Vanessa, you really touched a nerve with this article.
I was one of those people who marched for civil rights. I was one of those people who supported gay rights. I was one of those people who supported women's equality. Like many Jews of my generation, I believed that solidarity meant reciprocity and that standing up for others would create lasting alliances based on shared principles.
What October 7 and its aftermath taught me is a much harder lesson. Many of those alliances turned out to be far more conditional than we believed. When Jews were the victims, many of the people and movements we had supported either went silent, rationalized what happened, or quickly redirected blame back onto us.
It is disappointing. It is painful. But it is also reality, and reality has to be faced honestly.
That doesn't mean we become bitter. It means we stop being naïve. We keep plugging along, keep building our own communities, keep defending ourselves, and keep standing up for what is right, but without the illusion that others will necessarily stand up for us in return.
And on the cultural point you make, I would strongly recommend a book that one of my subscribers suggested to me: Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell. Whether people agree with every conclusion or not, it challenges many assumptions and forces readers to think more deeply about culture, behavior, success, and responsibility.
In any case, I think you're right on target. This is an uncomfortable conversation, but it is one that needs to be had.
"It is disappointing. It is painful." -- I disagree, it is disgusting and appalling. I don't believe in feeling pain over this stuff,. Outrage is much more appropriate. Pain hurts oneself.
You fell for the same tikkun olam B.S. as the ADL, which I stopped supporting over a decade ago because it went all out for the same causes as you. But your job isn't defending Jews, as is that of the ADL!
Meyer Kahane was an extremist, but he was on to something. Jews defend every person or cause but their own.
A. Kauffmann, I think you're making a lot of assumptions about me that simply aren't true.
You mention Rabbi Meir Kahane. I actually had lunch with him twice and was a member of the JDL. So please don't assume that because I support certain causes or believe in equal rights that I somehow come from the same place as the ADL or the modern institutional Jewish world. In fact, I have been one of the loudest critics of the large, bloated Jewish organizations and the bureaucratic swamp they have created.
And no, I don't think it is weakness to feel disappointment or pain. Quite the opposite.
When you actually invest yourself in causes, when you march for civil rights, when you stand up for people being mistreated, when you support equal rights, when you spend time with friends dying during the AIDS crisis and visit them in hospice, when you put real effort and real emotion into helping other human beings, then yes, it is painful when some of those same movements later abandon you or turn against you.
That isn't weakness. That's being human.
You are entitled to feel outrage. I understand the outrage. I feel plenty of it myself. But please don't tell other people how they should feel. Disappointment, hurt, betrayal, outrage — these are all legitimate responses.
My primary concern is and always will be the Jewish people because they are my people. But caring about Jews does not require me to stop caring about everyone else. I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive.
So while we may disagree about the emotional response, I think we probably agree on more than you realize.
By the way, the Rebbe became an extremist in the end right before he moved to Israel, but he was one of the most charming, intelligent, and caring people I have ever met. He would be turning over in his grave to see how the diaspora Jews are so disorganized, so strategically weak, and so passive.
I have no problem with having concerns for others but our response with such movements as Tikkun Olam has diluted concern for our own especially when the very people we have helped turn against us. It’s time to put Jews first. In the end, no one is coming to rescue us but ourselves.
I greatly appreciate this convo today between you, Kaufman and Segal- we need more of this tough dialog and we need more loud unified action to fight this neverending battle against Jewish hatred and overcome the betrayal of our so called Jewish leaders who have failed us.
Sam, I actually enjoyed the give and take as well. It lights the fire in my belly.
I know I private messaged you and asked you to support me and subscribe to my free Substack, fredericktatala.substack.com. I hope you do so. Have a great weekend.
My main point on “pain” was that — my view — it is self-harming. I find that developing a plan to combat something harmful to me is much more satisfying — and less painful! — than being upset about it. Jews often talk about hos “painful” are the various indignities to which they are subject. I believe is just fighting back.
It is rare for a black op-ed writer to not incessantly talk about blacks. Yet apart from Stephens, Weiss and a handful of others, of the more than 1000 Jewish journalists, they remain either mute or like fools like Michelle Goldberg and Tom Friedman, spend more time criticising Jews than defending.
