With Purim near, rioters threaten Jews in Teaneck, NJ

Sunday is the Jewish holiday of Purim, a commemoration of the defeat of Haman, a king’s aide under the Achaemenid Empire who planned to massacre all of the Jews — and Jews in Teaneck, NJ, are on edge that the celebration will lead to a renewed violence in their community.

They’re particularly worried about their children being targeted.

Everything old is new again.

Over the last few weekends, a car rally called “All out for Palestine” has targeted the town, the home of the second-largest Jewish population in New Jersey.

The meetup location of the protesters is in Paterson, at the Islamic Center of Passaic County: Cars drive from there nearly 13 miles to Teaneck.

A social-media post for the rally menacingly adds, “Once we arrive at [sic] destination further action will be determined.”

The point is to harass Jews, and everyone knows it.

Police recently arrested two people shooting paintball guns at Jews, but have told residents there isn’t much more they can do as the protesters have First Amendment rights.

They do — but Jews have also been spat on, followed and harassed, none of which is protected by the Bill of Rights.

It’s hard to overlook the lack of outcry from outside Teaneck.

If white supremacists were driving through majority-black towns with swastikas, you’d see think pieces and outraged articles about the event, not a defense of them in the name of free speech.

People would volunteer to protect the townspeople.

No such protection is forthcoming for Teaneck.

There’s an impulse to point to the atmosphere in some US towns and cities right now and say it feels like it’s Germany in 1937 — when Jews were feeling squeezed but still imagined that everything might be OK: Surely the normal people who lived among us will stop this abuse.

Surely.

But the Holocaust isn’t the only deadly event for Jews in the last 150 years.

Other painful Jewish history exists; the patterns won’t always include shipping 6 million off to their deaths.

Pogroms in Eastern Europe in the early 1900s forced thousands of Jews out of their homes.

And some estimates have 100,000 Jews tortured and killed in just Ukraine between the years 1918 and 1921.

Slaughter went on after World War II as well: On July 4, 1946, a rumor had spread in the Polish town of Kielce that Jews were using the blood of Christian children for some unnamed ritual; a mob descended on the Jewish community killing 42 people and injuring 40 more.

In Teaneck last week, a rumor spread that an Israeli real-estate event held at one of the synagogues would auction off “stolen Palestinian land,” though the event was actually just an educational event about moving to Israel, and no real-estate transactions were occurring whatsoever.

“Imagine seeing your family’s lands being sold online while you helplessly watch, this stirs a rage and a pain that is indescribable,” Lamis Deek, an attorney with the PAL Law Commission, wrote.

“It’s an injustice that should shock the conscience and mobilize authorities and attorneys to action.”

Maybe it would, but absolutely nothing like this was happening at the synagogue.

Yet the flames were fanned.

Two protesters — Letticia Freitas, 29, of Worcester, Mass., and Mahdy Suleiman, 20, of East Hanover, NJ — were eventually arrested for spray-painting cars, throwing objects at Jews, and charged with bias intimidation, criminal mischief and harassment.

Freitas was also charged with assault.

Many more menacing protesters weren’t arrested.

The New York Times pretends the tensions originate on both sides.

“Teaneck, which once touted itself as a model of religious harmony, with a Muslim mayor and an Orthodox Jewish deputy mayor, has become a seat of conflict over the Israeli-Palestinian hostilities.”

Yes, the religious harmony comes to an end when irrational rioters from out of town attack a synagogue over some tale they heard.

Teaneck hasn’t become a “seat of conflict,” but a place where Jews specifically are being targeted for being Jews.

It’s not complicated and it’s not unique to our current moment.

And it may not be as deadly as Kielce, yet — but the impulse to spread lies about Jews, to rage in their communities, is the same.

Here’s the message to Jews from the rioters rolling through Teaneck: “You’re not safe here. You’re not safe anywhere.”

Ironically, a message like this is the very reason modern-day Israel exists.

Twitter: @Karol