The Day I Learned Jewish Safety Is Not A Guarantee

Do you remember the first time you felt physically threatened for being Jewish?

I do.

In the winter of 2019, I was speaking at a software conference in Brussels. It was a sunny yet freezing day as I walked near my hotel in the Louise district, an upscale area filled with high-end shops and cafes. It didn’t feel like a dangerous place for an afternoon stroll. Yet, suddenly, I heard someone shout what sounded like a string of expletives. I turned around to see a group of teenagers, roughly between 17 and 19 years old, moving toward me, pointing and yelling.

As they quickened their pace, I hurried to return to my hotel. Words like “Jew” and “Israeli” were increasingly audible, mixed with other unpleasant terms shouted in a blend of English, Arabic, and French. Thankfully, I made it safely back to my hotel, and they did not follow me inside.

Since that day, I’ve encountered other overt incidents of antisemitism. More importantly, I’ve learned a crucial lesson: our collective past is neither distant nor fully behind us. Perhaps the relative safety and security I experienced in my childhood in California, my young adult years in New York City, and early in my professional life were simply an anomaly in the broader arc of Jewish history.

Growing up, I was privileged to hear firsthand testimonies from Shoah survivors who visited my elementary and middle schools. As a young child, I listened in rapt attention, shocked that such horrors occurred within the lifetime of my own grandparents, yet relieved to believe such tragedies couldn’t happen again. After all, we had Israel. We had the IDF. Even as a child in Southern California, I was aware of a sovereign nation thousands of miles away with a powerful military that had my back, ensuring the impossibility of another period of Jewish powerlessness and vulnerability.

The recent accounts from freed hostages have painfully shattered this illusion. Eli Sharabi’s testimony at the UN vividly brought back the horrors of the Shoah, not in 1930s Europe, but here, in the 21st century, in the modern Jewish state.

Eli Sharabi’s words could easily have been spoken by a Shoah survivor. Watching him, I was transported back to my childhood, sitting at the feet of survivors bearing witness to their experiences.

“I reassured my family that the Army will come. They always come.

Eli shared these words at the UN, words he spoke to his family as terrorists stormed his community and home, as their door was breached, and his entire world violently collapsed around him.

On that dark day, the army did not arrive. The illusion of guaranteed safety and security vanished. The ocean of time separating the Jews of 20th-century Europe from the Jews of 21st-century Israel disappeared. Where there had been two separate worlds – one of Jewish despair and vulnerability, and another of Jewish autonomy and hope – now there was only one.

Since 2019, I no longer wear my kippah in public spaces while traveling for work without seriously weighing the risks. I always carry caps to conceal this visible symbol of Jewish identity. I hesitate before sharing my full name publicly. Is this the right moment to reveal myself? Will I remain safe if I do? Or, less dramatically but still significantly, will it jeopardize the start of a new professional relationship?

These are considerations my colleagues who are not visibly Jewish never have to entertain, considerations I myself didn’t seriously contemplate until recently. And yet, here we are.

Jewish safety, at best, is a fragile shelter we valiantly strive to maintain, or perhaps it was merely an illusion that never truly existed.

Before Brussels in 2019, I was personally complacent. Post-October 7th, complacency is no longer an option for any of us. Our ancestors – our grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond – learned to live their lives without becoming numb to the ever-present dangers they faced daily. For generations, they had no choice. To be unaware was a luxury they couldn’t afford, whether in Warsaw or Baghdad, Vienna or Tunis.

That same obligation falls upon us today. Indeed, it always has, even if we momentarily enjoyed the fleeting privilege of ignoring it.