JustASC

Commenting on the shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Museum and the murder of a security guard there, Jonathan Sarna writes:

“It’s open season on Jews,” one of my friends remarked upon hearing the news of the shooting at the Holocaust Museum.
The response, I first thought, sounded like typical Jewish paranoia. The alleged shooter was an 88-year-old white supremacist fanatic operating alone, and his only victim, in the end, was a non-Jewish security guard. Why magnify an isolated incident into an incipient pogrom?
But, on second thought, isn’t this the third “isolated incident” directed against Jews in just over a month?
On May 6, Johanna Justin-Jinich, a student at Wesleyan University, was murdered by an alleged stalker who, according to reports, wrote in his diary that “I think it’s okay to kill Jews, and go on a killing spree at this school.” His plan, apparently, was to kill a much larger number of Jewish students, to create in his words (recalling the 1999 high school massacre in Colorado), a “Jewish Columbine.”
On May 20, four men were arrested in New York after planting what turned out to be fake explosives near two Riverdale synagogues. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Synder, the men were “eager to bring death to Jews.”

Concludes Sarna:

Nevertheless, three “isolated incidents” [the quotes are Sarna's, suggesting he doesn't think they are quite so isolated as they seem] in just over a month should give us pause. While it may not be “open season” on Jews in America, it is surely long past the season when concern over anti-Semitism can be dismissed as typical Jewish paranoia.

The question, it seems to me, is not whether Jews should be concerned over anti-Semitism, but how they should address and express this concern. The statement “it’s open season on Jews” imagines a widespread threat, arguing for a communal lockdown: Armed guards at every synagogue, no yarmulkes on the street, perhaps removing signage on Jewish institutions. Are we ready for such measures? Does the daily experience of America’s five million Jews justify such measures?

Or perhaps it argues for a law enforcement strategy — a summit of anti-hate groups like the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center and law enforcement officials working together to determine where current measures to monitor hate, prevent attacks, and punish perpetrators are lacking.

The three incidents make an odd troika. One by a spurned stalker, a second by a quartet of ex-cons goaded and abetted by an FBI informer, the third by an elderly white supremacist with a history of anti-Jewish and anti-black activity. As much as they are linked in their anti-Semitism, they are almost completely dissimilar in their motives and plans of attack.

That being the case, what do we do with our “concern”? Fear without some sort of strategy is a Jewish telegram: “Start worrying — details to follow.”