JULY 1 • 2021 | 7

when the United Nations was
voting on its resolution equat-
ing Zionism with racism, and
when anti-Israel and anti-Jew-
ish slogans began to show up
on buildings in some sections
of Paris. And I wasn’t afraid
when the Latin Quarter’s only
Jewish student restaurant was
bombed in 1979 — injuring
26 people — or in 1982 when
attackers fired submachine
guns and hurled grenades into
Jo Goldenberg’s, a restaurant
in the historic Jewish quar-
ter of the Marais. I believed
that because these weren’t
state-sponsored crimes that
France could still be trusted.
Fear had still not gotten the
better of me in 2002 when
synagogues in Lyon, Marseille,
Strasbourg and Kremlin-
Bicetre were attacked in rapid
succession. Nor had it after
the torture and murder of Ilan
Halimi in 2006, nor in 2012
after a Jewish teacher and
three children were murdered
in Toulouse. Instead, I wrote
about France’s abject failure
to assimilate immigrants from
its former colonies in North
Africa and reasoned that this
was less about terrorism than
the failure of the French state.
I wasn’t afraid in 2015 after
a siege at a kosher super-
market in Paris, following
the Charlie Hebdo massacre,
left four Jews dead, or after
soldiers guarding a Jewish
center in Nice were stabbed,
or the next year when there
were anti-Jewish attacks in
Strasbourg and Marseille.
But in 2017, Sarah Halimi
was murdered in her apart-
ment; Mireille Knoll the
following year. In 2019, the
philosopher and public intel-
lectual Alain Finkielkraut was
subject to anti-Jewish abuse

on the streets of Paris. The
same year, a painting of the
late Simone Veil was defaced;
the word Juden was scrawled
on the window of a Paris
bakery; a memorial to Ilan
Halimi was destroyed and a
Jewish cemetery in eastern
France was vandalized.
I’m nothing if not stub-
born, so despite all of this I
remained unafraid.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve
always taken the existence of
anti-Judaism everywhere as a
given. With that as an emo-
tional shield, I could go any-
where and see any anti-Jewish
act — even murder — as busi-
ness as usual because, well,
history. Others might express
worry and fear at the news
of Jews getting stabbed, or
shot, or spat upon, but I could
shrug my shoulders and say,
“So what else is new?”
In those situations, I’d often
respond to anxious friends by
asking why they thought the
Shoah would have changed
the way many people and
many countries treated Jews.
After all, didn’t the pre-Shoah
world create the environment
that resulted in the Shoah
in the first place? Maybe it
should have put an end to

anti-Judaism, but it was wish-
ful thinking to believe it actu-
ally would.

CHANGES FOR WORSE
Still, when I moved to Paris
in January, something had
changed.
As family and friends wor-
ried about my physical safety
as a Jew in France, I threw
myself into setting up my
Paris apartment. But by that
time, countries and inter-
national organizations had
started adopting an official
definition of antisemitism, as
though that’s something any-
body actually needs. I would
have thought killing a Jew,
shooting up a synagogue or
beating up a guy in a kippah
is self-evident.
And just last month, the
violence and killing in Israel
and Gaza shook the world
yet again. With that came
pro-Palestinian demonstra-
tions in Paris and elsewhere.
That in itself isn’t new, but
this time it was evident that
one of the things that had
changed was French people,
along with others around
the world, felt at ease voicing
anti-Jewish sentiments in
public. What’s more, many

have become vocal about their
desire to see Jews killed for
imagined collective crimes …
again.
Whether or not you think
anti-Judaism and anti-Zion-
ism are the same is irrele-
vant. In practice, when mobs
demonstrate against Israel,
when Israel is vilified, when
Israel becomes a proxy for
every bit of vitriol the people
of the world can spew against
every societal or governmen-
tal misdeed, Jews regardless
of where they’re from get
attacked.
Now that the COVID con-
finement has been lifted and life
in Paris is returning to a sem-
blance of normal, I’m resigned
to the idea that I should keep
my head down and be less open
about being a Jew. I will no
longer wear Jewish jewelry in
public. I’ll think twice before I
go to a Jewish event or attend
synagogue.
And what of my native
city, New York? Anti-Jewish
attacks have become routine
there, too. New York!
I don’t know what to
believe, whom to trust or
where I will be (relative-
ly) safe. But now I know
emotionally what I’d always
known intellectually: the
post-World War II era in
which I grew up really was an
anomaly in the continuum of
Jewish history.
And for the first time in my
life, I’m afraid.

This article originally appeared
on Kveller.

Toni L. Kamins is a freelance
journalist and former editor. She is
the author of The Complete Jewish
Guide to France and The Complete
Jewish Guide to Britain and Ireland.

Paris at night.

MARTIN BUREAU/GETTY IMAGES/JTA

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