Rising Anti-Semitism in the US: Why Intersectionality is its Latest Expression

I was seventeen years old, huddling in the corner of a classroom with other kids from my grade, cowering in darkness. Approximately ten seconds earlier, my principal’s voice had come over the loudspeaker: “We are now in lockdown.” Shortly thereafter: “This is not a drill. There is an active shooter at a nearby school.”

So there we were, grouped together in darkness except for the glow emitted from my classmates’ phone screens, silent except for the rapid tapping as they texted their parents, There’s an active shooter and I’m okay and Mom, I’m scared.

It was a mistake. There was no active shooter at a nearby school. The reason we went into lockdown, however, was because the school people thought had an active shooter was a Jewish institution.

The school’s code is that, if another Jewish school in the area has an active shooter, it also goes into lockdown. Why? Because the shooter might hit multiple schools, to kill as many Jewish kids as possible.

The reality of living as a Jew in America, or living as a Jew anywhere, is that people are going to try to kill you and they will sometimes succeed. Anti-Semitism is rising in America, in Europe, everywhere. Even in Israel, our homeland, we aren’t safe, because everyone in our vicinity wants to kill us. There are lots of random terrorist attacks—stabbings, shootings, bombings, car rammings—resulting in thousands of civilians dead. My own cousin, Ezra, who was…