It feels like I am living in two realities. Both are exhausting and terrible.
In one, Jews are not people. We are a topic. Everyone feels entitled to define us, use us, and erase us from conversations about our lives.
This broken reality was on full display in a recent Denver Post opinion piece.
Start with the controversy the piece covered. A Republican county commissioner posted an image of Phil Weiser with horns — imagery that echoed other far-right antisemitism this election cycle. The elected official claimed he did not know Weiser was Jewish. Rather than apologize, he started a GoFundMe to sue Kyle Clark for covering it. The Colorado Republican Party has said nothing.
The Colorado Democratic Party rightly condemned the image and then immediately used it to score political points.
Yet I have seen nothing close to that moral clarity when Jewish groups and leaders raise concerns about Democratic candidates and activists whose rhetoric isolates and vilifies Jews. Instead, figures on the left lecture us about our own identity. They insist that Israel can be decoupled from Jewish identity, despite most Jews saying otherwise.
Some on the left blame rising antisemitism on Jewish advocacy or Israel itself rather than grapple with years of vicious rhetoric about Zionists. They impose a false choice between worrying about antisemitism and advocating for Palestinians, punishing anyone who rejects this binary. They , of all people, for . She felt compelled to publicly clarify that she had not intended to move to the center on the subject.
Then there is the op-ed in The Denver Post by Krista Kafer on Sunday. It begins by asking, 鈥淲hat does it mean to be antisemitic?鈥� but never asks a single Jew for an answer. Instead, a non-Jewish author tells us not to get 鈥渆xercised鈥� about the Weiser image and dismisses our concerns about Kiros by arguing against a position we never took: that any criticism of Israeli policy is antisemitic.
Stop using this straw man to dodge our real concerns.
Zionist organizations criticize Israeli extremists and policies all the time. Jewish groups on the left and right have explained how to criticize Israeli policy without being antisemitic. But declaring every possible Jewish state inherently illegitimate is not policy criticism. It places a central part of most Jews鈥� identity outside the bounds of acceptable public life.
That is what makes this reality so outrageous. People feel comfortable telling Jews who we are, what matters to us, whether hatred against us counts, and which of us are acceptable. When we object, they replace our concerns with an argument we never made. No other community is expected to accept this.
Then there is the other reality: the one Jews in Colorado live in.
Two weeks ago, someone drove past the home of an elderly Jewish couple and threw a tire onto their lawn marked 鈥渇*** you Zionists.鈥� The self-serving claim that hostility toward Zionists has nothing to do with Jews collapses yet again. Imagine finding that outside your home. Imagine wondering who did it and whether they might return.
This was not an outlier. This summer, the Winston Downs neighborhood association warned of increasing harassment of Jewish residents. alleging the Boulder Valley School District failed to protect a Jewish student from nearly two years of harassment, including being choked with a cable and called antisemitic slurs. A Denver Jewish facility . That抖阴ap just three months in the life of Colorado Jews.
Here is the thing. These realities are interconnected. Jewish safety requires more than condemning hateful images and protecting Jews from physical violence. It also requires the basic agency afforded to other communities — the right to define our identity and decide which emotional, cultural, and political commitments are part of it.
Stop denying our agency and identity. Stop making a show of your outrage only when the other side is responsible. Stop speaking for us.
We鈥檙e left to live with the consequences.
Brandon Rattiner is the senior director of the聽nonpartisan聽Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).聽JCRC is the largest collective voice of Colorado鈥檚 Jewish community, bringing together nearly 50 Jewish organizations to聽help ensure that the Jewish community and our neighbors can thrive.
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