Five Jews Stabbed in Rabbi's Home in Monsey, Suburb Near NYC. Suspect in Custody; Demographic Data Withheld

There have been numerous, including murderous, attacks on Jews in the NYC area in the past month. In Jersey City, NJ, Jews were killed merely for being Jewish. 

After  these disturbing attacks, authorities typically withhold demographic data on the suspects, even if they are in custody. 

We are told if the suspects are male or female, and their age. But not their ethnicity. 

When this data is discovered, it often transpires that attackers are African American. 

Clearly, there is a problem of anti-Semitism among African Americans, and clearly the powers that be are avoiding discussing that problem. 

It is so much easier to lay all blame for anti-Semitism on Poles, on Christians, on "white trash." 

This obscuring of important realities, realities that involve life and death, is criminal. 

See New York Times coverage here

Under this Yahoo account, readers comment on the withholding of a description of the suspect. 

American Jew Visits Poland and Feels Afraid

The Golden Rose Restaurant in Lviv Ukraine photo by Tripadvisor

Alex Schmidt, an American of Polish-Jewish ancestry, visited the Golden Rose restaurant in Lviv, Ukraine, and published a piece about that visit on an NPR site. 

The Golden Rose restaurant is one of many attempts by Eastern Europeans to address the near extermination of the Jewish presence in what was once the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. (Lviv, Ukraine used to be Lwow, a Polish city.) 

There are many such attempts. These include folk carvings of Jewish figures, Polish people maintaining Jewish cemeteries, and the Jewish festival in Krakow. 

Alas, these attempts are often excoriated by those invested in the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype. In this stereotype, we imbibe antisemitism with our mother's milk, we are essential anti-Semites, and therefore everything we do is antisemitic. 

There's another possible explanation. Maybe the folks who set up the Golden Rose restaurant want to share and honor Jewish heritage and educate their customers about it. 

Alex Schmidt, in her piece, goes back and forth. She and her mother try to figure out if the restaurant, or a "Shabbat shalom" greeting, are menacing or friendly. 

Schmidt writes, 

Earlier on the trip, I'd experienced a detail that felt far less positive: On a Friday evening in Warsaw, a hotel doorman wished my sister "Shabbat Shalom" without having shared another word with her. It was said with no discernible animus — in fact, some might have found it a polite greeting. But the fact that Jews were persecuted here, and that we could be identified by a stranger, felt ominous. In the U.S., I go through life pretty blissfully, benefiting from white privilege and generally not thinking much about my race or religion. 

Now, in an area that had a history of hating people like me, and feeling unable to hide, I sensed a visceral, immediate danger that "playing Jewish" at the Golden Rose hadn't come close to. At the restaurant, it was easy to guess what people thought of Jews — that we're stingy and eat matzo and wash our hands a lot. But in the hotel, I had no idea what it meant to be assumed Jewish. Was the doorman's greeting an attempt at politeness? Connection? Or was it something more coded? What did he really think of Jews — of me and my family? There was no way to tell. 

I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to live full-time in a country with documented hostility toward me and never be able to hide. Would I be on edge all the time? Would I get accustomed to it somehow? In what subtle ways would the fear I felt only momentarily in Poland creep into my subconscious in a place where it was ever-present? Would it affect my mindset, my trust of strangers, my overall sense of joy and peace? I know this is something that visible minorities deal with every day. And I couldn't fathom it.

Here's the thing. Yes, there is a "documented hostility toward" Jews in Poland. There is also, as no less a personage than Columbia University Slavic Literature professor Harold Bernard Segel pointed out, a significant "documented" philo-Semitism in Poland, a philo-Semitism unique in Europe. 

Philo-Semitism is often mocked. "A philo-Semite is an anti-Semite who likes Jews," a Jewish person once said. 

Well, no. People like Jan Karski, the Ulma family, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Irene Sendler, and too many others to list here put their lives on the line. They should not be mocked and stereotyped. 

