Simon Taylor was on his way to an appointment in Flatbush, Brooklyn, when he pulled into a local filling station one afternoon last week. It was a lovely fall day in New York, but as he began to fuel up, the climate turned sour: Another customer, spotting the skullcap atop Rabbi Taylor's head, launched into an expletive-laden rant about how much he hated Jews and then, when the rabbi photographed his license plate, started chasing him with an upraised fist.
Taylor, a 38-year-old father of five who oversees social services and disaster relief programs for an umbrella organization of Orthodox Jews, was shaken. A native of England who now lives on Long Island, he wondered if the incident was connected to a mainstreaming of antisemitic rhetoric in America.
"I've never had anything like this in New York, and it definitely felt to me like this whole Kanye West thing had something to do with it," said Taylor, referring to the ugly utterances of hip-hop legend Kanye West, now known as Ye. "All it takes is a couple influential people to say things, and suddenly it becomes very tense."
For Jews in America, things are tense indeed. Next week's midterm elections feel to some like a referendum on democracy's direction. There is a war in Europe. The economy seems to be teetering. It is a perilous time, and perilous times have never been great for Jews.
"When systems fail, whether it's the government or the markets or anything else, leaders often look for someone to blame," said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which seeks to monitor and combat antisemitism. "Jews have historically played that role."
Antisemitism is one of the longest-standing forms of prejudice, and those who monitor it say it is now on the rise in America. The number of reported incidents has been increasing. On Thursday, the FBI warned of a "broad threat" to synagogues in New Jersey; by Friday, the agency had located a man it said expressed "an extreme amount of hate against the Jewish community."
Social media has clearly made it easier to circulate hate speech, and that means outbursts like Ye's, in which he posted on Twitter that he would "go death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE," get more attention. (Many have noted that Ye has about twice as many followers on Twitter as the world's population of Jews.)
Ye's persistent outbursts have been followed by attention-getting signs of support: In Los Angeles, a group of emboldened antisemites hung a "Kanye is right about the Jews" banner over an interstate Oct. 22, and Saturday, similar words were projected at a college football stadium in Jacksonville, Florida.