As a trapeze artist flipped overhead, a mother in the audience gasped, squeezing her 3-month-old infant tight. It was a moment of nail-biting suspense — the trapezist had missed his partner’s grip on the previous two attempts and fallen into the safety net below.
“I can’t watch,” the mother said, burying her head behind her baby boy, peeking up in time to see the performer swing into his partner’s open hands, setting off a roar of applause.
“Why must I be Jewish in today’s world?” Amidst the ongoing conflict in Israel, with antisemitism once again on the rise, this question is beginning to worm into the minds of a new generation of young Jews.
Today, what we are witnessing on college campuses across the nation is an entirely new breed of the old antisemitic tropes that have waxed and waned on the battlefield of the American academy.