Being Jewish Doesn’t Mean You’re Not a ‘Karen’

“Karen” is finally receiving her well-deserved reckoning. Well, this week her name is Amy Cooper, but what she represents is a collective societal outcry at the terror and injustice that the ‘basic white woman’ (often nicknamed Karen) inflicts on society.

Over the past few years, the cultural conversation about the “Karens” began to bubble up with Tweets like “Hell hath no fury like a white person mildly inconvenienced,” but the Central Park incident this past week with Cooper finally touched a nerve that pushed the conversation beyond a cynical joke to the very real and very frightening problem of basic racism. The link between attacks on men like Christian Cooper by the “Karens” of the world and the resulting systemic over-incarceration, police brutality and injustice faced by Black men have become all too clear. As a white Jewish woman I had always felt relieved to not technically fall under the “Karen” label…but after the horror of this weekend, I wondered if that was true.

As a white Jewish woman I had always felt relieved to not technically fall under the “Karen’”label…but after the horror of this weekend, I wondered if that was true.

Raised in a liberal Conservative Jewish community in L.A. I vividly remember learning about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and his partnership with Dr. Martin Luther King. Their famous black and white protest march photos are etched in my mind when I think about race relations between Blacks and Jews. I was taught that because as Jews we understand the reality of living in an anti-Semitic world we instinctively understand racism. I thought I was anti-racist by default! 

Now I wonder if that’s true. Is just being Jewish enough? Can we really still say “we get it, we suffer too” without doing more to stretch out our hands (or stick out our necks) and help? The unrelenting pursuit of justice in an unjust world is a tenant of our faith “Justice, Justice you shall pursue” or “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof” – it’s how we create Godliness on Earth. The Torah doesn’t instruct our forefathers to wallow in our collective suffering, it doesn’t say ‘the world is unjust, and it sucks for us for most of all!’ (or at least I don’t remember reading that line), it demands that we make the world a more just place for everyone.

So today I’m doing some reflection on when I have been a “Karen,” when I haven’t done all that I could to speak up for what is right and demand change. We know well that the biggest crime would not have been if Amy Cooper got away with it, but if the whole world turned away and let her.

Marion Haberman is a writer and content creator for her Youtube channel and Instagram @MyJewishMommyLife page where she shares her experience living a meaning-FULL Jewish family life. She is also a professional social media consultant and web and television writer for Discovery Channel, NOAA and NatGeo and has an MBA from Georgetown University.