When will Jews know that it is time to go?

The prescient observation of the biblical character, Balaam, that we are a “nation destined to dwell alone” provides us with an understanding of our place and role in the modern world order.

Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt to the Land of Israel (“The Crossing of the Red Sea” by Nicolas Poussin)

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This is a guest essay written by Saul Goldman. You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

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There is a scene from the 2006 movie “The Good Shepherd” — about a spy who lays the foundation for the CIA — when Joe Pesci, who played Joseph Palmi, says:

“Let me ask you something. We Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the nigg**s, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson? What do you have?”

Edward Wilson, played by Matt Damon, responds: “The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.”

This exchange captures a lot of both the good and the bad of the old White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment. More importantly, the fact that Jews were often safer among Protestants than Muslims or Catholics should alert us to a serious concern.

The tolerance extended to us by Protestantism reflected the liberalizing consequences of the Enlightenment. Apparently, along with the decline of the Protestant establishment, there is a rise of Jew hatred.

Of course there were rabid Protestant Jew-haters such as Martin Luther. Nevertheless, as Enlightenment values penetrated into Protestant churches, greater tolerance was extended to the Jews.

Perhaps unconsciously, America’s founding fathers often identified with Jewish history proclaiming America to be a fulfillment of the new Jerusalem coming down from the Heavens. It was in this spirit that George Washington penned his letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island.  

Unfortunately, as Plato warned, democracy can easily decompensate into demographics, making political leaders more concerned with voters than values. It has always been the case that in spasms of liberal decline, Jews are in danger. An enlightened world becomes darker.

About a decade ago, I led a discussion in my congregation. It has been our custom for years that, during the break, between the morning and afternoon services on Yom Kippur, I would lead a discussion. While most of my congregants made a dash homeward, the stalwarts would remain with me. We usually had between 70 to 90 people.

That afternoon, I began with the question: “Will our children know when it is time to go?” The demographics of my audience were middle-aged Jews who did well in business or professions and resided in an upscale suburb.

Actually, I was surprised that they were not outraged by my question. This was a community of people ethnically Jewish but whose theology could be described as a faith of upward mobility.

Their parents or grandparents left eastern Europe for the shores and the promises of the goldene medinah (“the Golden Land” in Yiddish). And their lives seemed to be testimony to the beneficence of their Promised Land in which assimilation would relieve them of the burden of Jewishness.

Bret Stephens, writing in Sapir magazine, summarized our “success” in America:

“Today, the secretaries of state, treasury, and homeland security; the attorney general; the director of national intelligence; the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; the chief of staff to the president; the governors of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, and Hawaii; nine U.S. senators, including the majority leader, and 26 members of the House of Representatives are Jewish.”

“So are nearly one-quarter of American Nobel laureates — 10 times our share of the overall population — as well as six of the 10 richest Americans, all of whom are self-made.”

Stephen’s statistics are troubling because they seem to acknowledge that the way to succeed is to assimilate. Acceptance has always been the Jews’ measure of success. Our memory is faulty because it is too obvious from our experience in Germany, or prior to that in Spain, that this acceptance, integration, or assimilation was not genuine.

Germany, in electing Hitler, chose evil. Under his malevolent guidance, the ordinary German regressed to primal racial instincts. As Freud taught us, civilization is contingent upon the human ability to suppress his instinctual life.

Accordingly, the tidal wave of Jew hatred in America should light up our early warning system. We cannot fail to see that beneath the surface of progressive political ideology reposes the frustrations of American society.

Americans have been misled that affirmative action will abolish racial tensions and promote greater harmony. Instead, what has happened is that racism became an ideology rather than a social disease.

In the new sociology, there are abusers and abused. And now the abused are in power.  Under the guidance of “diversity, equity, inclusion” (also known as DEI) and wokeism, Jews and Israelis have been joined together as objects of derision. Jews became privileged Whites, Israelis are Nazis, and Hamas (the world’s fifth-most active terrorist organization) became a “resistance movement.”

When I addressed the question of when we will know that it is time to go, it seemed to me little more than a simple question. It seemed obvious that inasmuch as history is our teacher, having an exit strategy was an essential element of our theology.

The prescient observation of Balaam (a biblical character) that we are a “nation destined to dwell alone” provides us with an understanding of our place and role in the modern world order.

Therefore, developing an exit strategy now would save lives and treasures. We should know not only when it is time to go, but how to go. We do have a choice. We can flee as victims or move on as successful people ready for history’s next stage. All the difference lies in our readiness to accept life and its challenges — and to prepare accordingly.

We can lament how we left behind possessions, fortunes, and loved ones. Or, we can leave, as Moses led us once, with “our old and our young” and with our treasures.

Timing is everything. It is clear these days, in light of our war against Hamas, that the bedrock of war and violence is the millennial tension between good and evil. This war is as primordial as the tension between gravity and inertia, between order and chaos.   

Nothing lasts forever, not even our glorious American sojourn. If there is some blessing even in evil, as the ancient Jewish sage Simeon ben Azzai used to teach, this blessing is the realization that the purpose of Jew hatred is to remind us that we must not worship false gods.

One example of this kind of idolatry is conflating tolerance and kindness with liberty and self-reliance. While we may feel at home anywhere in the world, we must remember that this feeling or sentiment is subjective.

Being at home, however, is existential — and we can never really feel at home anywhere until we are truly at home, in Israel.

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