I am your Jewish neighbor. Anti-Semitism is all too real in San Luis Obispo | Opinion

Dear Neighbors,

Eight months ago it was easy for many of you to dismiss the threat-Tweet to “go Death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” as late-night blather by a toxic person. But Neighbors, I’m not so sure.

In an April 2022 press release, the Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said, “But we do know that Jews are experiencing more antisemitic incidents than we have seen in this country in at least 40 years, and that’s a deeply troubling indicator of larger societal fissures.” Here in San Luis Obispo, the animosity toward Jews is much worse than it has been in the past, and yet it has never been easy being Jewish in SLO.

‘It was hard to blame tourists’

In the summer of 2016, a group of SLO Jewish folks and allies came together to hold rallies protesting Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. We held signs that read “Jews against Trump” and walked down Higuera Street through the Thursday night farmers market. As I’m wont to do, I strayed from the main group and found myself alone in a crowd of unfriendly people. A woman followed me for five blocks screaming that I had killed Jesus and deserved to die, too. We blamed it on tourists.

The next week, on a Tuesday evening, we moved our protest with several rabbis, older people, and kids to a less trafficked corner to avoid the tourists. As we stood with our signs, singing and waving at cars — a peaceful protest — a large truck cruised by repeatedly, the men inside yelling, “We’re going to gas you! We’re coming for you!” It was hard to blame tourists. Those words had their intended impact, and we moved our efforts to campaigning.

Then, leading up to the presidential election in 2020, someone put human feces under our Biden yard sign. Sure, it may just have been neighbors who really hated Biden. However, the rise in anti-Semitism and anti-black racism — the pillars of White Nationalism that work together so white supremacists can push down on black people and punch up at the Jews who purportedly control everything from banking to entertainment — made us question whether our neighbors more than detested us.

A woman at my gym repeatedly insists that all people celebrate Christmas and Easter and harasses me for days prior to these holidays questioning why I refuse to comply. I chose not to explain Christian hegemony.

Jewish fraternity members subjected to slurs

A local example I could cite is how members of a Jewish fraternity at Cal Poly say that other students regularly yell anti-Semitic slurs when they walk by; it’s so common, they say, that Jewish students don’t even report it.

In November 2022, a San Luis Obispo City Council candidate my husband and I supported was the target of an online Anti-Semitic attack. It was hard for me to suss out whether our association with her or her use of the word “DEI” (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) was the culprit. Then while I was canvassing, I stood frozen on a neighbor’s porch as he spouted that “Soros is controlling our politicians in San Luis Obispo and people need to wake up to the Jews controlling everything.” I was worried that if he looked hard enough, saw my Jewishness, I would be in danger.

The next day at a campaign event, I told a Cal Poly student how scared I am, and he responded by telling me that his uncle should have been at the Poway Chabad on the day in 2019 when a young shooter killed one person and injured three others, including the rabbi, at that synagogue just north of San Diego. Stories about Jews having close encounters with shootings don’t make me feel better.

This past October 27, the fourth anniversary of the Tree of Life shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the deadliest attack on Jews in recent history, I told our rabbi I am too afraid to attend synagogue. A banner spewing anti-Semitism and encouraging harm to Jewish people was in California. In California on the 405 freeway! I knew the 405 was dangerous due to car accidents, but I’d never associated it with anti-Semitism.

Neighbors, I did stand in my synagogue on that Friday night in late October saying Kaddish, a Jewish prayer for the dead, for the victims of Tree of Life. I held fear, grief and courage in one hand, and anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism in the other, and I prayed. And I will need to do that again this Shabbat.

Sincerely,

Your Jewish Neighbor

Dona Hare Price is a local Jewish activist with Bend the Arc and a Facilitator of Dismantling Racism From the Inside Out.

This story was originally published June 11, 2023 at 5:00 AM.