In 2004, I left Belgium as a young Jewish boy with a feeling I could not fully articulate at the time, but one that was already deeply present: as a Jew, I was not fully welcome. It wasn't always explicit. It didn't always come in the form of violence. Nevertheless, it was there; in the atmosphere, in the tension, in the quiet understanding that being openly Jewish came with a price and made you a target.
More than twenty years later, I look back and what is most striking is not that things have improved. It's that they have gotten far worse.
