We have spent much of our history being told that Jews were paranoid shortly before discovering that we were not paranoid enough. I suspect that is precisely the point we are at now.
Love this. I agree with everything you say, except that I believe you aren't neurotic enough. It's the neurotic Jews who survive. My grandfather left Hungary in 1939 because he'd had enough of the crushing poverty and antisemitism that he'd been enduring for years. He spent the following two years raising money to bring the rest of the family over, and in 1941, my then 4-year-old father left Hungary.
My grandfather had no clue that a catastrophe as huge as the Holocaust was coming, and my grandmother didn't want to leave, arguing that they should wait until after the war. He wasn't a prophet; he just felt an overwhelming need to get out.
The Holocaust reached Hungary in the last year of the war, and in that one year, the Nazis succeeded in wiping out three quarters of Hungarian Jewry. Had they "waited," I very likely might not be sitting here typing these words.
The pattern of Jewish history is clear. When the signs we are seeing today become clear, things get horribly worse before they get better, usually ending with Jews either being exterminated or cleansed from that place. Because of the global nature of the threat today, that thought is extremely terrifying.
I don't think we can do anything to successfully fight it off, either. Why would we succeed where so many Jews in history have failed before? The only thing we can do is survive it, and we instinctively know how to do that. After October 7, we began to cling harder to each other and to our traditions. It's what we've always done in times of trouble, and it's the only way to weather it through.
You hit the nail on the head and I am glad your family escaped. Fifty years ago, a man named Ernest van den Haag, wrote a book called The Jewish Mystique. He wrote that yes we faced pogroms. Some might be harmed, but the majority would survive. Who could have imagined the Holocaust? Now that it has happened, we have to be aware. Historical memory helps.
There is an old saying. "It's not paranoia if they're really after you." As a non Jew who supports Israel because it is the one country in the Middle East in which there is respect and support for freedom and individual rights (FAIR), I say to anyone who is Jewish, do not make the mistake of thinking that the new alliance between the left and followers of Islam is anything but virulently anti Semitic and desperately trying to enslave not just Jews but everyone in order to establish a police state in America and world wide. Jews happen to be an early target because of the alliance's virulent hatred of Israel. But that hatred includes not only Israel but also FAIR and life itself with its requirements. If you disagree or are uncertain, just keep watching, listening to, the alliance and its leaders. Like all 'wanna be' tyrants, they cannot resist telling you what they're going to do.
Nachum Kaplan has written the diagnosis and it is correct in every particular. The cycle is starting again: violence rising, governments issuing statements instead of protection, politicians performing concern for cameras. The only question left is what we do about it. Not as individuals. As a people.
I am talking about America, because for most of Europe it is already too late. The continent that murdered our grandparents has spent eighty years apologizing while nurturing the next generation of people who want to finish the job, and its governments now indulge them for votes. Jews there live among the descendants of their families' killers and the successors to their families' killers at the same time. No Jew should support or live in that concentration camp. Leave. Take the businesses, the capital, the talent, and let Europe find out what it looks like without us. It is a decaying broken society and I welcome its future status as a 3rd world failure.
Canada is worse, because it is faster. When the Palestinian flag flies over government buildings and synagogues are shot at and firebombed almost weekly, nobody paying attention needs more evidence. Take your companies, lay off your workers, move your money, and let that government explain the hole in its economy to the voters it chose over you.
Now America. There is no Jewish leadership here capable of fighting this fight. Not in the Democratic Party (half the country) where Jewish senators voted to withhold even bulldozers from Israel in wartime and the Senate Majority Leader, the highest-ranking Jew in American history, told Columbia's president to "keep heads down" on campus antisemitism because only Republicans were complaining. Jews were being assaulted on that campus. Jamie Raskin shielded Harvard while Jewish students were harassed in the open. These men are not our leaders. They are our problem. Republicans, whatever their resolve, cannot save us. Safety that depends on one party is not safety.
Not in the twelve thousand Jewish charities either. Two years into the worst antisemitism in American history, the richest diaspora institutions ever built have produced zero coordinated plans. They compete for donors, protect budgets, and mistake press releases for action. Every liberal partner they spent fifty years cultivating walked out after October 7 and joined the intifada, and most still cannot say so out loud. They are not generals. They are custodians of endowments.
