WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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In September of 2022, an Indiana University student burned and vandalized a sacred Jewish object at a student’s home. The object in question, a mezuzah, symbolizes to the outside world the occupants’ relationship with God and their home as a Jewish household.
The article states the Bloomington Police have the suspect in custody, and if convicted, he’s facing a potential of 180 days in jail and a fine of $1000. But will this punishment be enough to deter the next anti-Semitic incident? Gunther Jikeli, the Erna Rosenfeld Professor of Jewish and Germanic Studies at Indiana University, isn’t convinced.
“Unfortunately, this is not a one-off incident,” Jikeli said, “I’ve even seen, personally, swastikas on the sidewalk here in downtown Bloomington.”
The Anti-Defamation League conducts research on trends related to anti-Semetism and is dedicated to combating extremism. In 2021, the ADL found a 34% increase in anti-Semetic incidents since 2020. This statistic includes reported cases of harassment, vandalism, and assaults.
Bloomington is no stranger to anti-Semitic actions and vandalism. In February of 2022, WTHR reported on racist and anti-Semitic messages sent anonymously to members of Jewish Greek life at Indiana University.
“Last year, in particular. . . for our campus, a lot of anti-semitism. . . there were swastikas drawn around town. . . students felt very vulnerable and were really deeply affected. And there was a student who faced harassment on her residence hall floor for being Jewish,” Sue Silberberg said.
Anti-Semitism has a long and branching history, breaching both aisles of the modern political spectrum. Offensive caricatures and stereotypes of Jewish people often find themselves intertwined within popular culture, hence letting outdated attitudes flourish without further exploration.
“Historically, Jews have often been blamed [for running the world],” Jikeli said, “Even from 2000 years ago when Jews have been blamed for killing Jesus, which is a false accusation, but what does it mean? It means that. . . if you believe Jesus to be the son of God, that ‘the Jews’ . . . have killed the son of God, and that could only be the Devil. This demonization has been there for a long time.”
Within modern anti-Semetic discourse, a document that remains unfortunately influential is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum describes it as “the most. . . widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times. . .[and] entirely a work of fiction, intentionally written to blame Jews for a variety of ills.”
The vandalism of the mezuzah and the trend of anti-Semitism raise safety concerns in the minds of local Jewish leaders. Sue Silberberg of the IU Hillel Center says that anti-Semitic actions have a ripple effect throughout the Jewish community.
“Whenever Jewish students experience any kind of anti-Semitism or hate, it affects us because we’re here as their support, as their home away from home,” Silberberg said.
So how can regular people combat anti-Semitism and religious prejudices? While the answer may be simple it doesn’t stop at the source: radicalization. Instead, Tanenbaum, the center for combating religious prejudice, recommends a more peaceful approach. They recommend actionable practices like calling out hate as it happens and physically talking out one another’s differences with fact-based logic.
Resources for fighting anti-Semitism in your community, along with this story can be found at WFHB.org
For WFHB, I’m Clayton Young.
Resources:
https://tanenbaum.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Believe-it…or-not-Combating-Extremism-12.3.18-1.pdf
https://tanenbaum.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Guidelines-for-Conducting-Open-Conversations.pdf
https://tanenbaum.org/about-us/combating-extremism/ways-to-take-action/
https://tanenbaum.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Five-Ways-to-Combat-Anti-Semitism-NOW.pdf
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/countering-violent-extremism
