A human balance: whether it's antisemitism or its polar opposite, rarely are Jews seen as ordinary human beings—as flawed and perfect as everyone else. Adam Ma'anit appeals for just such a balance

New Internationalist, Oct, 2004 by Adam Ma'anit

A TYPICAL moment in the course of a child's life. Somehow playful banter in the schoolyard suddenly descends into a tense showdown of wills. Young boys clash over the most mundane reasons, and someone inevitably ends up getting hurt. In this case it was me.

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I'm not talking about getting punched in the face. Sure that hurt--few children go through life without at some point having to endure the awful humiliation of bullying. No, I mean the part where I was called 'Jew!'

That hurt more deeply.

I hadn't been conscious of being any different to the other children I played with at school. The way I saw it, we all liked to play dodgeball in gym class, eat greasy New York pizzas with gobs of pepperoni and play video games at the arcade.

But now that the 'J' word was invoked, I felt vulnerable and afraid--afraid of no longer being seen as just a normal kid. To the gang I aspired to be a part of, I was now 'the Jew'. This marked the beginning of a series of incidents in which my attackers would embellish on the theme. They would raucously laugh at insulting jokes intended for my hearing in the school cafeteria. Eventually they would throw pennies at me in the hallways, and carve swastikas on my desk. Gripped by a need to belong, I even for a short while flirted with their antisemitism. I told jokes more vile and laughed harder at their insults. I was rewarded with occasional acceptance. But it was never stable and hardly ever satisfying. I ended up befriending the only other Jews in the class and trying to avoid my nemeses for years.

It was some time later that I had an 'Ah hah!' moment upon learning that one of the boys' older brothers was a racist skinhead. Pieces fell into place.

I reasoned that my prepubescent attacker's idolization of his brother combined with a pack mentality were the source of my schoolyard oppression. In some ways I always felt that antisemitism was as alien to them as it was to me, but we each had our roles to play and they were still rehearsing their lines.

One day I found my locker adorned with swastikas and slogans. One read: 'Go back to Isreal'. The incorrect spelling struck a chord. How I wished I could go back to what 'is real'--a feeling of being a human being again rather than a demonic stereotype conjured in someone's mind.

Ironically, a few years later I did go back to the place of my birth, Israel, for secondary school. It felt liberating to have so many Jewish friends and know that my Jewishness would not be despised but celebrated. So many of my diaspora friends felt the same way. It was the safety of community. During those passion-filled formative teenage years, I sought to understand my Jewish identity and embrace it almost as a last act of defiance against the bullies who had used 'Jew' as invective against me. As my hip-hop idols--Brooklyn-based outfit, The Beastie Boys--recently sang: 'I'm a funky ass Jew and I'm on my way!'

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I absorbed my mother's stories of her and her parents' escape from the Nazi-installed Ustase fascists in Croatia and my paternal grandmother's tales of how she left Magdeburg, Germany in the 1930s and sought refuge in Palestine. My uncle Robbie escaped from a concentration camp at the age of 12. Most Jews I know can talk to members of their own family and readily tap into such living memory of one of the most horrific episodes of recent history. For many, the pain of the Holocaust is all too real. I began to see why my maternal grandparents, deeply traumatized by what they had endured, were so distant and cut off. Life was a grim struggle for survival. Laughter was rare and guarded. They were only shells of the vibrant people they once were.

Of place and time

Despite a childhood pockmarked with antisemitic bullying, most of the later periods of my life spent living in New York City and Long Island were not consumed by rabid Judeophobia. Few Jews today in the United States are victims of overt antisemitism. There is no longer official discrimination and by all accounts, post-World War Two Jews have enjoyed some of the lowest levels of antisemitism in history. For so long, Jews have been a people mainly of time, but with the creation of the state of Israel, they are now also a people of place. If it ever became necessary, there is now at least one country in the world which would welcome Jewish immigration, unlike during the run-up to the War when millions of Jews were denied asylum in the Allied and 'neutral' countries.

But while public sympathy and widespread awareness of the atrocities committed against the Jewish people in the Second World War is high, it would be wrong to assume that the scourge of antisemitism has been eradicated. If I can draw one lesson from my childhood nemeses, it is that anti-Jewish racism, like all forms of racism and bigotry, is a hardy weed. Transmitted across generations, children embrace the prejudices of their elders, swallowing them whole. Some eventually learn to shed such prejudices, but many clutch them firmly as though safeguarding the treasured wisdom of their ancestors for future generations. How else can one explain actor Mel Gibson's defence of his holocaust-denying and virulently antisemitic father whom he claims 'never lied to him?