved to visit Kyiv with
my mom. It’s true that there was antisemitism. I
grew up knowing that Jews were not fully part of
Ukraine or the Soviet Union before its collapse.

We were Jews, something apart. Not Jewish —
Jews. We left Ukraine with very mixed feelings.

As Jews, we tend to feel solidarity with people
in need. By working through some of those feel-
ings, I also found a way to identify with Ukraine,
my native country. As I learned of cities in my for-
mer homeland being destroyed, my connection to
Ukraine strengthened. I plan to learn more about
the Jewish community in Ukraine. I’ve spoken to
my parents to better understand why we left.

I still don’t call myself “Ukrainian,” but I also
have the same problem calling myself “German.”
Of course, I share the democratic values of the
German state, but I have a different culture and
customs, have another mother tongue, a complex
heritage and belong ethnically to another group
(which can be very problematic to speak about in
Germany after the Holocaust).

We all know that Jewish identity is complex.

But for now, I’m happy to help other people, set
a positive example for my children and future
generations and better understand myself in the
process. JE
Irina Rosensaft is the digital transformation lead
at the Central Welfare Board of Jews in Germany.

She is a board member of B’nai B’rith Frankfurt
and a member of the World Jewish Congress
Jewish Diplomatic Corps.

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