When writing letters to one publication it is not normal practice to reference a different publication, but there is a specific reason for me doing it here.
In the June 6 edition of the New York Post, under the headline “Muslims in, Jews out, of NJ Yearbook,” they reported that the East Brunswick High School yearbook “erased the names and photos of a Jewish club and replaced them with Muslim students.”
East Brunswick is in our local Highland Park-Edison-East Brunswick community, yet this outrageous antisemitic act seems to have gone completely unnoticed here at the time it occurred. In this age of instantaneous social media, I hadn’t heard it mentioned by any of our Jewish officials, lay leaders, religious leaders or neighbors. I only noticed it in the New York Post first, and only after that in other media. (Understandingly, being a weekly paper it was only reported in The Jewish Link online on June 11 and in print on June 14.) Apparently what happens in East Brunswick is their problem and doesn’t concern the rest of us.
This situation is common in New Jersey (as elsewhere) where in recent years, there have been numerous reports in The Jewish Link and elsewhere of Jews being targeted, harassed, taunted, subjected to violence, threatened and ostracized in Princeton and Rutgers Universities and the East Brunswick, Highland Park, Linden, Teaneck and Lakewood areas, among others. In virtually all cases, the victims were left to fend for themselves with little or no participation or support from other Jewish communities and organizations. At most there have been the usual expressions of outrage, and routine memos issued.
In contrast to this, our “cousins” are always well organized, well funded and zealous in their mission.
Several letters and columns appeared recently in The Jewish Link, including from me (“Jews, Where Are Our Leaders?” May 23) which have expressed the need for the Jewish communities to become better organized to counter the alarming increase in Jew-hatred locally, regionally and nationally. However, these must also include a physical presence, not just memos and slogans. Chanting “Jews Are United” and singing “Am Yisrael Chai” will just not do the job. In order to effectively counter our adversaries’ attacks we must take actual concrete steps to make sure “Jews Are United,” or else “Am Yisrael Chai” is a much more difficult task.
