The Echoes of the Shofar: Why the 2020s Are Beginning to Look Dangerously Like the 1920s

I wasn’t around in the 1920s to witness what was beginning to happen in Europe. I arrived on the scene a little later—in the spring of 1941—when much of what had been brewing during those earlier years was reaching a terrible crescendo.

I didn’t know much about it at the time, of course. I was an infant in Florida while Hitler’s armies were sweeping across Europe. Nazi forces had occupied Athens, the invasion of the Soviet Union would soon follow, and Pearl Harbor was still months away.

Across an ocean, I knew nothing about European Jews being pushed toward a fate much of the civilized world could scarcely have imagined.

More than eight decades have passed since then. I have lived through a world war, the Holocaust, the birth of Israel, the Cold War, Korea and Vietnam, assassinations and riots, the Cuban Missile Crisis, 9/11, wars in the Middle East, and enough political and social upheaval to know that every generation tends to believe its troubles are unprecedented.

Usually, they aren’t.

And lately I have found myself wondering:

Are we hearing an echo?

Not of the 1940s. That comparison is too easy—and far too extreme. I’m thinking about the 1920s. That was the decade before.

Before Hitler came to power. Before the Nuremberg Laws. Before Kristallnacht. Before Auschwitz became a word forever associated with mankind’s capacity for evil.

What interests me—and troubles me—is what was happening while all those horrors were still unimaginable.

A World Turned Upside Down

The 1920s began in the aftermath of catastrophe. World War I had killed millions and shattered empires. A devastating influenza pandemic had swept around the globe. Economies were unsettled, technology was transforming everyday life, political extremes were gaining strength, and confidence in governments and institutions was weakening. People were frightened about their jobs, their countries, their identities and their futures.

Does any of that sound familiar?

Our own twenties followed another worldwide pandemic that closed businesses, emptied churches and synagogues, separated families and changed the way millions of people worked and lived.

Then came war in Europe and war in the Middle East.

Political polarization has intensified across America and Europe. Mass demonstrations have filled the streets. Arguments over immigration and national identity grow sharper. Distrust of government, universities, journalism and other institutions are deepening.

Artificial intelligence has arrived with astonishing speed, promising extraordinary benefits while leaving millions wondering what their jobs—and perhaps their world—will look like a decade from now.

Great wealth exists alongside genuine economic anxiety.

The circumstances are certainly different.But the atmosphere? There is something uncomfortably familiar about it.

When people become frightened about the future, lose confidence in their institutions and begin believing that complicated problems must have simple explanations, they often start looking for someone to blame.

A century ago, the Jews were available.

They usually were.

Finding Someone to Blame

Europe in the 1920s didn’t invent antisemitism. It had been there for centuries.

What changed was its usefulness.

The Jew could be blamed for almost anything: international banker controlling finance or Bolshevik plotting revolution; too wealthy or too radical; too powerful or too alien; too international and somehow too tribal.

None of it made much sense.

It didn’t have to.

Fear has never demanded consistency

Listen carefully to some of the language circulating today. The words have changed. The politics have changed. The circumstances have changed. Yet Jews once again appear in conspiracy theories emerging from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

From one direction comes the shadowy Jewish “globalist,” supposedly manipulating governments, finance, immigration or cultural change. From another comes the Jew as colonialist, oppressor or representative of some worldwide Zionist power structure.

Yesterday the Jew was the Bolshevik, the banker, the internationalist or the capitalist. Today he may be called the globalist, the colonialist, the Zionist or the oppressor.

The labels change with the times.

And now, Genocide

Perhaps nowhere is the changing atmosphere more apparent than in the language surrounding Israel and Gaza.

Israel has been accused before the International Court of Justice of violating the Genocide Convention—an accusation Israel vigorously rejects. The suffering of Palestinian civilians is real, and the actions of any government, including Israel’s, are legitimate subjects for criticism, investigation and moral examination.

But something else has happened.

The word genocide has escaped the courtroom and entered the streets. It appears on placards, university campuses and social media. Sometimes the distinction between Israel and the Jew seems to disappear along with it.

A Jewish student in America didn’t decide Israeli military policy. A synagogue in Europe didn’t order an air strike. A Jewish family walking home from Sabbath services isn’t responsible for decisions made by a government thousands of miles away. Yet Jews far removed from Israel increasingly find themselves expected to answer for it.

