My Year of Angst and Antisemitism: (Book Proposal)

A 25-Year Old American Jew Responds to the Return of Popular Antisemitism

(Current Cover of my poetry collection, One Hundred Days of Night, now available for digital download here.)

Context: After much thought and reflection, I have decided to edit and compile the essays and poems I have written this year into a memoir. 

It will take me some time before this book is complete, but I wanted to give my readers a taste of the introduction so that I could gauge interest in this project.

As always, thank you for your continued support of Zionist Literature. 

Dear Reader,

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ted Goldstein. I am a 25-year-old American Jew from Los Angeles, CA. I graduated from Princeton University in 2020 with a degree in History, and I have been working as a Jewish Educator ever since. 

And this is the story of how antisemitism changed my life.

Less than 10 days after my 17th birthday, I received the greatest news of my life to date – I had gotten into Princeton University. 

Since as long as I could remember, it was my dream to go to Princeton and one day become the first Jewish-American president in history. 

However, what I saw in my four years there made it all too clear that Jews were no longer welcome in the United States, and the powerful wheels of progressive antisemitism were turning once again. 

The outpouring of antisemitism following the October 7th attack on Israel came as no surprise to me – my Ivy League education had prepared me for it. 

While so many people I know were dumbfounded that progressive America had come to so virulently hate the Jews, I was, more or less, prepared. 

I was prepared to watch an entire generation of Americans take their colleges hostage in the name of their antisemitic doctrines because, in my four years at Princeton, I was a witness to their indoctrination. 

I was prepared to watch the President of the United States stay silent about the American citizens taken hostage by Hamas because I was a witness to the silence of his party members when their Jewish constituents were attacked and harassed in the streets. 

And I was prepared to watch Jewish students of New York hide and flee from their fellow classmates because I knew that the horrible history of the Holocaust began in the most liberal and progressive German Universities.   

Although I was intellectually prepared to watch all of these things happen, I was not emotionally prepared.

And so, in response to the outpouring of antisemitism, I did the only thing I could – I wrote. 

I wrote so that I could read the words that this pain had written upon my heart. 

On October 7th, 2023, every wound of the Jewish people that had been scarred over since 1948 was reopened in the most violent and excruciating way. 

And the Jewish people have not even been allowed to cry out. 

Within a week of our immense trauma, we were fighting for homegrown antisemitism after the New York Times spread a blood libel about Israel targeting hospitals. 

Within a week. 

For months now, the Jewish soul has been crying out, and, for months now, the world has been pretending not to hear us. 

In truth, they have done more than pretend not to hear – they have attempted to silence. 

By boycotting writers and artists who have any affiliation with Israel, antizionists have tried to silence Zionist voices and crush the Jewish will to speak.

(Just last week, an independent bookstore in Chicago called City Lit Books decided to stop promoting a book because of the author’s affiliations with “Zionism.” They were so petty as to even suggest that their readers check the book out from the library if they would like to do a “critical reading” of it, while ensuring that the author did not collect her royalties.

This is what a Jewish cultural boycott looks like. Thank you for supporting The Zionist Voice during these times.)

But I will not be crushed, and I will not be silent. 

This book is a collection of the essays and poems I have written this past year. 

Each of these pieces was written as I struggled to make sense of my life in the new world, and I hope this account of my struggles may help guide anyone who is struggling with something similar. 

For the Jews who will read this, I hope this provides you with comfort and wisdom, and, most of all, I hope this reminds you that you are not alone, no matter how isolated you may feel. 

For the non-Jews who will read this, I hope this will give you some insight into the Jewish psyche, and I hope this will make you reflect on who you would have been living in Germany 100 years ago. 

For, unfortunately, the days of 1924 and 2024 are not looking so different for your Jewish neighbors.

And so, without further adieu, allow me to present My Year of Angst and Antisemitism: An American Jew Responds to the Return of Popular Antisemitism. 

May G-d Help Us All. 

Spread Love, Spread Light,

Am Yisrael Chai

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