People are human, everyone has sins. That’s why we have communal confessions on Yom Kippur. I have yet to hear of an orthodox shul where they say, oh we skip that part since obviously no one among us has sinned.
Just my view, but I’ve never liked the labels Orthodox, Conservative, & Reform for people. They are affiliations for synagogues or organization. People are Jewish. They can be more or less observant/frum. You can say you grew up in or belong to an O/C/R shul, but even individuals within the same family and over the course of their lives have varying levels of observance.
Here’s a few examples of why I think O/C/R as individual labels don’t work.
There’s a Refom (non-congregational) Rabbi who reads Torah weekly at a local Modern Orthodox shul where I believe he is a member. What is he? Reform? Orthodox?
(Reform + Orthodox)/2= Conservative?
No, he is Jewish.
My friend had a Jewish father and Christian mother, he was Baptized in the church and had a Bar Mitzvah at a Reform synagogue. What is he? A Reform Jew? No, not Jewish.
My friend was ‘raised Conservative,’ he married a non-Jewish woman, they have children, everyone in the home keeps kosher. What are they? One lonely Jew.
Someone who was ‘raised Orthodox’ but no longer is observant? He is Jewish.
A BT or FFB? They are Jewish.
When the little boy at religious school drop-off asks me skeptically if we are Jewish since our family is visibly less observant than others, I say without qualifiers, yes we are Jewish.
“In NYC, however, there has always been a massive amount of Antisemitism that people seem to just tolerate.”
I think it gets lost within the general violence of a big city. Not going to be front page news over yesterday’s 75 other crimes. In a small town where Jews are rare and crime is rarer its more likely to make headlines.
Also being from OOT I feel the need to clarify this statement, edited