The New Jewish Reality Is An Old Problem
What has happened to the Jewish people that we have become so war-like? The Israeli Defense Forces are fighting wars like it’s 1394. They’re really good at it.
For two thousand years, after the Romans expelled us from our native land, we have buried ourselves in Torah and Talmud and pursued underground lives, hoping to be noticed as little as possible by the ruling authorities throughout Europe and the Middle East.
It didn’t work.
The Christian Bible blamed the Jewish people for the death of Jesus. The words, “May his blood be on us and our children,” which the author of Matthew, writing thirty to fifty years after the crucifixion, put into the mouths of the crowd set the stage for the persecutions to come.
The fact that no one in the right mind would ever say this didn’t seem to occur to the readers of this and other sections of the Gospel that blamed the Jewish people for the death of the Christian savior.
Who would damn themselves and their descendants in order to demand the death of an itinerant, trouble-making rabbi who had arrived in Jerusalem just a week before? And why would a Roman prelate famous for his insensitivity toward his subject population of Hebrews bow to the demands of a rabble of ragged Israelites?
It doesn’t make sense. But sense doesn’t matter when you’re talking about religion. It seems that rationality flies free of the mind in order to let savage bloodlust loose.
That sentence served as a declaration of war on the Jews. There is a direct line from the Gospel of Matthew to Hitler’s orders of extermination.
Our ancestors were attacked after Easter services in medieval times because of priests’ accusations that the Jews had killed the Christian savior. They were burned at the stake. They were brought before inquisitions. They had to wear yellow badges and hats to distinguish them from the general population. Because otherwise, how could anyone tell they were different from Christians?
They were accused of killing Christian children to use their blood in matzo and an unknowable number of our people were executed for this feverishly imagined lie.
In the Middle Ages, Jews were expelled from England (1290), Hungary (1360) Spain (1492), Vienna (1670), Yemen (1680) and countless other places. Our ancestors were condemned to live in ghettos in Venice, Rome, Frankfurt and Prague. They were forced to go back to a small section of the city at the end of the day, where they were locked in behind gates, caged like animals.
They had to pay special Jewish taxes and wear prescribed clothing in Muslim countries and could not hold certain political offices. They were slaughtered by the thousands by Christian Crusaders who killed us in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
In Russia in 1791, they had to live in the Pale of Settlement, a kind of open-air ghetto. Starting in the late 1800s, the governing authorities in Russia thought it would be a lot of fun to murder Jews en masse from time to time, by either directing or acquiescing in anti-Jewish pogroms.
The chronic storms the Jews endured spurred the urgent birth and growth of the Zionist movement. The rise of Hitler blew apart any lingering thoughts that the Jews could ever live in peace in Europe. We’d finally had enough of depending on the tender mercies of the ruling authorities.
America, once the most open of countries for immigrants from everywhere, would never have taken in millions of Jews trying to escape Europe. President Roosevelt severely limited Jewish immigration in the 1930s and 1940s.
The establishment of Israel came about because the Jews finally fought back. We had our backs against the wall. That’s the source of Israeli strength now. There is no alternative to Israel.
Unfortunately, after fighting, and losing so much against Christians for 2,000 years, our return to Israel brought us into open conflict with the Muslim countries of the Middle East. They made it very clear they didn’t want a Jewish state anywhere near them.
But, as Golda Meir said, “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.”
This statement was never more true than today. The Jewish people know that we cannot lose Israel. It’s our last, and only redoubt of safety.
America is becoming far less hospitable to Jews. On the left, we have heard, “Globalize the Intifada!” being screamed out on college campuses. The possible next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a Shia Muslim, and BDS supporter, has tried to explain away the phrase, saying it means fighting for Palestinian rights. About one million Jews live in the city, the largest urban population of the tribe anywhere outside Israel. What Mamdani is selling sure doesn’t smell good.
The Jewish people have heard this kind of equivocating through the ages. When I hear, “globalize the intifada,” I take it to mean that the speaker is calling for harassment and violence toward Jews.
Pro-Palestinian activists on campuses from the University of Florida and the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee to Ohio State, Cornell and Columbia have declared war on Jewish students. They’ve threatened Jewish kids in emails and phone calls. They’ve vandalized and defaced Hillel buildings. They’ve called Jewish students terrorists. They’ve written, “The best Jew is a dead Jew.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters trashed the City College of New York campus in May 2024, where I am currently a graduate student. They caused $3 million in damage to the school. One of the protestors threw a flare onto a roof, setting it on fire. The protestors broke windows, chairs and furniture. They spray painted surveillance cameras so they wouldn’t be identified by the campus police. How’s that for courage?