There’s a difference between turning towards painful experience and meeting it, which allows you to address its causes; and ignoring it or pretending it’s not there, which tends to make it worse and leaves you reactive rather than responsive. There’s no shame in Acknowledging that it is painful to see what’s happening, to be betrayed and gaslit, to see fellow Jews working against their own . Pretending one doesn’t feel pain is more harmful to oneself than meeting it
A. Kauffmann, I understand your point, but I think we're using the word "pain" differently.
For me, disappointment and pain are not passive emotions that lead to inaction. Quite the opposite. They are often what trigger action. When I say I was disappointed, I don't mean I sat back and felt sorry for myself. I mean I looked at people and movements I had supported for years and realized many of them were not what I thought they were.
That realization was painful, but it also motivated me. I write. I speak out. I argue. I try to persuade people. I don't simply accept things.
In my experience, disappointment and outrage are not opposites. Disappointment is often what produces outrage, and outrage can produce action.
And by the way, before assuming I somehow spend my time "kissing ass" to the Left, I invite you to read some of my writing. You may discover very quickly that I'm not exactly known for pulling punches. Feel free to subscribe to my free Substack and judge for yourself:
Jews have long been the useful idiots for black organizations. Starting with funding the creation of the NAACP, Jews have helped blacks. But the article overlooks something actually worse than what is described. Blacks have long been the most antisemitic identifiable group in the US. Pew polls as recently as 2023 showed 44% of black to have antisemitic views. That long predates October 7.
Blacks identify with Palestinian Arabs. Blacks are humiliated by Jewish history, where Jews suffered vastly more, but despite it all, accomplished what blacks could not, in nearly all fields of endeavor.
This is not news. It is merely confirmation of facts that were hidden in the misplaced Jewish tendency to empathize with all suffering -- except their own.
We tried repairing the world for 3000 years. You know the saying, it is insane to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.
Don’t kid yourself—black anti-semitism is nothing new. It’s been going on in the US since the late 60s, at least and is the reason why former Jewish leftists Marty Peretz and David Horowitz changed sides.
My father ran into Stokeley Carmichael in Honolulu airport in the 60s. Stokely called my 6’5”, veteran father a “Jewboy” and threatened to riot in an affluent Jewish suburb in which he thought we lived. (Ours was actually very modest). The black-Jewish alliance that liberal Jews get so misty-eyed over was always a one-way alliance, on behalf on blacks.
The primary historical periods of the transatlantic slave trade span from the 15th century (the 1400s) to the 19th century (the 1800s). Over these 400 years, the dynamics between European traders and African kingdoms evolved from sporadic coastal raiding to highly organized, state-level commercial networks.
Historical data archives like the Slave Voyages Database show how the scale of the trade shifted dramatically across these centuries.
Without the cooperation between African warrior tribes or kingdoms, the transatlantic slave trade could not have succeeded.
Don't forget the historical impact of Islam on the African slave trade.
The nation of Islam’s proliferation in the Black community opened the door. We and Black people are suffering the consequences of both being weakened by being played against each other. As horrible as it is to say, they have lost me as an ally. I am never going to fight against civil rights. I am too busy fighting against Jew hate, to focus on issues that don’t affect my community. When the cycle of jew hate subsides, I am not going to rejoin their fight. I’m autistic and don’t forgive betrayal.
For decades many black leaders have monopolized the victim label. It became an industry. After October 7th and before, when Jews became the oppressed, blacks had to share that seat at the table and weren’t happy. Their response was to turn against any who would challenge their exclusive narrative.
Antisemitism had been integrated into black activism for decades before oct 7. They didn’t suddenly turn against us. It was just the defining moment when we needed our friends most that we saw the extent. It’s important that how we talk about these issues be accurate- we need to be aware of the failures in our own perceptions about how bad it was earlier, when we might’ve had a chance to address what was going on. Jews have had our heads in the sand for too long, not understanding the nature of the threat
I remember a good (liberal) friend of mine in the early days of Black Lives Matter made a comment online in the early days and got back, “No one asked you Askinaz.”
