Turns out I'm Jewish after all

I left Judaism 20 years ago. Anti-Semitism has inexorably pulled me back.

A synagogue.
(Image credit: Illustrated | SeanPavonePhoto/iStock)

Being Jewish has become hard again.

After decades when Jews in America permitted themselves to believe they had finally found a welcoming home in a majority Christian, creedally universalist country, things have begun to shift in familiar and terrifying ways. Jews have been murdered in synagogues and kosher delis in the United States. They are regularly harassed and beaten on the streets of American cities. Swastikas scrawled on walls, acts of attempted arson and vandalism at synagogues, shouted slurs — the stories add up, amplifying one another and mixing with similar and worse stories from abroad.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.