Christmas: A Festive Frustration
At a school with so many associations dedicated to diversity and awareness like OMA and the DEI, I’m often shocked by how little attention Jews and anti-Semitism receives on campus. I’m happy that these departments have started to help minority groups that previously felt ignored, but despite of the progress, I find myself invariably frustrated during the holiday season every year.
During Yom Kippur services last October, 40 people gathered in the Church, including my entire family who attended Exeter’s service instead of the one in my local area. Rabbi Marx-Asch voiced her frustration with Academy Life Day — how it had fallen between the two most important holidays of the Jewish calendar, yet, nobody managed to bring up anti-Semitism as a topic worth discussing.
Anti-Semitic attacks have constituted the majority of religious hate crimes in the United States and the number of such attacks rose 60% from 2016 to 2017. Anti-Semitism is not disappearing in America. The rise in these attacks often makes me and other Jewish people fear for our personal safety.
At 9:57 a.m. on Oct. 27, Robert Bowers walked into the Tree of Life Synagogue in the historically Jewish neighborhood of Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the one hour before police intervention, he managed to mow down eleven people with three handguns and an AR-15 rifle. Three days after the largest anti-Semitic attack in American history, Dr. Stephanie Bramlett, the new Director of Equity and Inclusion, gave an assembly speech on the values her department wishes to uphold.
At the beginning of the assembly, Dr. Bramlett mentioned that we have had “assemblies on anti-Semitism,” yet I and many others do not recall any assembly of the kind in the past few years.
We are frustrated that Exeter prides itself on the inclusion of all identities and still goes into Christmas overdrive every December. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-Christmas. I’m just annoyed that Exeter doesn’t give us holidays off to “make everyone feel included,” but instead, makes Jews and adherents of other faiths feel uncomfortable with the annual ‘Christmas wave.’
Every December, I feel like an ‘other.’ When I walk into the local coffee shop and see it decorated with Christmas ornaments, I’m not mad. I’ve grown used to it by now, in a country where Christmas is now more secular than religious. But, the Academy’s push for diversity and inclusion fades at Christmas as well and makes some students feel like they don’t belong.
I was happy that this phenomenon seemed to be waning: when I walked into Wetherell last Thursday night, I was ecstatic to finally see a couple of dreidels on the tables for the annual holiday dinner. I quickly realized, however, that for every dreidel, there were multiple reindeer finger puppets, candy canes, and Santa-themed rubber ducks. As I went to get a plate, Christmas music was blasting over the speakers and I realized nothing had changed after all. They weren’t fooling anyone; the ‘holiday dinner’ was just a Christmas dinner and generalizing the name doesn’t make me feel any less like an outsider.
With everything that has happened lately, I and the entire Exeter Jewish Community (EJC) thought the Academy would have responded to the anti-Semitism by now, even if it’s just by toning down the Christmas bonanza.
Every morning when I walk into Grill and see a room filled with decorations for a holiday that is weeks away, then see a single sheet of paper stapled to the wall with a picture of a Menorah colored in with marker, I can’t help but think that our community has more work to do in fostering a sense of belonging for everyone.
The EJC is a safe haven to celebrate Hanukkah with, but, a temple that I volunteered at over the summer, which is only a half hour from here, had to have an armed officer at their candle lighting for safety reasons. Even before the shooting, it was a common practice to have officers at the bigger services. This is something Jews have come to accept for their own safety. In Concord, a synagogue was covered in anti-Semitic graffiti just a couple weeks ago. And in Durham, the town refused the right of a local temple to display a menorah in a public park for ‘fear of anti-Semitic attacks.’
For a problem of this size, anti-Semitism should not be an issue to be passive about, especially at Exeter. Dr. Bramlett and the DEI are beginning to work with other people on campus to help resolve the issue, which is exciting to see. Maybe the day will come when so many of us finally won’t feel forgotten in this community.