admin“I’m afraid to wear this,” I told my fiancé. We were emptying Christmas stockings, and Matt had given me a delicate Jewish star.
“That’s fucked up.” My step-son nodded slowly. Kanye West’s unraveling has been a fertile topic between us. The day Ye said he was “going death con 3” on Jewish people, Thurston called while Matt and I were walking to the farmer’s market. I heard Matt’s side of the conversation.
“Kanye said what? I’ll tell her. Maybe we can pick up a bullet-proof vest from the guy who sells pickled beets.”
“I’m honored he used his phone to talk through,” I said.
So Thurston thought he understood why I was scared to wear my new necklace, but I wasn’t sure I did. My Judaism is served with a heaping side of assimilation. Case in point: the Jewish star in question was a Christmas gift. I’ve never thought much about Jewish symbolism, but as we dug through our stockings I found I was rummaging my own depths, groping for the source of my fear.
I started with the symbol. I knew it had existed since at least the 17th century. Sometimes referred to as the Shield of David, the Jewish star began as a way for Eastern European Jews to self-identify. By the 19th century, it was understood to represent Jewish identity by the world at large. World War One may have been a turning point; the graves of Jewish soldiers were demarcated by Jewish stars, just as a Christian grave is identified with a cross. As such, the symbols assumed a similar quality; the cross is to Christianity as the Jewish star is to Judaism. Both hold meaning for those outside each religion, and that meaning defines those within.
Which brings me back to Kanye. This fall, in the weeks after Ye accused Jews of toying with him; trying to “black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” Thurston’s best friend’s mom posted a picture of the word Ye under which two hands formed a heart in the gap between fingers and thumbs. I was surprised by what I interpreted as a defense of Kanye. I wanted to understand what Jill felt called to uphold.
When I commented that Ye’s words led some “followers to turn their ire on the Jewish people” citing “the protests in LA last weekend during which protesters did the Nazi salute,” Jill reacted by linking to shakinglife4jesuschrist’s tiktok which includes a meme of a gas station sign on which the following is written: “Epstein sold and raped children but never lost access to banks. Who who did? Truck drivers my pillow guy and Kanye. Are you awake?”
The image was a dog whistle; but once again, I wanted to understand Jill’s motives. I asked her to explain in her own words the intention behind the meme.
“For argument’s sake, I’ll engage,” she wrote. “…what if we accept that Ye is AS…could that be a thing, and could he also be telling us all the truth about what’s really going on in this country, this world (?) But we are unwilling to listen out of fear of what?????? Why are we so worried about him if he’s just crazy…maybe because he’s got something to say but stop over Saturday the boys are having a party!!! I love you!”
If you know me, the most offensive part is the insinuation that I would want to attend a party.
“When someone says ‘the elites are the enemy” they’re talking about the Jews,” Matt commented. “If you look at some of the other videos from that nightmare of a lady who can barely string two sentences together, she makes anti-Semitic comments directly. You’re free to toss your hat in with that lot if you want but it’s embarrassing.” Then he unfriended her.
My tack was different. I wrote: “….I think the danger is in Ye’s followers taking his words about Jewish people at face value without understanding the way in which white supremacy seeks to stir up fear and hatred of Jewish people and ultimately how it impacts people of all races. I think it’s helpful to talk publicly about the history of the sort of language he’s using and also what underlies memes like the one you posted, so thanks for discussing.”
I told Matt my politic reaction was intended to maintain open communication between our families, but as the months have elapsed I’ve understood that to me Jill represents a growing swath of Americans uncritically absorbing conspiracy theories that link Jews with evil power sources. As a Jew, I’m alert for that tipping point when micro-aggressions become torch-wielding mobs. Staying friends with Jill gave me the illusion of control.
In this cultural moment, it would be reasonable to believe that I was afraid to wear my Christmas present because of anti-Semites, whether ignorant and passive like Jill, or informed and calculated like Donald Trump. By the time of World War Two the Jewish star was widely known to symbolize Jewish identity, which allowed Nazi’s to harness its meaning to target Jews. In many Nazi occupied areas, Jews were required to wear armbands stamped with the emblem, and punished if they appeared in public unadorned. But in my modern case, putting the onus on an external force felt false. I wasn’t afraid of being targeted so much as misunderstood. Perhaps my fear came from a twist in the way outsiders perceive the star’s significance, but as I watched Thurston eat the sour Skittles he’d found in his stocking, I had the sense that twist started from some truth within.
Before Hitler repurposed the symbol’s power to label and control Jews, the Zionist movement adopted the Jewish star at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. Zionism espouses the necessity for a Jewish homeland and in 1948, soon after Israel was established, the Jewish star was chosen to adorn the Israeli flag. While Zionists see themselves as a liberation movement for a persecuted people, anti-Zionists believe the movement is colonialist and racist. (Someone who doesn’t identify as Zionist might say Israel was stolen, not reclaimed.) Both Zionists and non Zionists exist within Judaism, but the Jewish star has become associated with Zionist ideals. Maybe the validity of this association scared me. If people misidentified my beliefs based on my new necklace, they wouldn’t have misunderstood the symbol’s meaning. Would wearing it render me as unthinking as Jill, flaunting an image without processing it? Ignoring the nuances I didn’t embrace?