After applauding the person for knowing, sight unseen, that she was a Jew, she quickly left the forum.
We still do have many Black friends, and there are many Black Jews But the generational rise of belief in Marxism, Critical theory and Critical Race theory have severely damaged and misdirected the civil rights movement.
The "mechanism for Jewish success" is hiding in plain sight. It's called belief in the one true G-d, educating yourself in the Torah, and trying the best that you can to follow it.
This is an important discussion. This article makes sweeping generalizations with few concrete examples. And so doing, the writer does to them what they do to us. The discussion needs to happen, and it needs to identify who and where the generalizations and marginalization are being made
This article makes an excellent point by relating Jewish success to Jewish behaviors which are shaped by Jewish culture. It's a point that does not receive wide attention yet other groups could learn from it. Instead people want to believe there is a conspiracy afoot.
The utter silliness of this subject. The only alliance between Jews and blacks was at the level of the top leaders. You could not find two groups who have less in common. One out of three black men spend time in prison, in Chicago 75% of black high school graduates cannot read, and 70% or more of black women having babies are unmarried. A black-Jewish alliance has always been a myth. There was never any chance of connections between blacks and Jews.
Great essay, Vanessa, and you provoked interesting dialogue in these comments. Both the Black and “Palestinian” communities have made victimhood a terrifically successful tool. Our emphasis on Holocaust education has been less successful, and it is time to find better tools for ourselves.
The soul saving education continues.... I would love a saviour to protect everyone (and bloody enlighten them)... Like a broken friendship - it's their loss and they'll have to work bloody hard for any recognition from you 🤬🙏💪🇮🇱💙🫂🙏
Vanessa, you really touched a nerve with this article.
I was one of those people who marched for civil rights. I was one of those people who supported gay rights. I was one of those people who supported women's equality. Like many Jews of my generation, I believed that solidarity meant reciprocity and that standing up for others would create lasting alliances based on shared principles.
What October 7 and its aftermath taught me is a much harder lesson. Many of those alliances turned out to be far more conditional than we believed. When Jews were the victims, many of the people and movements we had supported either went silent, rationalized what happened, or quickly redirected blame back onto us.
It is disappointing. It is painful. But it is also reality, and reality has to be faced honestly.
That doesn't mean we become bitter. It means we stop being naïve. We keep plugging along, keep building our own communities, keep defending ourselves, and keep standing up for what is right, but without the illusion that others will necessarily stand up for us in return.
And on the cultural point you make, I would strongly recommend a book that one of my subscribers suggested to me: Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell. Whether people agree with every conclusion or not, it challenges many assumptions and forces readers to think more deeply about culture, behavior, success, and responsibility.
In any case, I think you're right on target. This is an uncomfortable conversation, but it is one that needs to be had.
"It is disappointing. It is painful." -- I disagree, it is disgusting and appalling. I don't believe in feeling pain over this stuff,. Outrage is much more appropriate. Pain hurts oneself.
You fell for the same tikkun olam B.S. as the ADL, which I stopped supporting over a decade ago because it went all out for the same causes as you. But your job isn't defending Jews, as is that of the ADL!
Meyer Kahane was an extremist, but he was on to something. Jews defend every person or cause but their own.
A. Kauffmann, I think you're making a lot of assumptions about me that simply aren't true.
You mention Rabbi Meir Kahane. I actually had lunch with him twice and was a member of the JDL. So please don't assume that because I support certain causes or believe in equal rights that I somehow come from the same place as the ADL or the modern institutional Jewish world. In fact, I have been one of the loudest critics of the large, bloated Jewish organizations and the bureaucratic swamp they have created.
And no, I don't think it is weakness to feel disappointment or pain. Quite the opposite.
When you actually invest yourself in causes, when you march for civil rights, when you stand up for people being mistreated, when you support equal rights, when you spend time with friends dying during the AIDS crisis and visit them in hospice, when you put real effort and real emotion into helping other human beings, then yes, it is painful when some of those same movements later abandon you or turn against you.
