It's the High Holy Days. It's supposed to be a time for joy and celebration. I feel none of that.

[AZLD4Candidate]

I feel no desire to celebrate. I feel no movement towards welcoming in a new year with hope and the promise it brings.

I only feel that as the new year comes, it will be the same as the old year. Let's look at how we were treated in our own country and worldwide last year:

1: Oct 7th, 2023. The most Jews killed in a single day since Nazi Germany. These weren't military. These weren't government. These weren't even "extremists." They were mostly the 35 and younger set going to a music festival. Unarmed, unaware, looking to relax and have fun. 1400 of them butchered. Some tortured before death. Added to it the over 200 hostages taken. I will contend most weren't alive in 1948 either when the UN partitioned the Mandate of Palestine.
1a: How was it received? Tepid outrage. Typical political platitudes about terrorism for a little while. But in the streets of Gaza, it was celebrated like the Japanese celebrated the Rape of Nanking and the Chinese celebrated Pearl Harbor: A great military victory. In the US, people actually celebrated it as the "oppressors" rising up against the "apartheid state," all but ignoring that most, if not all, of the 1400 killed were NOT part of Israeli policy. They were just Jews and throughout history, Jews have been the whipping boy.
2: Constant domestic terrorism against Jews, namely in the form of bomb threats and psychological warfare. Pro-Hamas gadflies using Israel as a mask for their latent antisemitism, masking it in nice political language rather than the pejoratives of the past, chanting genocidal slogans against Jews like "from the river to the sea."
2a: How was it received? Most don't care. After all, we only make up 14 million people in the country. As Rush Limbaugh said on his turd factory in the 1990s about black people: "They're only 12% of the population. Who cares?" Source: Al Franken's book and the book "The Way Things Aren't To Be." Antisemitism is the only form of bigotry in the US where it can be immediately dismissed, justified, or explained as "normal."
3: "Genocide Joe" Shapiro. Remember that before Tim Walz was selected as Veep? I guess that last name makes one guilty by association.
3a: How was it received? Neither the left nor the right condemned it. The right explained it was a legitimate attack on a potential vice-presidential candidate and the left (the gadflies) were the ones that started it, all because Gov. Shapiro is Jewish.
4: Israel is, according to the things I read and listen to, the most genocidal, brutal, dictatorial, racist, militaristic apartheid state in the world. Worse than Communist China. Worse the Communist North Korea. Worse than psychotic Turkmenistan. Worse than autocratic Swaziland. Worse than homicidal Russia.
4a: How it is received? Repeated day in and day out without a shred of objective evidence.
5: The IDF is killing women and children. Israel (and Jews in the IDF) are warmongering war criminals.
5a: How is it received? By burping back numbers from the Hamas controlled Gaza government through the UN and then repeated like Hamas is a 100% honest player while Israel are just a pack of liars. Remember the old antisemitic trope about Jews, honesty, and money.
6: Campus university protestors targeting Jewish students and organizations because Israel.
6a: How was it received? Even university officials were slow to stop it, while some used their social media to support. All documented over the last year through news articles and news video clips here on DU. Just do a search.

These are just six examples. There are many others.

I feel no mood to celebrate Rosh Hashannah. There is no reason to look forward to a new year being Jewish. It will be the same as last year and next year will be the same as this year.

I remember, a long time ago, someone telling me "Before Israel we didn't have an enemy in the Middle East. Because of Israel, now we don't have a friend."

At least I have heard blood libels mentioned, but I doubt it will be too long before people start using those and bringing back The Protocols to attack us.

We are alone in the world. We will always be alone in the world. I've lived in five countries other than the US. I've been to another eleven for extended periods of time.

1: Seoul had a Hitler bar in Hongdae
2: Indonesia and Malaysia bar anyone entrance to their countries if they have/had an Israeli entry stamp in the passport.
3: Singapore youth think dressing up as Hitler for Halloween is not a problem
4: Thailand has become openly hostile to the Chabad houses in Bangkok and Phuket, so much so that there is armed security at both of them.
5: People in China sell Hitler playing cards and wear Hitler T-shirts likes we'd wear one of the hulk (Tianjin and Suzhou respectively when I lived there). Mao even praised Hitler as a man that could get things done.
6: In Abu-Dhabi, I was ordered to remove my Star of David necklace by police because it "offended Islam, Allah, and prophet."

And it will never change. 2500 years of these attitudes both in the Eastern and Western worlds, it's ingrained into the psyche.

Sorry to be downer, but 46 years of this is enough.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. All valid points.

Look inward and outward. As individual, do acts of kindness to and for others. That’s how I was raised as a Jew.

[Beastly Boy]

2. It was the year that normalized antisemitism worldwide.

This is what disturbs me the most. I see so many comments, and not just on DU, that are overtly antisemitic, and the authors of these comments don't see them as such, most of them being sincere in their conviction that they are not being antisemitic.

This disturbs me the most.

I was going to post a long commentary on the abomination Hamas inflicted on both Israelis and Gazans, and the ensuing shameful universal apologia that followed, but I just can't get myself to dwell on this monumental atrocity for an extended period of time. Not today.

[spike jones]

3. I had a Jewish roommate in college one-year in1965. He was very smart with a great sense of humor.

We had some interesting discussions with me being an atheist. He told me that all the hate against the Jewish people was misplaced especially regarding the Christ Killer crap. He said that in the Bible God had sent Jesus to earth to save people’s souls by dying for their sins. Jesus had said as much too. So, when Judas betrayed Jesus and the Jews condemned him to be killed by the Romans, they were doing God’s will. They were doing God’s will at great personal cost. Jesus’s death and resurrection is the most significant part of the Christian religion, and as such the Christians should be grateful to the Jewish people for their sacrifice. Without them it would not have happened.
I wonder if this is a common thread that has been discussed at any time.

I am not sure how devout my roommate was. He always referred the High Holy Days as the Holy High Days. It was the Sixties.