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Content Warning: This story contains mentions of antisemitic language.

Car Shapiro, a member of this year’s Remembrance Scholar cohort, was in the program’s weekly meeting along with the rest of the scholars when they learned about the antisemitic language and swastika found in Bird Library’s archives for Pan Am Flight 103 terrorist attack.

“I was just shocked at first. I mean, unfortunately, I’m not too shocked by hate,” Shapiro said. “I’m just shocked that it had gone unnoticed for so long.”

The letters from twins Jason and Eric Coker sat in the archive for years before the Remembrance Scholars were collectively told about their existence by Syracuse University. Now, Jewish leaders across campus are both grappling with antisemitism and considering how the Remembrance Scholar program can move forward.

Both letters now sit in a brown box in the Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives with a note on one of its manilla folders warning that its contents contain antisemitic material.

In one of the letters, Jason Coker wrote to wish his family a Merry Christmas while he was living abroad in London. The card’s pre-printed message reads “Seasons Greetings.” Under the message, Jason Coker wrote “what’s happened to all those cards that just read ‘Merry Christmas’ – maybe the Israelites burn them all during Chanheka (sic).”

Campus Rabbi Ethan Bair of SU Hillel said the rhetoric is a “classic antisemitism trope.”

“(The trope) has been around for hundreds of thousands of years unfortunately. It sort of hits in the gut, in that way, because it’s so conspiratorial,” Bair said. “It’s ignorant, it’s hateful, it’s unfair.”

Erella Brown Sofer — a languages, literatures and linguistics professor in SU’s Jewish Studies program — agreed with Bair that antisemitism’s conspiratorial nature isn’t new. Sofer said antisemites use conspiracies to discriminate and attack Jewish people.

Prominent figures, including politicians and celebrities, still propel conspiracy theories regarding Jewish people. In 2018, now-Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed that wildfires in California were the result of a “Jewish space laser.” In a now-removed tweet, rapper Kanye West said on Sunday that he would go “death con (sic) 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”

Eric Coker wrote the other letter to his mother in 1988, wishing her a happy Mother’s Day on a Bat Mitzvah card, which he refers to in a joking tone throughout his letter. Under the section congratulating the recipient on their Bat Mitzvah, Eric Coker drew a swastika.

“When Jews make jokes, sort of at their own expense. It’s very different than this kind of humor, which is dangerous and violent and hateful,” Bair said.

Bair said over the last few days he has been thinking about the concept of Teshuva, or forgiveness, with last week being Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement.”

“For me, this news compounds the tragedy of the Coker brothers’ death because they never had the chance to complete their education and to grow and change around some of these views,” Bair said.

Hendricks Chapel Dean Brian Konkol said he’s working through a question Remembrance Scholars are also considering: ‘where do we go from here?’

“It’s a difficult question,” Konkol said. “I believe our campus community is capable of both seeking truth and extending grace. We need not choose between the two. We can hold them together.”

Konkol said the the Coker twins’ antisemitic writings will impact what Remembrance Week – which starts on Sunday – looks like in the future.

The Remembrance Scholars cohort are weighing the same uncertainties regarding how the program will move forward, Shapiro said.

“Now this raises the question of, ‘Is someone going to represent someone who is antisemitic?’” Shapiro said. “Obviously everyone should be remembered (who died) from this act of terrorism, but we have to take a stand against antisemitism.”

Syracuse Hillel Student Union President and SU Senior Sydney Schroeder shared a similar sentiment, saying it’s important to remember each individual victim while not glorifying them. Overall, she said people should remember the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 as fully-rounded individuals.

“Honoring a scholar and having that legacy is a very beautiful thing, but it could be more of a broader remembrance than just the individual,” Schroeder said. “It’s an older program that can be updated with the voices of Jewish students … they should be heard and respected.”

Schroeder emphasized the importance of Jewish people standing up against antisemitism. In 2019, SU students protested antisemitic, racist and homophobic acts at the university through #NotAgainSU.

Any decision regarding how the program moves forward should ultimately come down to what this year’s Remembrance Scholars feel comfortable doing, Schroeder added.

Shapiro said that he has had less of a say in the response as a Remembrance Scholar than he would have preferred. When the university put out a statement on Tuesday regarding the antisemitic letters, he said the university gave the cohort little notice and had no opportunity to make changes to the letter.

After the university released the statement, Shapiro felt it was not the voice of the Remembrance Scholars, but the university’s. Shapiro took issue with the university calling the twins’ actions a “mistake.”

“I find the SU statement pretty embarrassing,” they said. “I don’t want that to be associated with how I feel.”

Shapiro continued, saying that members of the cohort will be coming out with a statement of their own.

“We’ve literally been working nonstop since we found out about this to figure out what to do,” he said.

Published on October 13, 2022 at 12:45 am

Contact Kyle: kschouin@syr.edu | @Kyle_Chouinard