As many of us now know, the Island’s synagogue was broken into and defaced. Written on the west-facing wall, near the ark where the Torah is kept, were the words “God Hates Jews,” accompanied by a Nazi swastika.

Astonishingly, as I write these words, tears come to my eyes. In my 63 years of life, I have experienced anti-Semitism too many times to count. I have taught Jewish history several times in university settings, in religious schools, in adult education classes. I know quite a bit about the last 1,200 or so years of the hatred and persecution of Jews — the astonishing extent of anti-Jewish violence, the range and intensity of it. I know things that would shock and disgust you. So I thought I was beyond being so upset.

But my synagogue has never been openly attacked like this. It is remarkable the impact it has had on me. There is something about a community building, the physical manifestation of peoplehood, that is sacred space. When that gets violated, it means so much more than the casual use of a slur, a mean-spirited joke or even an attack on an individual. In some strange way it makes the attack official; it makes it public and dangerous; it makes it a community-wide event.

One of the reasons why it has so upset our Jewish community is that official, community-wide anti-Semitic attacks were at the heart of European anti-Semitism. Pograms were community-based, semi-official violence, often deliberately meant to destroy Jewish communal objects and spaces as well as to injure and kill individuals. And Nazi violence against Jews, of course, was planned, organized and carried out by officials of the party, made legal by the courts and executed with a self-congratulatory arrogance not unlike the foolishness that is reflected in the belief that “God hates Jews.”

In other words, this act is now in the public realm. That is why it is not just a problem for the Jews of this Island. It is, especially, a problem for everyone on this Island.

The act has meanings that far transcend its juvenile perpetrators. There is a good chance that those who committed this act don’t fully realize the meanings that inhere in a swastika or the horrific images and terror that symbol and those words open up for all Jews and especially for those who are survivors or adult children of survivors of the Holocaust. But the act has been done. And until we all rise up and say publicly that it is wrong and we abhor it, the act will stand as a communal statement, a semi-official act.

We cannot allow that to happen. Not for the sake of the Jews, but for the sake of everyone, for the soul of our Island. It was often said that although the Nazis killed six million Jews, they killed a lot more Christians than Jews — because they destroyed the Christianity of the Christians who did not actively fight against them.

Ultimately, that’s the point, isn’t it? The problem isn’t that a couple of kids wrote an absurd statement on a synagogue wall. The problem is that they must have heard that statement from others or gathered that sentiment from the behavior of others and thought that others would be proud of what they did. And until they, and all young people on the Island, learn from the rest of us that racist ideas and symbols and slurs are an abomination, we are all complicit in what the perpetrators of this act have done.

Don’t indulge in the fantasy that everyday racial, religious and gender slurs — let alone more explicit and violent events — never happen on our Island. We all know they do. During this year’s Strawberry Festival two longtime Vashon residents were talking while volunteering in a booth. One said straight-out to another, “I wish you people would go back to where you came from!” “Well,” said the second guy, “I guess that means I should go back to Wyoming, because that’s where I was born — in a Japanese internment camp during World War II.” “Oh,” said the first guy.

Oh.

It is our responsibility to ask ourselves what kind of world is it that has so injured and twisted these youngsters that they would think that such an act was good. We live with a great deal of insecurity, fear and worry. Bereft of meaningful political power and overwhelmed by the everyday problems of our lives in such a complicated, exhausting and threatening world, the temptation to blame someone else, rather than the system, becomes extremely seductive. Unconsciously, in times of stress, we turn to historical traditions of hate. The others we blame, of course, are those who are different from us. Difference makes distance; it makes it easier to project our fears onto others, to believe that they are not exactly human, and therefore to hate them.

We can’t let that process go publicly unchallenged on our Island. Let us search our souls for the ways we have influenced our young people, either explicitly or especially implicitly, to believe that some people are fair game — that values of fairness, respect and understanding do not apply when it comes to them. Let us notice the ways in which we have avoided recognizing and fighting against the racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and homophobia of our time, either that which is ours or that of others, expressed individually or institutionally.

Let us work together to better educate the children of our Island so that the projection of fear and hatred will not go unnoticed — and unresisted — by them even in the privacy of their own hearts. And let us work to make the world into which we have thrown them a little less confusing, meaningless and threatening, for them and for us all.

Last week’s incident was not just an attack on the Jews, it was an attack on us all, as is every heartbreaking act of prejudice. We must fight against the hatred, before it kills the good in our community and in us all.

— Philip Cushman, Ph.D., teaches psychology at University of Washington, Tacoma, and Antioch University, Seattle, writes for professional journals and has a private practice on Vashon.

