Antisemitism

HAVE RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY

Letter to the Editor of the Coaster, Published August 24, 2023

Last week, I received the letter below from a dear friend of mine. Although she wanted to submit this as a letter to the editor, due to the escalating divisiveness in our community, and with a focus on her safety, she prefers to remain anonymous. Like my friend, I believe that raising awareness of hatred is the first step in combatting it. Therefore, with her full permission, I submit her words and experience below, and call on the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association (OGCMA) to stop promulgating the spread of antisemitism and have respect for the diversity of our community- not with lip service, but with action.

“While walking on the Ocean Grove boardwalk, a public thoroughfare, one of my summer house guests heard coming from inside the Boardwalk Pavilion, in her words, “a young man addressing young pre-teens through a microphone about ‘the Jews’ mistreatment of Jesus.’ And with microphone in hand, he asked, ‘What can we learn from how the Jews treated Jesus?’

My guest is not Jewish. She was terribly uncomfortable hearing this characterization of Jewish people and deeply concerned that these young people were being taught not critical thinking skills but rather a distorted view of history and a hateful fiction about Jewish people. She said this was all coming from what’s known as the New Testament story of John.

Is this free speech?

As a Jewish woman, I am utterly horrified and fighting the inclination to defend my choice of living in Ocean Grove. I so want the scales to remain at least balanced, so I can stay in this architecturally beautiful town with many wonderful people. But to think that the OGCMA not only allows, but facilitates, the aforementioned to young people within earshot of all passersby skews the balance and, quite honestly, frightens me.

I understand that some members of the community might think that instead of submitting a letter to the editor, that I should instead talk to the OGCMA directly. Please note, I have approached the CMA’s head administrator twice, by myself, in the 20 years I’m in OG. Both times I was too easily led to believe that my concerns were ‘certainly shared’ and then finally told that there was absolutely no way we could work together because my views were fundamentally opposed to the heartfelt beliefs of the person.

The first person was about 19 years ago. He was very well liked and the adult son of a very popular OG attorney. The issue was about teaching yoga in OG.

The second time I reached out to the OGCMA I scheduled a meeting with the president of the OGCMA after he first addressed the Ocean Grove Homeowners meeting. I felt I could help him build bridges between groups in Ocean Grove. We started discussing same-sex marriage and his views were absolutely repugnant to me. At that point our discussion became impossible.

The fact that our values were so different did not alone make it impossible for us to work together. It was that these two men were recalcitrant, obstreperous, intractable in their positions. Compromise was out of the question.

Consequently, I am not willing to speak to anyone in the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association. I don’t want to hear the OGCMA President say that I am ‘challenging the beliefs that he holds in his DNA’!”

Pamela Remler

Ocean Grove