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Palestinians keep stabbing and Biden keeps supporting Palestinians.
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An Israeli man sustained moderate injuries in a Palestinian stabbing attack in the West Bank.
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The rest of this memo will be devoted to the possible beginning in the political thinking trend by previous liberal Jews because of their belief they were put here on earth by God to make the world better so they started bleeding with their hearts and gave up thinking rationally..
Norman Podhoretz wrote a great book: WhyJews Are Liberal" and said Jews traded religion for politics and his wife said Jews became Protestants and voted like Puerto Ricans. Certainly the owners of the NYT's did so in order to escape social prejudice.
Since I have explained, in previous memos, Jews could take their heads with them when they were driven out of countries, assuming they were not killed first. They sought institutions and businesses where they could use their minds so that meant the arts, special manufacturing jobs that involved transportable objects, like diamond cutting. Medicine where they were needed and so allowed to live. Entertainment where people wanted to laugh or see films were other outlets..
Yes, they solved their survivor dilemma intellectually but they went overboard and hypocritical, in my opinion, with respect why they were put here on earth and began to be so emotional they became transfixed on using their heads but in perverse ways.
The two articles I have posted are good but I do not fully agree with their conclusions. because they leave out what I have just written, I believe economics impacts everyone, even those who are not religious. We need faith in something beyond self but politics dictates far more of what impacts life and people's decision making than religion unless being a religious extremist drives your life and that is extremism. I believe acts of moderation should dictate your life.
Jews in Savannah appeared around Yellow Fever time with doctors aboard and Oglethorpe needed them so the Savannah Jewish community has been here for a long time and has been an active and integral part of this historical city's scene.
As for myself I am totally turned off by extreme liberalism and thus Democrat politics are abhorrent so I am not a Republican but I am left with few alternatives when I vote. I remain socially liberal, militarily a hawk and fiscally conservative but fiscal conservatism dictates most of my choices. if you need or want it, pay for it.
As you know the only Democrat I believe was outstanding was Clinton because he was a shrewd politician and embraced Gingrich's concepts and wound up balancing the budget. I did what I did with Trump, I ignored Clinton's loathsome personal attributes and based my decision on his achievements. What you do is more important than what is said, particularly when it comes to politicians.
Having said the above what do I know?
Leaving for our cruise come this Monday. Stay well, be back at the post when I return in early February.
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The New Jew
By Karol Markowicz
It was early December when The Chosen Comedy Festival came to Miami. It had been a tough few weeks for Jews.
Kanye was on his “I love Hitler” tour and it seemed like too many people wanted to hear what he had to say. The New York Times was running regular pieces about problems they saw in the Haredi communities of Brooklyn, and absolutely nowhere else, and even the secular Jews who nodded approvingly at the first write-up were starting to notice the obsession.
A rabbi friend once told me that Jews are the only people that when someone says “I hate you” say “let’s hear him out.” But at the end of 2022, Jews were finally unwilling to hear anyone out. The hatred at us had gotten old. We were collectively tired of being the target and we were craving being together in an actually safe space.
It had been 4 years since the Tree of Life shooting, 3 years since the Monsey stabbing. We weren’t over those attacks, at least in part because less deadlier attacks on Jews in places like Brooklyn were happening regularly both before and after those killings. We weren’t raw anymore. We were something else. Inside the community, something was shifting.
The easy explanation is political. Jews are moving rightward. Slowly. An Associated Press survey found that President Donald Trump’s share of the Jewish vote went from 24% in 2016 to 30% in 2020. Exit polls had 33% of Jews voting Republican in the midterm elections and exit polls require someone to tell the truth to a pollster, something a lifelong Democrat switching sides for the first time might not be ready to do. Some people credit the Jewish vote with swinging several close House seats in New York and ultimately netting Republicans the House of Representatives.
Florida in particular is becoming a home for the wayward right-leaning Jew. Florida Jews went 41% for Trump in 2020. Exit polls showed Gov. DeSantis climbing to 45% of the Jewish vote in his recent election. That number could be even higher; the campaign team will confirm after they finish combing through precinct data in the coming weeks.
For so long, Jews were seen as a political monolith. This was never exactly so. My own ex-Soviet-Jewish community in Brooklyn was always very conservative yet still rarely represented by Republicans. The so-called "ultra" Orthodox Jews of Boro Park and Williamsburg were also, of course, very conservative, but often voted Democrat anyway. Israeli-Americans, Syrian Jews, so many small pockets of Jews in America actually always leaned right.
The type of Jew that was a reliable liberal in the last 50 years was rarely an immigrant. Sometimes their families had been here since the turn of the century, missing the pograms in Russia, the oppression of the Soviet Union, the camps of World War II. American Jews have been the luckiest Jews in history but the Jews whose families had been here for a hundred years were something else beyond that. They did not know struggle or pain or true ostracism because of a faith you often couldn’t practice but also were not allowed to discard.
