Is Being Jewish Having White Privilege?
This summer, Anne Frank went viral on Twitter, but not for the reasons one might expect. She was accused of having “white privilege,” as in this tweet:
As a teenager just a little bit older than Anne Frank was at her untimely death in a Nazi concentration camp, but fortunate enough to instead live in 21st century America, I am appalled that anyone could even fathom that Anne Frank had “white privilege” when she had to hide from Nazis and was killed for being Jewish.
“Privilege” doesn’t need to be a dirty word, and we should be grateful for the benefits we possess in life. Moreover, we each can have privileges in some ways while also being disadvantaged in other ways. Indeed, while Jewish groups on the whole have many material and other advantages in today’s society, there is unfortunately still antisemitism in the United States and around the world.
It is important nonetheless not to fall prey to the same thinking as those on social media who accused Anne Frank of having “white privilege.” They seem to assume that if one group does not generally suffer in a certain way that others do (as white people generally have had a leg up in contrast to the racism that Black people and others have suffered and continue to experience too much in this country) then the group has some comprehensive privilege that its members ought to recognize and check, so to speak, to help uplift the disadvantaged. From this thinking comes the fallacy that because Anne Frank was a white girl in Western society, she must have had privilege, all her other unfortunate circumstances because of her Jewish status to be disregarded.
Rather, just as with Jewish people in today’s world, all groups have both advantages and disadvantages. Part of the Jewish privilege is our heritage and tradition. That tradition, embedded in the Torah, emphasizes both charity and empathy to those in need around us, including in the biblical commandments to leave some crops at harvest time for the poor to collect (Leviticus 23:22) and to not oppress strangers in our midst, because we were once strangers in Egypt (Exodus 23:9). Many scholars, including Maimonides, further emphasize that this charity should be paired with empathy. This tradition of charity and empathy to others suggests that it is important to be outwardly involved rather than just internally focused. This tradition is about empathizing with others in worse circumstances and helping to improve their situation. This is indeed what references to “check your privilege” in contemporary society are all about. This notion is embedded as a principle deep in the Jewish privilege.
In this regard, even when we find it nonsensical and offensive to say that Anne Frank had “white privilege,” it is important to try to understand what might make someone assert that in the first place. It might not come from hatred but rather from ignorance about the tragic circumstances of the Holocaust for the Jewish people and also from a place of deep frustration in today’s society that there is still racism. It emphasizes a need to educate others that the Jewish people were and are disadvantaged in certain ways. It also suggests that we should empathize with the frustration other minority groups have with racism and the structural harms it continues to cause in society. We need to build more connections with other communities and use the principles of our tradition to uplift and support them when they lack societal advantages. That is the essence of our Jewish privilege.
This writing was later published in a somewhat different form in The Jewish Press on August 5, 2022.
