We went to see E at camp in Maine for visiting day. It was our last visiting day so that was bittersweet but visiting day and all that will be another entry. When I think of Maine, I think of crunchy, outdoorsy things. I don't know if I thought of it as necessarily democrat or republican. I know the governor is a democrat but one senator is republican and one is an independent.
I haven't actually seen a lot of Maine. We just go for a quick hit of a weekend, and where we go is Auburn-Lewiston and then the Hartford area to the camp. I don't know much about either area except that Auburn-Lewiston has a lot of big box stores and is somewhat more urban than Hartford, which is more in the middle of nowhere. There are a decent amount of gun and ammunition stores around, which isn't the norm by me, but I never really thought much about it.
This year though, with the extreme rise in antisemitism pretty much everywhere, I've been pretty conscious of where I wear a Star of David. I have a really pretty one that I get compliments on often. I don't wear it all the time, but I started wearing it more as my own kind of F-U to whomever. Maybe not the most mature reason, I don't know. I just don't like feeling like I'm supposed to hide being a Jew. So wearing it, to me, says, I'm not afraid.
Except, there have been breadcrumbs of stories or anecdotes of antisemitism friends have encountered, more recently, that have stuck with me. A friend of mine, who I only speak to once in a while, mentioned through Facebook messenger, a store she thought I'd like. She's Sephardic Jewish and she looks like she could be. No one ever knows what my ethnicity is and are often surprised when I say Jewish. As in, American Jewish. She told me that if I go to this store, not to wear any Jewish accessories, like a star. The owners and employees are Arab - I don't remember if she said they are Palestinian. I also could swear she told me they ASKED HER if she is Israeli. I just know it didn't sound like a very Jew friendly establishment.
I admit, I was curious about the store. I wasn't going there to buy anything, but the type of store was intriguing to me and I wanted to understand how it was run. I was wearing my star though and B pointed that out to me as we were about to go inside. I was also wearing a full zip hoodie. I just zipped it all the way up. I did not like how that felt but I looked around the store for a few minutes, got the gist of it, I moved on, and unzipped my hoodie.
I hadn't had another encounter like that until we went to Maine. And to New Hampshire. I forget exactly where we were in Maine, I think it was Auburn that were at some local restaurant or actually, it might have been Walmart, and we just looked around and it didn't feel like a place I should be announcing myself as a Jew. I took off my necklace. Again, I didn't like how it felt, but I also just didn't want to have any kind of issues in another state. I actually don't know why I felt comfortable in my own state wearing it, but I'll get to that.
We went to Portsmouth, NH the day after visiting day. I thought Portsmouth seemed like a real progressive, liberal, touristy place. However, yet again, looking around at a head to toe Trump logo wearing family, I took it off. I know some people think Trump is for the Jews, which is a completely ridiculous fallacy, there are plenty of Trump supporters who are decidedly not a friend to the Jews. And when there are Trump supporters who looked just the dad of this logo family, marching with tiki torches chanting "Jews will not replace us", I'm not looking to find out if they're friend or foe. I just want out of there, STAT.
We got home and I put it back on. It's really pretty, it's mine, and I want to be able to wear it. I walk to the post office most days. I have to pass a storefront that once had questionable anti-Israel imagery painted on it. The store is Palestinian owned and operated, as far as I know. They often sit outside the front of the store smoking cigarettes and either talking on the phone or listening to Arabic radio. I've always been more irritated by having to walk through the cloud of smoke than anything else. The other day, as I was walking by I heard the radio (or whatever they're listening to), mention Hamas. Twice. I don't know what was said besides that, but at that moment, I became uncomfortable again. I didn't take my necklace off. I just avoided eye contact and felt very self-conscious, like I was a big walking Star of David.
I don't even know what my point is here. Just to say that when we make reference to the current state of the country feeling like the beginnings of WWII, because of what was going on in Germany, I don't think it's overreacting. The crazy part is that we thought we had a party - the democrats. We found, unexpectedly, that we didn't really have that many allies there in the far left. But we also don't have a home in any way with the Trumplicans. This is really what it feels like to be on an island of our own and it doesn't feel safe anywhere. I never thought I'd see a day where I felt uncomfortable being the minority. I always loved being the minority. Being different. I've dealt with antisemitism but in a more- get a load of that dummy kind of thing. It wasn't often and it didn't feel scary. I just felt like I was dealing with the uneducated. Now, it feels different. I think, it feels different because no one is really coming to our defense. If anything, it's getting worse. It also feels like it's everywhere, like, in places where it never felt like that.
I've researched leaving the country. Unfortunately, we don't have anywhere we would have citizenship but even if we did, it's not as easy as just looking for a place that will take Americans. It's where would they take JEWS, and where is actually hospitable to Jews. So far, I've got Mexico City and a few South American countries. The choices are REALLY limited though. We're obviously not going anywhere. It's just the point that even if we COULD go somewhere, it would be really difficult to find a place that we could just be Jews and not worry about persecution or eventual persecution. Most Americans are privileged just by way of not being Jewish that they don't have to think that way. I wonder what that's like.
