The Jew’s Nose: Gatekeeping and Marginalization in a Time of Crisis
FEATURED AUTHOR
REBECCA SHAPIRO, PH.D.
---- September 28, 2020
Today is not Monday for me. It is Yom Kippur 5781, and today for the first time in many years my synagogue was not protected by armed police officers during services. While that lack of protection might be alarming to some, I am familiar with being alone and being Jewish in the United States. Indeed, most Jews I know are familiar with being alone and vulnerable because many Jews in America have worked hard for centuries: to assimilate, to pass, to acquire social and political capital, and to become unseen. While we are not always seen, however, we are noticed, and rarely for the reasons we wish for. We are noticed because we are Jews and just for that people hate us; our mere existence births hatred of us.
I take the title of this piece from two well-known books by Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body and Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis. The term anti-Semitism has evolved to be “antisemitism” and a more visceral term, “Jew-hatred.” Jew-hatred is not new to Jews and it is not new to me. As recently as a year ago I was informed that I had been put on a Telegram channel of known or prominent Jews on Twitter, and that my image and personal information were being circulated among white nationalists and neo-Nazis. More recently, this summer I was assailed on Twitter accounts with increasing virulence, calling me out as not human. These accounts shared online images of me and screen-shot images of my nose because the nose is specifically ugly to Jew-haters. And a Jewish nose is, to those of a eugenic and bigoted mindset, something that marks an outward manifestation of inward corruption. (My grandmother said my nose is lovely, but I believe there is bias there.)
Such invective and intentional cruelty are expected by Jews online and in real life. But what was not expected was the support and kind words from other Jews who defended me from internet trolls, while sharing what they too had experienced what I had—and much worse. The opening of the gates of kindness meant that I saw a community of like-minded people, Jews of all perspectives and denominations and ages—also non-Jews appalled by the unveiling of hatred—who banded together to deflect and reject the racism directed at me.
What is not pleasant about the Jewish community—in any context—is the practice of “gate-keeping.” Gate-keeping among Jews is a pernicious and mean-spirited way of deciding who is and who is not Jewish, either because one comes from a patrilineal line, or one who did not convert in an Orthodox ceremony, or one who might have “returned” to Judaism, or who does not look like whatever has been decided a Jew looks like. Gate-keeping and people who decide they can choose who is “legally” and legitimately Jewish divides and splits our tiny worldwide community and diminishes us. It weakens our numbers, depletes our energy, and moves discussions in ways that hurt those who need help the most. When I say “those who need help the most,” I mean specifically the Jews who do not “look like” the rest of us: Jews who are Black or Brown, or who spring from regions not considered typically Jewish centers. Black and Brown Jews need support, and we who do not stand up and defend those Jews as being inseparable from us makes us guilty of a perpetual sin. It is wrong and cannot be condoned, and if we shame or separate Jews in public or private, we destroy ourselves from the inside out. This is our collective sin that we must confront and end. We must heal by accepting each other; it is no one’s business who is a Jew and who is not—certainly, it is not my place. We are all Strangers in some way and to make our Jewishness an active practice—to “do Jewish”—and to be better Jews is to acknowledge that it is not our right or responsibility to keep the gates closed to our own.
This summer I was in a foreign country that had closed its borders, so for the most part I watched the United States convulse after racial crimes were “televised” in waves of fear, outrage, grief, and also resignation. We in the United States may have moved away from the constant public demonstrations to necessary discussions of what it means to be a decent human, and at its most basic level, what it means to be a denizen of the United States. I hope we are in a time of national reckoning when we can repair our country and our world, for to do that is to provide care and succor to all who feel unwelcome and isolated. Our history comprises the sins that we must confront, the sins of hundreds of years of doing nothing or little when people were harmed in countless ways. As the Ashkenazic prayer “Ashamnu” recited on Yom Kippur states, it is not just we who have sinned, but also our forebears. The prayer calculatedly uses the collective “we” as opposed to the individual “I.” The list of our infractions is long and inclusive, but two of the most relevant are that we have gone astray and that we have led others astray. Today must be a day when we can come back to being a people who do good deeds and who believe in giving to those in need without questioning their intent. The collective “we” of the United States, likewise, must accept the sins of our forebears and stop the continuation of crimes against our victimized ancestors by choosing to hew to decency and respect for those in need.
As a Jew, I am asked to live my religion and to “do Jewish.” But I cannot accept that to be American means to “do American,” because for hundreds of years doing American meant helping ourselves at the expense of others. The list of victims is long and includes people in my family, people who are my friends, and millions of other people I will never know or who can never be known. We are indeed in a time of crisis that is being exposed by technology and voices that will not be silenced. Those who have been hurt and who have hurt others for centuries by the very foundation of the United States are visible. The perpetrators are shown to us all for what they are: criminals and victimizers. We must not give in to a polarizing mob like that Lincoln referred to in his speech of 1838; we can overcome this crisis by repairing our nation, and through repairing our nation, repairing the world.
Repairing in the world, though, requires action. One of the things that I have begun to do actively and publicly is to work with my synagogue and several groups in the Black community where I live, Jersey City, to promote peace, dialogue, and direct assistance. The specific reason for our recent and urgent coming together is that on December 10, 2019, Jersey City was the site of a violent and prolonged gun battle at a kosher market that resulted in the deaths of a police detective, the shooters, three Jews in the market, and a Hispanic employee of the market. Over the last year, many of us horrified by the spectacular hatred and damage brought about by two hate-filled people, helped to shine a much brighter light on the extreme segregation, denigrations, and Othering that had been committed for decades against Black, Brown, and Jewish people in that neighborhood. It is also the neighborhood where eleven years ago I chose to live, and I hope that I am becoming one with the people who used to live here, who remained here, and who live here now. I am grateful that even though I and others like me are latecomers, our assistance has been welcomed by people and groups who have been unseen and unheard by those in power for generations. Specifically, my synagogue is close to where the shooting took place, and our congregation sees our sixty-year presence in the community as inadequate. Merely being somewhere does not grant us the right to have a voice; we must “live” our beliefs there as well. We who believe in the goodness of the people of Jersey City and our community must immerse ourselves in right actions for all.
Jersey City, ironically, has been loudly and proudly called one of the most diverse cities in the nation by demographers and government officials. Those who promote that fact do not similarly acknowledge that we are not nearly as integrated as we are diverse. Many people here are, by socio-economic status, ethnicity, or linguistic imperialism, unable to participate in the burgeoning growth that has benefited my city even during a global kill-off and pandemic. The inability to be equal denizens of Jersey City does not correlate with the unmet needs of a better educational system—though that should be foundational—but rather to better access to the same kinds of political, economic, and social capital that the rest of us enjoy. We Jews who have striven to be unseen cannot let our invisibility beget inactivity. Because silence = violence = death.
We Jews who have striven to be unseen cannot let our invisibility beget inactivity.
Because silence = violence = death.
Gate-keeping is forbidden in Judaism; it ought to be reconsidered in greater social ways when members of marginalized and invisible groups require care and support and cannot receive it. As a professor whose life’s work is to care for and learn along with my students, I cannot let more gate-keeping occur in my field because it is not usually followed by positive action. Words are cheap. Academics are especially needed to effect change not only in the classroom but also in the public sphere where our voices can be heard, seen, and read—and then we must enact our words. It is not enough to profess justice and equality, but we must turn words into deeds. Recently some academics, rightly horrified by the continued assaults on Black and Brown people in this country, have transmuted into a collective mentality of unquestioning binarism, “us” against “them” of righteousness. In so doing those who think like that replicate the mob that Lincoln spoke of: those who are not careful will scoop up “the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals are trodden down and disregarded.” The last thing academia needs is a purge of those who strive to do good. The reality is that we have seen the enemy and it is us.
Those who swing the gates open wide for one group but close them when others wish to enter ultimately lose, because they injudiciously decide the worth of peoples
—Rebecca Shapiro, Ph.D.
We who are comfortable in our classrooms and suburbs and brownstones do not have the right to decide in our national discussion who is worthy and how they are deserving. Our response to any marginalized or minority group should be to see the Stranger and the Other. And then without hesitation ask what we can do. And then we must listen to what they tell us. And then we must do what we are asked to do. We cannot be silent or silence others when they speak out against injustice done to one group or another, because we are all one world. We are all one people. Those who would think or say otherwise are shamefully guilty of gate-keeping, and I suggest that whoever believes there is a finite amount of good will and care to be had reconsider that notion. Those who swing the gates open wide for one group but close them when other wish to enter ultimately lose, because they injudiciously decide the worth of peoples. And truly, all of our lives are worth above rubies.
As a Jew and an academic I find myself in a peculiar position as one who has had lifelong direct experience of hatred, and as one who can speak out against it when it is directed against others. What we need more of, then, are people who seek to heal by radical inclusivity. Exclusion of the Stranger and marking of the Other—whether by the shape of our nose or the color of our skin or who we love or how our bodies or brains are divergent—furthers discord for generations to come. That tension and division is precisely what those in power wish to happen so that we remain immobile and ignored. Rather, we must redeem ourselves by putting aside pride and indifference and do justice for everyone who asks. That is strength. That is power.
Rebecca Shapiro, Ph.D.
Rebecca Shapiro is an associate professor of English and linguistics at City University of New York. Her work has evolved to focus on linguistic imperialism, asymmetrical relations of power in academia, linguistic register and student language in New York City and Barbados. She has published a book on the history and politics of English dictionaries as well as articles on historical sociolinguistics.