Special thanks to Anne Dance, Tina Adcock, Stephanie Pettigrew, Lee Blanding, and especially Lynne Marks for their help with this piece.
Content Warning/Trigger Warning: antisemitism, racism, violence
In the wake of the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday, I wrote a Twitter essay sharing some thoughts and feelings. To my surprise, it gained a lot of attention, and I am overwhelmed by the resulting outpouring of love and support. However, since Twitter isn’t an ideal medium for a nuanced discussion of history, I was also debating putting together a blog post. A number of individuals expressed interest in more information about the racial identity of Jews and the history of antisemitism[1]. There seems to be overwhelming support for this idea, so here we go. While I’ll be repeating a lot of what I’ve said already, if you want to see the original Twitter thread, just go here.