13 Jan 2014 1:57 PM PT
by Mayim Bialik on Jan 13, 2015 at 1:02 PM ET
I grew up in a public school that had enough Jewish kids that I felt represented. I went to Hebrew school twice a week and had a chavurah (fellowship) through my Reform synagogue with kids my age. A portion of my family was Orthodox. I was surrounded by Jews. I always felt like there were a lot of Jews in the US and the world based on my childhood experience. I was wrong. We are less than 2% of the US population, and 0.2% of the world population.
Last week in Paris, 17 individuals were killed, including four Jews who were executed when a Muslim terrorist took them hostage in a kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes, a prominent and well-known Jewish neighborhood. This was a calculated attack on Jews and anyone who happened to be there (including workers at the store, not all of whom were Jewish).
We are told the past few years have seen a global rise in anti-Semitism, especially across Europe. While many could argue that the facts are inflated or biased and that for the most part we Jews have “made it,” it is undeniable as of last week that Jews are still the center of a variety of political arguments around the world for which we are not responsible in any logical way.
Do I think another Holocaust is coming? Chas v’chalilah (heaven forbid), no. Do I think Jews need to live in fear of another Holocaust? No. Why not? Because of the existence of the State of Israel. Politics aside, and controversy over establishment of the State aside, Israel is a homeland for Jews. Period. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Jews of France after the attacks to seriously consider moving there, as some 6,000 French Jews have done in the wake of the previous many years of anti-Semitism in France. He told them Israel is their home and it is true. It is our home. Until people stop dragging Jews into global terrorism perpetrated by cowards who hide behind the peaceful religion of Islam, I need Israel very much. And so do you.
When I took Jewish Studies 101 (an introduction to Judaism) at UCLA as an undergraduate, our instructor had us read a small book called “The Short History of the Jewish People” by Raymond Scheindlin. It detailed major historical events for the past thousands of years of Jewish existence, and what struck me then and still astounds me now is how for the better part of the past few thousand years, each century–that’s each 100 year period for thousand of years–featured a segregation-related designation placed upon the Jews in all of the communities we lived in all over the world. We were made to live in separate parts of the city walled off from everyone else, and made to wear distinguishing hats, marks on our coats, and yes, even before the Holocaust, we were sometimes made to wear Jewish stars.
And all we want to be is part of the world. Unique, but also universally accepted and assimilated. Our religion allows for it. Our sages preach it. Our greatest minds thrived on it.
I hated last week’s events as a human; to see what humans can do to one another brought me to tears. I hated last week as a person of faith who believes in living by a code of decency and goodness that our Creator established for us on this planet. But mostly, I hated last week as a Jew.
On the day of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, I posted on social media the following: #JeSuisCharlie. We are all Charlie. Especially the artists and satirists and creative minds who make our living by creating and challenging and questioning with artistic expression. We are those artists. We all are the innocents executed in the name of religion, transformed into representatives of liberty and freedom.