That isn't weakness. That's being human.
You are entitled to feel outrage. I understand the outrage. I feel plenty of it myself. But please don't tell other people how they should feel. Disappointment, hurt, betrayal, outrage — these are all legitimate responses.
My primary concern is and always will be the Jewish people because they are my people. But caring about Jews does not require me to stop caring about everyone else. I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive.
So while we may disagree about the emotional response, I think we probably agree on more than you realize.
By the way, the Rebbe became an extremist in the end right before he moved to Israel, but he was one of the most charming, intelligent, and caring people I have ever met. He would be turning over in his grave to see how the diaspora Jews are so disorganized, so strategically weak, and so passive.
I have no problem with having concerns for others but our response with such movements as Tikkun Olam has diluted concern for our own especially when the very people we have helped turn against us. It’s time to put Jews first. In the end, no one is coming to rescue us but ourselves.
Being an agnostic, it was not Tikkun Olam that made me help others. And I totally agree with you. We have to take care of ourselves first.
I greatly appreciate this convo today between you, Kaufman and Segal- we need more of this tough dialog and we need more loud unified action to fight this neverending battle against Jewish hatred and overcome the betrayal of our so called Jewish leaders who have failed us.
Sam, I actually enjoyed the give and take as well. It lights the fire in my belly.
I know I private messaged you and asked you to support me and subscribe to my free Substack, fredericktatala.substack.com. I hope you do so. Have a great weekend.
My main point on “pain” was that — my view — it is self-harming. I find that developing a plan to combat something harmful to me is much more satisfying — and less painful! — than being upset about it. Jews often talk about hos “painful” are the various indignities to which they are subject. I believe is just fighting back.
It is rare for a black op-ed writer to not incessantly talk about blacks. Yet apart from Stephens, Weiss and a handful of others, of the more than 1000 Jewish journalists, they remain either mute or like fools like Michelle Goldberg and Tom Friedman, spend more time criticising Jews than defending.
There’s a difference between turning towards painful experience and meeting it, which allows you to address its causes; and ignoring it or pretending it’s not there, which tends to make it worse and leaves you reactive rather than responsive. There’s no shame in Acknowledging that it is painful to see what’s happening, to be betrayed and gaslit, to see fellow Jews working against their own . Pretending one doesn’t feel pain is more harmful to oneself than meeting it
A. Kauffmann, I understand your point, but I think we're using the word "pain" differently.
For me, disappointment and pain are not passive emotions that lead to inaction. Quite the opposite. They are often what trigger action. When I say I was disappointed, I don't mean I sat back and felt sorry for myself. I mean I looked at people and movements I had supported for years and realized many of them were not what I thought they were.
That realization was painful, but it also motivated me. I write. I speak out. I argue. I try to persuade people. I don't simply accept things.
In my experience, disappointment and outrage are not opposites. Disappointment is often what produces outrage, and outrage can produce action.
And by the way, before assuming I somehow spend my time "kissing ass" to the Left, I invite you to read some of my writing. You may discover very quickly that I'm not exactly known for pulling punches. Feel free to subscribe to my free Substack and judge for yourself:
https://fredericktatala.substack.com/
Be well and keep fighting the good fight.
We need 10 million more Kahanist Jews in the diaspora . I am one fervently and so are my children
Outstanding thank you. Keep on keepin on !
Jews have long been the useful idiots for black organizations. Starting with funding the creation of the NAACP, Jews have helped blacks. But the article overlooks something actually worse than what is described. Blacks have long been the most antisemitic identifiable group in the US. Pew polls as recently as 2023 showed 44% of black to have antisemitic views. That long predates October 7.
Blacks identify with Palestinian Arabs. Blacks are humiliated by Jewish history, where Jews suffered vastly more, but despite it all, accomplished what blacks could not, in nearly all fields of endeavor.
This is not news. It is merely confirmation of facts that were hidden in the misplaced Jewish tendency to empathize with all suffering -- except their own.
We tried repairing the world for 3000 years. You know the saying, it is insane to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.
