“Why don’t you Jews go back to Jew-land,” shrieked my friend’s mother, standing on the hill in front of her house while my 6-year-old self stood below her on the sidewalk. Looking up at her red face contorted with anger, I just waited there, confused. I played with Joan all the time. Why did her mom say that?

That was an early lesson in antisemitism, the first of other such events through the years. But prejudice was on full and frightening display on January 6. As I watched the riot unfold in Washington, DC, in my own country’s Capitol building, I thought about that early experience and now this: a deliberately staged chaotic production, complete with live video feeds in real time and strategically placed individuals in full costume, preening in the midst of evil and terrifying violence.

Camp Auschwitz. 6MWE. The Confederate flag. Antisemitism was on full display, front and center before the world. It resonated in the moment, and for the hours and the days that followed. It is insidious. It proliferates among the shadows of the dark web, and in the light of neighborhoods where 6-year-olds play with their friends.

We need to keep it out there, front and center, a reminder to our Congressional representatives that antisemitism is growing with frightening ferocity. We need to spotlight it, and take aggressive action to stem the growing tide. It is easy to sit back and watch, overwhelmed by the frightening world we live in — faced with Covid isolation, the pursuit of an elusive vaccine, and the endless fear of contracting the disease. But all that is temporary. If we are indifferent, the other scourge will fester and grow ever more wild. As Maya Angelou said, “If you don’t like something, change it.”

—Judith K. Weiner