There is also a "documented" history of Jewish autonomy, power, and success in Poland. 

It's funny. Schmidt's piece is about being stereotyped as a Jew, but in her piece she manages to disseminate and perpetuate stereotypes of people like me as exclusively menacing, dangerous, ignorant, and hateful. 

Bieganski is Very Cheap Right Now

So hurry on over to Amazon and buy a copy before the prices changes. 

More Anti-Semitic Attacks in NYC

I write about black anti-Semitism in Bieganski the Brute Polak. 

Anti-Semitism among blacks and Hispanics is real. It's something PC people don't want to talk about. 

We need to start talking about it.

There have been at least four violent anti-Semitic attacks in NYC in recent days. In one incident, the attacker yelled "You f--king guy, you f--king Jew, I punched you, you f--king k--e."

That attacker is alleged to be 28 year old Steven Jorge of Miami. Someone on Facebook is claiming that the attacker is black and that he saw that in news coverage that has since been scrubbed. I don't know if this is true. I will update if I find out more. 

Read more about this incident here

Another incident: 

"The most recent confirmed attack happened in the early morning hours on Tuesday on Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights, when a 25-year-old Jewish man was walking on the sidewalk when he saw a large group of people walking toward him, police said.


That man told police that members of the group yelled “f—k you Jew” before hurling a Slurpie at him. The group can be heard laughing and one appears to be filming the incident as they quickly flee shortly after."

Read more here

General Grant and the Jews

"In 1862, in the heat of the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant initiated the most blatant official episode of anti-Semitism in 19th-century American history. In December of that year, Grant issued his infamous General Order No. 11, which expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi."
Full story here

Six Days Before Christmas, Lost My Job of Fifteen Years

Polonia needs to support her own scholars, storytellers, filmmakers, and artists. I've said this many times before, for example here, and will say so many times again. 

Six days before Christmas, I lost my job of fifteen years. I write about that here. At so many points in my journey in academia (see samples here), I wished there were support, of any kind, in the form of funding, publicity, book sales, publication opportunities, networking, and employment, from fellow Polonian individuals, institutions, chairs. 

I did not encounter that support.

Like it or not, academia is the factory that churns out what many accept as truth. Like it or not, academia rewards and punishes people based on religion, ethnicity, politics, skin color, and social class. Like it or not, Polish, Catholic, working class, and to the right of most academics politically is the kiss of death in academia. 

There are cliques and rewards for members of numerous groups: African Americans in academia, Hispanics in academia, transgenders in academia, Marxists, etc. One earns points in any number of academic environments for being a member of those groups.  

The Poland First to Fight conference was a step in the right direction. I hope we keep moving that way, towards supporting and highlighting each other. 

Anti-Semitic Pig, Scum: Putin to Poland; Soviet Anti-Polish Propaganda Redux

Vladimir Putin, who played, and continues to play, a dire role in American politics, via his propagandizing for Donald Trump, is reviving Soviet-era anti-Polish propaganda, specifically, that Poles are anti-Semitic pigs who collaborated with the Nazis. 

Of course it was the Poles who were the first to fight the Nazis, and it was the Soviets who collaborated with the Nazis. Nazi Germany and Communist Russia invaded Poland in September, 1939, as agreed to in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

Soviet Russia mass murdered Poles, see, for example, Katyn. Soviet Russia rounded Poles up and  put them on boxcars and sent them to concentration camps in Siberia. Soviet Russia ethnically cleansed historically Polish lands and  to this day the territory Soviet Russia ethnically cleansed is no longer Polish. 

After the war, Soviet Russia called Polish heroes who fought against the Nazis "spit-flecked dwarves" put these heroes, men like Witold Pilecki and General Nil on trial, tortured them, killed them, buried them in unmarked graves, and erased their history. 

You can read more about Putin's statements here and here

For more on this see Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype.