On Seinfeld, Jerry’s less-than-beloved Uncle Leo (whose son Jeffrey, you'll recall, worked for the Parks Department and who reprimanded Jerry repeatedly for not saying “hello!”) was an occasional subject of Jerry’s not-so-subtle jabs and manipulations. One of Jerry’s many criticisms of Uncle Leo was that anything that went awry in Uncle Leo’s life was the result of anti-Semitism. Jerry even went so far as to poke fun of Uncle Leo’s ability to “find” anti-Semitism everywhere during an appearance on The Tonight Show. What made Uncle Leo funny, in addition to his amazing portrayal by the late Len Lesser, was the loosely-disguised dismissiveness that Jerry had for his uncle’s paranoia.
Many of us, I suspect, had an Uncle Leo in our family or in our broader Jewish world. Or maybe more than one. Or, maybe, you yourself were the Uncle Leo of the family. Everyone’s “Uncle Leo” harbored suspicions of the world-wide conspiracy arrayed against us, fears that were generally met with an eye roll, a dismissive “Nah,” or just total disregard. Yet, what we have seen with what is now reaching a near-deafening crescendo of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish voices is that we were perhaps way too premature to dismiss Uncle Leo’s admonitions.
Part of the unstated humor behind Uncle Leo’s warnings is that, as with most every joke, there is a degree of truth underlying it (a topic itself helpfully covered on a different Seinfeld episode). Fortunately, however, for many years we thought it was just that – a mere kernel of truth. It was not worth worrying about. We all knew, though some were less perceptive than others, that anti-Semitism had not been eradicated. It was, we believed, nonetheless lessened greatly in the post-World War II, post-Cold War era. And while we still needed vital organizations like the Anti-Defammation League, actual overt acts of Jew-hatred were mercifully few and far between.
Yet, starting a handful of years ago, we began to notice an increase in these brazen acts of anti-Semitism. Neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, the heinous shooting in Pittsburgh and other events gave some of us pause. Perhaps anti-Semitism was not as dead as we had believed.
Of course, there are always those – perhaps they are Pollyannas or maybe just in denial – that assert that such concerns are needless hand-wringing. “There’s nothing to truly worry about,” these unmoved members of our community avowed. “You are being Chicken Little. The sky is definitely not falling.”
Yet I, like many of you, was never so confident in such dismissals. Growing up in an area with precious few Jews, I knew that we were looked at differently and frequently – possibly even normally – viewed with a degree of suspicion, or at least uncomfortable puzzlement. Whatever the term, we certainly were not like them. We were different, and I think we all know that different is often not truly embraced. Perhaps more poignantly, can a people that have faced countless extermination attempts, including of course the Holocaust itself, ever over-react to concerns about anti-Semitism? I would suggest not.
Now I fear that I and my like-minded friends among you are seeing that our concerns were not misplaced. In the short span of less than a month, we have seen such a surge in anti-Semitic acts and rhetoric that I hear, even from my gentile friends, that it is all so “terribly scary,” “very disturbing” and “beyond comprehension.”
But even I, who admittedly was a slightly younger but aspiring version of Uncle Leo, am shocked at the prevalence of this hatred for us. From corners that we thought were above such base hatred – the enlightened, the educated, the believers in social justice and acceptance – we have seen a level of disgust for our existence that I never would have believed still existed. And to that end, I am forced to conclude that the breath and depth of this hatred for us and our mere being is just yet another in the countless reincarnations of the world’s oldest hatred. Nothing, tragically, has really changed.
The deniers will, as they always do, say that it is either (1) not nearly as pervasive as it seems or (2) that it really is “just about Israel and Zionism, not about Jews.” Of course, Zionism and its progeny – the State of Israel – exists because of this millennia-old hatred. Those who claim that Zionists and Israelis are causing the hatred have it precisely backwards; it is the hatred for us that necessitates the need for Zionism and Israel.
We all know that there is, and always has been, a dangerous double-standard applied to Israel. But also to us as Jews. Israel is, we are ceaselessly reminded, unacceptable because of its “apartheid regime,” “colonizing,” racism and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. All of this despite the fact Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs possess equal legal rights, that Israel was necessitated largely to escape the true colonialists of the last several hundred years, Israel is far less homogenous than any of the Arab states and of course the only country amywhere in that part of the world that allows such practices as free speech and freedom of religion. This includes, of course, both Gaza and the West Bank, which is led by the “more moderate” Mahmoud Abbas, so moderate that he stated mere weeks before 10/7 that Hitler massacred our people not due to anti-Semitism but because of our social behaviors. If Holocaust denial is now considered moderate, then we are too late.
And let us not forget that while other groups are beyond reproach when claiming discrimination or mistreatment, our objections to similar treatment are at best dismissed if not outright met with hostility. Somehow it is still okay to kick the Jew, largely by the same groups that many Jews supported unquestionably when they themselves were the targets of prejudice.
Our rose-colored glasses are off. Even if one doesn’t chant “Gas the Jews” we still know that that is what you mean when you whip others into frenetic and violent states with chants of “From the river to the sea.” Uncle Leo may have been old and a caricature, but the words he spoke were unfortunately nothing short of the undeniable truth.
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