From the perspective of Jewish history, harassment and violence against Jews is not a new thing.

It's perhaps the historical norm.

Groups of bullies assailing a Jewish man walking down the street, striking a Jewish mother and her baby,

knifing, using bricks and rocks, making Jews fear the walk from their synagogue to their home,

in the neighborhoods where they've lived for generations.

That's a dark condition that we know from Jewish history.

But I'm not describing the pogroms of the old world.

All of those aggressions against Jews have happened and continue to happen, continue to happen at an alarming rate in Brooklyn,

in and around New York in 2019. Violence is regularly being visited upon Haredi Jews on the streets

of America's largest Jewish city. and there doesn't seem to be

much of a media appetite to cover the story. On today's episode, I have two special guests to help us

think about the anemic media coverage of violence against Orthodox Jews in New York. Welcome to the

Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. Avital Cizik Goldschmidt and Batya Unger Sargon

are editors at the Forward, the voice of the Jewish left since 1897. We may agree or we may

disagree on many things regarding America, American culture, Jewish politics, Israel,

and you'll hear some of our disagreement on this podcast. But each of them

have been courageous in calling out the political left, Jewish institutions, and mainstream media

outlets for their inadequate outrage at these alarming anti-Semitic attacks in and around New York.

Avital and Batya know the left better than I do, and today on the show we get to hear

how they're thinking about how the coalition politics of the left mutes the conscience of the

same media voices who demonstrate such caring concern for other persecuted minorities.

There are two essays that are relevant background for our conversation.

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