Selling Virtue

From time to time, I devote my analysis to a single article.  One from The Forward on a pundit's suggestions for reviving a defeated Democratic Party invites a paragraph-by-paragraph assessment.

His Op-Ed; My Thoughts

https://forward.com/opinion/756508/what-democrats-fighting-trump-should-learn-from-germany-hitler/

In the final years of the Weimar Republic, the German left was paralyzed by ideological divisions, by a failure to persuade broad swathes of the populace that it was capable of guiding the country out of its economic and domestic turmoil, and to neutralize the snowballing popular appeal of a budding despot — Adolf Hitler.

Weimar had power.  If Germany was not functioning, they owned that non-function.  

Today, the American left faces a similarly perilous moment. Since Donald Trump began his second term in office, the Democratic Party — shut out of power in both chambers of Congress — has been flailing around in search of ways to thwart his dismantling of the country’s democratic norms. And with the MAGA-fied Congressional Republicans marching in lock-step with Trump, he has repeatedly outmaneuvered the fractured Democrats.

The real problem, though, is they were voted out nationally for cause.  Donald Trump was not an unknown, as Hitler was by comparison in 1933.  American voters replace failing leaders with some frequency in our history.  We have had states seceed to protect their cultural norm of slavery.  We could have elected at that time a President who would compromise on this or a President who would say Good Riddance and salvage some of the prosperity of cotton diplomatically with a prototype of two two-state solution.  Lincoln and Roosevelt could only sell virtue if they could also sell competence.  Bill Clinton sold competence.  Trump's message, right or wrong, is that of a problem solver in a time when problems are large.   

We’ve seen a version of this movie before, in a different setting, with different players, and with different social, economic and cultural conditions.  Parallels are inexact, of course. But there are so many similarities that they warrant an examination of why the German left — and in particular the Social Democratic Party — failed to stop Hitler.Let’s go back to November 1918, with Germany losing World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicating, revolutionary upheaval erupting across the land, the leftist Social Democratic Party (SPD) taking over governance and trying to launch Germany’s first democracy under tumultuous circumstances.

From the founding of the Weimar Republic until its death in 1933,  the German left was fatally divided over the nation’s direction. The SPD was the strongest force on the German left. The German Communist Party also had mass appeal, but favored revolution and a Bolshevist-style regime over cooperating with the SPD.

The SPD itself was riddled with dissension — torn between pragmatic reformism and revolutionary Marxism. A faction called the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) split from the mainstream Social Democrats over ideological disagreements.a

And today we have a party divide nationally, though not state by state.   AOC is not a statewide official.  The Berne and Sen. Warren are, but they function as two of a hundred.  Neither occupies their Governor's Mansion.  Democratic Governors, functioning in states where people have graduate degrees, work at the forefront of commerce, medical care, and technology, have to sell competence and stability.  They fix roads, make sure there are enough insured patients to get their doctors paid, have adequate public transit.  And they have predictable failures that generate resentment, the DEI, their campuses, the decline of institutions of social engagement.

In early November, 1918, Independent Socialist Kurt Eisner led a revolution in Munich, overthrowing the Bavarian monarchy and proclaiming the People’s State of Bavaria. Eisner was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1919 by a far-right nationalist. Radical left-wing factions, including anarchists and communists, seized the moment and proclaimed the Bavarian Soviet Republic. This regime was short-lived, crushed within weeks by radical-right Freikorps paramilitaries and forces loyal to the central government in Berlin.

We have a certain failure of Democratic Presidents to restore order, even when public sentiment runs in that direction.  It takes a lot of forms from Vietnam/Racial violent gatherings, torching cars after a sports event, going to the Walgreens for cough syrup and finding it locked and the first two scarce salespeople do not have the key. This year, Jewish students chased across the college quad with bullhorns while College Deans and the invariably Democratic elected officials of those states and municipalities let it happen.  People fundamentally want to live peacefully.  It is the other folks who are troublemakers.  

The chaos, bloodshed and terror during the brief reign of the Bavarian Soviet Republic traumatized many Germans, weakened the left, and strengthened conservatives, monarchists, and far-right extremists like the German Workers’ Party, soon to become the National Socialist German Workers’ Party — the Nazis.

They sold themselves as problem solvers.  And people with the strength to bring order and prosperity about.

