If Jews need an excuse to leave Twitter, X marks the spot
Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as “X.” Can that be good for the Jews? Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
By PJ Grisar July 24, 2023
When Elon Musk announced, in a thoughtfully coordinated random tweet typical of his leadership, that he would be rebranding Twitter as “X,” I was transported back in time to the gates of Ellis Island, a babe on my hip and my first quandary in a new land before me.
There is a theory, recorded in Leo Rosten’s Joys of Yiddish, that illiterate Jews arriving in the United States were asked to sign entry forms with an “X.” “The Jewish immigrants would refuse,” Rosten wrote, “because they associated an X with the cross of Christianity.”
Instead, they drew a circle (kikel in Yiddish). From that unconventional signature, Rosten and others have posited, an anti-Jewish slur was born.
Scrolling through Twitter in the months since Musk’s takeover, one may well encounter the slur’s 21st century variants. Antisemites on the platform have resorted to all kinds of coded tricks to elude Twitter’s now limited hate speech detection.
There’s the ((())) echo, which, before the chosen reclaimed it, was designed to out Jewish users. A well-placed “3” changes “Jews” to “J3ws.” Some people just write “Js.” If we were new here, we might be as bemused as our ancestors were hearing immigration inspectors debuting the word “kike.”
But we’re not new, and savvier users know they can get away with uncoded bile under the guise of “Just asking questions,” like right-wing podcaster Elijah Schaffer, who, earlier this month, polled his followers to ask “Do you believe Jews disproportionately control the world institutions, banks, & are waging a war on white, western society?”
Meanwhile, a charming crossposted clip of a young woman strumming a guitar and singing about how we can’t “talk about them” was all over my feed. (I’d buy into her premise more if the song, dedicated to Nick Fuentes, wasn’t titled “Anti Jew Song.”) The Jews have been trending, and that’s never a good thing. A study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that, since Musk took the reins, antisemitic tweets had more than doubled.
The writing has been on our virtual walls for some time now, but for a variety of reasons — attachment, habit, community, work responsibilities and engagement — some of us have been slow to leave.
But now, Twitter really isn’t what it used to be, in the most literal sense. Gone is that charming blue bird, replaced with an “X” that resembles the signage of some once-trendy club packed wall-to-wall with men who look like Elon and reek of Dior Sauvage.
With Musk not only allowing bigots to flourish on his platform, but often opting to interact with them, the advent of X seems like a wake-up call. Jews can — and maybe should — respond as our forebears did.
We can refuse the “X,” or brace ourselves for a digital town square where we are increasingly unwelcome.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