Mindlessly, I lined up the contents of my stocking. Beside a glossy candy cane, bottles of nail polish, and the throwback Lip Smackers I’d requested, the Jewish star caught the light from the tree. Was someone else’s association with the symbol really my problem? Catholics get away with wearing the cross without anyone assuming their beliefs are identical to say, Seventh Day Adventists. How are the Jewish star and the cross distinct? Maybe I needed to start with the object.
Literally, the Jewish star is a hexagram comprised of two equilateral triangles. Prior to the 17th century, it was used for decorative and mystical purposes by both Muslims and Kabbalistic Jews. In some cases, the shape was purely aesthetic, a geometric figure pleasing to the eye. In contrast, the cross is an historical object directly related to the central tenant of Christianity, namely that Jesus died for humanity’s sins. Christians wear and display the cross to remind themselves of their belief system and to let others know what they believe as well.
Perhaps in a quest for this sort of connection, in the time since Jews adopted the star to represent Jewish identity, some scholars and religious thinkers have sought to explicitly correlate the figure to the tenants of Judaism, to retrofit literal meaning onto the intersecting lines. Some claim a relationship between the star and the Passover plate, specifically that the symbolic offerings must be laid out in the order of a hexagram. The Zohar, a medieval book of Jewish mysticism posits that the star’s six points relate to the male attributes of god in union with the seventh female attribute at the center. Philosopher Franz Rosenzweig conceptualized the two triangles as representative of revelation, creation, and redemption while the corners signify humans, the World, and God.
This intellectual work cannot change the star’s origins. Whereas the cross has a literal point of origin which symbolism springs from, the Jewish star is an image onto which Jews have grafted meaning. Is this what allows for the breadth of messages contained within? Is the Jewish star more permeable, more open for interpretation?
“Maybe the inherent instability of a symbol without a literal antecedent makes it susceptible to symbolic slippage.”
Across the coffee table, Matt and Thurston blinked at me.
“Could the cross be divorced from Christianity as a whole and made to represent one aspect?” I asked.
Matt spoke around one of three enormous popcorn balls I’d crammed into his stocking. “To who?”
That was an important question. I sunk back into my thoughts. (This behavior, by the way, is why other people don’t want me at their parties any more than I want to attend.)
While my Facebook interaction with Jill began as an inquiry into her thinking, ultimately I’d felt driven to point out the meaning beneath her memes. Specifically, I’d tried to explain that the danger in Kanye’s message came not just from his power but from Jews’ minority status.
“Ye has 31 million Twitter followers,” I’d written, “There are 14 million Jews on the planet.”
What I’d meant was that Jews do not control their narrative, or rather their narrative can be controlled by outsiders who view them through the lens of misconception or stereotype. The cross as a whole represents Christianity in all its diversity because there are enough Christians around to do the understanding. The majority defines the minority. Which meant maybe anti-Semitism really was the source of my fear.
“Does blaming anti-Semitism absolve me?” I resurfaced to ask Matt. “Interpretations change. You wouldn’t wear a swastika and be like, ‘I’m all about those Aztec vibes.’”
“No, but you could call it irony,” Matt said. “That’s what some people do in meme culture. They start out claiming to mock Pepe the Frog or whatever, and eventually they’ve got Evan Rachel Wood tied to a kneeler while they whip her with a Nazi whip.”
Matt’s not great at parties either, but he was right: that’s the truth about indoctrination. It happens subtly. It happens when the Bubonic Plague spreads across Europe and leaders reference old myths about dirty Jews to deflect blame, and the masses wind up burning Jews at the stake. It happens to women in the suburbs who hashtag their posts “IYKYK.” From her place of privilege, Jill believes we can agree to disagree; but historically, what begins in unexamined ideology ends in the deaths of Jews.
“I appreciate the gift.” I watched Matt bite the foot off a gingerbread man. “I think I forgot to say that.”
“When you said ‘maybe the inherent instability of a symbol without a literal antecedent makes it susceptible to symbolic slippage,’ it was implied.”
By now Thurston had scattered the contents of his stocking and gone driving with Jill’s son. Later we’d learn he was in fact towing him on skis from the back of his car. (You can do all the deep thinking you want about symbolism, but never forget your seventeen year old is out there in the literal making unexamined choices himself.)
“If I wear it, I’ll fixate on what other people are thinking.”
“You do that anyway.”
“Hyper-vigilance is my epigenetic inheritance.” I brushed crumbs from Matt’s beard.
“The whole thing seems pretty nuanced. Why do you have to make one choice? Wear it in some situations and not others. It can mean anything you want.”
I lifted my hair so Matt could clasp the necklace. Light at my throat it felt like nothing, but weighed down by all that history and symbolism, who might I hurt with it? Who might hurt me?
When I turned, Matt was looking at me as if what he said next might clarify everything. “If all else fails, the chain is long enough to tuck under most shirts.”
_________Sarah Terez Rosenblum’s work has appeared in literary magazines such as The Hopkins Review (forthcoming 2024), The Normal School, Prairie Schooner (Shortlisted for Prairie Schooner’s Summer 2020 Creative Nonfiction Prize), among others. A two time Pushcart Prize nominee, Sarah holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Sarah’s novel, Herself When She’s Missing, was called “poetic and heartrending” by Booklist.
This piece was written prior to October 7th, 2023. Some names have been changed.