So ask the question. Who is going to lead this? Which organization will build one security apparatus instead of a hundred, one legal operation that sues every university and city that lets this happen, one political machine with real money that ends the career of any politician in either party who looks away?
Today there is no answer. Not a name. Not an organization. Not a room of donors with a plan on the table. Seven million Jews, more wealth and influence than any diaspora in history, and not one entity whose job it is to win. Think about that. We can fund a hospital wing in an afternoon and we cannot name the person responsible for keeping our children safe. That is not an oversight. It is the failure. Everything else in this essay is a symptom of it.
We have always been hated. We have never before had this much capacity to defend ourselves and used none of it. Israelis assume no one is coming and act accordingly. That posture is the only thing that has kept Jews alive, and American Jews have refused it because it felt paranoid, or divisive, or bad for fundraising.
That ends now. There is nothing to reform, so build it from nothing. Pull the communal money out of institutions that will not fight and put it into the one that will. Replace the leaders who stay silent. Defund the charities that will not coordinate. And then, for once in diaspora history, fall in line behind the effort instead of splintering it into two hundred chairs at two hundred tables.
None of this is radical. It is what a people does when it decides to survive. We did it in Israel. Do it here, before the next stage arrives and we are once again shocked, once again scared, once again unready.
This is a great comment and points forward to the next questions about our current moment where Jew hate is trendy again: Are there any leaders or champions anywhere on the horizon?
Schumer, Raskin, Nadler, that sad Nessel creature who said Jews should sacrifice their lives for a Dem Senate majority, and of course J Street and the rest of institutional liberal Jewry are obviously not built for this moment. They are creatures of politics and know how to fight for the needs of the Party, but not for their own people. They have too much love and attachment to their careers and social status to risk them. History has passed them by, they just don't know it yet.
And then there are all the rich and famous American Jews: Speilberg, Streisand, Katzenberg, Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, Sandy Weill, the Google guys, the Kushners etc and all the other people of wealth who "fund a hospital wing in an afternoon"...yet..."cannot name the person responsible for keeping our children safe." Not one has taken a stand against the Jew hate mania of the past 3 years. They seem to be keeping their heads down and hoping all this passes.
I think the issue here is (and this goes beyond Jewish or Israel issues) is that American liberalism is dead, but anyone over, say, age 50 and raised in the old liberal America either doesn't know it or denies it. Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, people raised in the old America can't quite wrap their brains around the fact that tolerance, good-faith debate and compromise have been replaced by tribalism, ideology, grievance and who/whom friend/enemy morality. But this blindness and ineptitude is much more dangerous when it comes to Jews.
The current generations of Jewish leadership were all molded in peacetime and are only built for peacetime, they cannot fight, will not fight, and need to be replaced by people who will.
Your observation about the lack of Jewish leadership capable of responding is spot on. It seems like they are the proverbial 'deer in the headlights'. These organizations grew at a time when Jew hatred was mostly a fringe condition of Neo-Nazis. What we have seen occur in breathtaking speed is the inculcation of Jew hatred, sometimes disguised as 'anti-zionism' but more commonly simply as Jew hatred in academia, the media and entertainment. Groups like the ADL and AJC are good at documenting incidents, but are fighting the current situation like it is still the 1950s-1980s. Even worse you have organizations like the JCRC and Jewish politicians who are reminiscent of the Jewish councils in Europe who continue to appease the Jew haters.
Sadly, I don't see any likelihood that these organizations will shift their approach. They will continue to ignore the fact there will be no cavalry coming to help, and worse that if the DSA totally consumes what is left of the Democrat party and gains control of the levers of government we will be facing a situation similar to what Germany's Jews faced in the 1930s.
And this is why we need a sovereign healthy vibrant Israel ! And why we annex J&S take back the Sinai and continue kick the shit out of neighbors who, for even a second,think they can impact us in any negative way, Am Yisroel Chai!
Agreed, especially given western society will be in total disarray in under 10 years. It was the Jewish Councils in the 30s, and the precursor of the AJC in the US that were anti-zionists and tried to dissuade Jewish migration to Israel and provided no support to the Jewish youth in Europe who wanted to move to the British controlled Israel (note I won't say Palestine).
You may be completely right, and yet these useless organizations might not only grow, but actually thrive - fundraising on the very threats they are useless to address. And their funds allow them to build the walls that protect them.
Two small personal examples:
- a local federation official responded to remarks critical of Israel by reiterating that Federation would continue to maintain good relationships with the critical group. When I wrote a letter to our local Jewish newspaper criticizing that Federation official - the newspaper refused to publish it.
-Tree of Life congregation , where the terrible murders occurred several years ago, now has significant funds to "rebuild." Their plan is to erect a huge complex, including a new Holocaust center. All at the same time that a major synagogue stands empty nearby. And with nary a cent for sadly lacking Jewish education for our young people.
I've seen the same nonchalance from my own Federation and the irrelevant Jewish News.
I'll give you one better. Nine- ten years ago I sat next to a relative of mine who chairs the largest and most venerable Jewish charity in the world — an organization whose charter names it the global advocate for world Jewry, with annual contributions of roughly $130 million. I asked him what he made of the antisemitism being taught on our university campuses. He looked at me as if I'd landed from Mars. He wasn't aware of it.
That is the state of our leadership. We are in real trouble, and not only because these institutions do nothing-they are clueless unless they're hosting networking for elitist cocktail parties, writing letters and kissing their own asses.
Yes. This is all true. And you point a finger to how hatred of Jews and hatred of Israel has become normalized to the point where our very right to be safe has become a debate.
It seems there’s always validation offered for violence and hate against Jews in Israel and I think this is what’s different from most other forms of hate
People accept Jew hatred as a valid default position
Worse things than looking foolish? You got that right! At least for me. I couldn't care less if people think I am an idiot or a fool. As long as I am the one still standing at the end. I think we all know the old joke. "Just because you are paranoid, does not mean that someone isn't really out to get you." Get out to the range and practice.
Dear Nachum. Ever heard of" Kill the Boer, kill the farmer"? I am not a "Yew". I am a Hebrew. Not a Boer. I am a South African. I read, I hear, I see. Our realities are running parallel. Our enemy have the same root. Iran, Hamas, ANC.
A reality ignored. What follows is apeacement, liberal thoughts, democrat "theology".
The majority keep their heads down, eyes cast downward, swallow the injustice, no challenge, hoping for a change.
The psychosis of Jew hatred, individual-group- community- country, has continued for several millennia. The reasons are endless and reflect the haters interests which do not require a grain of truth.
Calm down, stop catastrophizing, most people are decent, it is just a fringe minority, institutions are strong, this is not 1930s Europe, you are seeing patterns where none exist.
Kick me once, shame on you. Kick me twice, shame on me.
Silly question: how would world history have been different if it had taken Hitler's Mein Kampf at his word instead of Chamberlain's Peace in our time declaration?
"Antisemitism has developed an extraordinary modern advantage: It can frequently present itself as something else."
That is one avenue. The other is the democratization of the Media: the Press, Social Media, all open mikes for the social influencers of our day.
"Unless brownshirts are marching down the street and governments are preparing deportation lists, apparently everything is going splendidly."
The Antifa costume is black shirts, black pants, face mask. The Red-Green Axis costume includes keffiyes worn as head coverings, kerchiefs, shirts, and face coverings.
"Jews have experienced societies in which they were tolerated but insecure, prosperous but vulnerable, legally protected but socially hated." And increasing subjected to cancel culture.
How is that different from the Jews' position in any Western country today.
"A civilization can deteriorate greatly without reaching its worst imaginable destination."
And what are the other, more acceptable ends? Social ostracism, denial of social services, work opportunities, housing, expulsion, ghettoization, denial of civil rights, exclusion from legal protections?
"Liberal societies have difficulty comprehending people who genuinely mean monstrous things because liberal people themselves do not think monstrously. So they translate fanaticism into grievance and ideology into rhetoric. "
A well known phenomenon. Its name is ethnocentrism. Seeing everything through the eyes of one's own value systemJews . Perhaps another term would be ethnic narcissism.
"Jews adapt."
Put another, more direct way, Jews as victims of bigotry adapt before raw persecution sets in. Take note all ye minorities.
Thank you so much for your brilliant essay !!!!!!! The writing is on the wall for sometime already......... We have unfortunately, lots of antiAmerica, antiIsrael, antisemites, jihadists, friends of terrorists in Public Offices. who keep on spreading antisemitism !!!!!!!!
“Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean no one is after you.”
In the interest of accuracy, I found that the more correct passage is: “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.” Although the precise attribution is difficult to verify conclusively, it is often attributed to the author Joseph Heller (Catch-22).
Not paranoia but vigilance. Is the United States 1930's Europe? No, the Antisemitism is not state sponsored. Could it drift that way? I hope not. I am not so sure about our Northern neighbor Canada, from what I read. Until three years ago, I knew there were cranks out there, but it is getting more shrill for sure. No matter what I am watching.
The ability to hold opposite ideas and conclusions in one’s head marks a special aspect of the Jewish Cultural experience. In fact, Liberal societies can be AntiSemitic. The history of the Jewish People in Europe is not good. Certainly too, America is adjusting to Economic change through Demographics which has seen the same antisemitic Dynamic now in ascendancy. The very first point to make is, non of these trends is our fault. Understanding this fact eliminates self-doubt. On-going Hatred of Jews and the steps we take to avoid the worst consequences of this are actually a permanent feature of Liberal Democracies. And they always were. For our job for wider society is to prevent Genocidal Nazism, and the causes of Nazism, and more recently Islamist terrorism. Thus we preserve freedom in Society, from the twin horrors of mass intimidation from psychopaths, and from penury which feeds their support. And in doing this work uniquely well we are mightily appreciated. This is our real job.
Love this. I agree with everything you say, except that I believe you aren't neurotic enough. It's the neurotic Jews who survive. My grandfather left Hungary in 1939 because he'd had enough of the crushing poverty and antisemitism that he'd been enduring for years. He spent the following two years raising money to bring the rest of the family over, and in 1941, my then 4-year-old father left Hungary.
My grandfather had no clue that a catastrophe as huge as the Holocaust was coming, and my grandmother didn't want to leave, arguing that they should wait until after the war. He wasn't a prophet; he just felt an overwhelming need to get out.
The Holocaust reached Hungary in the last year of the war, and in that one year, the Nazis succeeded in wiping out three quarters of Hungarian Jewry. Had they "waited," I very likely might not be sitting here typing these words.
The pattern of Jewish history is clear. When the signs we are seeing today become clear, things get horribly worse before they get better, usually ending with Jews either being exterminated or cleansed from that place. Because of the global nature of the threat today, that thought is extremely terrifying.
I don't think we can do anything to successfully fight it off, either. Why would we succeed where so many Jews in history have failed before? The only thing we can do is survive it, and we instinctively know how to do that. After October 7, we began to cling harder to each other and to our traditions. It's what we've always done in times of trouble, and it's the only way to weather it through.
You hit the nail on the head and I am glad your family escaped. Fifty years ago, a man named Ernest van den Haag, wrote a book called The Jewish Mystique. He wrote that yes we faced pogroms. Some might be harmed, but the majority would survive. Who could have imagined the Holocaust? Now that it has happened, we have to be aware. Historical memory helps.
"I don't think we can do anything to successfully fight it off, either."
Really? Try not being so suicidal.
Maybe stop voting for the Communist/Islam Party for starters even though 70% of Jews apparently still do.
In Israel's upcoming elections we will see how the voting goes as well.
I will summarize this lengthy article which seems to repeat endlessly the same theme:
“ If you know someone is going to kill you, rise up early and kill them first”
the Talmudic principle from Sanhedrin 72a, "if someone comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first."
There is an old saying. "It's not paranoia if they're really after you." As a non Jew who supports Israel because it is the one country in the Middle East in which there is respect and support for freedom and individual rights (FAIR), I say to anyone who is Jewish, do not make the mistake of thinking that the new alliance between the left and followers of Islam is anything but virulently anti Semitic and desperately trying to enslave not just Jews but everyone in order to establish a police state in America and world wide. Jews happen to be an early target because of the alliance's virulent hatred of Israel. But that hatred includes not only Israel but also FAIR and life itself with its requirements. If you disagree or are uncertain, just keep watching, listening to, the alliance and its leaders. Like all 'wanna be' tyrants, they cannot resist telling you what they're going to do.
Nachum Kaplan has written the diagnosis and it is correct in every particular. The cycle is starting again: violence rising, governments issuing statements instead of protection, politicians performing concern for cameras. The only question left is what we do about it. Not as individuals. As a people.
I am talking about America, because for most of Europe it is already too late. The continent that murdered our grandparents has spent eighty years apologizing while nurturing the next generation of people who want to finish the job, and its governments now indulge them for votes. Jews there live among the descendants of their families' killers and the successors to their families' killers at the same time. No Jew should support or live in that concentration camp. Leave. Take the businesses, the capital, the talent, and let Europe find out what it looks like without us. It is a decaying broken society and I welcome its future status as a 3rd world failure.
Canada is worse, because it is faster. When the Palestinian flag flies over government buildings and synagogues are shot at and firebombed almost weekly, nobody paying attention needs more evidence. Take your companies, lay off your workers, move your money, and let that government explain the hole in its economy to the voters it chose over you.
Now America. There is no Jewish leadership here capable of fighting this fight. Not in the Democratic Party (half the country) where Jewish senators voted to withhold even bulldozers from Israel in wartime and the Senate Majority Leader, the highest-ranking Jew in American history, told Columbia's president to "keep heads down" on campus antisemitism because only Republicans were complaining. Jews were being assaulted on that campus. Jamie Raskin shielded Harvard while Jewish students were harassed in the open. These men are not our leaders. They are our problem. Republicans, whatever their resolve, cannot save us. Safety that depends on one party is not safety.
Not in the twelve thousand Jewish charities either. Two years into the worst antisemitism in American history, the richest diaspora institutions ever built have produced zero coordinated plans. They compete for donors, protect budgets, and mistake press releases for action. Every liberal partner they spent fifty years cultivating walked out after October 7 and joined the intifada, and most still cannot say so out loud. They are not generals. They are custodians of endowments.
So ask the question. Who is going to lead this? Which organization will build one security apparatus instead of a hundred, one legal operation that sues every university and city that lets this happen, one political machine with real money that ends the career of any politician in either party who looks away?
Today there is no answer. Not a name. Not an organization. Not a room of donors with a plan on the table. Seven million Jews, more wealth and influence than any diaspora in history, and not one entity whose job it is to win. Think about that. We can fund a hospital wing in an afternoon and we cannot name the person responsible for keeping our children safe. That is not an oversight. It is the failure. Everything else in this essay is a symptom of it.
We have always been hated. We have never before had this much capacity to defend ourselves and used none of it. Israelis assume no one is coming and act accordingly. That posture is the only thing that has kept Jews alive, and American Jews have refused it because it felt paranoid, or divisive, or bad for fundraising.
That ends now. There is nothing to reform, so build it from nothing. Pull the communal money out of institutions that will not fight and put it into the one that will. Replace the leaders who stay silent. Defund the charities that will not coordinate. And then, for once in diaspora history, fall in line behind the effort instead of splintering it into two hundred chairs at two hundred tables.
None of this is radical. It is what a people does when it decides to survive. We did it in Israel. Do it here, before the next stage arrives and we are once again shocked, once again scared, once again unready.
This is a great comment and points forward to the next questions about our current moment where Jew hate is trendy again: Are there any leaders or champions anywhere on the horizon?
Schumer, Raskin, Nadler, that sad Nessel creature who said Jews should sacrifice their lives for a Dem Senate majority, and of course J Street and the rest of institutional liberal Jewry are obviously not built for this moment. They are creatures of politics and know how to fight for the needs of the Party, but not for their own people. They have too much love and attachment to their careers and social status to risk them. History has passed them by, they just don't know it yet.
And then there are all the rich and famous American Jews: Speilberg, Streisand, Katzenberg, Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, Sandy Weill, the Google guys, the Kushners etc and all the other people of wealth who "fund a hospital wing in an afternoon"...yet..."cannot name the person responsible for keeping our children safe." Not one has taken a stand against the Jew hate mania of the past 3 years. They seem to be keeping their heads down and hoping all this passes.
I think the issue here is (and this goes beyond Jewish or Israel issues) is that American liberalism is dead, but anyone over, say, age 50 and raised in the old liberal America either doesn't know it or denies it. Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, people raised in the old America can't quite wrap their brains around the fact that tolerance, good-faith debate and compromise have been replaced by tribalism, ideology, grievance and who/whom friend/enemy morality. But this blindness and ineptitude is much more dangerous when it comes to Jews.
The current generations of Jewish leadership were all molded in peacetime and are only built for peacetime, they cannot fight, will not fight, and need to be replaced by people who will.
Thanks
Outstanding. Thank you
Same to you, thanks.
Your observation about the lack of Jewish leadership capable of responding is spot on. It seems like they are the proverbial 'deer in the headlights'. These organizations grew at a time when Jew hatred was mostly a fringe condition of Neo-Nazis. What we have seen occur in breathtaking speed is the inculcation of Jew hatred, sometimes disguised as 'anti-zionism' but more commonly simply as Jew hatred in academia, the media and entertainment. Groups like the ADL and AJC are good at documenting incidents, but are fighting the current situation like it is still the 1950s-1980s. Even worse you have organizations like the JCRC and Jewish politicians who are reminiscent of the Jewish councils in Europe who continue to appease the Jew haters.
Sadly, I don't see any likelihood that these organizations will shift their approach. They will continue to ignore the fact there will be no cavalry coming to help, and worse that if the DSA totally consumes what is left of the Democrat party and gains control of the levers of government we will be facing a situation similar to what Germany's Jews faced in the 1930s.
And this is why we need a sovereign healthy vibrant Israel ! And why we annex J&S take back the Sinai and continue kick the shit out of neighbors who, for even a second,think they can impact us in any negative way, Am Yisroel Chai!
Agreed, especially given western society will be in total disarray in under 10 years. It was the Jewish Councils in the 30s, and the precursor of the AJC in the US that were anti-zionists and tried to dissuade Jewish migration to Israel and provided no support to the Jewish youth in Europe who wanted to move to the British controlled Israel (note I won't say Palestine).
You may be completely right, and yet these useless organizations might not only grow, but actually thrive - fundraising on the very threats they are useless to address. And their funds allow them to build the walls that protect them.
Two small personal examples:
- a local federation official responded to remarks critical of Israel by reiterating that Federation would continue to maintain good relationships with the critical group. When I wrote a letter to our local Jewish newspaper criticizing that Federation official - the newspaper refused to publish it.
-Tree of Life congregation , where the terrible murders occurred several years ago, now has significant funds to "rebuild." Their plan is to erect a huge complex, including a new Holocaust center. All at the same time that a major synagogue stands empty nearby. And with nary a cent for sadly lacking Jewish education for our young people.
I've seen the same nonchalance from my own Federation and the irrelevant Jewish News.
I'll give you one better. Nine- ten years ago I sat next to a relative of mine who chairs the largest and most venerable Jewish charity in the world — an organization whose charter names it the global advocate for world Jewry, with annual contributions of roughly $130 million. I asked him what he made of the antisemitism being taught on our university campuses. He looked at me as if I'd landed from Mars. He wasn't aware of it.
That is the state of our leadership. We are in real trouble, and not only because these institutions do nothing-they are clueless unless they're hosting networking for elitist cocktail parties, writing letters and kissing their own asses.
words fail me. It's always worse than we think
"Safety that depends on one party is not safety."
Consult the ghost of Abraham Lincoln and honest Balck people in ths country if they believe liek you that one party is not safety.
Yes. This is all true. And you point a finger to how hatred of Jews and hatred of Israel has become normalized to the point where our very right to be safe has become a debate.
It seems there’s always validation offered for violence and hate against Jews in Israel and I think this is what’s different from most other forms of hate
People accept Jew hatred as a valid default position
There is a saying among Holocaust survivors, the pessimists fled, the optimists stayed.
Worse things than looking foolish? You got that right! At least for me. I couldn't care less if people think I am an idiot or a fool. As long as I am the one still standing at the end. I think we all know the old joke. "Just because you are paranoid, does not mean that someone isn't really out to get you." Get out to the range and practice.
