SAN DIEGO — We are heading into the holiest time of the year on the Jewish calendar: Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) next week followed by Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Combine that with a rise in antisemitism and one nonprofit says this is the perfect time for new, thought provoking billboards across San Diego.
“On the fringes of where our country is right now, the hate is very strong, and it's very real, and it's really, really, dangerous,” said Archie Gottesman, co-founder of JewBelong.com. Her nonprofit is putting up billboards and signs across the country with one major goal. “It gets them talking. It's like why did they put a billboard up about antisemitism. Well, because you haven't been thinking about antisemitism and it's growing in our country and it shouldn't be growing and until people start talking about it, it's not going to go away.”
In July, a man yelled antisemitic remarks and physically attacked a rabbi in a College Area convenience store and racist flyers were recently distributed across the county. The Anti-Defamation League says antisemitic incidents in California jumped from 367 in 2021 to 518 in 2022.
JewBelong actually started as a website seven years ago with no thought of fighting antisemitism. Instead, the goal was to provide friendly resources to people intimidated by Judaism. “Maybe they didn't have a Jewish education,” Archie said. “Maybe they aren't Jewish and they're married to someone who is and just feels like they never got the secret handshake.”
Some of JewBelong's San Diego billboards use humor to try and bring people back to Judaism. There’s one on El Cajon Boulevard that reads, “ So you eat bacon. God has other things to worry about.” And another on Miramar Road says, “Judaism: Come for your girlfriend. Stay for the lack of hell.”
Archie says some rabbis like what she's doing, but others not so much and she's okay with that. “You're not my target audience,” she said. “It's okay you don't like it. It's not you, but Jews who get it think it's really funny and then they go to the website and say - oh, this is really something that resonates with me.”
Archie is hoping to put up more billboards across San Diego but, as a nonprofit, she says funding will determine if that can happen and how long the current ones will stay up.
Watch Related: Adapting to all comfort levels for High Holy Days (Sep 2, 2021)