As many of us now know, the Island’s synagogue was broken into and defaced. Written on the west-facing wall, near the ark where the Torah is kept, were the words “God Hates Jews,” accompanied by a Nazi swastika.

Astonishingly, as I write these words, tears come to my eyes. In my 63 years of life, I have experienced anti-Semitism too many times to count. I have taught Jewish history several times in university settings, in religious schools, in adult education classes. I know quite a bit about the last 1,200 or so years of the hatred and persecution of Jews — the astonishing extent of anti-Jewish violence, the range and intensity of it. I know things that would shock and disgust you. So I thought I was beyond being so upset.

But my synagogue has never been openly attacked like this. It is remarkable the impact it has had on me. There is something about a community building, the physical manifestation of peoplehood, that is sacred space. When that gets violated, it means so much more than the casual use of a slur, a mean-spirited joke or even an attack on an individual. In some strange way it makes the attack official; it makes it public and dangerous; it makes it a community-wide event.

One of the reasons why it has so upset our Jewish community is that official, community-wide anti-Semitic attacks were at the heart of European anti-Semitism. Pograms were community-based, semi-official violence, often deliberately meant to destroy Jewish communal objects and spaces as well as to injure and kill individuals. And Nazi violence against Jews, of course, was planned, organized and carried out by officials of the party, made legal by the courts and executed with a self-congratulatory arrogance not unlike the foolishness that is reflected in the belief that “God hates Jews.”

In other words, this act is now in the public realm. That is why it is not just a problem for the Jews of this Island. It is, especially, a problem for everyone on this Island.

The act has meanings that far transcend its juvenile perpetrators. There is a good chance that those who committed this act don’t fully realize the meanings that inhere in a swastika or the horrific images and terror that symbol and those words open up for all Jews and especially for those who are survivors or adult children of survivors of the Holocaust. But the act has been done. And until we all rise up and say publicly that it is wrong and we abhor it, the act will stand as a communal statement, a semi-official act.

We cannot allow that to happen. Not for the sake of the Jews, but for the sake of everyone, for the soul of our Island. It was often said that although the Nazis killed six million Jews, they killed a lot more Christians than Jews — because they destroyed the Christianity of the Christians who did not actively fight against them.

Ultimately, that’s the point, isn’t it? The problem isn’t that a couple of kids wrote an absurd statement on a synagogue wall. The problem is that they must have heard that statement from others or gathered that sentiment from the behavior of others and thought that others would be proud of what they did. And until they, and all young people on the Island, learn from the rest of us that racist ideas and symbols and slurs are an abomination, we are all complicit in what the perpetrators of this act have done.

Don’t indulge in the fantasy that everyday racial, religious and gender slurs — let alone more explicit and violent events — never happen on our Island. We all know they do. During this year’s Strawberry Festival two longtime Vashon residents were talking while volunteering in a booth. One said straight-out to another, “I wish you people would go back to where you came from!” “Well,” said the second guy, “I guess that means I should go back to Wyoming, because that’s where I was born — in a Japanese internment camp during World War II.” “Oh,” said the first guy.

Oh.

It is our responsibility to ask ourselves what kind of world is it that has so injured and twisted these youngsters that they would think that such an act was good. We live with a great deal of insecurity, fear and worry. Bereft of meaningful political power and overwhelmed by the everyday problems of our lives in such a complicated, exhausting and threatening world, the temptation to blame someone else, rather than the system, becomes extremely seductive. Unconsciously, in times of stress, we turn to historical traditions of hate. The others we blame, of course, are those who are different from us. Difference makes distance; it makes it easier to project our fears onto others, to believe that they are not exactly human, and therefore to hate them.

We can’t let that process go publicly unchallenged on our Island. Let us search our souls for the ways we have influenced our young people, either explicitly or especially implicitly, to believe that some people are fair game — that values of fairness, respect and understanding do not apply when it comes to them. Let us notice the ways in which we have avoided recognizing and fighting against the racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and homophobia of our time, either that which is ours or that of others, expressed individually or institutionally.

Let us work together to better educate the children of our Island so that the projection of fear and hatred will not go unnoticed — and unresisted — by them even in the privacy of their own hearts. And let us work to make the world into which we have thrown them a little less confusing, meaningless and threatening, for them and for us all.

Last week’s incident was not just an attack on the Jews, it was an attack on us all, as is every heartbreaking act of prejudice. We must fight against the hatred, before it kills the good in our community and in us all.

— Philip Cushman, Ph.D., teaches psychology at University of Washington, Tacoma, and Antioch University, Seattle, writes for professional journals and has a private practice on Vashon.