As the stabbing victim began to tell his story, I had an epiphany: I care a lot about antisemitism; I’ve been a Judeophile since childhood (It was reading those All of a Kind Family
books, over and over). But I’m a Christian: I have no real idea what it feels like to be Jewish, much less have a stranger hate me because of my religious faith—much less hate me enough to try to kill me. The Orthodox Hasidic rabbi from Boston, recently the victim of an antisemitic knife attack, was speaking at a “No Fear” rally in support of Jewish people in Washington, DC. Shlomo Noginski said he’d been born in St. Petersburg, where he had experienced “terrible antisemitism” even as a young child. “Never in my darkest dreams did I imagine that I would feel the same way here in the United States, the land of freedom and endless possibilities,” said the rabbi, via a translator (he was, he said, too weak to speak much in English). And listening to his voice break with emotion, I suddenly realized: I am all words.
Read the complete essay at the Times of Israel.
Photo by Village Hero via Flickr (cc)
As the stabbing victim began to tell his story, I had an epiphany: I care a lot about antisemitism; I’ve been a Judeophile since childhood (It was reading those All of a Kind Family books, over and over). But I’m a Christian: I have no real idea what it feels like to be Jewish, much less have a stranger hate me because of my religious faith—much less hate me enough to try to kill me. The Orthodox Hasidic rabbi from Boston, recently the victim of an antisemitic knife attack, was speaking at a “No Fear” rally in support of Jewish people in Washington, DC. Shlomo Noginski said he’d been born in St. Petersburg, where he had experienced “terrible antisemitism” even as a young child. “Never in my darkest dreams did I imagine that I would feel the same way here in the United States, the land of freedom and endless possibilities,” said the rabbi, via a translator (he was, he said, too weak to speak much in English). And listening to his voice break with emotion, I suddenly realized: I am all words.
Read the complete essay at the Times of Israel.
Photo by Village Hero via Flickr (cc)
