Every week, millions of Jews around the world begin their routine to attend synagogue or other community services. They get dressed, brush their teeth, maybe even cook a family meal. And now, many are adding something new to their routine: checking exits at their synagogue to make sure they don’t get shot.

This is the reality that Jewish community members around the United States now face after the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that took place in October, and it’s also a situation that many of our own students at WHHS have been forced to confront.

“People feel not scared, but disappointed and angry that we’ve gotten to a place where this can happen,” Bettina Ernst, ‘20, said.

Ernst is an active member in her religious classes and local youth group. She believes that this shooting and other hate crimes like it are innate in American society, explaining that this kind of bigotry has been present in America since its inception.

Of course, this shooting didn’t come out of the blue, and to many, it has become just another in a series of tragedies due to gun violence. But this shooting in particular begs the question: Is anti-Semitism in America on the rise?

Ernst argues that it is.

“Statistics show that in the past recent years hate crimes have gone up in general and hate crimes against the Jewish community have also gone up. Instances of anti-Semitism have risen,” Ernst said.

Ernst is right. According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents have surged 57 percent in 2017, reversing a long downward trend of incidents in the United States.

Despite this, many community members view and experience anti-Semitism not as a new issue; rather, it’s been a lingering force against the Jewish people for quite a while.

“I think the statistics may say that there’s a rise [in anti-Semitism], but I think the problem is that anti-Semitism is a problem that’s not new. It’s a problem that’s gone on since basically Jews have been a race or a religion,” Ben Spector, ‘19, said.

Spector has been attending the same synagogue since he was born, and in recent years has taken up a leadership role in local Jewish youth communities. And because of his strong Jewish identity, he, like many others, has been the target of a myriad of Holocaust and anti-Semitic jokes told by his peers.

“We’ve all had Jewish jokes pointed at us for a long time since I came to Walnut. Ever since seventh grade, I’ve had to cope with that and understand that people might not be as culturally sensitive as I may be or may not understand that millions of people died in the Holocaust,” Brad Gallop, ‘19, said.

Gallop spent his elementary years at a private Jewish day school, and has been a participant in his youth group since the eighth grade. And ever since he arrived at WHHS, he wondered how people can be so casual about anti-Semitism, and even joke about such tragic events. Considering WHHS students organized walkouts for gun control and initiatives for racial justice, it is unclear why this form of intolerance is so much more prevalent, and often accepted.

Spector believes that this is because of the nature that religious intolerance has taken on.

“Religious persecution takes a much different form than it used to. There’s no longer Cossacks coming to raid your village or Nazis coming to round up your family and destroy your business. Today it’s more of a battle of language… When we have experiences like Charlottesville, where you had alt-right people coming in saying Jews will not replace us, or obviously this most recent Pittsburgh attack, there’s some element of action, but for the most part it’s just hate speech, and ultimately there’s nothing you can do against hate speech,” Spector said.

Can you do anything about hate speech? Until it incites violence, the Supreme Court has ruled time and time again, in cases such as the 2017 case Matal v. Tam: no. But cultural change doesn’t begin in the law books.

“If you educate people and if you expose them to other cultures and give them the chance to appreciate all the positives in other faiths, other races, other religions, that’s how they will grow to understand. It’s not a problem that can be stopped by making a law… But if you educate people there won’t be a need to make a law,” Spector said.

On an even more personal level, change in local communities can occur with the actions of even just one individual.

“One change makes a difference. One person can make a huge difference, because if one person who acted culturally insensitive realizes what they’ve done, says sorry and then tries to work to raise cultural awareness, that could be huge,” Gallop said.

No change is going to be immediate, and any push for acceptance will always be met with challenge. This, however, is no battle that the Jewish people haven’t fought before, and there seems to be no community more strong or loving than the united Jewish community.

“There’s a Jewish value called Tikkun Olam which is ‘repairing the world’ that says that even though it’s not our responsibility to completely repair the world and finish the work, but it’s our responsibility to to take part in it and at least try,” Ernst said.