Unfortunately the Jews themselves are to blame for this. Just as two temples were destroyed and the Jews dispersed thru out the world we are now in the same position. Israel was attacked because the Israelis were divided. Fifty percent of the Jews in this country support anti Israel organizations and politicians. Even Jewish politicians are anti Israel. Why? Because they support all these left wing causes instead of supporting the needs of Jewish survival. They have totally distorted Tikun Olam! Look how many Jews voted for a Jihadist mayor in NYC.
Europe is well on its way to being taken over by Islam. Americans are so badly educated they have no knowledge of what is going on in the rest of the world. They live in their own little naive bubble and the Holocaust, to them, is ancient history almost as distant as past Jewish persecutions and destructions that have happened continuously throughout history. Until the Jews learn to be united in their politics , which hasn’t happened in 5000 years, we are only in for another destruction and dispersal, but who will accept us this time? When Trump leaves office there is not another politician in the world with any power who will support the Jews.
26% of NYC Jews voted for Mamdani, the Democrat candidate for mayor. Considering that 90% of NYC Jews in NYC are registered Democrats, looks like most Jews voted against their party's choice and didn't vote for Mamdani. I still have family members living in Brooklyn and none of them voted for Mamdani, and all are registered Democrats.
Haven't you figured it out? The people you are describing aren't liberals. They are illiberal radicals. They have coopted the term. We mustn't let them. Leftists are inherently illiberal.
Disappointing that liberalism/progressivism turns out to be antisemitism in disguise. Even more disappointing that so many Jews not only haven’t figured this out, but actually embrace it.
The hypocrisy is damning. I will never forget Columbia's former president, during the government hearings about justifying antisemitic campus actions, saying "It depends on the context." There is no context to anti-Semitism or racism. Traditional progressives knew that, but today's "progressives" are actually regressives.
An absolutely superb piece. I would add to your list that Liberals frequently accuse others of cultural appropriation yet have no qualms about wearing a keffiyeh.
Where were these people hiding before October 7th? How did Jewish organizations and thought leaders not know this was brewing? How did all of the big shot donors to Harvard, Colombia, etc. not see this coming? Was everyone asleep at the switch? Or in cahoots with it?
The principle of Freedom and Love and Peace for all people, which is the emotional and moral foundation of Liberalism, sadly breaks down in times of War. This singular fact is so hard for Liberals to accept because the Real reason is that to do so challenges the Easy living and comfortable and cosseted living which Western Liberals think is their entitlement and Birthright. This fact, liberal laziness, is ruthlessly used and exploited by both Islamists and Islam itself which is a Religion of War. The Palestinians were offered Peace and a State FIVE TIMES. They chose war, and is the exact point at which Western Liberalism no longer applies. In case anyone says that The West has not been in this position before, say this: We in Western Europe suspended Liberalism in World War Two to defeat a merciless dictator. We would have to once again if threatened. All principles meet their match when confronted by reality. Gaza was ours. This is the Reality of the Limits of Principle. Sad but True.
Yup! So what are the Jews going to do about this? And what is Israel going to do about it? Breaking with the liberal tradition is hard for Jews, even though we have another older one to apply in the modern world. But will we? Will Israel crush the Palestinians and drive them out of a land they do not belong in? Will Jews make life miserable for their enemies? Wait and see, but not too long.
Liberalism's Achilles' Heel has always been that it can provide a HOW or a YES or NO but never a WHY, that it is based on proceduralism and abstractions like Liberty and Justice but has no normative moral core, no telos of the Good for its citizens. Liberalism is rooted in Protestantism—individualism, pluralism, emancipation, tolerance, free critical inquiry etc—but we only notice our Christian (and Jewish) roots now because they're rotted and severed. As we've become post-faith we've also become postliberal, meaning all the basic moral suppositions of Christianity (even if honored in the breach) that governed norms and relations have given way to a war of all against all, rooted in the raw tribalism that Liberalism was meant to counter.