Although Germany’s political landscape was badly splintered, the mainstream Social Democrats — backed by trade unions  — were a prominent player through most of the life of the Weimar Republic, leading, or being a part of coalition governments. Their power began to wane as the Communists gained  traction on the left, while nationalist and conservative factions surged on the right. The Social Democrats’ decision to support Centrist Chancellor Heinrich Brüning — despite his use of emergency decrees — was seen by many as a betrayal of democratic principles, further eroding their credibility. By the time Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933, the SPD was politically isolated, morally exhausted, and institutionally sidelined.

Nearly a century later, the echoes of Weimar reverberate in Washington. Since Trump began his second term, America has witnessed a spree of executive overreach that has undermined democracy: mass pardons for convicted insurrectionists, an assault on birthright citizenship, extortionist tactics against higher education, law firms and the press, and a gutting of civil protections.

The question remains, can you sell virtue when competence lags?

Democrats, still reeling from Kamala Harris’s narrow defeat and locked out of Congressional power, have struggled to mount a coherent resistance. There have been bright moments: Sen. Cory Booker’s marathon floor speech galvanized activists, however briefly, and state attorneys general have eked out temporary restraining orders against some of Trump’s more brazen orders. But the party’s broader response has lacked urgency and imagination. Sometimes the Democrats’ flailing for relevance produces moments too easy to lampoon, like Chuck Schumer’s boast that he had used a Senate rule to strip the title “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” from Trump’s $3.3 trillion spending package.

It really wasn't a narrow defeat.  The margin was small in each swing state and nationally.  However, that small margin was maintained very consistently in each jurisdiction.  A plurality of 50% + 1 is an electoral approval for the majority to implement what they proposed.  My Jewish world conveys many illusions of its success.  I get newsletters from local Chabad, some of the dearest people around, showing photos of their events. The pictures look like SRO crowds.  When I attend a few, there are maybe a dozen participants.  My shul, a non-egal place, promotes women's participation.  Women read four verse aliyot, men read the others, but they create a promotional illusion of parity that isn't accurate but reinforces belief in gender equality.  Nor does it advance the capacity of some very talented women.  Cory Booker and Schumer had their fifteen minutes, or 24h of fame, but were fundamentally ineffectual people who put themselves on display.

Much like their Weimar counterparts, many of today’s Democrats appear trapped in the belief that the system’s norms will somehow correct themselves. But Trump flouts the norms on a daily basis, leaving the Democrats clutching a rulebook that has already been shredded by America’s 47th president.

One can argue that many norms were shredded before that.  Moreover, they are replaced with new norms.  One need only read an etiquette book from the 1960s and one from the 1990's, often revisions of the same code by the same author.  Early etiquette books did not have chapters on safe sex, which partner supplies the condom, or when female or minority employees should be assertive.  The emergence of anti-Semitism from the Sewer might be Trump 45, it's eruption on elite campuses certainly is not.  New taboos of microagressions correlate a lot more with social media and phone technology than they do with who holds office.  Abe Foxman, probably my favorite Jewish advocate, used to insist on taking advantage of the rules, whatever they happened to be.  

The Democratic Party needs to restore its connection with the masses, shed its aura of elitism, learn how to speak in a language that resonates beyond Beltway bubbles. An anti-Trump resistance movement has spread across the land over the past few months. Why aren’t prominent Democratic politicians at the front of these marches? Of course, there could be security concerns. So why not come up with some novel, creative ways to embed leading Democrats directly in the beating heart of resistance?

This one I almost agree with, though they may be handicapped.  I think one historical element that needs an answer is why the Red Wave predicted in 2022 did not happen, but came with consistency, if not a vengeance, two years later.  The elected officials were already in place.  The culture of identity politics, many would say pandering, had been established.  Closure of hourly earners from the American Dream had been settled.  Yet in 2020, Americans voted a Democratic majority and largely held it amid the culture wars already in place.  What changed is that they didn't own the problems once they were given their governing mandate.  They didn't just have elites, not that it mattered.  There is no greater collection of elitists than the current Cabinet.  What the voters said, I think, is that they botched their chance to govern fairly.  They protected a President, who I met many times as my Senator and admired personally, even though he wasn't up to the task.  By 2024, Harvard and Columbia where my parents wanted to send me and where I wanted to direct my kids, had corrupted liberal education outside the quantitative sciences.  Their supporters sought vengeance for petty verbal comments they perceived as infractions, such as saying there were only two genders or equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.  In short, my party governed poorly when given the chance.  Neither side has virtue to promote.  Instead, they are asking voters to judge who can bring us closer to the life we'd like to have.  A few human sacrifices along the way?  The pro-Hamas and pro-Ayatollah crowd, part of a Democratic base as the primary voters in NYC exposed, don't seem put off by the concept of Human Sacrifice to meet desired ends.

