We have been taught since we were children to be prepared that when people come to slaughter us, the world won't care.  Or that they will say we had it coming.  That they might even celebrate it.  But we didn't believe that could be true.  

Not anymore.

Then we saw it happen, again.  As our global Jewish community was in shock and mourning from the Hamas attacks on October 7th, emboldened protest groups worldwide celebrated the massacre of our people, murders and kidnapping of innocent babies, children, parents, and grandparents.  They screamed that it was our fault.  Some even called for more of us to be killed.

We were vulnerable, and we turned to our union leaders, our friends and colleagues, waiting for them to join the other leaders in our industry to simply say this is wrong.  That they felt our pain.  That they heard us.  But they chose to stay silent.

In the past, our Guild understood when tragedies cried out for moral leadership.  They spoke on behalf of other ethnicities and vulnerable groups who were in pain.  And we stood by our suffering fellow-members, and we applauded our Guild for their moral courage.

Then came their deafening silence on our behalf.  And when they finally did speak out, it was not to say they heard us and understood us, it was largely to say that we should understand them.

They insinuated that we were forcing them to take a political position when all we wanted was for them to condemn the murderers and the kidnappers, and to empathize with us in our fear and our pain.  Their 17-day silence, followed by their discomforting responses, then encouraged a dangerous false narrative, motivating some of our Guild brothers and sisters to malignly recast our pain as politics.  They issued letters and petitions, grossly misrepresenting our simple human plea.

That, too, was a painful day for us.

We live with the knowledge that our place in the world is, and has always been tenuous.  We are a tiny minority.  O.2% of the world's population.  About 2% of America's.  And that can be a lonely, frightening reality for us, especially at a time like this.

Since that tragic day of October 7th, antisemitic hate crimes in America have risen over 400% with a 1,000% increase in violent antisemitic online hate speech.  On college campuses, protestors scream for our extinction and threaten Jewish students with physical violence.  Our children's schools and our houses of worship require even more barricades, more armed guards, and metal detectors.  Our Jewish friends tell us they are so afraid, that they're removing the Stars of David from their necks, and the mezuzahs from their doors.

We are not so foolish to believe that we -- or the WGA leadership -- can stop the real bloodshed.  We are not so arrogant as to believe that we can convince the United Nations and the world to see the terrorists for who they truly are.  We are not so naive to believe that we can eliminate all antisemitic tropes, threats, and violence that increasingly plague our people.

But we must do everything that is in our power to try.

And we must begin to make that effort here, in the place where we live and work.  Because if not here, then where?  And if not now, then when?

As Jews we have been tasked with the work of Tikkun Olam.  To heal a broken world.  It is the cornerstone of our identity.  And as storytellers, we do have the power to at least begin that healing.  But how can we do that if we don't feel safe in our shared storytelling space?  When we don't feel safe in writers rooms, feeling surrounded by people who attack us, dismiss us, or make no attempt to understand us, and when our Guild believes it's just too risky for them to defend us.

We can't demand that people understand our fear or our pain.  But we can ask them to acknowledge that we have a unique experience in this world.  We can ask people for their empathy and for their compassion.  And as our collective voices speak out, perhaps the next silence we hear will mean they've started to listen.