So it seems that my "Dear Students" post from last week appeared on Facebook and has gone viral. Although it was posted anonymously, with a little googling some people tracked it to this blog, and from there to me. I've been receiving a steady stream of emails since yesterday from total strangers. Given my experience with public scholarship on the Bible, emails from strangers about things I've written online are usually not a welcome thing for me. But this is different. People are writing to thank me. They are grateful to have found an ally, a voice that expresses what they are feeling; or expresses what they wish others in universities were saying in place of the media-amplified vitriol from students and professors alike across the entire free world.
I'm pretty floored. I had wanted to keep this blog private, just for people I know, as a means of dealing with my own thoughts, frustrations, rage, and sadness (and also at first to let people know I was safe). As I stated at the outset, I'm a pretty private person. But what I've realized in the process of communicating with many of you over the past 5 weeks, and with strangers in the last 24 hours, is that if what I write here can help people to understand, to process their own emotions, to sort through the misinformation, and ultimately to feel less alone, then it's worth sacrificing a bit of my privacy. We can all use a little bit of light these days, when we are surrounded by so much impenetrable darkness.
And hopefully I won't get too much hate mail.Â
I am going to get some help next week in moving the blog to a more secure site though. I will post the new url when I have it, hopefully by the end of next week.
My trip to NY was overall good -- I got to hug my son daily and spend quality time with him. But I have to say, outside of being in my parents' gated community in Florida, being back in North America and walking around the streets of cities like New York, and now Chicago, is weird. It feels different. The other day I sat in a small, hip, pink (the walls and the lighting inside were all pink) vegan Chinese restaurant on the NYU campus with my son, surrounded by tables full of students. Normally I like tuning in and out of conversations around me in that kind of environment; I always enjoy listening to students and hearing the conversation topics go from classes they're taking to books, movies, music, dating, and all around the ins and outs of the world of an 18-22 year old. I used to find it fun and energizing to be around them. But it's not the same now. I sit there and wonder how many of them marched the other day in keffiyehs, waving flags and chanting genocidal slogans. I wonder how many of the people there, in the restaurant with me and my son, had harrassed a Jewish student today. Which of them had ripped down posters of Israeli hostages. Had posted solidarity with Hamas on Instagram. Walking around Manhattan for hours, on my last visit I derived (way too much) pleasure from window shopping and people watching. I don't love crowds but it seemed different there because everyone was moving, everyone had a place to go, it was dynamic and so engaging. This time, the crowds on the sidewalks seemed more menacing, more oppressive. Signs that cried "end apartheid" with bloodied Israeli flags dotted the walls near my hotel, and I wondered how many of the people around me would turn on me and spit or even hit me if I were to try to take them down, or if they knew that I was Jewish.
The world has changed. Certainly my perception of it has, but I really feel that there has been a fundamental shift in reality. We can't pretend anymore that Jew-hatred is only an issue on the fringes of society. We can't turn a blind eye to casual commonplace denigrations of Israel and not bother addressing them because it's too complicated and too much trouble to explain why what is "common knowledge" is wrong. People like me, who would prefer to avoid confrontation, to hide in the intellectual pursuit of the past, fume in private but put up with it in public, have to find the courage to speak up. I have to share what I know, and I have to learn more so I can share more, so that those of you who are getting something out of reading this can also share and we can do what we can, even if it's too little too late. Even if it's just to try to regain something of our own peace of mind.
I'm at a conference now and trying to re-immerse myself in the ancient world for the sake of my career, though I know my success with that will be limited; the present is ever-present and will remain so. I might miss a day or two here or there but I will post when I can, and I will keep posting.