Where does the Jewish double fit into this landscape of malevolent twinning? Hasidic Jews, conspicuous in black hats and long coats, are easy targets for street violence. But a secular Jew like me? Frankly, I’m battling the feeling that it is slightly fraudulent to even mention it in the same breath. Thanks to the timing and location of my birth, which coincided with a high point in Holocaust education and collective contrition, I have been largely protected from direct encounters with Jew-hatred. A notable exception was a year spent in Oxford, England, when I was ten, where “Jew” was such a frequent schoolyard taunt that I hid my religious identity and muddled my way through morning hymns (“Shine, Jesus, shine! Fill this land with the Father’s glory!”).

QUESTION: Does the author resolve this tension — how does one reconcile relative safety with inherited Jewish vulnerability?

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 926