Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

And we will all be called as witnesses, each and every one, to stand before the eyes of God, and speak what was done.

– Jerusalem, Paul Simon

“Now you see what we’re up against!” said my mother when hearing that Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin had an Arab name. And thus, someone who had shown no special interest in Israel, or spoke a word of Yiddish in the house despite being fluent, or said anything about our being Jewish, revealed the depth of her identity as a Jewish victim.

It runs deep, and it’s not a stretch to say at any point over the past two thousand years, “They’re out to get us.” My identity includes suffering antisemitic rants from a store owner when I was in high school, having an overt antisemite for a college roommate, being accused when I quit the high school football team of “Jewing out,” seeing the ad in the college paper by a gentile fraternity pressured to admit Jews inviting people to show up........

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