Lampposts as a Site of Resistance
They tear down the posters. I tape them back up.
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
On October 7, seeing the sickening footage of Hamas’s mass slaughter and violent kidnapping of so many innocent Israelis, something shifted deep inside me. A Reform Jew who has not yet been to the Holy Land, that day I began wearing a Star of David, bought an Israel shirt and pins to wear in support of the hostages, and commenced a small, personal crusade.
Shortly after the heinous terror attack, along my local walking route in the San Fernando Valley, posters went up on lampposts for the 240 hostages Hamas viciously assaulted, dragged from their loved ones and shoved into hellholes in Gaza. You’ve seen these fliers: candid photos of once-joyful babies, concertgoers, moms and sisters, even octogenarian Holocaust survivors, each with a brief bio and a plea for their release. Topped by a stark banner — KIDNAPPED. I would study these victims’ faces on my walks and send each one a prayer for protection, courage and safe return. I wanted to do more, but what?
I was livid when, on my subsequent walk, I discovered that some sick person had ripped down and keyed nearly all of these hostage posters, defacing them with crass, anti-Jewish scrawl. New posters went up, and they too were vandalized.
That same week, Paul Kessler, a Jewish man I did not know but who was about my age, was murdered for holding up the Israeli flag at a street corner rally nearby.
Judaism — safeguarding it from those who seek to eradicate us — is thoroughly woven into my being. My grandfather, Al Sherman, told me about barely fleeing the murderous antisemitic pogrom in Ekaterinoslav (near Kiev) as a child. My father, Robert B. Sherman, fought the Nazis in World War II, culminating in Dad being the first American G.I. to liberate Dachau. The only Jew in his squadron. Both men became very successful songwriters, their words and music infused with themes of love, optimism, tolerance, peace, charity, community and lifting mankind.
Seeing this blatant antisemitic and pro-terrorist vandalism right here in my neighborhood was shocking, but not entirely unexpected. Acts of antisemitic hate and violence are on a sharp rise here in America and all over the world.
Tragically, once again, Jewish people have been attacked in their homeland, forced to flee. The door slammed shut by my father’s generation some 80 years ago has been kicked open again. These hateful bigots, even in my quiet residential Los Angeles neighborhood, are emboldened to publicly rear their ugly antisemitic heads; to echo Hamas’s inhumanity with their own destructive hatred.
Perhaps they believe we’ll forget about the poor innocent souls still held prisoner by sadists for 394 days, as of this writing. Well, I certainly won’t forget these victims and their families, and I won’t let others forget, either. We must speak out and not allow evil to win.
I decided, in my small way, in my own hometown, to push back on these vandals, to keep our attention and compassion focused on the plight and release of the remaining hostages. I created and printed up a stack of my own fliers that read: “FREE ALL ISRAELI HOSTAGES NOW!”
On my next walk, I taped my fliers to the same lampposts where the hostage photos had been ripped down. One by one, within about a week, my signs, too, were defaced or torn down.
So I printed a whole lot more. I post these on even more poles, use more tape. They rip them down; I put new ones right back up. In recent weeks, I amended my message to read: “FREE ALL ISRAELI HOSTAGES NOW! — LET THERE BE PEACE.”
Like most, I long for peace and lasting coexistence for the Israelis, Palestinians and all the Middle East. I believe this resolution can only begin, though, with the release of all the hostages.
I will not be intimidated by the hateful. I will not go away and be silent. I will not stop replacing these signs until the very last hostage is set free.
Jeffrey C. Sherman is a writer, producer, director and composer for film and television (“Boy Meets World,” “Au Pair,” “The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story”).
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
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