But atop this sterile soil a new worldview was planted with a harder-edged morality (sorry for the mixed metaphor), the post-Marxist post-Christian faith called Social Justice. And Social Justice was perfectly designed for the secular, deracinated post-60s Westerner: simplistic, moralistic, essentially a modern crucifix pendant designed to signal that the bearer is on the side of the angels, as much therapeutic and political as religious and based on an updated Marxist theology: all victims are sacred, all oppressors evil, the West is wicked just based on its wealth and colonial history and all of its patrimony is a single uninterrupted hate crime against the marginalized (now sacralized) Other, the black/brown or sexual/religious minority, the last who shall now be first, who become the center of a new moral universe that all Good People know to center and atone toward.
And once the West handed over 2/3 generations of its children to the academic New Left (whose campuses have long been churches of the Social Justice faith), who gradually gained power by styling themselves as Official Defenders of the Oppressed, all the rest we've been living through was inevitable. Or to make the point more simply: if you allow others to install their morality in your children (not to mention the larger culture) don't be surprised when the moment comes and an entire generation has a different morality—and not just different in this case, but completely oppositional and designed to be an illiberal weapon that uses the Paradox of Tolerance to bully its way to total control. Thus many people now who were born in a world governed by Judeo-Christian ethics are living in a world governed by Leninist who/whom ethics.
Critical Anti-Zionism has been a strong branch of this new political religion since at least Munich 1972 and it's not surprising that few liberals can stand up to it. They've already long been conditioned to view Social Justice as not just morally pristine but socially mandatory, the moat that separates compassionate liberals from bigoted Deplorables, not to mention that their jobs, careers, futures, friends and families depend upon displaying loyalty and obedience toward it (their kids would kill them otherwise!). It wasn't 10/7 that proved this but 10/8: this is when we learned we were living in a different world now and that the old order was dead. Our liberal classes (well-compensated writers, journalists, artists, professors etc) were faced with a major moral test and failed miserably, showing no spine or ability to contradict any child shrieking about Justice and no ability to oppose the herd. (Even our exalted Ivy League couldn't be bothered to explain to their children the difference between a just, defensive war and a "genocide".)
Epidemics of mass social hatred and destruction are always enabled by mass outbreaks of cowardice. The supposed leaders of the liberal West have failed to stand up for all the principles they claim—it even turns out that Never Again! came with an expiration date—which is why liberalism is rotting and close to death.
Joshua nailed it, again. The term liberal has been highjacked, like the term " progressive ", for opposite nefarious meanings . Those " liberals" are totalitarians. They tolerate no other thinking. I have experienced it personally with friends and family.
" Progressives" are " regressively" attached to Islamists and to communist doctrines that have universally proven themselves useless and, indeed, regressive.
As for us, Jews, being divided has many times brought catastrophe upon the people. Individual Jews have been world changers, but as a people, we have demonstrated not a small measure of collective stupidity.
Whether it was the decision to ally against the Babylonians, or oppose and attack Rome, or decide Hamas could be managed, or for so many so-called Jews to vote for Mamdani, all these were terrible errors. But we are entitled to our errors .We are human. The question is why can't we learn from those errors.
At the same time, in spite of all these cataclysmic defeats, the people miraculously survived and Israel was re-born. So was Hebrew.
So many miracles. There will be more. It comes with the Jewish territory.
Joshua Hoffman misses the point. He describes the signs and symptoms of liberal rejection of Jews, but not the cause. For many Jews and liberals
(aka the Left), the power ascendancy of the Red/Green Alliance provides a gathering point for all the woke, vapid liberals who want to be on the side of the “winners“ and occupy a seat at the cool kids lunch table.
I agree, historically Jew’s embrace of liberalism was a moral framework. But liberalism left Jews in favor of power and influence. The liberal response to October 7th laid bare their true motivations. They doubled down on Jew hatred, lest their argument be usurped by the obvious complicity of the very people they were defending.
Liberal embrace of this movement comes with a cost as pastor Niemoller has said loud and clear.
Unfortunately the Jews themselves are to blame for this. Just as two temples were destroyed and the Jews dispersed thru out the world we are now in the same position. Israel was attacked because the Israelis were divided. Fifty percent of the Jews in this country support anti Israel organizations and politicians. Even Jewish politicians are anti Israel. Why? Because they support all these left wing causes instead of supporting the needs of Jewish survival. They have totally distorted Tikun Olam! Look how many Jews voted for a Jihadist mayor in NYC.
