Antisemitism is confusing in a way that would be impressive if it weren’t so ugly. It’s like a virus that keeps mutating, not because it has a plan, but because society keeps providing new hosts, new excuses, new costumes. People say it’s ancient hatred, which is true. They just forget the second part. It’s also weirdly modern, always updating itself like an app you didn’t ask for.

My family story is not unusual, which is its own kind of punchline. My father went to the UK from Poland in 1933 with his grandparents and managed to escape the Holocaust. His father never made it out. No one knows what happened to him. That’s the phrase you end up saying a lot when you’re Jewish, “No one knows what happened.” It’s a sentence that sits in the room with you, like an extra chair you just can’t fold away.

On my mother’s side, her father was born on the boat from Russia around the turn of the 20th century and she was the first generation born in Britain. She was almost nine when Israel declared independence. She used to tell me about her experiences in elementary school in Stepney Green, and how the other kids would say, “Jew go home.” She was born in the UK, speaking English, doing British homework, eating whatever war-time rations that British children ate that could technically be described as food. Home was literally the place in which she was standing. But apparently, she’d missed the memo.

That’s the first layer of the confusion. Being told to go “home” when the people shouting it have no idea where your home is supposed to be. Or maybe they do. Maybe they like the vagueness. “Go home” is perfect as a slur because it’s both specific and meaningless. It’s a command that doesn’t require a destination, only your disappearance.

Then history did its thing and a Jewish homeland became real. You’d think, logically, that would simplify the shouting. But it didn’t.

Now we have Israel, and suddenly the same world that spent centuries telling Jews we don’t belong anywhere has developed a passionate opinion........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)