Here’s an idea: a rebirth of whistlestop tours. Recruit fifteen or so Democrats — potential presidential candidates plus a roster of other politicians and even non-politicians who are admired by Americans and have shown an ability to connect with people on a gut level. Have them board a train that would be christened the “Democracy Express.”

All depends on who gets a ticket to ride.  Needless to say, every losing candidate had high profile endorsements.

Just imagine this list of passengers aboard the “Democracy Express,” going from city to city, town to town across the land, talking about issues that resonate with all Americans: JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Cory Booker plus proven crowd draws like Bernie Sanders and AOC. Add a couple of fresh faces, like Jon Ossoff, the young senator from Georgia, and Becca Balint, Vermont’s representative in the U.S. House. Make a show of a united front — with baseball caps and T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Democracy Express” handed out at every stop.

What this exaggerates is the reality of how few statesmen we have in the public arena.  Princess Di engaged the world, in large part because the future King, or his shadchan, opted for a charming lady too young to have a searchable past.  All the people on that train carry their assailable, searchable baggage.  I think the public abhors entitlement, as the 2016 results reflected.  The Dems have done much better with people like Princess Di, who come as unknown talents.  Jimmy Who, that nice Senator from Illinois.  I'd replace a couple of People of Entitlement with people of widespread respect.  Gov. Schwartznegger, Abe Foxman, NIH director Collins, maybe my own Senator Coons, Sen. Kelly, Gov. Stein, David Brooks or Bret Stephens from the NYT.  They need to restore respectability and sell wisdom, which still has a market to replace the illusion of virtue, which does not.

And as head of this delegation, why not Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington who made Trump squirm in the front row of a church service by asking that he “have mercy” on LGBTQ+ communities, undocumented immigrants, and others who felt threatened by his policies. In a way, Budde was a founder of the anti-Trump resistance. So she would deserve her own compartment on the “Democracy Express.”

Maybe she would.  But so would Rabbi Buchdal or Rabbi Wolpe.  Or the Dalai Lama who cannot vote.  But you also need people who build their congregations, not just inherit what somebody else created.

Defending democracy requires more than integrity—it demands strategy, daring, imagination, a unity of spirit, and the courage to call authoritarianism by its name.

I'll end my commentary on The Forward's op-ed with something I keep on my whiteboard in my line of sight from my desk chair.  It comes from an anthology called Jewish Megatrends.  Its editor, Rabbi Sid Schwarz of Clal, distilled his vision of Judaism into four core elements.

1. Chochma=Wisdom
2. Tzedek=Righteousness
3. Kehillah=Community
4. Kedusha=Sanctity

While the public votes for perceptions, usually scripted ones, of what enhancements they might experience based on who they offer power, the core virtues never disappear, even if their absence are not dealbreakers.  Each of the R Schwarz' elements has an illusion and the real thing.  Demeaning trans, Jews, Muslims, The Other Party in the name of Sanctity is the illusion.  And as Torah emphasizes by putting Mishpatim right after the Ten Commandments, making people's lives as decent as you can, that's Sanctity and Tzedek.  That's what the battered Democrats have a chance to promote.  But the cast of characters on Terry's train doesn't seem up to that challenge.

Anti-Semitism from Afar

My introduction to the thoroughly inhumane attacks by a planned initiative from a Gaza militia on Israeli civilians came as an announcement from our Rabbi as we davened shacharit on Simchat Torah, a day in which traditional Jews keep the electronics turned off.  In the ensuing six months, the responses from around the world, and many places in America where American Jews have been thoroughly engaged for some three generations, have made this an inflection point.  A Sentinel Event for sure.  A Never Event, probably.  Hostility to Israel, the one place in the world that accepts Jews in political distress and offers us sovereignty, has always been an undertone of political discussion.  It is no longer an undertone.  In America, we have political displacement as those chronically uneasy affiliations with the minority communities sink with a predictable mutual detriment.  I find opportunists only too eager to flip the majority Jewish vote a generation after the white wage-earner vote was flipped. 

