Questioning the word 'pogrom'
And making sense of the conversation post-Amsterdam
The 185th mitzvah pertains to idol worship.
I know this not because I am an observant Jew, nor because I paid attention in Tuesday school at Temple Emmanuel. I know this because I worship at the altar of a device that inundates me with a never-ending list of threats to my sanity from when I rise in the morning until when I go to bed. Troubled by own inability to go long periods of time without the phone, I found myself googling ‘false idol worship’.
Chabad.org fills many of the gaping holes in my very lacking spiritual education, which I’m relieved to hear is not uncommon. As I sat at Little Bay, Sydney, on a picture-perfect Spring afternoon, squinting through the salt in my eyes and the glare, I absorbed the details of yet another expectation of my people:
“The 185th mitzvah is that we are commanded to demolish all idols and their places of worship with all kinds of demolition and destruction — breaking, burning, dismantling, and cutting down. Each method is to be used where most effective, i.e. where it will achieve the most complete and speedy destruction. The goal [of this commandment] is that there should not remain any remnant of [idolatry].”
Throwing the phone into the sea seems counterproductive. Not only did it cost me an arm and a leg, but it’s waterproof. And how am I going to read about the 186th mitzvah and the 187th without it?
I turn it off and put it away, frustrated that while everyone else around me soaks up this tiny corner of paradise, I remain consumed by the news trickling in from all corners of the world about Jews being beaten up on their way home from a soccer match.
I plunge deep into the silence of the bay and roll over at the bottom, watching bubbles from my mouth rise to the surface and pop before returning for air and repeating the process. I follow a small fish around for a while, eventually conceding that the goggles I bought from Amazon are doing exactly the kind of job I should have expected for the $15 they cost. When I return to my towel, I splay out, determined to complete a currently very difficult mission: lie down and think about nothing. The sun is high in the sky and I can feel tiny droplets of ocean and sweat roll down my neck and my abdomen.
The dialectics begin again, only this time the Idol is dead and buried beneath my car keys, sunscreen, and a copy of Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus.
Am I a bad person for wishing to care less about what people say on the internet?
Are all of the people I know posting ‘context’ for these beatings bad people?
Did these Jewish football fans bring these vicious and premeditated attacks upon themselves by chanting horrible, horrible things?
Is this the same logic utilised to excuse October 7 by so many?
If the desecration of a flag is something that people care so much about then why are some flags considered fair game?
Is the Israeli flag fair game because of Israel’s decimation of Gaza?
Is the Palestinian flag considered not fair fame because the actions of Hamas do not represent Palestinians?
Does that mean that both Israeli citizens and diaspora Jews are more responsible for the actions of the Netanyahu government than Palestinians are of Hamas, and that it’s therefore more reasonable to beat Jews in the streets for flag desecration than it would be should the roles be reversed?
Why is this even a question? Why is anyone justifying the beating of anyone else?
Is the word pogrom the right word? Am I a bad Jew for questioning this? Am I bad global citizen for using it?
Why does this feel like a pogrom? Am I having an emotional response spurred on by intergenerational trauma or am I having a very rational response to people trying to justify a disgraceful antisemitic event on the streets of Amsterdam?
Why must all my reactions and interpretations be marred by my Jewishness? Would my disgust be considered more reasonable if I wasn’t a Jew?
What happened to two wrongs don’t make a right?
What happened to everyone agreeing that collective punishment is always, always wrong?
Why does nobody use ‘Zionist’ in the videos I’ve watched?
While I’ve never been very good at sunbathing, this was an especially bad attempt. I pack up my towel and walk back to car thinking about the ‘gas the Jews’ / ‘where’s the Jews’ debate, wondering whether any of us would have justified a malicious Jewish-instigated attack on those people who chose October 7 as a reasonable event to rally around at the Opera House.
When I get out of the shower at home I make a conscious effort to not open any social media. Instead, I look up the next mitzvah, mitzvah 186, hoping that it might be a little bit more achievable than destroying the very expensive false idol in my hand.
For those familiar with mitzvah 186, all I’m going to say is this: I should have obeyed mitzvah 185.
