“I Am Not a Knee-Jerk Jew”: Demanding Visibility

Without her whispering a sound, I already knew what she was going to say. I felt it in my bones long before the conversation began. My heart pounded knowingly. A 35-year friendship was on the line, its unexpected fragility exposed. And then the offhand utterance came, and just hung there, unswatted despite the simultaneous, dismissive wave of her hand, and undissipated by my unreleased tears: “Rape always happens in war.” Our Facetime sparked, was electrified, and flamed out forever.

What through the years I had sensed as an unnamable shadow grew slowly into an unbreachable divide after October 7th, and even then I had ignored it with the stubborn loyalty and determined self-delusion that deep affinity demands. “Janine” had always called to say, “Happy Rosh Hashanah,” her Irish-English cadences caressing the words. She was the first to arrive at my children’s B’nai Mitzvot. She seemed to value and understand my Jewishness. Until she didn’t. She seemed to be an ally. Until she wasn’t. She seemed to see me. Until it became undeniable on my side that my Jewish identity obfuscated the rest of me on hers.

Professionals in a field neither of us had a calling for, Janine and I met in May 1990, bonding over our shared need for intellectually stimulating conversation amid the pragmatists surrounding us in our Century City office. Ultimately, we found more satisfying jobs, our paths diverging but our friendship enduring. As I earned my Master’s degree and then my doctorate, she celebrated my success. She was among the few friends I permitted to sit with me in the NICU during the terrifying three and a half months when it was my second home after my first child was born. She had my back.

Unfortunately, as was unmistakable when her derisive gesture married her shocking words in that painful January 2025 Facetime, Janine also believed she had my number: that being Jewish clouded my rational judgment regarding Israel and Jewish concerns and rendered anything I believed a misperception at best and a bias at worst. Managing to detach from a few quiet displays of this subtle microagressive thought process over the years, I willed our friendship into prolonged life.

Against my will, though, the memories remained deeply embedded: the time long ago she had proclaimed there was no antisemitism in America—as I described the antisemitism my husband and I had recently been confronted with. When a neutral discussion of California’s mid-90s Prop 187 suddenly devolved into a didactic diatribe—”Do you know that there are 8,000 illegal Israelis living in LA? How do you feel about that?”—my shock was palpable. That she had a statistic at the ready and conflated my being Jewish with loyalty to other (presumed) Jews or Israel—an old and dangerous stereotype—was unsettling. For reasons I can scarcely muster now, I propped up our friendship on its ostensible last legs and forged ahead, the years slipping by as though no bitter blow had struck me in the head and no quiet doubt had entered my heart.

But then “Rape always happens in war” and its ugly step-siblings, traumatic invalidation and Israel-blaming—along with a heavy dose of haughty rejection of my responses as misinformed, likely due to my communal connection—showed up and shoveled the remnants of our friendship under. Because, as I wrote to Janine later, “I am not a knee-jerk Jew.” Being Jewish is not a subject position. It doesn’t cause reflexive responses fueled solely by emotion, with no thought, no understanding, no consideration. My identification as a Jew does not render the rest of me invisible.

My identification as a Jew does not render the rest of me invisible.

An academic mired in the battle against the antisemitism that didn’t bubble but rather burst to the surface on my university campus after Oct. 7, I am, I noted, conversant in the language and information and education needed in order to make accurate, credible statements about the current state of antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and being a Jew in this troubled and troubling moment. More important, I am a Jewish person. My lived experience and my knowledge of the lived experience of Jewish people around me have meaning.

Undoubtedly, many kind-hearted and loving friends who have abandoned us by failing to acknowledge or attempt to understand our pain don’t recognize the antisemitism inherent in their comments or in their outlook; they might even feel wounded by our words calling them out. I am sure Janine would. But in that last-ever communication between us, I told her that I don’t do “invisible” or “defined by others.” “It’s not in my character or my constitution,” I wrote, “and especially not where my identity is concerned.” Given our friendship of most of my life, I had hoped she knew me. Her assumptions about the issues facing the Jewish community and how I must be perceiving them, however, made clear once and for all that she didn’t.

“Unseen” just doesn’t work for me. It shouldn’t for any of us.

Audrey B. Thacker, Ph.D. is Adjunct Professor of English at Cal State Northridge, where she is Chair of the Matadors Against Antisemitism Faculty and Staff Resource Group. She is also a 2025 Fellow of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN).