My mother told me this morning that she removed the gold Star of David she always wears around her neck and placed it safely in a box, in her drawer. For now. Out of an abundance of caution, I suppose.
I was born 14 years after the Holocaust ended. I remember when my mother explained to me, in whispers after an elevator ride with our neighbor, Mrs. Schachner, the tattoo on her forearm. I knew that my mother's uncle and his family had perished. Over there. In a place far away, in a time that seemed much more far away than it actually was.
Growing up, I knew our long history of persecution. Still, I never felt it, living in Brooklyn, surrounded by Jews, Jews who lived freely and well. As they did, you know, in Poland, say, a century ago. When anti-Semitism was always there but tucked neatly under the rocks, manifested more in a disdain for "otherness" than outright hatred. Live and let live, just keep your distance.
Fast forward 75 years, generations after any European Jews who survived could rip off their yellow stars, or the prison garb that hung on their gaunt frames. American citizens have actually put into office some ignorant and hateful people, one of whom is particularly loud. The only things that set her apart from so many are her shamelessness and her ready podium. She verbalizes what all too many among us still believe. That Jews are evil. That black lives don't matter. That Asians shouldn't be here. Or Muslims. Or Mexicans. Or anybody with a tinge of otherness.
Haters are gonna hate, and that's bad enough when they do it on their own time, in their own heads. But give it oxygen, and fuel (thank-you social media of all stripes) and, well there you have it. My mother removing her gold star; me, relieved that she did.
There's a tragic absence of nuance in our country. Last week, a highly educated MSNBC news anchor asked when President Biden is going to demand that Israel stop bombarding Hamas. Really? Hamas isn't Palestinian children. In fact, Hamas is more than happy to bask in the optics of dead Palestinian children, and it has an uncanny ability to place them in harm's way. If Israel is to be believed, it bombed a building in Gaza -- with warning so that there would be no loss of human life -- that housed Al Jazeera and other press organizations because it also housed the machinery of Hamas. Hamas doing what it does best -- creating great optics. My hunch is that the Israeli bomb did far less damage to the free press than our past president managed to do in four years of an insidious terror campaign against democracy.
Like my mom, I wear a Star of David around my neck. Hers is from Tiffany's; mine comes from a small town in the south of Mexico, the last place I would have expected to find such a treasure. It is a mix of gold and silver, crafted in a country that is largely Catholic, purchased by my husband when we were already in the midst of our own tiny warfare, because my daughter told him I liked it. It means a lot to me, that gold and silver star. I choose to wear it, this blended metal pendant, a symbol of my heritage, from a place of "otherness," at a time of personal ambivalence. Nuance, hanging right there around my neck.
Almost every weekend now, carloads of young Palestinians wearing keffiyeh ride up and down the streets of downtown Chicago, their wrapped heads poking out of sunroofs, their shouting incomprehensible, at least to me. I was parked at a light, and I imagined that a few of them peered in at me as they sped by. Imagined, because I don't really know, but I couldn't help but wonder whether I should be afraid. For me, my children, for everyone. I mourn all the dead children, the innocents caught up in all the hate.
After talking to my mother this morning, I unclasped my gold and silver Star of David and stared at it for awhile. Haters gonna hate. I put it back on.
