Article 8

Simon Taylor was on his way to an appointment in Flatbush when he pulled into a local filling station one afternoon last week. As he began to fuel up, another customer, spotting the kippah atop Rabbi Taylor’s head, launched into a rant about how much he hated Jews, and then started chasing him with an upraised fist. Rabbi Taylor, a 38-year-old father of five, was shaken, and wondered if the incident was connected to a antisemitic rhetoric in America going more and more mainstream.

“I’ve never had anything like this in New York, and it definitely felt to me like this whole Kanye West thing had something to do with it,” said Rabbi Taylor, referring to the ugly utterances of the hip-hop legend now known as Ye. “All it takes is a couple influential people to say things, and suddenly it becomes very tense.”

For Jews in America, things are tense indeed. There is a war in Europe. The economy seems to be teetering. It is a perilous time, and perilous times have never been great for Jews. 

Antisemitism is one of the longest-standing forms of prejudice, and those who monitor it say it is now on the rise in America. The number of reported incidents has been increasing. 

Social media has clearly made it easier to circulate hate speech, and that means outbursts like Ye’s, in which he posted on Twitter that he would “go death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” get more attention. In Los Angeles, a group of emboldened antisemites hung a “Kanye is right about the Jews” banner over an interstate on Oct. 22, and then on Saturday similar words were projected at a college football stadium in Jacksonville, Fla.

“There’s no doubt that the normalization of antisemitism in the highest ranks  of our culture is toxic,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs. “It’s dangerous, and it’s deadly. It has been unleashed and accelerated in the last few years, and actual attacks have risen.”

Many  Jewish people across the country are unsettled by the antisemitic rhetoric coming from so many places. Steve Rosenberg, a former executive at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, said he was put “over the edge” when a prominent basketball player, Nets guard Kyrie Irving, defended his support of an antisemitic documentary (and got praise from Ye in the process). 

“Antisemitism is a conspiracy theory,” said Deborah Lipstadt, the United States special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism. Ms. Lipstadt said she sees antisemitism as “the canary in the coal mine” for a broader set of threats to democracy.

A thread of antisemitism connects many of the nation’s recent spasms of political violence: the “Jews will not replace us” chants during a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017; the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt worn to last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers has watched the steady stream of headlines about antisemitic rhetoric — and the sometimes muted responses to it — with sadness and horror. “When people don’t speak up, their silence is deafening,” he said.

Rabbi Myers was speaking the day after the fourth anniversary of the killing of 11 people at Tree of Life, his synagogue in Pittsburgh. The gunman later told police he “wanted all Jews to die.” Rabbi Myers survived the shooting, which remains the deadliest attack on Jews in American history.

“Speech is just the beginning,” Rabbi Myers said. “It moves from speech to action.”