There is a strange pleasure in receiving physical mail these days. Unlike the hordes of emails I can never keep at bay (“Death by email,” my tombstone will no doubt read), snail mail comes with wonder (who’s it from? The sender isn’t listed in my inbox!), unknown contents (no subject line) and perhaps even pretty packaging. All this is to say that I was touched to receive a postcard in my work pigeonhole from an admirer in California — an individual who had read my articles and wanted to tell me he appreciated my writing and my work in interfaith dialogue.
I texted my husband, who had returned to his place of work for the very first time in 22 months. “I received a postcard too,” he replied.
“Oh, nice! What does it say?”
Instead of responding with words, he sent me a photo. I gasped.
On the right, there was his work address, the full thing – title and name, office number, department, university, even the country was listed (I note this detail because it was peculiar; the postcard was sent from within the country, as the postage indicated). On the left not a single word had been written. Instead, there were three stamps.
On top, in small letters: ‘Occam’s Razor.’ On the bottom, also in diminutive print: ‘jesusbuddhacult.com.’ Between the two, covering the full panel, a giant red stamp comprising a circle containing a Star of David containing…a swastika.
I’m sure the postcard is nonsense (what cult calls itself a cult?). I know that the Jewish Star-Swastika hybrid is the symbol of the Raëlians, a religion that believes extra-terrestrials created life on earth, cloning is our future, and the swastika helps our telepathic communication with Elohim (totally serious).
But none of that knowledge diminished the fear I felt in staring at a swastika beside my husband’s name – and this on the week of the Texas synagogue hostage siege.
“Did anyone else in your department get one?”
“No.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s on the other side?”
Another picture: an eye in a triangle — the Eye of Providence. A Freemason symbol, as found on the American $1 bill.
Or a way of saying, We’re watching you?
We debated: should we report it to the university? Yes — and they were very supportive. Should we report it to the police? Maybe — its not clear a crime has taken place, although the university recommended we do so. Is there anyone else we might want to tell? Yes, CST, just in case…
There’s a lot of ‘gentleman’s’ antisemitism that makes me angry: diversity trainingthat says you can be Jewish, you just can’t practice Judaism (or we won’t hire you); a university saying you can be Jewish, you just can’t act it (or we’ll sack you); the FBI and then BBC gaslighting us by saying the Texas synagogue siege was “not specifically related to the Jewish community”. But antisemitism that manifests as violence, or even the threat of violence, does more than anger me; it taps into a primal fear. Every Jew held their breath knowing full well that the siege in Texas followed on the heels of very tragic, and very recent, predecessors: the Poway, California synagogue shooting of 2019, and Pittsburgh synagogue mass murder of 2018.
Violent antisemitism doesn’t just belong to some far off, distant past; that’s why we have security at every synagogue and Jewish school in the UK. Of course, we don’t live under Nazi rule (no matter what the anti-vaxxers tell you), and we’re not subject to state-sanctioned pogroms. But there is reason for fear.
The Raëlian postcard is ambiguous — and probably nothing. I strongly suspect a non-Jewish recipient would have reacted very differently, probably crumpling up the narishkeit and tossing it straight in the bin, never giving it another thought.
But this is the hidden burden of Jews in the 21st century, isn’t it? Worrying even when you probably need not. Just imagine it: You arrive at work, you excitedly pull a postcard from your mailbox, you see a symbol of UFO cult followers, and against all rational thought, a tiny voice in your head pops up to say: My God — the Nazis have my address and are coming to get me.
