“A people still, whose common ties are gone; Who, mix’d with every race, are lost in none.”
— George Crabbe
You can shave your beard, move to Australia — or your grandparents could, permitting you to party on a New South Wales beach in cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.
Even with an Australian accent, putting shrimp on the barbie by the Tasman Sea, you’re still a Jew.
Not held personally responsible for the death of Christ so much anymore. Generally, that particular deathless sin, one horror used to justify a million others, now plays second fiddle to a more recent wrong that can be laid at the feet of any random Jew, anywhere in the world.
Now, all Jews carry the stain of recent Israeli policy in Gaza, and no joyous gathering anywhere on earth can be free from the risk of blame showing up, uninvited. Punishment delivered by those whose hearts are so big they agonize over the sufferings of a people they may have never met. And so small they can vent the resultant fury on the most marginally-connected victims.
No matter that Jews tend to take up the cause of their adversaries with a zeal seldom found elsewhere. They still count as Jews, and die just the same. Also par for the course. In the 1940s, you could convert to Catholicism, but if your grandmother was Jewish, into the pit you go. They call it “blind hatred” for a reason — it neither sees, nor assesses, nor stands on ceremony.
A thousand people on a beach in New South Wales, celebrating the first night of Hanukkah, which arrived in Australia 15 hours ahead of Chicago. Two shooters. Twelve dead, 29 injured, including two police officers.
About 100,000 Jews in Australia, out of a population of 28 million. Most in the cities — the shooting was on Bondi Beach, on the east side of Sydney.
If that number seems vanishingly small, it is 0.35%, or nearly double the percentage Jews make up of the world population. Our numbers dwindle through assimilation and intermarriage in a way that murder could never contemplate.
That doesn’t mean people don’t still try.
Like most groups, Jews feel a kinship with each other. I’ve never been to Australia, but if I did, I might slide by a synagogue, the way I did from Bridgetown to London to Taipei. Check out the locals, catch a bagel and a whiff of home.
So their deaths still hurt. The odd thing about such attacks is, they’re really an eloquent argument for the importance of a secure Jewish state. Because if you’re Jewish, and feel you’re safe where you are and let your vigilance ebb, you might be caught in an enfilade from two gunmen on a pedestrian bridge.
You either empathize with other people or you don’t. And once you view them, not as individuals, but as faceless members of groups, you’re capable of anything
We have a president damning Americans for the crime of coming from Somalia. A federal government sweeping people off the street for being brown-skinned. And as if the Israeli-Hamas war hasn’t been blood-soaked enough over the past two years, we have no shortage of self-appointed avengers keen to mow down a few more innocents. In Australia.
One horror begets the next, and the rising tide of nationalism reaps the bounty. Along with funeral directors and granite monument salespeople.
I cherry-picked the epigram above from Crabbe’s 1810 poem, “The Borough.” It comes after a vigorous keel-hauling of the Jews you never read before yet will ring familiar. Here is the quote in context:
Jews are with us, but far unlike to those,
Who, led by David, warr’d with Israels foes;
Unlike to those whom his imperial son
Taught truths divine — the Preacher Solomon;
Nor war nor wisdom yield our Jews delight;
They will not study, and they dare not fight.
These are, with us, a slavish, knavish crew,
Shame and dishonour to the name of Jew;
The poorest masters of the meanest arts,
With cunning heads, and cold and cautious hearts;
They grope their dirty way to petty gains,
While poorly paid for their nefarious pains.
Amazing race! deprived of land and laws,
A general language and a public cause;
With a religion none can now obey,
With a reproach that none can take away:
A people still, whose common ties are gone;
Who, mix’d with every race, are lost in none.
History’s little joke. Hated for centuries for not having a land and not fighting, now Jews are hated for having a country and fighting to keep it. Whenever someone raises the subject of Israel, bear in mind how much Jews were despised before they controlled a square inch of land.