If there’s one thing that I have always been able to count on as a kippah-wearing Jew, it’s that I will always be seen by society as an “other.” I’ve considered myself lucky to grow up in LA, where I’m not as “other” as elsewhere. But it always lingers, and comes up in either small or not-so-small ways.
It was my first day in Paris with a kippah on my friend’s head, making our Judaism obvious, when a handful of teenagers began throwing glass bottles at our feet. While they screamed, “YISRAELI, PALESTINI”, followed us, and spat in our faces, hundreds of white and black onlookers actively averted my gazing pleas for help, like a driver who knows you are asking to enter a lane and yet refuses to make eye contact since doing so would force him to make a human decision.
It was my mother’s first day in London without our kippahs nearby to identify her as a Jew, when some lovely white ladies at a bus stop made friendly chit chat with my mother and casually brought up the “murderous Israelis and Jews”, a discussion apparently de rigueur in their circles.
Here in the safety of my Los Angeles home, these occurrences have thankfully been less common, but have always persisted. It has happened when walking down the streets of Pico Robertson on my peaceful Friday night Shabbat, when a car driving by has slowed down, gotten my attention, and yelled “Heil Hitler” with the salute included, and different variations of “Die Zionist/Israeli/Jew” – take your pick.
As an undergrad at UCLA, I was treated to jeers and boos as I walked with my kippah on, and students held signs up while yelling “ZIONIST/ISRAELI OPPRESSORS/MURDERS” as I walked by but strategically left out the word “Jewish” so that those taunts would be legal and acceptable in the eyes of free-speech on campus.
At my doctor’s office when the nurse who’s triaged me for years suddenly asked, “Is it true that you can take off your beanie once you make your first million?”
On the bus in Santa Monica when a friendly girl asked me genuinely curious if we wear the kippah to cover up our horns, and if not then when do they grow in.
Hatred for the “other” has never been a partisan issue. I have both felt and experienced Anti-Semitism from a macro level (ranging from politicians on the left supporting BDS to politicians on the right questioning Jewish loyalty if we do not support the candidate who supports Israel), and a micro level (all of my aforementioned stories, which I assure you came from Republicans and Democrats equally.
If there’s one thing that can be agreed upon by both sides, it’s that Jews are most certainly, at all times, an “Other”.
This is why in my heart I want to support every other “Other”, because I know what it is to be one. And we “others” have our own unique challenges. We have our own unique pasts. It should never become a pissing contest between “who has it worst”; that is a zero sum game that none of us should want to play. As a Modern Orthodox Jew, I have the ability (that I often utilize) to sense a less desirable situation, remove my kippah, and thus avoid potential Anti-Semitism. And I recognize that this is a privilege that a black or brown person does not have the option to do when their Spidey Senses alert them to potential racist danger. At the end of 2018 we went on a road trip with friends. Two cars driving in Arizona to the Grand Canyon. Without realizing, our highway speed limit dropped down to 35mph. I was going around 85mph when the lights flashed behind me to pull over. I was genuinely confused as to why. When I saw the white cops walking toward us with hands near their gun holsters, I removed my kippah, not wanting to take extra chances. After explaining that the speed limit had changed and we were fifty above, not only did he ultimately let me off with a warning, but during the process with our baby screaming in the back seat, he relaxed his demeanor, and allowed Adi to exit the car and tend to her while his back was to her. I remember him asking for my license, I warned him it was in my jacket in the backseat cluttered with luggage, and he seemed relaxed as I turned around rummaging through dark belongings for it, any of which could have been a weapon. Driving the other car was our friend Courtney, a black man, who has served his country as a Marine. Had he been pulled over, he could not have changed the color of his skin. It is hard to believe the process would have been as relaxed, nor the results as generous.
Each “Other” must overcome their challenges, and we should all be uplifting one another, which is why it is extra maddening when we see the opposite occur, such as with recent Anti-Semitic incidents from such public personas as Ice Cube and Nick Cannon.
I strongly recommend the recent piece attached by Eric Ward, which discusses how Anti-Semitism threatens all “others”, and should have absolutely no place within any social justice movement. In one passage he writes,
“Taking anti-Semitism seriously as a threat to everyone’s civil rights and humanity means challenging it wherever it arises, within our own ranks as well as in our opponents. Opposing antisemitism can’t be used to make partisan or other ideological points. We can’t choose only to point it out when it comes from white nationalists; nor can we ignore or treat it more harshly when it’s expressed by those fighting for civil and human rights. Hypocrites don’t solve problems, they reinforce problems. Our fight against antisemitism has to be value based.”
I do not expect to ever live in a world without Anti-Semitism where I feel completely safe as a Jew. I do not expect to ever live in a world where someone is always treated equally for their skin color. I am not naive about how slow change comes. But can the education at least propel us “others” forward to help one another?
A bizarre fact I remember learning as a child is that when female lobsters are put into a pot of boiling water, a lid does not need to be put on, because they will claw and pull each other down rather than help each other escape. A twisted and sick fact of nature. My hope and prayer is that we “others” can and will be less like these lobsters and more like the humans we were blessed to be, building a bridge that helps all of us climb out of our respective pots.
Eric Ward’s full piece can be read here.
Boaz Hepner is a registered nurse in Santa Monica. When he’s not working he can be found with his wife and daughter enjoying his passions: his multitude of friends, movies, poker and traveling.
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