{"id":378,"date":"2007-12-19T16:36:48","date_gmt":"2007-12-19T16:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html"},"modified":"2007-12-19T16:36:48","modified_gmt":"2007-12-19T16:36:48","slug":"the-randomness-of-antisemitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html","title":{"rendered":"The Randomness of Anti-Semitism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Only in America, was my response to the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/muslim-rescues-jew-in-ny-hanuk-1.html\">New York Post story referred to by Rabbi Grossman<\/a>. Could one ever imagine the same scene playing itself out in a European subway? Aside from it being a truly heartwarming story of how a Muslim saved a Jew from Christian anti-Judaism, the happening highlights just how unique American religious relationships are vis-\u00e0-vis the rest of the world.<br \/>\nThe story is basically proof of the randomness of religious discrimination in America. What strikes me is just how easily any of the roles or elements of story could theoretically be interchanged. We should never fool ourselves: Anti-Semitism still exists in this country. But <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/muslim-rescues-jew-in-ny-hanuk-1.html\">Rabbi Grossman is wrong<\/a> when she suggests, \u201cthat the story is both warm and chilling. It reminds us that anti-Semitism is prevalent not only in Europe and throughout the Arab world, but also remains a constant here in the good old US of A.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nAnti-Semitic acts on American soil should never be confused with the rampant and calculated anti-Semitism that infects Europe. The Post story shows us how anti-Semitism has gone from a premeditated evil to something so random that it can be used as the backdrop for a Holiday story of rapprochement between Muslim\u2019s and Jews! People who read the story were not shocked or concerned of a major outbreak of anti-Semitism in New York. As concerned as Rabbi Grossman is, something tells me that New York Jewry is not preparing for the outbreak of a major pogrom on the West Side of Manhattan.  What got the story on the front page was not the news that there still exist a few hoodlums on the subways of NYC, but that there are more than a few good and decent human beings that live in this country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Only in America, was my response to the New York Post story referred to by Rabbi Grossman. Could one ever imagine the same scene playing itself out in a European subway? Aside from it being a truly heartwarming story of how a Muslim saved a Jew from Christian anti-Judaism, the happening highlights just how unique&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-holidays"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Randomness of Anti-Semitism - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Randomness of Anti-Semitism - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Only in America, was my response to the New York Post story referred to by Rabbi Grossman. Could one ever imagine the same scene playing itself out in a European subway? Aside from it being a truly heartwarming story of how a Muslim saved a Jew from Christian anti-Judaism, the happening highlights just how unique&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-19T16:36:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Randomness of Anti-Semitism - Virtual Talmud","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Randomness of Anti-Semitism - Virtual Talmud","og_description":"Only in America, was my response to the New York Post story referred to by Rabbi Grossman. Could one ever imagine the same scene playing itself out in a European subway? Aside from it being a truly heartwarming story of how a Muslim saved a Jew from Christian anti-Judaism, the happening highlights just how unique&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html","og_site_name":"Virtual Talmud","article_published_time":"2007-12-19T16:36:48+00:00","author":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html","name":"The Randomness of Anti-Semitism - Virtual Talmud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-19T16:36:48+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-19T16:36:48+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/53c806e36632262087fa251c621f2bc9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/the-randomness-of-antisemitism.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Randomness of Anti-Semitism"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/","name":"Virtual Talmud","description":"Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, where politics and pop culture meet 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/53c806e36632262087fa251c621f2bc9","name":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/417\/4170a8452a509d8efe19496bf5d566e9x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/417\/4170a8452a509d8efe19496bf5d566e9x96.jpg","caption":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/author\/estern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}