When did political disagreement become collective guilt? When does criticism of a government become condemnation of a people?

And haven’t we seen something resembling this before?

Perhaps we could dismiss all of this as another ugly period of political rhetoric if it remained merely words.

It hasn’t.

In Pittsburgh, eleven Jews were murdered while worshipping in their synagogue. In Colleyville, Texas, a rabbi and three congregants were taken hostage during Sabbath services. In Manchester, two Jewish worshippers were killed in an attack at a synagogue on Yom Kippur. Elsewhere synagogues have been attacked, shot at, firebombed or threatened. Jewish schools and houses of worship now routinely require security precautions that would once have seemed extraordinary.

And just recently another disturbing incident has occurred. A Flydubai flight bound for Israel with more than 170 people aboard was forced into an emergency landing after its co-pilot allegedly attacked the captain with a crash axe in an apparent attempt to seize the aircraft. Authorities are still investigating precisely what happened and why.

Yet almost immediately—before investigators could establish all the facts—social media began filling with conspiracy theories suggesting that Israel or Jews themselves had somehow staged the incident.

Think about that for a moment.

An airplane bound for Israel is nearly lost, and before the facts are known, someone finds a way to blame the Jews.

Different century. Different technology. Different circumstances.

From the Street Corner to the Smartphone

That brings us to perhaps the most dramatic difference between the 1920s and today: speed.

Hatred once required some effort. Someone had to print the pamphlet, organize the meeting, distribute the newspaper or stand on a street corner shouting. Today hatred travels at the touch of a screen.

A conspiracy theory conceived in one corner of the world can reach millions before breakfast. An ancient antisemitic caricature becomes a meme. A medieval accusation is dressed in twenty-first-century clothing and delivered to a generation that may know almost nothing about where it originated.

The technology is new.

Human nature isn’t.

We have democratized information in ways our ancestors could never have imagined.

The Decade Before

This is where we need to be careful.

The 2020s are not the 1930s. America is not Nazi Germany. Europe today is not the Europe of Hitler and Mussolini. Criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic. And nothing about our present circumstances makes another Holocaust inevitable.

But that isn’t really the comparison I’m making.

I’m looking at the decade before.

The 1920s were not Auschwitz.

That is precisely why they matter.

The lesson of the 1920s is not that Auschwitz was inevitable.

It is that Auschwitz was still unimaginable.

People went to work. Children went to school. Families celebrated birthdays and weddings. Jews built businesses, attended universities, raised families and participated in the societies around them.

And gradually the atmosphere changed. An insult became easier to tolerate. A conspiracy theory became easier to repeat. Street intimidation became easier to excuse. Political leaders discovered that anger could be useful. Another boundary moved, and then another.

Surely civilized societies would never allow things to go too far. Surely the institutions would hold. Surely common sense would prevail.

We know now that it didn’t.

And perhaps that is the most sobering lesson the 1920s offer the 2020s:

Catastrophe rarely introduces itself as catastrophe. It more often arrives as a series of things people gradually learn to tolerate.

The Sound of the Shofar

At my age, perhaps one is permitted to look backward a little more often. I entered the world when one of history’s darkest chapters was already being written. I have been fortunate enough to live long enough to watch the world change in ways that infant in Florida could never possibly have imagined.

Perhaps that is why something about our present moment bothers me.

I recognize none of it exactly. But I recognize pieces of it—the social upheaval, the political extremes, the distrust, the conspiracy theories, the search for simple villains to explain complicated problems.

And once again, somehow, the Jew.

For thousands of years, the shofar has summoned the Jewish people to attention. It has announced sacred occasions and called people to reflection. But it has served another ancient purpose as well.

It sounded an alarm.

Perhaps history is sounding one now—not telling us what will happen but reminding us of what can happen.

I wasn’t there to witness the 1920s. But I arrived in time to see where they eventually led. And after more than eight decades of watching history unfold, I find myself wondering whether we are listening carefully enough to its echoes.

The danger is not that history must repeat itself.

The danger is believing that it cannot.

Author’s Note: A fully sourced academic research version of this article is available from the author upon request.