Light In The Darkness: How Telling Jewish Stories Is an Antidote to Antisemitism

In 1925, an idealistic librarian named Fanny Goldstein organized a celebration of Jewish books at the West End Branch of the Boston Public Library and called it Jewish Book Week. In the 1940s, this annual event expanded to a full 30 days. Since then, communities throughout the U.S. have marked an annual Jewish Book Month in the lead-up to the first night of Chanukah.

Jewish Book Month offers an opportunity for us to celebrate ourselves, and to express justified pride in our literary contributions to society and culture. It is also an opportunity for Jewish authors like me to connect with an eager and receptive readership.

But Fanny Goldstein’s original aspiration was “to give the non-Jewish community an opportunity to learn about Jews and Judaism.” Here in the Boston area, almost all JBM events are organized and hosted by Jewish schools, community centers and synagogues. The West End Museum at the BPL’s West End Branch – the very place where Fanny launched Jewish Book Week – has no Jewish Book Month events listed this year.

With antisemitism rising to record levels and manifesting in vandalism and violence, Fanny’s vision of sharing our stories with the world seems like a dream for better times. But Jewish Book Month was not founded in better times. The Ku Klux Klan had over two million members and antisemitism ran rampant in the year Fanny launched Jewish Book Week. Two decades later, when she expanded the celebration to a full month, Jewish books were still burning in Europe. Fanny understood that sharing Jewish books with the broader community is particularly critical in times of crisis.

Fanny framed the need to share Jewish stories in terms of education. She wanted others to learn about Jews. The implied reasoning behind this is that antisemitism emerges from a lack of knowledge, and as such, teaching people about Jews would “fix” the problem.

I used to think this way, too. Years ago, while fundraising for a Jewish short film, I encountered several people who made antisemitic comments. My attempts to educate them fell on deaf ears. When I completed that film, it received a positive reception and screened in film festivals all over the world, including in places without a Jewish presence, and where antipathy toward Jews was common. A great story did what education could not.

I reflected on this phenomenon, and came up with a metaphor: Imagine you’re a young child in your bedroom at night. Perhaps there’s a night light in one corner, illuminating a few toys and part of a wall. But your closet door is cracked open, and the darkness beyond is thick, and seems almost infinitely deep. When you look at that darkness, a visceral fear wells up inside you. You imagine frightful things. You imagine monsters.

This is how antisemitism forms. Jews make up a tiny fraction of the global population. In most parts of the world, people have never met a Jew. For many, the gaps in their knowledge of Jews get filled by popular media. Jewish doctors or lawyers make regular appearances in TV shows. Every now and again, an opaque chassidic type plays a bit part or walks through the background. Jewish protagonists tend to be secular New Yorkers with anxiety issues, or aggressive entertainment industry types. This narrow depiction of Jews in media is like that night light, illuminating a corner of the room. But the rest of the room is still dark.

When people sense a gap in their knowledge, they tend to fill it in with their fears. It’s a deep-seated lizard brain instinct that kept us alert to danger. In that darkness – the broad spectrum of Jewish life and culture that we haven’t illuminated – imagined monsters still lurk and prowl.

If you’ve ever tried to convince a child that there are no monsters in the closet, you know that a logical explanation simply won’t make a difference. Instead, when the kid fears the monster in the closet, the fastest solution is to turn on the closet light and show the child that they are safe.

Sharing Jewish stories shines more of that light. As we get better at telling a broader range of Jewish stories, beyond the Hollywood tropes, we illuminate more dark corners in people’s minds. And we do it without making anyone feel defensive. With stories, we can cut through fear.

This is the real potential of Fanny Goldstein’s original vision. Jewish Book Month is an opportunity not just to educate, but to entertain, and by means of that entertainment, to shine light in the dark corners, to alleviate fears, to dispel the vision of monsters. To achieve this, Jewish communal organizations must push harder for Jewish Book Month to expand beyond Jewish circles.

We have many stories. It’s imperative that we share them.