If you're Jewish, 2022 is no different than 1965

The year is 1965. I’m a twelve-year-old child, living in Skokie, Illinois. At that time, finding a more Jewish community in the United States was hard. On my block, there were two families that weren’t Jewish. One was a friend of mine who lived across the street. The other was an adult man who lived on the corner.

One day most of the neighborhood kids were playing ball in the street. That was a regular thing…nothing new there. Someone hit the ball onto the lawn at the corner. That happened regularly, too. My friend and I went to get the ball. The only thing new to us was his response:

“Hey, Kikes! Keep your fucking kike ball off my lawn and keep your fucking kike asses off my lawn, too. Now get the fuck out of here.”

That was my first experience with antisemitism. As we were running back to the game, we were laughing because he had picked the one non-Jewish kid on the block to call that name.

The game went on as if nothing had happened. We were young kids, what did we know about this? That changed soon afterward. I went inside and told my parents what happened. I remember telling the story as if it was not a big deal…as if it was an everyday occurrence. That changed as I saw the look on the face of my parents and a cousin who was visiting that day. It was a look of anger and sadness. The two men had both fought in World War 2. It was only twenty years since the end of the war. That had to be on their mind as I told them what happened.

My dad and my cousin left the house together. They never told me what happened, but I know they went to have a conversation with our neighbor on the corner. I imagine it wasn’t very pleasant for him and really for any of them.

The ball games continued and the ball still ended up on his lawn. We’d retrieve it and he would just look at us. He never said another word to us, but in his mind you know he was thinking the same thing…“Kike”.

Yesterday, we saw more antisemitism in the above picture over a freeway in Los Angeles. “Kanye was right about the Jews”, with seven people holding up their arms in a Nazi salute. You would have thought that things would have changed in the fifty-seven years since a man in my neighborhood called me a Kike. In reality, things have become worse. They have an ally in the former president…at least they think they do. That makes them more brazen than they were in 1965. It makes them more dangerous.

It’s never been easy being Jewish. It wasn’t in 1965. It’s not in 2022. The more things change, the more they stay the same.