American Jews Are Concealing Their Jewish Identity

In the past, when I thought of Jews concealing the fact that they are Jewish, black and white scenes from the Holocaust or the former Soviet Union came to mind. As a Jewish baby boomer who grew up in the United States, I always felt safe here and I wore my Judaica to show off my Jewish pride.

But over the past few years, the rise of antisemitism in the U.S. and abroad is making Jews question if they should openly wear religious symbols in public.

Just recently, a loudspeaker on a train traveling through Austria near Vienna began blaring Adolf Hitler's speeches and chanting "Sieg Heil" at the passengers. Someone aboard the train had hacked into the PA system, and it wasn't the first time this happened. One passenger, a concentration camp survivor, left the train crying. Police are investigating, and there is concern that this may be part of a disturbing trend.

40% of Jews have “changed their behavior” to conceal the fact they are Jewish.

In my Long Island community, which is home to the fourth largest Jewish population in the U.S., antisemitism is virulent enough to require a community-wide response. The American Jewish Committee recently held a bipartisan meeting of more than 50 Nassau and Suffolk County elected officials to discuss antisemitism and formulate a cohesive response to it. Laura Shaw Frank, the AJC’s director of Contemporary Jewish Life, said that 41% of American Jews indicated that they felt less safe than a year ago, when the figure was 31%. And 40% of Jews have “changed their behavior” to conceal the fact they are Jewish.

Concealing my Jewish identity is not something that I ever had to do growing up in Queens, New York. Neither did my own children, who attended a Jewish day school on Long Island. I remember a synagogue trip to France about 10 years ago when our rabbi told the men in the group to remove their kippot. But now in the U.S.? That is sobering – and very scary.

The AJC report evoked memories of my mother, who enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II as soon as she graduated from college. She had seen a film about Hitler and was determined to do her part to fight the Nazis. Growing up in a New Jersey community with a tiny Jewish population, she knew what it was to be a suspect minority; her friends had even accused her of killing Jesus. When she tearfully told them she had nothing to do with it, they accepted her explanation and resumed their play. That’s probably the reason she and my father chose to raise their family in an area that was heavily Jewish.

My mom shared stories of army life with my brother and me, but never explained why she didn’t wear a Jewish star. As a child, I didn’t understand it, but she didn’t stop me from wearing the Jewish symbols my grandmother gave to me.

Long Island’s German Gardens

As someone who writes about the Holocaust and is a member of The International Advisory Board for Holocaust Survivor Day, I am very well versed in this dark chapter in our history. While doing research for my second post-Holocaust novel, “Shadows We Carry,” I learned that there was a community called German Gardens in eastern Long Island, which required residents to show proof of German lineage to live there. I used this community as a setting in a section of my book that explores neo-Nazism.

This German community still exists in Yaphank, a hamlet in Suffolk County, and it was one of the German American Bund’s main centers of activity before World War II. In 1935, the German American Settlement League bought a large tract of land in the hamlet and the neighborhood soon became a Nazi community for those of pure Aryan lineage. The fliers that were distributed at the time inviting German Americans to live there read, “You will meet people who think like you.”

In this May 22, 1938 photo provided by the New York City Municipal Archives, a large swastika is surrounded by a white picket fence at Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, N.Y.Credit: AP

The main street, which ran the entire length of the community, was named Adolf Hitler Strasse. This and other street names honoring Nazis have since been renamed, but it wasn’t until May 2017 that the requirement to be of German ancestry was dropped. New York State prosecutors reached a settlement with the League to end any discriminatory housing policies and practices.

As my Jewish community and others throughout our country cope with antisemitic incidents, we need to be vigilant in reporting such acts, and not just ignore them. These acts impact not only our lives, but also the next generation. It’s heartening to see that the country as a whole is addressing this disturbing issue. It can no longer be shrugged off as an innocent prank.

The Nazis made the Jewish star pejorative, and that’s probably what my mother was reacting to in not wearing one.

My response to today's antisemitism? To keep wearing my Judaica and feel proud of my Jewish heritage, as well as a sense of connectedness to all Jews. My mother felt constrained from wearing hers, which keeps me motivated to wear mine every single day. I think of her when I put it on and wish for a world in which all Jews can be proud to display their heritage. I can't change her experience, but I can change what's happening today and try to make the future brighter for my children and grandchildren.