"I do not feel safe wearing a kippah because I fear that to many Australians this would be interpreted as a sign that I support Israel. I do not want people to make assumptions about my politics based on my appearance. And, more prosaically, in terms of my fear, I do not want to be shouted at when I'm going to the shops."
"The truth is, like many secular Jews, my sense of safety and acceptance in Australian society has always depended on my secularness, which is another way of saying on my invisibility. Invisibility, here, is no accident. It is made possible, I know, by my whiteness. And enabled too by the foresight of my parents, who gave me an English name and adopted Australian customs (ie sporting teams) when they immigrated here."
A secular Jewish person fears wearing a kippah because many Australians may interpret it as a sign of support for Israel and make political assumptions based on appearance. The person worries about verbal harassment while running errands and has long overheard antisemitic conspiracy theories portraying Jews as greedy, cheap, power-hungry, or controlling the media. Wearing a kippah is perceived to invite conscious and unconscious biases, and there is a real fear of lethal violence against Jews. Personal safety and acceptance have relied on secularness and invisibility, enabled by whiteness and parents' cultural adaptation, but that invisibility may not protect the next generation.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]