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Mordechai I. Twersky

Straight Outta Chelm: Jewish Leaders’ ‘Horse-Mule’ Musk Feud is Self-Defeating

In the wake of Elon Musk’s recent remarks at a far-right rally in Germany, where he suggested there is “too much focus on past guilt,” the Jewish communal establishment finds itself engaged in a familiar, self-defeating ritual: parsing the obvious. The debate over whether Musk’s controversial gesture was an intentional Nazi salute or an “awkward gesture” evokes the ludicrous wisdom of Chelm, the interminable “horse-mule” argument from Fiddler on the Roof, and the comically self-important Lilliputians examining Gulliver washed up on their shores.

The elephant in the room is fear and unease. Fear of losing influence, of alienating powerful allies, and of stepping outside the comfort zone of calculated outrage. What else could explain the ADL’s initial tepid response to Musk’s salute, in contrast to Abe Foxman’s clear-eyed assessment? Musk’s recent Holocaust jokes finally garnered condemnation from both the ADL and AJC, but the reluctance to act decisively until the last possible moment reveals a troubling dynamic: a communal leadership that is more comfortable with polite lobbying than with speaking truth to power.

How far we have come from the days when Alan M. Dershowitz, in his 1992 book Chutzpah, assailed Abe Foxman for what he called his “sha shtill” approach—urging Jews to remain silent and avoid confrontation. Dershowitz rejected this mentality, arguing for a more assertive and unapologetic stance in the fight against antisemitism. Yet, today, we see a communal establishment that continues to parse and hesitate, bound by the same fears that Dershowitz once railed against.

Ring-kissing has become the currency of influence. Yeshiva University President Rabbi Berman’s sycophantic embrace of President Trump at the inauguration last week, hours before Trump pardoned January 6th convicts and rolled back crucial consumer and civil rights protections, is a manifestation of that fear. With all due respect to social influencers covering for Musk—those who tout their personal connections or cite his visit to Auschwitz—his actions speak louder than their rationalizations. After all, visits to Yad Vashem haven’t stopped Putin or Orbán from undermining Jewish history for political gain.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s endorsement of Musk carries little weight given his own administration’s complicity in distorting Holocaust memory. Yad Vashem, once a beacon of historical integrity, has seen its moral standing eroded under Netanyahu’s tenure, particularly when it hosted Putin in 2015 with a glaringly revisionist narrative of WWII.

As the son of Holocaust survivors, I don’t need influencers or overcompensated antisemitism watchdogs to tell me what is obvious. I grew up surrounded by survivors—my parents, my rabbinic father’s congregation, and my Polish Jewish barber with the concentration camp number tattooed on his forearm. Like today’s Germans who see Musk’s remarks for what they are, my survivor friends—now gone—would have recognized the pattern immediately. The same pattern they witnessed in pre-war Europe.

But what is perhaps most alarming is that we cannot expect the President of the United States to demand accountability from Musk, even as neo-Nazis crawl out of the woodwork and are freed from American jails. Were my great-uncle Abraham Joshua Heschel alive today, to whom would he send a telegram calling for the declaration of “state of moral emergency?”

I am reminded of the unforgettable monologue delivered by the late, great Danny Kaye in the award-winning television drama Skokie. Portraying Holocaust survivor Max Feldman, Kaye’s character confronted Jewish leaders advocating a passive response to a planned neo-Nazi march. “If you want no violence, keep the Nazis out,” warned Feldman, his trembling voice rising steadily with anger. “Because if they march here, if they bring the swastika here, I swear to you, nothing, there is nothing that will keep me from fighting. On the memory of  my mother, the Nazis will not march.  On my life, on the grave of my mother, which was a lime pit in the death camp at Mauthausen, a pile, a heap of naked Jewish bodies. On that  grave, I swear.”

That kind of raw, unfiltered moral clarity is what we desperately need today. But we cannot expect it from our ring-kissing, spineless, cowering, self-anointed Jewish leaders and social influencers. They have long abandoned the fight for truth in favor of access and optics.

If the Musk salute has shown us anything, it is that Jewish leadership must reclaim its backbone. Otherwise, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of those who, in the face of rising stormtroopers, insisted on quarantine strategies and game plans while the world around them burned.

About the Author
Mordechai I. Twersky is a veteran journalist, essayist, strategic media consultant and community and social activist. He has reported for – and his essays and op-eds have appeared in -- the New York Times, Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, and the New York Jewish Week. Mordechai earned a B.A in political science from Yeshiva University, an M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and an M.A. in political communications from Tel-Aviv University. He was named to the Forward’s Top 50 in 2013 after he exposed decades of child sexual abuse at Yeshiva University. A social activist inspired by his great-uncle, Prof. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Mordechai is an advocate for the rights of foreign caregivers, the elderly and physically challenged, terror victims, and survivors of institutional abuse. A native of New York City, Mordechai is the scion of the 250-year-old Twersky-Heschel Rabbinic-Hasidic dynasty.
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