Diaspora Jews Are Passive – It’s Our Achilles Heel
Tikkun Olam – repairing the world – is a concept that is central to Judaism. Despite that, diaspora Jews have the worst case of Bystander Effect I have ever seen.
An example of this is at Microsoft, the Jewish community has repeatedly stated to itself that they do not feel safe coming into work due to all of the recent protests and even before that from the repeated anti-Israel propaganda posts on both Engage and via mass email. The issue is that’s where it ends. The complaints seldom even make it to HR as hardly anyone takes the time to verbalize their complaint to someone who isn’t already aware of the issues that our community faces. Those that do want to voice their complaints more visibly are often discouraged, not by leadership, but by fellow Jewish employees. They insist that our strength as a community comes from quietly taking the abuse and if we want to be heard, we should only do so by slowly going up the chain of command. I am by no means saying we need to occupy Microsoft property or break into an executive’s office. There are ways to be heard without breaking the law, but Jews aren’t even willing to properly organize those. There has been no protest, no petition, no article.
If we want Never Again to indeed be Never Again, we can’t sit idly by and watch antisemitism rise because if we do, Never Again will turn into Yet Again. For the past week, Microsoft headquarters have been ground zero for No Azure for Apartheid protests. As frustrated as I’ve seen people be regarding those, the prevailing logic has been “let them hang themselves” and “now the leadership will finally put their foot down”. In other words, let’s wait it out. If we just wait long enough, the problem will go away on its own. Unsurprisingly, the problem hasn’t gone away on its own. It never has and never will go away on its own. Nearly a century ago now, European Jews watched Hitler rise to power and implement policy after policy to demean them, dehumanize them, defame them. Yet most Jews stayed. They thought it would blow over. That it couldn’t get worse. So they did nothing and watched the Nazis take everything from them, including their lives.
Israel, however, is a great example of taking action and doing what needs to be done to protect the nation regardless of what the rest of the world might think. Israel would love nothing more than for the world to be on its side, but if it won’t be, Israel knows how to go at it alone. In Menachem Begin’s words:
“I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again.”
To the Jewish community at Microsoft: we need to do more to be heard. If you feel unsafe, physically or emotionally, report it. If a coworker is telling you they feel unsafe, urge them to report it. Start a petition or an initiative and if you see an existing one, don’t just ‘like’ it and move on. Sign the petition. Join the initiative. Encourage your friends to do the same. There are ways we can be heard without being disruptive to our peers. We cannot continue to be okay with being told that security is aware and handling things, only for the protest to still continue for an hour while security and police watch from the sidelines. The protestors who trespassed and broke the law still got to be heard. And they got to be heard at our expense. That is not acceptable, and we need to make the leadership at Microsoft see that.
To all diaspora Jews: we need to stop living in the shadows, acting like if we stay quiet and hidden antisemitism will magically disappear. Antisemitism will never fully go away. It is a disease that mutates to ensure its survival. This means our collective “immune system” needs to fight each new strain or risk being wiped out. We need to become better at embracing the concept of Tikkun Olam, at being the change we want to see. We need to protect our own community and to do so unapologetically.
