Interview 2 - Alex Gross

Alex Gross
Mr. Roddy
IHSS
30 April 2020
Interview Blog: Sarah Yonas

My interview with Sarah Yonas, the Texas regional director of BBYO which is a worldwide organization for Jewish youths was focused strongly around how to prevent and combat Antisemitism, and what I found most was that educating people on Antisemitism is the most important thing. A large part of our conversation was that many people think of the Holocaust as the only large amount of Antisemitism in one place at one time, when this is very false. Another interesting thing was that people reduce the Holocaust becuase it was “so long ago” and she agrees that some people think of it as long beofre slavery in America. In reality we haven’t even celebrated the 80th anniversary of the escape from Auschwitz, and there are still many Holocaust survivors alive today. Some other less recognized events of violent prejudice towards Jews in mass amounts include: The Crusades in which Christains went around Europe trying to convert non Christians (mostly Jews) and if they refused would kill them, Conversos in which people were forced to practice Judaism privately because they would be attacked if they did it publicly (mainly in Spain and Portugal), Pogroms which were people invading the houses of Jews and killing them because they were Jewish which happened in Eastern Europe, and many others. Some also used to believe that Jews planted the black plague because Jews were required by religion to be MUCH cleaner than the average person in that time so there were less Jews infected which led others to believe they created the plague. There was also the enslavement of Jews in Egypt thousands of years ago. Sarah Yonas taught me about many of these things, which gave me insight into the fact that we need to recognize that Jews have prejudice against them, and have had it in the past to make change. In many other religions it is important to accept someone as your lord and savior, but that is not as true in Judaism. The belief is hollow without practice and the lifestyle. This is why Judaism is actually often considered a race. Many people in the Holocaust identified as Jewish, but had no religious beliefs. They identified as racially Jewish. This still caused hate against them. Judaism is also obviously a religion though, and not only race because someone can convert to Judaism which can’t happen to any race, so there is a Jewish religion, and a Jewish race, and sometimes people are both, some are neither, and some are just one. If people do not learn about some of these things, and we are not looking at our mistakes, it would be very difficult to make changes. We also need to spread this message on social media because that is where the next generation is. Sarah Yonas believes that educating adults about this is important but it will not make a ton of change, and that we need everyone to know, especially kids.

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