In 1654, 23 Jews fled the Portuguese Inquisition in Brazil and arrived in New Amsterdam, which became New York 10 years later. Jews have been coming to America ever since in search of safety.

In 1883, Emma Lazarus, the descendant of Sephardic Jews who immigrated to the United States in colonial times, wrote a poem entitled “The New Colossus.” It includes the words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.” Those words are inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

I don’t know whether my maternal grandparents saw Lazarus’s words when they arrived from Russia, separately, early in the 20th century and sailed past the Statue of Liberty. If they did, they would have needed a translator.

While their Yiddish accents never left them, English became my grandparents’ primary language. For them, this was the promised land, a place where they could breathe free in safety.

When I asked my grandmother why she left the Old Country, she answered “pogroms,” the Russian word for violent attacks on Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Pale of Settlement, the part of the Russian Empire where Jews were allowed to live, wasn’t safe.

I recently attended a function in Claremont, and two brothers whom I know were at the same event. As I was getting ready to leave, one of them said, “Joe, if you have a minute, we would like to talk to you.”

We stepped outside to a quieter space, and they told me what was on their minds. “We’re worried about you.”

I couldn’t imagine what was worrying them, but I soon found out. “The way things are in this country,” one of them said, “it isn’t safe to be Jewish. We want you to know that we are here for you, and if you need us just let us know.”

I told them I share their concern about the rise of antisemitism in this country and around the world. “But don’t worry, I’m fine,” I said.

That conversation took place a few weeks ago, and it has remained in my mind ever since. Did I answer too fast? Should I be worried about my safety on account of being Jewish?

Our country has a long history of antisemitism. In the 1920s, Henry Ford promoted his hateful views in “The Dearborn Independent,” a weekly newspaper with a large national circulation. In the 1930s, millions of Americans listened to Father Charles Coughlin’s tirades against Jews on his weekly radio broadcasts.

Then came the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews, more than one-third of the world’s Jewish population, were systematically killed.

In her 2019 book titled “Antisemitism Here and Now,” historian Deborah Lipstadt writes, “It is axiomatic that if Jews are being targeted with hateful rhetoric and prejudice, other minorities should not feel immune; this is not likely to end with Jews. And … if other minority groups are being targeted with hatred and prejudice, Jews should not feel immune; this is not likely to end with those groups, either. Antisemitism flourishes in a society that is intolerant of others, be they immigrants or racial or religious minorities.”

I do not believe that antisemitism is “flourishing” in the United States. But it has become more pervasive than at any time in my memory. According to an American Jewish Committee report titled “The State of Antisemitism in America 2024,” a majority (56%) of American Jews say they have changed their behavior out of fear of antisemitism. As an example, an observant Jew who formerly would have worn a yarmulke, the traditional skullcap, in public may now decide to wear a baseball cap instead.

Antisemitism in America is not limited to the racist, right-wing phenomenon we witnessed in 2017 in Charlottesville, where white supremacists chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Today, Jew-hatred manifests itself from both the right and the left, including on college campuses. One consequence of the war in Gaza is that over three-fourths (77%) of American Jews feel less safe than they did before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war. People have taken sides, and not always peacefully.

On May 22, 2025, two young staff members at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, an American named Sarah Milgrim and an Israeli named Yaron Lischinsky, were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. Milgrim grew up Jewish in Overland Park, Kan. Lischinsky moved from Germany to Israel as a teenager. He was a Christian, the son of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. The police arrested a 31-year-old man from Chicago, who said, “I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza.”

On June 1, in Boulder, Colo., a man yelling “Free Palestine” attacked a group demonstrating in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza. Eight men and women were hospitalized in what Gov. Jared Polis called a “heinous and targeted act on the Jewish community.”

Are my Claremont friends right? Is it no longer safe to be a Jew in the United States?

We do not have pogroms here, and I am a lot safer than my grandparents were in Russia. As a white person, I am also safer than people of color, undocumented immigrants and no doubt members of other minority groups. I do think, however, that I responded too quickly to my friends’ expression of concern. I still feel safe being Jewish, but I used to feel safer.

Joseph D. Steinfield lives in Keene and Jaffrey. He can be reached at joe@joesteinfield.com.