Antisemitism Spikes, And Many Jews Wonder: "Where Are Our Allies?"
For Alex Zeldin, it began as a normal Friday.
He was headed to Trader Joe's on New York City's Upper West Side to pick up some food for the Jewish Sabbath.
As usual, he was wearing his yarmulke, or skullcap. When he turned a corner, he realized that a couple of teenagers had started to follow him, spewing antisemitic insults.
"It took me about halfway down the block to realize that the thing that they were commenting on was they kept saying, 'yarmulke': 'I want to take that yarmulke, I want to hit him in his head and take that yarmulke; that Jewish baby killer,'" Zeldin recalled.
Zeldin's harassers ultimately peeled off, but the fact that they used the term "baby-killers" gave him a jolt.
"Calling Jews 'baby-killers'? That's the blood libel. That's a thing that was happening in medieval Europe,"referring to the that accused Jews of murdering Christian children to use their blood in rituals.