When they weren't allowed into certain clubs, American Jews started their own and that was that. They did not worry, they did not fear.
The archetype of this Jew lived on the Upper West Side, always voted for the most left-leaning Democrat, spent a summer on a kibbutz, maybe, but otherwise felt little affinity for Israel. They didn't need Israel’s security and didn't know anyone who did. They could be counted on to criticize Israel and America openly and happily. Their lifelong security allowed for that.
Being Jewish was about shopping at Zabar's and little else. There was a joke during the last few years that summed up what was happening with this community: "What's the difference between Donald Trump and a liberal Jew? Donald Trump has Jewish grandchildren." The shidduch crisis is very real in the liberal Jewish world. A 2021 Pew study found that “If one excludes the Orthodox and looks only at non-Orthodox Jews who have gotten married since 2010, 72% are intermarried.” When being Jewish is about bagels, people realize they can have the bagels and not think about religion at all.
This breed of Jew is the one so many think of when they think "Jewish community in America." But that Jewish archetype is fading and a new one is coming to take its place.
The night of the comedy festival, Jews were desperate for connection. Some comedians alluded to it, the way we needed each other then. Our family had moved to south Florida 11 months prior from Brooklyn. We were escaping Covid restrictions that targeted our children, crime that was spiraling out of control and also looking for a Jewish community where two immigrant, right-leaning Jews could be ourselves and be safe.
Some of the first people I met in Florida were a wealthy Jewish couple in their 70s who both carry guns. I was wowed by them and reported about their existence to all of my friends back in New York. It turned out they were not as unique as I had imagined.
There's a local gun group for Jewish gun owners in Boca Raton called "lox and glocks." A Jewish friend of mine accidentally boarded the Bright Line train while carrying and then was forced to Uber from West Palm Beach back to his Miami home. I overheard a foursome of 80-something year old Jews, one in a wheelchair, discuss their favorite gun ranges as they licked frozen yogurt in Delray Beach. These were not the Jews we were used to.
The crowd at the comedy show was uniformly Jewish. One of the early comedians asked how many in the crowd were non-Jews. Two or three hands went up. There were cool Miami scenester Jews with Bottega Veneta bags, many Orthodox Jewish couples, Spanish-speaking Jews, groups of boychiks out on the town, Israelis, oy va voy, the Israelis.
The room laughed at in-jokes about getting into kosher restaurants in Surfside during season. They laughed at a woman imitating her elderly bubbie and zayde having sex. They laughed at comedian Modi's famous joke about how Florida didn't have Covid. "Oh yes, Florida. We were doing shows on Zoom because there was this thing called A PANDEMIC."
And then comedian Judy Gold hit the stage. She had some early laughs but then she made an abortion joke and the vibe in the room shifted. We don't all believe the same things anymore.
She persevered and got the audience back. But soon she joked about how Jews don't have guns. The room was silent. "Really? No one likes anti-gun jokes?" That’s when the booing started. She was shocked.
Frankly, I was shocked.
I knew a change was happening but did not know it had arrived. What has been emerging, in Florida but also elsewhere, was a New Jew. This shift is partially political, yes. It does come with more votes moving from Democrat to Republican. But the main change is cultural.
The New Jew does not cower. He does not make excuses for those who hate him, whether white supremacist or black nationalist. She speaks plainly about threats, refuses to pretend they're exclusive to the far right when she can see with her own eyes that they are not.
This New Jew might not be conservative but they are no longer of the left. His story is laid out in "The Turn" by Liel Leibovitz. He didn’t shift, the left shifted around him. She isn’t afraid of name-calling. As Leibovitz wrote “We have a better word to describe ourselves: free.”
The New Jew openly loves Israel and does not let anyone believe otherwise so that she can fit in with her usual political side. There is no “but…” same as one can love France or England and not launch into a dissertation about their political wrongs.
The New Jew remembers the Taffy Brodesser-Akner piece about how support for Israel is no longer in fashion on the left, how “we whispered to each other that it felt like the anti-Israel sentiment was actually a new way of being openly anti-Semitic, somehow wrapping it up in a Democratic cause” and how that piece made him sad. Today it would make him angry. How dare the mealy-mouthed left question the existence of the only Jewish state? We're done explaining anything to anyone anymore.
When someone is found to be a Jew-hater (a term far preferable to the clunky “antisemite”) he thinks “please, just don’t take them to the Holocaust museum.” Having to prove our humanity to people who hate us is embarrassing and the New Jew refuses to do it. We are not here to beg “please don’t hate us” and show them how much we have been hated by others. We’re here to say we mean “Never Again.” We’re here to boo when you think we won’t have guns to protect ourselves.
