In Donald Trump’s abhorrence for globalism and in his inability to smack down David Duke, it was easy to hear the ominous chords of history, to see how he was activating dormant hatreds with his conspiratorial tropes. But it was always easy to see how Jews, with their well-developed institutions and communal resources, were not the most vulnerable targets of Trump’s racialism. I felt pride that so much of the organized Jewish community resisted the impulse to elevate its own problems above those of the more vulnerable.
Of course, this was not every corner of the Jewish community. After the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Gary Cohn couldn’t bring himself to resign from his job. After Squirrel Hill, Jared Kushner and Sheldon Adelson will likely stand their ground. In response to this massacre, every synagogue will protect itself with great security, with more cameras and more guards. They will do what is necessary to create a sense of safety, which will also invariably inhibit the sense of escaping from the secular world. The gunman committed a crime on Shabbat, and it will reverberate as a crime against Shabbat.
Any strategy for enhancing the security of American Jewry should involve shunning Trump’s Jewish enablers. Their money should be refused, their presence in synagogues not welcome. They have placed their community in danger.
Sure thing. Excommunicate anyone who politically disagrees with you. That'll make anti-Semitism go away. And hey, they can always become Presbyterians or something.
1 comment:
The problem is that apparently Foer, like many other American Jews, substitutes leftist ideology in great part for Judaism. "Repairing the world" is what Judaism means for folks like him. Other Jews, mostly strict or modern Orthodox, who disagree, become to him, anti-Jews. The rhetoric that blames Trump for somehow making this worse is idiotic. They say that any criticism of anyone who is Jewish is anti-semitic. George Soros and his son fund many left-wing foundations and political efforts, but criticism is not allowed because of their ethnic background, even if the critics are only interested in their ideas and actions, not their ancestry. Leftist idiots spend their time diagnosing "racist" or "anti-semitic" "dog whistles," that is, making things up as they go.
Post a Comment