“You people make all the rules, but not today.” I will never forget those words. Mere hours before my Olympic debut at Pyeongchang in 2018, a jury member of my event disqualified a critical piece of equipment of mine by overruling the recommendation of the equipment panelists. The decision had been requested on behalf of another athlete, who claimed that the prior legalization was the result of “Israel being well connected in sport.”
The piece in question, ruled legal in several prior qualification events, was a slightly modified helmet that helped eliminate traumatic head strikes, a common and devastating side effect of the Olympics’ craziest sport of skeleton. In skeleton, the competitor rides a small bobsled down an ice track, lying face down and going headfirst, sometimes reaching 80 mph.
This episode was devastating. For the entirety of my athletic career I have received much support while at the same time experiencing large amounts of vitriol. The brazenness in which it was communicated at the highest level of competition was something I never expected at the Olympic Games.
I hail from a proudly Jewish family. I am the first Orthodox Jew to compete in the Winter Olympics and proudly identify as a Jew by wearing a yarmulke and keeping kosher. My brother is perhaps one of the more well-known active Jewish stand-ups today. My father was one of only a couple of graduates of his Harvard Medical School class to wear a yarmulke at a time that Jews were actively discriminated against in admissions to universities and medical school.
The Jewish experience is present in all aspects of my life. It has given me a perspective on the societal reception of Jews and their “privileges” and over-representation in industries that has recently been called into direct focus.
There is a common yet vile theme that this year has run through the discourse of certain notable A-listers: that Jews are privileged because they can evade the all-too-common hate directed at them by “passing” as gentile “whites.” As Diddy posted recently, Jews are “part of the dominant racial caste in the US and therefore are able to participate in and perpetuate white supremacy.”
This notion is obscene. The very idea that a group is hated for being who they are, and therefore can shed their identity and hide their features — to live without proudly being themselves — is something that I believe is an affront to human decency. For what has the last half-century of social progress shown, if not that we should all be able to live openly as ourselves, whoever we are, with pride?
If a people are targeted for who they are and must hide their identity in order to lessen that discrimination, then the reality is unmistakable — they are being persecuted for their identity. Indeed, antisemitism is a unique kind of hate, for it is a hatred of man for merely existing. No matter what a Jew may “pass” as or the color of his skin, he is hated for simply being a Jew.
To have the “privilege” of trying to hide that from view is not privilege at all. It is a rejection of one’s identity. It is evil.
I recall the story of how my great-aunt, a trailblazer and intellectual powerhouse, became a chemist. It had been her dream to be a doctor. When she sought admission to Northwestern University Medical School she was told that they “certainly weren’t going to accept a Jewish woman.”
Yet under a twisted system of intersectional hierarchy embraced by all-too-many in our society, my aunt was privileged — hiding her identity would have given her a more fair shot at pursuing her dream. There is something rotten about a belief system that by and large looks the other way at this casual racism. What matters when it comes to “the Jews” is not individual or collectively lived experiences, but instead the appearance they can adopt if they hide their identifying features.
Recently more than a few celebrities have discussed the minority Jewish population in ways that would be condemned if you swapped “Jews” or “they” for another group. But the shock should not be that the sentiment exists, it is that these celebrities felt comfortable amplifying these sentiments publicly without the caution or deference that they would have afforded other groups.
In the same way that an official at the Olympics felt comfortable enough to openly reveal that his decision was based not on rules but on my identity, it seems all too routine that speaking ill of Jews is just simply treated differently. Indeed, it took a two week public pressure campaign for Adidas to drop Ye after his rants.
To Dave Chapelle, who before an audience of millions on Saturday Night Live said that “they” might take his wealth like “they” did to Kanye, I would ask sincerely: At what point do “they” get to proudly be themselves, respected for “their” identities as people? At what point are “they” no longer a conspiratorial collective, afforded the same rhetorical respect as other theys?
I will remain proudly and visibly Jewish — because like you I want to be judged for my own actions. That’s what makes our societal values great.
A.J. Edelman, a cantor at Congregation Ahavath Achim in Carnegie, was a 2018 Olympian competing in skeleton and is currently captain of the Israeli national bobsled team, “Bobsled Team Edelman” (teams are named after their pilots).
First Published: December 9, 2022, 5:00 a.m.
