As a young lady, I met a handsome man, and we felt an instant attraction. After a while, he invited me to a guest house in the Catskills, with plans to meet his parents. As we walked on a hot, muggy night, my curly hair turned frizzy. Wanting to look my best, I preferred meeting them the next day, when my hair behaved. Without understanding my true concerns and why I wanted to delay in meeting his parents, he turned cold and that was the end of us. All because of one humid night; climate was the catalyst for rejection and dejection. With time, my spirit rebounded from this personal dejection. That’s life.
But on the world stage, there is a current climate far more insidious than humid weather, that infiltrates and denigrates our humanity. It’s an escalating climate of hate and antisemitism. Israel is often depicted as the oppressor, rather than the civilized country that it is. Yet Israelis exhibit courage and determination, rather than succumbing to dejection and despair.
In America, our Jewish students are harassed, intimidated, assaulted. In this toxic climate, this deluge of hate brings disheartenment. We remember Germany of the 1930s and the ensuing expulsion of Jewish students from schools, culminating in the final nightmare. Our past history exhorts us to “never again” remain complacent. The current mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, with his overt cry to “spread the Intifada,” leaves us uncertain for the future.
We must unite as never before, raise our voices in unison, and refuse to succumb to this air of dejection. The “Titanic” dismissed imminent danger, with dire results. Today, what we are experiencing is just the tip of the “iceberg.” We can’t afford to ignore the signs.
