To the editor: Visitor contributor Rabbi Noah Farkas writes that antisemitism is “a Los Angeles downside” (“L.A. has extra to do to combat antisemitism and defend Jewish residents,” June 4). It undoubtedly is. However additionally it is a San Francisco Bay Space and San Diego downside, a California downside and an American downside. The shortage of solidarity he speaks of in protection of civil rights, fairness and equality for Jews is a state and nationwide downside. We really feel it as painfully and as palpably in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco as in Los Angeles. We battle with the identical challenges of being under-resourced to make sure the bodily security of Jewish neighborhood members at faculties, senior facilities, synagogues and neighborhood facilities.
We battle, too, with the dearth of recognition and inclusion of the variety of the Jewish neighborhood together with Ethiopian, Mizrahi and Sephardic voices, as Farkas notes, in addition to Asian, African American and Hispanic Jews in ethnic research curricula. Jews at California faculties and universities expertise well-documented marginalization, gaslighting and invidious focusing on by verbal and bodily abuse and violence, harassment, exclusion and discrimination, as Farkas illustrates. We’d like motion and allyship on a neighborhood, state and nationwide stage on a bipartisan foundation throughout society and with the assist of the complete range of the American folks. Solely then will Jewish folks in America be protected and solely then will we come nearer to attaining freedom, equality and entry to justice for all.
Noam Schimmel, Berkeley
This author is a lecturer in international research at UC Berkeley.
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To the editor: Farkas says L.A. should do extra to combat antisemitism. This invitations the query: Or what? What’s going to the Jewish neighborhood of Los Angeles do if the federal government and residents of town and county of Los Angeles proceed to disregard antisemitism? The phrase “should” implies that there can be penalties for failure to behave. Farkas ought to lead the Jewish Federation in creating a plan of motion that can maintain Los Angeles’ leaders accountable for combating antisemitism and that can impose precise penalties if these leaders fail.
Stuart Creque, Moraga, Calif.
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To the editor: I doubt antisemitism is greater now than earlier than. Nevertheless, the expression of it actually is. That is a part of a normal coarsening of public expression that was exacerbated in 2016 by a presidential candidate who known as folks names and is imply and confrontational. When he stated that there have been “very advantageous folks on either side” in 2017, he opened the Pandora’s field of hate that has its expression in vile and violent antisemitic assaults. So long as this tone is about from above, we can have violence, like that towards lawmakers in Minnesota, and all kinds of hate-induced assaults. Measures that Farkas suggests will do little to counter this narrative of open expression of hate by our leaders.
Harlan Levinson, Los Angeles