Europe is well on its way to being taken over by Islam. Americans are so badly educated they have no knowledge of what is going on in the rest of the world. They live in their own little naive bubble and the Holocaust, to them, is ancient history almost as distant as past Jewish persecutions and destructions that have happened continuously throughout history. Until the Jews learn to be united in their politics , which hasn’t happened in 5000 years, we are only in for another destruction and dispersal, but who will accept us this time? When Trump leaves office there is not another politician in the world with any power who will support the Jews.
26% of NYC Jews voted for Mamdani, the Democrat candidate for mayor. Considering that 90% of NYC Jews in NYC are registered Democrats, looks like most Jews voted against their party's choice and didn't vote for Mamdani. I still have family members living in Brooklyn and none of them voted for Mamdani, and all are registered Democrats.
Yes, too many people are glued to their phones/electronics! You’re forgetting about Rubio ‘28!
Rubio is a strong supporter of Israel.
Yes but he has to be elected president. We might get Vance.
Let’s hope not.
I’m not forgetting. I’m hopeful!
Haven't you figured it out? The people you are describing aren't liberals. They are illiberal radicals. They have coopted the term. We mustn't let them. Leftists are inherently illiberal.
The Democratic party has left liberals behind. Senator Fetterman a liberal Democrat is threatening to leave the party over its anti Israel stance.
Disappointing that liberalism/progressivism turns out to be antisemitism in disguise. Even more disappointing that so many Jews not only haven’t figured this out, but actually embrace it.
The hypocrisy is damning. I will never forget Columbia's former president, during the government hearings about justifying antisemitic campus actions, saying "It depends on the context." There is no context to anti-Semitism or racism. Traditional progressives knew that, but today's "progressives" are actually regressives.
An absolutely superb piece. I would add to your list that Liberals frequently accuse others of cultural appropriation yet have no qualms about wearing a keffiyeh.
Where were these people hiding before October 7th? How did Jewish organizations and thought leaders not know this was brewing? How did all of the big shot donors to Harvard, Colombia, etc. not see this coming? Was everyone asleep at the switch? Or in cahoots with it?
The principle of Freedom and Love and Peace for all people, which is the emotional and moral foundation of Liberalism, sadly breaks down in times of War. This singular fact is so hard for Liberals to accept because the Real reason is that to do so challenges the Easy living and comfortable and cosseted living which Western Liberals think is their entitlement and Birthright. This fact, liberal laziness, is ruthlessly used and exploited by both Islamists and Islam itself which is a Religion of War. The Palestinians were offered Peace and a State FIVE TIMES. They chose war, and is the exact point at which Western Liberalism no longer applies. In case anyone says that The West has not been in this position before, say this: We in Western Europe suspended Liberalism in World War Two to defeat a merciless dictator. We would have to once again if threatened. All principles meet their match when confronted by reality. Gaza was ours. This is the Reality of the Limits of Principle. Sad but True.
So often, you hear, "I didn't leave them: they left me"
Yup! So what are the Jews going to do about this? And what is Israel going to do about it? Breaking with the liberal tradition is hard for Jews, even though we have another older one to apply in the modern world. But will we? Will Israel crush the Palestinians and drive them out of a land they do not belong in? Will Jews make life miserable for their enemies? Wait and see, but not too long.
Excellent essay, Joshua. Aliyah on the Horizen for an older physician?!
Liberalism's Achilles' Heel has always been that it can provide a HOW or a YES or NO but never a WHY, that it is based on proceduralism and abstractions like Liberty and Justice but has no normative moral core, no telos of the Good for its citizens. Liberalism is rooted in Protestantism—individualism, pluralism, emancipation, tolerance, free critical inquiry etc—but we only notice our Christian (and Jewish) roots now because they're rotted and severed. As we've become post-faith we've also become postliberal, meaning all the basic moral suppositions of Christianity (even if honored in the breach) that governed norms and relations have given way to a war of all against all, rooted in the raw tribalism that Liberalism was meant to counter.
