Put Your Jewish Identity Where It Belongs

I thought burning Jewish buildings down in America was a thing of the past, until it wasn’t. Temple Beth Israel, the oldest synagogue in Mississippi, didn’t just employ the only full-time rabbi in the state. It was where my best friend from summer camp attended, where I had seen him become a bar mitzvah, where he had read from a Torah that, last week, burned to ash. The Jewish community of Jackson, the remnants of a community that has thrived since before the Civil War, now mourns instead. 

Antisemitism, however, goes much further back than the three generations my family has lived in my hometown of New Orleans, further back than during the lifetimes of the first Jews who settled into Savannah, Georgia in the 1700s. It was alive during my childhood, too, while I attended Isidore Newman, a New Orleans institution that had been founded as a trade school for Jewish orphans in 1903, by one of the city’s leading philanthropists of the day. It may have lost that identity long ago, but Newman, as it is known, never stopped attracting casual antisemitism, ignorant hatred that popped out of the mouths of the opposing sports teams, or their fans, or others, even within its walls. I saw with my own eyes, and heard with my own ears, many reasons why one might choose to wear their Judaism close to the vest. 

Today, even in New York City one might be justified in doing the same. But there is always a seemingly good reason to compartmentalize your Judaism, to limit your Jewish identity to two holidays a year. How’s that working out for you? Amid every wild subway rant, every pro-Hamas protest, every shooting at a Jewish museum or outdoor gathering and its aftermath, are you starting to feel a strange sensation? That’s your Jewish identity trying to come out. Do you feel its power pushing through whatever barriers you put in place to keep it in check?

Why do we feel we have to separate our identity as Jews from every other identity we take on? What is holding you back from incorporating your Jewishness into your professional life, your parenting, your personal relationships?

In a world where the line between antisemitism and antizionism is blurring, to put it mildly, what is the point of trying to hide your Jewish identity? Those who would burn our synagogues to the ground do not see a distinction. In fact, they take the opposite position: that you are a Jew, and nothing else. I’m reluctant to quote Albert Einstein, given how often he gets credit for things he didn’t say. Being one of the most prominent Jews that’s ever walked the earth will do that to you. But he hit the nail on the head long before Lord Jonathan Sacks said something similar: “It is not the Jew who is ashamed of his Judaism who is respected, but the Jew who is proud of it.”

There is a little television show that was recently up for a number of Golden Globes. It explored similar questions. That is, when you try to hide from your pain, your sadness, your loss, your identity, how long will it be until you either die or let that identity come rushing out? This series, “Severance,” shows us the perils of running away and hiding out. We shrivel up. We become shadows of our former selves. We lurk in the darkness, at the mercy of whatever forces decide to attack. 

What will you do? You can choose to learn from fiction, or you can choose to learn from real life. I don’t see an alternative to American Jews stepping up, owning who we are, and grabbing the power inherent in taking pride in our identity — unless we want to run away and never stop running. Israelis learned this lesson nearly 80 years ago. It’s time we do as well. 

Sure, we can reel off facts about our identities as billionaires, Nobel Prize winners, actors and comics and bankers and engineers, and farmers who have made the desert bloom. But at the heart of things, it is our Jewish identity, our age-old striving toward a perfection we will never achieve, that has proven to be the most effective engine of civilization there is. Why would we hide that away? Why would we keep it from infecting the rest of everything we are in the very best way? It is that creativity, that dynamism, that power that will save us from the perilous moment we find ourselves in. We are a beautiful people that has brought an almost immeasurable amount of goodness to the world. That’s an identity we should lean into.

Scott Harris is the founder of Magnetic Real Estate and the author of new nationally bestselling book The Pursuit of Home: A Real Estate Guide to Achieving the American Dream (from Matt Holt Books).