Her favorite Jewish organization is Tikvah because they didn’t flinch when the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan demanded they disinvite Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from their Jewish Leadership Conference. The boldness was appealing. The event went on, the protestors impotently raged outside, and the Jews inside got to say: we invite who we want.
The New Jew furtively discusses admiration for Bari Weiss if she’s at the beginning of her journey away from the left and brazenly Ben Shapiro if she’s exited the building.
Religiously, the New Jew is either Orthodox or shul-less. She noticed that Reform and Conservative synagogues stayed closed for too long during Covid and when they re-emerged they were temples to leftism not G-d. She fills in her worship at Chabad, because they’ll never turn Shabbat into a struggle session, but it’s not an exact fit. The shuls will get there. They’ll have to. Their empty pews will be their signal.
She has broken with Facebook or Instagram friends who said vile things about Israel while Jews hid from bombs in basements in Tel Aviv. He has looked at his family, or dreamed about the one he hopes to have, and said "Not us. Not ever."
He discovers there are many others like him, so many others, and they’re welcoming and accepting as we all navigate together being independent Jews in the freest of countries.
The gun booing was telling because it wasn't about quietly owning a firearm. It was about letting others know that you do. It was about standing up for that right, standing up against the idea that our people will always be sitting ducks. We will not be.
A real political realignment to accompany this shift is coming. It is not here yet. One issue, like support for Israel, often leads to change on other issues, like gun rights. One little time you pull out a thread and where has it led? The whole shawl of Jews-always-being-liberals unravels.
Israel is an imperfect example but it's still instructive. Israel was once a left-leaning country. It is not today. The shift runs parallel to what is happening with Jews in America. Leftism rewards victimhood and the New Jews have decided to be victims no more.
Karol Markowicz is a weekly columnist at the New York Post. Follow her on Twitter: @Karol.
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History Can Be an Antidote to Antisemitism
Today’s resurgent prejudices and conspiracy theories rest on old and dangerous ideas about Jews.
By David Nirenberg
Americans heard a lot about Jews in 2022, from a hostage-taking at a Texas synagogue in January to the unapologetic broadcasting of antisemitic conspiracy theories at year’s end by Kanye West and the white supremacist Nick Fuentes. University campuses produced sharp controversies over free speech and antisemitism, as some student organizations banned pro-Israel speakers and some Jewish students reported feeling unsafe.
In November, FBI director Christopher Wray warned of a sharp rise in antisemitic hate crimes. Jews were the main victims of these crimes, but not the only ones. In October, Thomas Meixner, a Catholic professor of hydrology at the University of Arizona, was murdered on campus by a former student who reportedly insisted Meixner was the Jewish leader of a Zionist plot against him.
What counts as antisemitism? Is it on the rise, and if so, who’s to blame?
President Joe Biden and a number of other politicians from both sides of the aisle have responded by condemning antisemitism. Such condemnations are welcome and important, but they do not help us answer some of the more inflammatory questions ignited by current events. What counts as antisemitism? Is it on the rise, and if so, who’s to blame—the left or the right, Christians or Muslims? Or is it “the Jews” and their actions that are at fault, as some maintain?
These questions may feel new, but the resurgence of antisemitism didn’t begin in 2022, and it’s not only happening in the U.S. Taking a historical perspective can offer im3 9:58 am ETportant insights into the current situation.
One is that antisemitism isn’t restricted to any single group. Since the turn of the millennium, Jews have been murdered by Islamists in France and opponents of Muslim immigration in Germany, by a white nationalist in Pittsburgh and a Black Hebrew Israelite in Jersey City, N.J.
Political actors have been similarly diverse. Prominent European politicians who have cast themselves as opponents of Jewish power include the U.K.’s Jeremy Corbyn on the left and Hungary’s Viktor Orban on the right. Before the Iraq War, Saddam Hussein tried to avoid invasion by claiming that any conflict between Islam and the West was the result of Jewish machinations. In Charlottesville, Va. in 2017, white supremacist marchers at the Unite the Right Rally chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
Clearly, antisemitism appeals to groups with very different values and interests. Such convergences have happened before. As industrial economies developed in 19th-century Europe, it became common for critics of capitalism like Karl Marx to characterize money and private property as Jewish and to see Jews as architects of economic inequality. Some leftists criticized this tendency with a popular saying, “Antisemitism is the socialism of fools.”
Right-wing enemies of socialism, on the other hand, often attacked it as a Jewish plot to destroy European civilization. During World War II, these overlapping prejudices about Jewish power helped the Nazis enlist many citizens of the countries they occupied to assist in the elimination of their Jewish neighbors. Here is a second lesson from history: The more diverse the appeal of antisemitism, the greater the danger.