—Jews suffered vastly more, but despite it all, accomplished what blacks could not, in nearly all fields of endeavor.
This is the root of the hatred: envy and resentment.
Don’t kid yourself—black anti-semitism is nothing new. It’s been going on in the US since the late 60s, at least and is the reason why former Jewish leftists Marty Peretz and David Horowitz changed sides.
My father ran into Stokeley Carmichael in Honolulu airport in the 60s. Stokely called my 6’5”, veteran father a “Jewboy” and threatened to riot in an affluent Jewish suburb in which he thought we lived. (Ours was actually very modest). The black-Jewish alliance that liberal Jews get so misty-eyed over was always a one-way alliance, on behalf on blacks.
The primary historical periods of the transatlantic slave trade span from the 15th century (the 1400s) to the 19th century (the 1800s). Over these 400 years, the dynamics between European traders and African kingdoms evolved from sporadic coastal raiding to highly organized, state-level commercial networks.
Historical data archives like the Slave Voyages Database show how the scale of the trade shifted dramatically across these centuries.
Without the cooperation between African warrior tribes or kingdoms, the transatlantic slave trade could not have succeeded.
Don't forget the historical impact of Islam on the African slave trade.
Excellent article. Also— there is such a thing as black supremacy and Islamic supremacy.
The nation of Islam’s proliferation in the Black community opened the door. We and Black people are suffering the consequences of both being weakened by being played against each other. As horrible as it is to say, they have lost me as an ally. I am never going to fight against civil rights. I am too busy fighting against Jew hate, to focus on issues that don’t affect my community. When the cycle of jew hate subsides, I am not going to rejoin their fight. I’m autistic and don’t forgive betrayal.
For decades many black leaders have monopolized the victim label. It became an industry. After October 7th and before, when Jews became the oppressed, blacks had to share that seat at the table and weren’t happy. Their response was to turn against any who would challenge their exclusive narrative.
Antisemitism had been integrated into black activism for decades before oct 7. They didn’t suddenly turn against us. It was just the defining moment when we needed our friends most that we saw the extent. It’s important that how we talk about these issues be accurate- we need to be aware of the failures in our own perceptions about how bad it was earlier, when we might’ve had a chance to address what was going on. Jews have had our heads in the sand for too long, not understanding the nature of the threat
I remember a good (liberal) friend of mine in the early days of Black Lives Matter made a comment online in the early days and got back, “No one asked you Askinaz.”
After applauding the person for knowing, sight unseen, that she was a Jew, she quickly left the forum.
We still do have many Black friends, and there are many Black Jews But the generational rise of belief in Marxism, Critical theory and Critical Race theory have severely damaged and misdirected the civil rights movement.
🌹
The "mechanism for Jewish success" is hiding in plain sight. It's called belief in the one true G-d, educating yourself in the Torah, and trying the best that you can to follow it.
This is an important discussion. This article makes sweeping generalizations with few concrete examples. And so doing, the writer does to them what they do to us. The discussion needs to happen, and it needs to identify who and where the generalizations and marginalization are being made
This article makes an excellent point by relating Jewish success to Jewish behaviors which are shaped by Jewish culture. It's a point that does not receive wide attention yet other groups could learn from it. Instead people want to believe there is a conspiracy afoot.
The utter silliness of this subject. The only alliance between Jews and blacks was at the level of the top leaders. You could not find two groups who have less in common. One out of three black men spend time in prison, in Chicago 75% of black high school graduates cannot read, and 70% or more of black women having babies are unmarried. A black-Jewish alliance has always been a myth. There was never any chance of connections between blacks and Jews.
Great essay, Vanessa, and you provoked interesting dialogue in these comments. Both the Black and “Palestinian” communities have made victimhood a terrifically successful tool. Our emphasis on Holocaust education has been less successful, and it is time to find better tools for ourselves.
The soul saving education continues.... I would love a saviour to protect everyone (and bloody enlighten them)... Like a broken friendship - it's their loss and they'll have to work bloody hard for any recognition from you 🤬🙏💪🇮🇱💙🫂🙏
Sorry...