Dear Nachum. Ever heard of" Kill the Boer, kill the farmer"? I am not a "Yew". I am a Hebrew. Not a Boer. I am a South African. I read, I hear, I see. Our realities are running parallel. Our enemy have the same root. Iran, Hamas, ANC.
A reality ignored. What follows is apeacement, liberal thoughts, democrat "theology".
The majority keep their heads down, eyes cast downward, swallow the injustice, no challenge, hoping for a change.
Change will happen but will it be what they want?
Shalom to all who trust in YHVH.
The psychosis of Jew hatred, individual-group- community- country, has continued for several millennia. The reasons are endless and reflect the haters interests which do not require a grain of truth.
Calm down, stop catastrophizing, most people are decent, it is just a fringe minority, institutions are strong, this is not 1930s Europe, you are seeing patterns where none exist.
Kick me once, shame on you. Kick me twice, shame on me.
Silly question: how would world history have been different if it had taken Hitler's Mein Kampf at his word instead of Chamberlain's Peace in our time declaration?
"Antisemitism has developed an extraordinary modern advantage: It can frequently present itself as something else."
That is one avenue. The other is the democratization of the Media: the Press, Social Media, all open mikes for the social influencers of our day.
"Unless brownshirts are marching down the street and governments are preparing deportation lists, apparently everything is going splendidly."
The Antifa costume is black shirts, black pants, face mask. The Red-Green Axis costume includes keffiyes worn as head coverings, kerchiefs, shirts, and face coverings.
"Jews have experienced societies in which they were tolerated but insecure, prosperous but vulnerable, legally protected but socially hated." And increasing subjected to cancel culture.
How is that different from the Jews' position in any Western country today.
"A civilization can deteriorate greatly without reaching its worst imaginable destination."
And what are the other, more acceptable ends? Social ostracism, denial of social services, work opportunities, housing, expulsion, ghettoization, denial of civil rights, exclusion from legal protections?
"Liberal societies have difficulty comprehending people who genuinely mean monstrous things because liberal people themselves do not think monstrously. So they translate fanaticism into grievance and ideology into rhetoric. "
A well known phenomenon. Its name is ethnocentrism. Seeing everything through the eyes of one's own value systemJews . Perhaps another term would be ethnic narcissism.
"Jews adapt."
Put another, more direct way, Jews as victims of bigotry adapt before raw persecution sets in. Take note all ye minorities.
Thank you so much for your brilliant essay !!!!!!! The writing is on the wall for sometime already......... We have unfortunately, lots of antiAmerica, antiIsrael, antisemites, jihadists, friends of terrorists in Public Offices. who keep on spreading antisemitism !!!!!!!!
I learnt this when I was a teenager:
“Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean no one is after you.”
In the interest of accuracy, I found that the more correct passage is: “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.” Although the precise attribution is difficult to verify conclusively, it is often attributed to the author Joseph Heller (Catch-22).
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there AREN'T people out to get you" is the version I heard :)
My typo! (And I was able to edit it)
“Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean no one is after you.”
Not paranoia but vigilance. Is the United States 1930's Europe? No, the Antisemitism is not state sponsored. Could it drift that way? I hope not. I am not so sure about our Northern neighbor Canada, from what I read. Until three years ago, I knew there were cranks out there, but it is getting more shrill for sure. No matter what I am watching.
The ability to hold opposite ideas and conclusions in one’s head marks a special aspect of the Jewish Cultural experience. In fact, Liberal societies can be AntiSemitic. The history of the Jewish People in Europe is not good. Certainly too, America is adjusting to Economic change through Demographics which has seen the same antisemitic Dynamic now in ascendancy. The very first point to make is, non of these trends is our fault. Understanding this fact eliminates self-doubt. On-going Hatred of Jews and the steps we take to avoid the worst consequences of this are actually a permanent feature of Liberal Democracies. And they always were. For our job for wider society is to prevent Genocidal Nazism, and the causes of Nazism, and more recently Islamist terrorism. Thus we preserve freedom in Society, from the twin horrors of mass intimidation from psychopaths, and from penury which feeds their support. And in doing this work uniquely well we are mightily appreciated. This is our real job.