Assorted thoughts:
1) Abraham abinu and Sara immenu had to become immigrants before being brought into a covenant with the Creator. Moshe rabbenu had to become a foreigner in a foreign land before being sent as an emissary of the Creator. The children of Yisrael had to become (mistreated) immigrants and be given a Tora that repeatedly demands compassion and even charity for immigrants, before the Creator gave them a promised land in which to dwell securely. This is all very suggestive to me of a deeper dimension to the tension between natives and immigrants in human society.
2) Fundamentalism causes many problems in the world. Humanism solves many problems in the world. The problem is that both do so in the name of religion (as well as secularly, but that’s not as big of an issue). The problem is compounded by the fact that, due to their mental state, fundamentalists are louder and more power-hungry. Despite the advantages of their worldview, humanists are at a disadvantage in resisting the tide of fundamentalism that has drowned humanity for thousands of years.
3) Antisemitism is the oldest of the modern prejudices, and while it shares much in common with other veins of bigotry it is as unique as the people of Yisrael are unique. The refusal of the Jew to accept the violence at the basis of imperialist “civilization” and “culture” – the insistence on preferring, even in the smallest part, the remaining vestiges of an alternative civilization and culture – ultimately marks him as anathema to “civilized” society, no matter how much he assimilates or seeks his place in the imperial pyramid of social privilege. This has held true for the Jewish people across Christian and Islamic lands alike, to this very day. But it is not enough to simply react to the fact of antisemitism: The ever-present challenge is to avoid internalizing the worldview and values of the antisemite, in both the diaspora and our homeland.
4) Reminder to myself: Nothing has a single cause and not every cause is linear. “Train your tongue to say I don’t know.” And just choose the good because it is good, so that there will be more good in the world.