By Glenn S. Easton
I didn’t realize it at the time, but as a Jewish kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, many people are now telling us that I grew up in a “bubble” of Jewish accomplishment, acceptance, creativity, stability, communal involvement and peace.
Israel, after the 1967 Six-Day War, brought pride to American Jews and a degree of safety to Israel’s citizens.
In America, the post-Holocaust Jewish community thrived as synagogues and Jewish community centers blossomed, degrees in Jewish studies appeared in American universities, Jewish youth groups (and their trips to Israel) flourished.
The only communication technology seen on the High Holy Days were the transistor radios (with that wired earphone running up our suit coat sleeve) that gave us World Series updates.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was drawn to and began working in the Jewish community in a career that now spans 50 years.
As I observe this jubilee year, the biblical occasion when debts are forgiven, slaves and captives freed, and loans forgiven, I find myself in a drastically changed and frightening world that desperately needs the reset of a jubilee year.
As a synagogue executive director for most of my career, I can sadly trace when my Jewish community transformed from bubble to barricade.
In the early years, synagogues had open and welcoming buildings often with hungry homeless visitors at a Shabbat morning Kiddush for lunch. Following a shooting at a Jewish community center nursery school, protective fences arose around synagogue preschools.
After a dangerous person entered a Jewish Federation office, doors began to be locked at Jewish institutions and synagogues with buzzers monitored by security personnel.
For the first decades of my work in the synagogue, my biggest concern was once a year when the largest number of Jews concentrated in one location on Yom Kippur could be viewed as a target for antisemitic violence.
After 9/11, my sleepless night expanded from that annual High Holy Day concern to a daily (and nightly) fear.
After the Shabbat morning shooting in Pittsburgh, friendly security guards were replaced with armed off-duty police, purses (and tallit bags) were searched, and metal detectors were erected at synagogue entrances.
After Oct. 7, even more security money, personnel and community resources were applied and my sleepless nights turned into a terror that no matter how much security we provided, if (God forbid) there was an attack and loss of life, we would be accused of not doing enough.
I cannot even begin to process my feelings following last week’s despicable shooting of the two youthful Israeli Embassy staff members.
Those innocent, hidden transistor radios tuned to the World Series on the High Holy Days have evolved into visible cellphones which display instant messages of missiles launched at Israel and wireless earphones connecting our armed security personnel with local police.
How did I go from being in a bubble of Jewish encouragement, safety and success to a barricade of Jewish institutions, insecurity and fear? How does my community, my children and my young, beautiful grandchildren reclaim peace, pride and protection in a world without senseless and heartbreaking hatred, prejudice and violence?
This past Shabbat, I listened to rabbis teach about the blessings and curses contained in this week’s Torah portion.
I thought back to my preteen years when as an unobservant and uneducated Jewish youth, I read how God would curse three generations of those who do not follow God’s laws but bless the thousandth generation of those who observe.
I naively and childishly looked at the three generations before me who were cursed with pogroms (causing emigration from homelands), the Holocaust (diminishing my family), antisemitic workplaces (triggering our last name change) and medical and financial distress (expelling my parents from synagogue membership for arrearage).
I foolishly thought maybe I could change the course for my generation through my thousandth generation.
How do I, the Jewish community, our nation, Israel and the world return from the barricade to the bubble? How do we find and cultivate leaders who strive for justice, equality, fairness and respect? How do we build a community and world dedicated to peace, freedom and coexistence? How do we transform the world’s curses into blessings?
The answers escape me, seem above my pay grade, and are beyond my intellect and capacity.
My career in the community is nearing its end and my life is in the silver years, but I hope and pray that we have hit the bottom of the cycle and that we return to a period of a long peace between people, religions, countries and the world.
Glenn S. Easton is the executive director of the Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park in Clarksburg, Maryland.