Looking to the past also shows how revolutions in media can give new life to old hatreds. The invention of the printing press in the late 15th century helped transform accusations of ritual murder against Jews from local affairs to international ones. The rise of mass circulation newspapers in the 19th century coincided with the rise of antisemitism in mass politics. In the 20th century, it’s hard to imagine Hitler being so successful without radio and cinema.
Today, social media is making it easier than ever to spread hateful ideas. Are we on the brink of a new era in which explicitly anti-Jewish politics once again becomes acceptable, perhaps even capable of provoking mass murder, as in the 1930s and ’40s? There is no consensus among historians on this question. How could there be? History does not repeat itself. It doesn’t even rhyme. But while comparisons between historical periods can be misleading, they can also be revealing, making us aware of our own blind spots.
In the 1920s and ‘30s, for instance, there were plenty of people who warned of the dangers of increasing antisemitism. From our point of view today, the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust show that these concerns were obviously right. But there were also plenty of people at the time who claimed that the problem wasn’t antisemitism but the actions of the Jews themselves. It was their wealth that was the problem, or their poverty; their too-successful assimilation, or their refusal to assimilate; or one of many other contradictory reasons.
These were the supposedly “real” issues, not antisemitism, which many argued was merely an accusation Jews used to silence criticism and squash free speech. During his rise to power, Hitler even brought libel lawsuits against newspapers that accused him of violent antisemitism—and won.
Today, too, there are people of various political and religious persuasions—including some Jews—who believe that antisemitism isn’t a significant problem. Rather, they say, the problem is the way in which accusations of antisemitism are wielded to repress legitimate criticism of Jews or Israel. What can we learn from this historical comparison? Certainly not that critics of Jews or of Israel today must be antisemites.
Rather, the point is that it is hard for us to know if our perceptions of our world are realistic, or if they are shaped by inherited ideologies and prejudices. A century ago, many people convinced themselves that the Jews were an obstacle standing in the way of a better future, and the result was cataclysmic—not just for the Jews but for much of the world. How can we avoid making similar mistakes?
Kanye West, seen here on Oct. 22, has stated that Blacks are the true Jews, echoing claims by Britain’s 19th-century ‘Anglo-Israelites.’
By calling our attention to past examples of how ideas like antisemitism have influenced humanity, history can provide an antidote to prejudice. We need this antidote today, because while antisemitic claims are often retailed as new revelations, they usually rest on very old beliefs. Consider Kanye West’s claim that he can’t be antisemitic because Blacks are the true Jews. In the U.S. today, variants of this idea animate the Black Hebrew Israelites and the Nation of Islam, but there’s nothing especially African-American about it.
Many different groups have argued that it is they, and not the Jews, who are the true descendants of the biblical Israelites. Contemporary white supremacists who subscribe to the Christian Identity movement say that they are the true Jews. In the early 19th century, British “Anglo-Israelites” argued that they were the descendants of the chosen people, pointing to God’s words to Abraham in Genesis 21:12: “In Isaac shall thy seed be called.” Clearly it was the Saxons who were “I-Saac’s sons”!
The diverse proponents of these anti-Jewish theories often share a common library of “proof texts.” God’s curse of the serpent in Genesis 3:15 (“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers”) is taken to mean that the Jews are the serpent’s children, eternal enemies of God’s true people. In 2020, the American rapper Jay Electronica riffed on Revelation 2:9, which warns against “those who say they are Jews and are not, but a synagogue of Satan.” Before murdering 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, Robert Bowers chose for his last social media post the words Jesus addressed “to the Jews who had believed him” in John 8:44: “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.”
Historians hope that prejudices will become less compelling if people understand how well-worn they are.
It is not only the durability of these ideas that makes them dangerous but the way antisemitism roots itself in sacred texts that express humanity’s highest aspirations, like the Bible and the Quran. How deep are those historical roots? Roughly 160 years after the birth of Jesus, an obscure author named Heraclion Philologus wrote a commentary on the Gospel of John in which he argued against early Christians who were apparently claiming, based on this verse, that the Jews were descended from Satan. As a purely negative force, he argued, the Devil could not create life. But this limitation on the demonic was soon dismissed as heresy by the much more influential theologian Tertullian, who preferred to stress the creative power of Satan’s seed.
Historians hope that prejudices will become less compelling if people understand how well-worn they are, how many times they have failed to bring about the better future their adherents promised. That hope has often been disappointed. History is not a magic amulet that we can rub to protect us from danger as we make our way through a changing world. But it is a powerful reminder of how previous generations struggled with problems similar to our own—and a precious gift of humility to our own age, which is so full of passionate conviction. When it comes to confronting antisemitism and other prejudices, we need all the help that good history can offer.
Mr. Nirenberg is the Leon Levy Professor and Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. He is the author of “Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition.”
Appeared in the January 7, 2023, print edition as 'History Can Be An Antidote to Antisemitism'.
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