Within the Jewish community, I read essays by Jews on the political right too eager to purge their organizations of individuals who challenge their hardball pro-Israel and intersected politically conservative agenda.  They seem totally oblivious to a certain reality that the people they wish to evict from their Jewish circles may be the people they need to support nursing homes, Hebrew Schools, and a campus presence.  They've made certain Jews expendable by ideology.

Amid this, some people gifted with that blend of knowledge, experience, saichel, and the ability to craft paragraphs that flow from one to another have brought upper-tier analysis to the forefront.  Two seminal essays appeared in The Atlantic, both rather lengthy but I read each in their entirety.  A response of somewhat lesser length appeared in The Forward.  Several years ago, I decided to add two subscriptions as a semi-annual initiative.  I selected The Atlantic and The Forward.  Good decisions, renewed each year since.

Since the response in The Forward incorporates the other two, and takes a very different position on how American Jews should best grapple with the many dilemmas and uncertainties of where we find ourselves, I add my own comments to that essay.  And while anti-Semitism has become more publicly explicit, my own personal exposure has been mostly from afar.  Shuls have more visible security, but that predated the Gaza attacks.  And the synagogue where I was married had two vandalism events.  But I still appear in public as the best representative of Judaism that I can be with no realistic fear for my personal safety.  

These are the original publications:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/us-anti-semitism-jewish-american-safety/677469/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/jewish-anti-semitism-harvard-claudine-gay-zionism/677454/

 https://forward.com/opinion/600187/antisemitism-united-states-israel-gaza-war/

The growing panic about antisemitism isn’t a reflection of reality

Yes, antisemitism is up — but prominent voices are confusing protest with bigotry

American Jews are being whipped into a panic about antisemitism.

There is no doubt that incidents of antisemitism have increased since Oct. 7. But prominent voices in the American Jewish community are making it harder to fight. Would challenge this They have mistaken political protest — however misguided — for bigotry some of it is bigotry, conflated anti-Zionism and antisemitism there are Americans being attacked because they are identifiable as Jewish or their property is damaged because it identified as belonging to Jews, and exaggerated the crisis on the far left while ignoring the far greater one on the far right.  We can argue whether either is a crisis

I do not question the motivations of those who have spoken out against antisemitism in this way. We are all in pain, and we all want a world in which people of all backgrounds can live their lives in safety. But the rampant hyperbole, confusion, and both-sidesing of this present moral panic are making it harder, not easier, to respond effectively.

 

Bottom of Form

Antisemitism is rising because of a brutal war

For example, consider two widely circulated recent essays in The Atlantic, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending,” by Franklin Foer, and “Why The Most Educated People in America Fall for Antisemitic Lies,” by Dara Horn. Both attribute the rise in antisemitism to the resurgence of an ancient, timeless hatred, rather than the obvious proximate cause: a brutal war, which is producing images of unthinkable horror to be streamed daily on social media.  I think it is.  The response on campuses defending the attackers as heroic was immediate.  The condemnation of the President’s response was immediate.  And it was the Islamic, African-American, and progressive elements that emerged essentially immediately.  The very real human cost in Gaza came a short time later.  There was no acknowledgment of the nature of the attack itself or condemnation of the glee many attackers displayed.

In Foer’s 11,000-word piece, few sentences mention the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza, where more than an estimated 32,000 Palestinians have been killed so far. “I don’t want to dismiss the anger that the left feels about the terrible human cost of the Israeli counterinvasion of Gaza, or denounce criticism of Israel as inherently antisemitic — especially because I share some of those criticisms,” he writes.  Much of it is very anti-Semitic, and has been.  The exclusion of American Jews from progressive causes such as BLM was a work in progress.  So was the difficulty in defining anti-Semitism for formal policy purposes as Jewishness has been inseparable from Jewish sovereignty. While I think Franklin Foer is wrong about the end of the American Jewish Golden Age (yes, I did read all 11K words over two sessions)  the virulence of the protests and its direction towards American Jews speaks for itself.  What I think he got wrong is the ability of American Jews to create things, whether institutions for our and public advancement, philanthropy, ideas, or expertise.  Those all remain valuable and don’t seem threatened.

