FIXED: Anti-Semitism (Jew Hatred) & Gaslighting the Jews: Progressives Telling Us to "Go Fix Yourselves First"

I present new difficulties facing progressive rabbis from the Left, including a paucity of resources to even discuss the rise in anti-Semitic attacks because racism "cannot be perpetrated against people of privilege," by new progressive definitions.  This, combined with other progressive tropes, has created a situation whereby anti-Semitism can only be mentioned by white Jews of privilege (like rabbis like me) once we have "fixed ourselves" according to purity tests on the left, and which mainly mean leaving our Judaism and our Zionism behind.  In that sense, it's a "gaslighting" situation whereby every time we cry out for the injustice against ourselves, we are told first we must "get well" before anything will be addressed.

My reading of Jacob's Wrestling with the "Angel" is that it speaks to issues we are struggling with today around the prevalence and reality of depression and anxiety.  We want to say that Jacob overcame his fears in order to face his brother, when something closer to the truth is that Jacob only temporarily overcame his fears, but quickly returns to them (since he flees from his brother immediately after facing him and lying to him, and then he suffers great fear and depression ongoing in his life).  Similarly, we wish those who suffer depression and anxiety could overcome them in a way that we can celebrate, like the end of a Hallmark movie. I argue that this is a tendency to blame the victim, a tendency to say the problem is "in them" and must be "fixed" and "treated" in them, rather than consider that they, and many of us, live in a CRAZY-MAKING world, and the whole system needs to be fixed and addressed.  (In psychology, this is called the mistake of identifying "a target patient" rather than targetting the system.  Without acknowledging the system, we are "gaslighting" the victim when we tell them:  "Just get a better therapist, coach, self-help book... Learn to prioritize, do self-care, etc."  We do that to Yaakov/Jacob.

I never got to give a great sermon on this because there was a violent act of Anti-Semitism two days before.  And what I realized is that Jews are being told the problem is in many ways with themselves when it comes to Anti-Semitism.  We say, "We're anxious!  There is rising anti-Semitism!  The press isn't even covering the attacks!  I want to be able to be a public Jew!" and the reply from some progressive quarters is, "Well, maybe it's Israel's fault, or your own failing to reckon with your own racism or privilege, and maybe you could be cured by dropping your Judaism and by just voicing a fully secularized progressivism" which is another form of gaslighting, of telling Jews THEY NEED TO CHANGE rather than that THEY LIVE IN A CRAZY MAKING SITUATION.  I try to explore this comparison in this 16 minute teaching.