We’re Giving the Guns to People to Shoot Us in the Face.

Kyla Kupferstein Torres • Age 50

Editor of an African Diaspora literary journal, Oakland, California

I am a third-generation survivor; my grandparents were Polish. European antisemitism is the reason I have no extended family. I’m trying to pass Judaism to my son without a family around him. But my grandparents were Bundists; their version of Judaism did not include Zionism. They believed in doikayt, “hereness,” which means that Jews can and should be who we are, wherever we are. I was not raised to believe that Israel, or the existence of a Jewish state, was necessary for Jews to be safe.

My whole life has been colored by the trauma of antisemitism, but the current American conversation about it feels profoundly ahistorical. As the Italians and Irish did, American Jewry underwent a process of “white-ification” in this country. As a result many Jews have been able to enjoy the privileges of whiteness, and have been lulled into a false sense of security.

Now, post-October 7th, Jews in America are saying they feel unsafe. But look at Harvard, look at Penn. Pressure from Jews removed two university presidents, and those who support Palestinians are losing jobs and opportunities. Jews are acting like we are the ones who are being hunted when Palestinians have been utterly dehumanized, with Gaza destroyed and 40,000 dead so far? October 7th was a horrific crime against Israel, but if you can watch what is happening in Gaza without your hair being on fire then you are part of the process of dehumanization that allows both an October 7th and the barbaric response to it. It feels profoundly un-Jewish.

My biggest fear is that AIPAC and others are going to enable fascist right-wing conservative leaders and their policies which are openly bigoted. Those leaders are not “good for the Jews.” Those leaders do not care about us; they are protecting strategic interests in the Middle East and messianic hopes about the return of Jesus. And if we can’t see that we are lost.
(as told to Sarah Seltzer)