TERRY GROSS: I’m wondering how your exposure to anti-Semitism and now your study and analysis of it [for “(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in American in the Age of Trump”] has affected your own life as a Jewish person. You grew up very secular. Your parents were from New York, but they moved to Atlanta. You grew up in Atlanta. You say your mother joined the synagogue not out of great religious conviction but because it was a synagogue connected to the civil rights movement, and she wanted to be a part of that.
JONATHAN WEISMAN: That is correct.
GROSS: So have you become more Jewish, so to speak? Have you become more observant? Have you become more self-identified, you know, in your mind, as Jewish culturally or religiously?
WEISMAN: Yes (laughter). When this first came about and I started getting noticed for standing up to the alt-right, I suddenly became a spokesman for the American Jews. And I laughed about it. I would actually joke and say, look at me, spokesman for the American Jews. But I have become, I think, more identified Jewish – slightly more religious, although I think my rabbi would differ (laughter). And I have tried to imbue more of a sense of Judaism on my two daughters.
But it’s one of these things that a lot of Jews took notice of during the Nazi era – that, you know, you can hide from your Judaism, but they won’t let you. It will catch up to you. And it caught up to me, and I realized this is something to embrace, and I will embrace it.
Attacked By Alt-Right Trolls, A Jewish Journalist Links Trump To The Rise Of Hate
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