Last week I was at the White Plains train station on my way into the city and something was going on. I saw three men that seemed to be casing the place. They were making eye contact with each other as they were working the platform. Waiting for the train I could see each of them approaching my passengers. I am pretty vigilant always look out for threats, but it turned out this was totally innocuous. I overheard on of them doing outreach to someone for the holidays. They were inviting people to join them for Christmas at their non-denominational Church in Scarsdale. Having engaged their Chabad compatriots enough in life I was preparing myself for the ritual ” No, thank you I have already put on Tfilin today”, but none of them approached me. I was wearing a hat over my kippah and as always my tzitzit were hidden away. How did they know that I was not interested? Did they know I was Jewish? Why was I beyond the grace of their salvation?

I did not give it another thought until the news this past Sunday regarding this horrific mass shooting in Australia. Two men opened up fire on Jews coming together for Hanukah. Many people from the community interviewed said that they were sad but not shocked by the shooting. This was already after two years of saying horrible things against Israel, Israelis, and Jews. And of course there as the terrible burning of the synagogue there amidst countless cases of vandalism. Despite warnings from people in the Jewish community, it seems that the government did not do its job of protecting its citizens. But this is not a new phenomena for our people and clearly not limited to Australia. It feels as though all of these calls to “Globalize the Intifada” are coming to fruition. Just because I am paranoid does not mean there people are not trying to kill my people.

To be clear I believe in free speech and I am totally fine being uncomfortable. That said, we need to get tough on acting swift and clear when this speech turns to incitement. But this assumed that that only action is between the government and the individual. Where are our fellow citizens? While we can see governments are failing us, more worrisome are the massed who say nothing in response. Silence is acquiesce.

This reminds me the profound words of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. From jail he wrote:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963)

It is not that I do not care about the mass shooters, but as a Jew there is little I can do to change their mind. When did the hunter ever listen to the prey. I must confess to my Christian and Muslim brothers, that all of their post facto thoughts and prayers are painful. It is not just that they are ineffective, their silence around the violent rhetoric creates space for violence. They are devoted to order cloaked in a new theory of justice over any real peace. The depth of deprivation is that we are getting this response and we have yet to resort to more “direct action”. To the contrary we are spending millions and huge amount of our attention to guard our institutions and protect our people. Not questioning the use of these resources normalizes the problem.

Where do we belong? It is clear from the violence that they do not want us in Sydney, Manchester, Toronto, Colleyville, Poway, Pittsburgh, etc. And this is just the recent list. There are no reason to think that this list of places will stop growing. It overlooks our history of being kicked of Europe in the Holocaust and being kicked out of countless Arab states in response to the founding of State of Israel. It is also clear that they do not want us in Israel because they see us as ” settler colonialist”. So where are supposed to go? Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people who want to kill us. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Why couldn’t people just ignore us and leave us alone? In an essay about  antisemitism  Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Far from experience producing his idea of the Jew, it was the latter that explained his experience. If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” We hardly exist. There are only 15 million of us left. We are but a rounding error in the Chinese census. People’s perception of us is made up to explain their reality. It is clear that if we allow people to have free speech more people need to come to our defense. Anything short of that will continue to translate into incitement against this Jewish villain the anti-Semite has invented. We would never tell another group that their mistreatment is their problem. The Jewish problem as nothing to do with Jews. When will my moderate Christian and Muslim brothers understand that this is their problem?

So back to my non-event interaction on the train platform. This most recent shooting and the aftermath has made me ask the same question with a totally different meaning. Beyond the heroic act of Ahmed al-Ahmed, are Jews beyond Christian and Muslim salvation?