By Shira Kramer, Editor-in-Chief
“Heil Hitler,” I heard as I walked with my friends in Union Square. I looked up to see a man giving us the Hitler salute. My friends, who recently moved to New York, were stunned. I, on the other hand, laughed it off.
“He’s clearly on drugs,” I reassured them, as if that was an excuse for using the same words that surrounded the murder of millions of Jews during World War II. We continued walking to the movie theater, where we were on our way to see Guns & Moses, a new Jewish action movie written after October 7 by Nina Davidovich Litvak and Salvador Litvak, a Jewish husband and wife duo.
The movie’s first scenes portrayed a Holocaust denier, a scenario that was used as an impetus for the protagonists to take action. I quickly felt embarrassed. The irony was hard to ignore. Just moments before, I had laughed off a moment of hate in front of my friends while the characters on screen used their angry fervor for this incident as a way to show Jewish strength.
My laughter suddenly felt shallow, and I found myself reflecting: Why did I laugh? Maybe because that’s what people do when they’re uncomfortable. Maybe because laughter is easier than fear. Maybe because I’ve dealt with crazy homeless people on the streets of New York enough to know that they are usually harmless. Or, maybe it was because antisemitism has become so normalized that I felt comfortable pretending it was a joke.
Guns & Moses ended up being a strange mirror to that day’s incident, but it was also one of the most powerful movies I had watched in a while. The story followed Rabbi Moses Zaltzman (played by Mark Feuerstein), his family and the High Desert Jewish Center community. During an event honoring a prominent member of their synagogue, the honoree is shot. After the attack, the police are quick to arrest a neo-Nazi who frequents the synagogue parking lot. However, Rabbi Zaltzman isn’t too sure of his guilt. After investigating himself and unraveling more than he bargained for, Rabbi Zaltzman learns that he was trusting the wrong people and emerges as the hero the community never dreamed he could be.
As the end credits rolled, I was stunned. The man from Union Square lingered in my mind just as much as Rabbi Zaltzman’s story did. While one was on the screen and the other was real and right in front of me, both stories confronted the same question: What does it mean to confront antisemitism today?
In the movie, Rabbi Zaltzman refuses to let antisemitism overpower him. He uses his physical strength to confront those threatening his community. He could’ve allowed the neo-Nazi to go to jail; he probably deserved it for tormenting the congregants all those times. But Rabbi Zaltzman wasn’t satisfied with the easy answer, he wanted the truth.
I, on the other hand, was so scared of thinking about the reality of facing antisemitism that I latched onto the easy answer too quickly, dismissing the homeless man’s antics as “drugged-up” commentary.
The more I thought about the man, the more I realized that accepting antisemetic rhetoric as background noise could not become an everyday reality.
While I do not recommend taking action to the same extent as Rabbi Zaltzman (he shoots people, it’s a whole thing), we must all take some kind of action to combat antisemitism. Even though I don’t think any sort of response to the homeless man would’ve been productive, I should have had a better response for my friends.
There are so many ways that antisemitism can hide in plain sight. Whether through a brand at Sephora or a Toronto film festival (two articles you can find in the September edition of the YU Observer), these incidents can slowly shape the world into a place where prejudice is normalized and ubiquitous.
We must take note when we see antisemitism and stare it down in whatever way we can. The easy route is not enough.
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