The school had to close for a week. Our professors were forced to conduct classes on Zoom, just like they did when COVID hit.
On the right, we have US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene opposing resolutions against antisemitism on the grounds that the Gospel says the Jews killed Jesus.
Representative Greene seems like the least Christian person I know. She hates immigrants, tarring them all as rapists, drug dealers and murderers. She said Obama won the Presidency because he’s black. She accused a prominent Jewish banking family of using space lasers to start wildfires in California.
Just this past week, Greene suggested that Israel had something to do with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 because he opposed Israel’s nuclear program. Does she have any evidence for this extraordinary claim? Of course not. But her lies further poison the environment for Jews in America and around the world.
She’s consistent in her ability to falsely stereotype just about anybody who’s not a white Christian. This vicious conspiracy theorist impersonating a US Representative wants to keep on blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus. In her eyes, even the descendants of the inhabitants of Roman-era Judea must continue to carry this burden through to the end of eternity.
Tucker Carlson has hosted Nazi apologist and Shoah-denier Daryl Cooper on his podcast. President Trump had dinner in 2022 at Mar-A-Lago with Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and Christian nationalist who thinks the Jews essentially run the US government. Fuentes said the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel were staged, that Hamas didn’t really kill or rape anybody. Oh, and by the way, Fuentes blames the Jews for crucifying Christ. His version of Christianity seems to depend upon and thrive on hating Jews.
Prominent hip-hop artist Kanye West has professed great admiration for Adolf Hitler, not seeming to understand that the Fuhrer hated black people. The Nazis imprisoned, murdered and sterilized an unknown number of Germany’s small black population. West doesn’t seem to know anything about it.
It’s difficult to admit the degree of new dangers for Jews in the US, because I am very American, in language, education, culture and outlook. Besides Jews, my friends, family and fellow students include people from a spectrum of backgrounds and faiths– Hispanic, African American, Catholic, Christian, Greek Orthodox, a Lutheran pastor and a Pentecostal minister.
I am Jewish in the sense that I read books incessantly, and I know Jewish history (see above). I care deeply about the future survival of the Jewish people, but my command of Hebrew is non-existent, and I’ve never been to Israel.
For the most part, since 1945 Jews in America have had a very good time of it. We’ve shared in American prosperity. We’ve contributed heavily to building the nation’s great economy as well as its culture, from Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand to Jeff Goldblum and Jerry Seinfeld. American Jews have done well and enjoyed unprecedented levels of wealth and ease.
It doesn’t take great detective skills to realize that the post-World War II golden age for American Jews is almost certainly over. We’re constantly being assaulted by both the left and the right.
It’s too easy to list the recent tragedies. Charlottesville, with white supremacists shouting, “The Jews will not replace us!” The Tree of Life massacre of eleven mostly elderly Jews by a white supremacist who believed the Jews are responsible for all illegal immigration. The criminal fanatic who tried to kill the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania and his family a few months ago.
It’s no wonder that the Israelis have evolved into warriors. They can’t ignore the tribal hatred being directed at us from all sides, from Iran to Europe to America. There are too many people who literally want to kill Jews.
Israel is being verbally attacked daily for defending itself. The mass psychology of Israel seems to carry the memory of the Shoah most intensely, but also the centuries of rejection and persecution in Europe and the Middle East.
Our Israeli cousins are determined not to let themselves get pushed around, persecuted and slaughtered again, for the simple crime of existing. They can’t afford to just continue reading books, studying the Torah and living quiet lives.
The Israelis know this in their blood. They are fully awake to the tribal and religious hatreds in the world. Now, Israel is acting like every other nation, every other people. Much of the world seems to hate this.
Jews in America are not used to being the subject of the constant negative attentions of the public. The views of extremists have moved closer to the center of political debate.
We have to change our focus to adjust to this new environment and publicly fight for a place on the planet. The Israel Defense Force, Mossad, Shin Bet – that’s the Jewish police, as far as I’m concerned. When reason and moderation have so thoroughly left the world, the Israeli armed force and the spy agencies are needed more than ever today and for the foreseeable future.
One of my fellow Jewish students at City College wrote in an essay that as Jews we always have to be prepared to leave.
I don’t want to leave America. I love my country. But I will if this kind of stuff keeps up and intensifies.
Israel is the ultimate fail-safe for the Jewish people. Jews all over the world know we can’t afford to lose it.
