To the editor: Visitor contributor Rabbi Noah Farkas writes that antisemitism is “a Los Angeles drawback” (“L.A. has more to do to fight antisemitism and protect Jewish residents,” June 4). It positively is. However additionally it is a San Francisco Bay Space and San Diego drawback, a California drawback and an American drawback. The dearth of solidarity he speaks of in protection of civil rights, fairness and equality for Jews is a state and nationwide drawback. 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 colleges, 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 colleges and universities expertise well-documented marginalization, gaslighting and invidious concentrating on by way of 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 degree on a bipartisan foundation throughout society and with the assist of the complete range of the American individuals. Solely then will Jewish individuals 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 world 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 the town and county of Los Angeles proceed to disregard antisemitism? The phrase “should” implies that there shall be penalties for failure to behave. Farkas ought to lead the Jewish Federation in growing 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 larger now than earlier than. Nonetheless, the expression of it definitely is. That is a part of a basic coarsening of public expression that was exacerbated in 2016 by a presidential candidate who referred to as individuals names and is imply and confrontational. When he mentioned that there have been “very advantageous individuals on each 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 in opposition to lawmakers in Minnesota, and all types 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
