March 9th, 2019 — Shabbat Pekudei
The story of Purim, as told in Megillat Esther, warns us of two characteristics of antisemitism that feel eerily familiar: the facility and immediacy with which animus toward one Jew becomes a vendetta against all, and the danger of overt antisemitism colliding with its more subterranean counterpart. These eternal truths call us to account for our own complicity as we too often excuse anti-Jewish bias when it manifests among our allies, all for the sake of the greater good. This is no longer about right vs left; we have to know that it’s the normalization of antisemitism on both right and left that poses the greatest danger.