Ashley N. Robinson, Postdoctoral Research Associate & Instructor, University of Connecticut In the January blog post, Steven Feldman offered an adaptation of the prayer “May their memory be for a blessing.” This is a distinctly Jewish sentiment about the dead, one that asks us to carry forward the memories of the deceased so that they might continue to live on. When I read Steven’s piece, I was reminded of Dara Horn’s (2021) book  People Love Dead Jews . Horn explores various ways that a focus on Jewish death and suffering in the non-Jewish imagination perpetuates the erasure of Jews and the realities of antisemitism. Memorializing of Jewish death exists alongside a perverse denialism of our historical and contemporary marginalization and suffering, which can make the former seem virtuous. But Horn argues that if the standard for non-Jewish concern with antisemitism is not endorsing or denying the Holocaust, that is a dangerously low bar. Steven has offered non-Jews a cal...

Steven Feldman, Ph.D., Higher Education student , Indiana University Bloomington In August 2017, white supremacists at the Unite the Right rally shouted “Jews will not replace us” as they marched through the University of Virginia’s campus in Charlottesville. On October 27, 2018, Robert Gregory Bowers murdered eleven people attending Shabbat services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  On October 8, 2022, rapper Kanye West tweeted “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up, I’m going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”          The headlines continue to pour in and yet only begin to scratch the surface in documenting the rise in antisemitism nationwide. Although it is easy to write these off as the mistaken views of lone terrorists and misguided celebrities, antisemitism nevertheless runs rampant across the country, illustrating an entrenchment in our culture that few are comfortable admitting.     May our memory be...