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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