But atop this sterile soil a new worldview was planted with a harder-edged morality (sorry for the mixed metaphor), the post-Marxist post-Christian faith called Social Justice. And Social Justice was perfectly designed for the secular, deracinated post-60s Westerner: simplistic, moralistic, essentially a modern crucifix pendant designed to signal that the bearer is on the side of the angels, as much therapeutic and political as religious and based on an updated Marxist theology: all victims are sacred, all oppressors evil, the West is wicked just based on its wealth and colonial history and all of its patrimony is a single uninterrupted hate crime against the marginalized (now sacralized) Other, the black/brown or sexual/religious minority, the last who shall now be first, who become the center of a new moral universe that all Good People know to center and atone toward.
And once the West handed over 2/3 generations of its children to the academic New Left (whose campuses have long been churches of the Social Justice faith), who gradually gained power by styling themselves as Official Defenders of the Oppressed, all the rest we've been living through was inevitable. Or to make the point more simply: if you allow others to install their morality in your children (not to mention the larger culture) don't be surprised when the moment comes and an entire generation has a different morality—and not just different in this case, but completely oppositional and designed to be an illiberal weapon that uses the Paradox of Tolerance to bully its way to total control. Thus many people now who were born in a world governed by Judeo-Christian ethics are living in a world governed by Leninist who/whom ethics.
Critical Anti-Zionism has been a strong branch of this new political religion since at least Munich 1972 and it's not surprising that few liberals can stand up to it. They've already long been conditioned to view Social Justice as not just morally pristine but socially mandatory, the moat that separates compassionate liberals from bigoted Deplorables, not to mention that their jobs, careers, futures, friends and families depend upon displaying loyalty and obedience toward it (their kids would kill them otherwise!). It wasn't 10/7 that proved this but 10/8: this is when we learned we were living in a different world now and that the old order was dead. Our liberal classes (well-compensated writers, journalists, artists, professors etc) were faced with a major moral test and failed miserably, showing no spine or ability to contradict any child shrieking about Justice and no ability to oppose the herd. (Even our exalted Ivy League couldn't be bothered to explain to their children the difference between a just, defensive war and a "genocide".)
Epidemics of mass social hatred and destruction are always enabled by mass outbreaks of cowardice. The supposed leaders of the liberal West have failed to stand up for all the principles they claim—it even turns out that Never Again! came with an expiration date—which is why liberalism is rotting and close to death.
Joshua nailed it, again. The term liberal has been highjacked, like the term " progressive ", for opposite nefarious meanings . Those " liberals" are totalitarians. They tolerate no other thinking. I have experienced it personally with friends and family.
" Progressives" are " regressively" attached to Islamists and to communist doctrines that have universally proven themselves useless and, indeed, regressive.
As for us, Jews, being divided has many times brought catastrophe upon the people. Individual Jews have been world changers, but as a people, we have demonstrated not a small measure of collective stupidity.
Whether it was the decision to ally against the Babylonians, or oppose and attack Rome, or decide Hamas could be managed, or for so many so-called Jews to vote for Mamdani, all these were terrible errors. But we are entitled to our errors .We are human. The question is why can't we learn from those errors.
At the same time, in spite of all these cataclysmic defeats, the people miraculously survived and Israel was re-born. So was Hebrew.
So many miracles. There will be more. It comes with the Jewish territory.
Joshua Hoffman misses the point. He describes the signs and symptoms of liberal rejection of Jews, but not the cause. For many Jews and liberals
(aka the Left), the power ascendancy of the Red/Green Alliance provides a gathering point for all the woke, vapid liberals who want to be on the side of the “winners“ and occupy a seat at the cool kids lunch table.
I agree, historically Jew’s embrace of liberalism was a moral framework. But liberalism left Jews in favor of power and influence. The liberal response to October 7th laid bare their true motivations. They doubled down on Jew hatred, lest their argument be usurped by the obvious complicity of the very people they were defending.
Liberal embrace of this movement comes with a cost as pastor Niemoller has said loud and clear.