But that is, effectively, exactly what he does, ascribing the increase in antisemitism to anti-liberal trends in American culture, and describing antisemitism as “a mental habit, deeply embedded in Christian and Muslim thinking, stretching back at least as far as the accusation that the Jews murdered the son of God.” The war is barely even an inciting incident.  I think that’s another area where Foer is wrong. Father Coughlin, Henry Ford, and Charles Lindbergh have all been discredited on a one-way ticket in America, though my Islamic medical colleagues tell me the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is required reading in some of their history curriculum in their Middle Eastern primary schools.  The American parochial school kids no longer seek out the Jewish kids for taunting when school lets out.  But in the Islamic communities and in some of our community of color, mistrust of Jews as Jews is still conveyed through household.  And it is usually tied to a justification, whether over-extending their dhimmi status by having a sovereign state or oppression as slumlords.

Horn, like Foer, largely dismisses concerns about the war. The word “Gaza” only appears six times in her essay. Yes, she writes, there are “the many legitimate concerns about Israel’s policies toward Palestinians and the many legitimate concerns about Israel’s current war in Gaza.” But those “cannot explain these eliminationist chants and slogans” — e.g. “Palestine from River to Sea” — “the glee with which they are delivered, the lawlessness that has accompanied them, or the open assaults on Jews.”  She got it right.

There are numerous omissions in this short passage: How many protests are gleeful? Certainly the primary attacks were.  I think they take more of a form of revenge  Defacing property, intimidating expression, making credible threats to safety, and locking Jews in campus rooms has its illegal elements.    (Few that I’ve seen.) What percentage are lawless? Is “‘river to the sea” always ‘eliminationist,’ despite what many pro-Palestine voices insist?   It has that intent. f But as the response acknowledges later, these chants come from people with no authority and therefore no accountability.  Having the onus of implementation of this desire would change the approach.  Then again, the Gazans are eliminationinst in their manifesto and acted as if this attack were one episode in the larger initiative.

Most significantly, though, both Horn and Foer write as if this is the first time in history that a war or catastrophe has provoked bigotry. But this is always the case. Just as Islamophobia rose after 9/11, and just as anti-Asian hate rose with the onset of the pandemic, so antisemitism is rising now. One could even say the same about anti-German and anti-Japanese stereotypes in the 1940s. or the ending of slavery in America or calling sauerkraut Liberty Cabbage.  The wars proceed because the sides object vehemently to each other.  But irrespective of precedent, we need not tolerate this or rationalize it now.

None of this is to excuse these spikes in bigotry, or to deny that the bigotry exists and is dangerous. It is only to note that the most obvious explanation for the current eruption is not a grand meta-narrative of American or European history, but rage at an ongoing war in which Israel’s conduct has received widespread international condemnation.

No, anti-Zionism is not antisemitism

Second, the moral panic conflates legitimate anti-Zionism with illegitimate antisemitism.  Not understanding why one is legitimate and another is not.  Certainly Popes for a thousand years thought their targeting of Jews was legit.  So did inquisitors.  So did Romans and Babylonias who created our diaspora.  All are interferences with pre-existing established Jewish norms.

Foer’s essay begins with a harrowing account of a Jewish high school student in Berkeley, California, who was “scared” by “a planned ‘walkout’ to protest Israel.” I do not doubt that this student was scared. But what actually happened? A misguided political protest, along with unsubstantiated rumors of “phrases shouted in the hallways, carrying intimations of violence.” It is not antisemitism whenever Jewish people are upset by anti-Israel actions or statements.  No, Jay, it is about fear for safety.  The statements were somewhat normative in a past era, whether by Spielberg’s fictional portrayals in The Fablemans or by encounters with parochial school students in my youth.  The difference is that the fear was not justified, though Spielberg’s character was in fact assaulted.  And Kristallnacht was a very real episode in history.  The kids at that Northern California HS attended that HS the year before.  Their fear is now.

Foer also reports secondhand accounts of Jewish students at other schools in the Bay Area being targeted and harassed in ways that are clearly antisemitic. But he lumps these incidents togethter as if they are the same, which they are not. Protesting against Israel, however misguided or disturbing, is not antisemitic; harassing Jews is.  But one becomes justification  for the other, and inseparable from the fears of the victim of physical harm

Foer asserts, without support, that the left “espouses a blithe desire to eliminate the world’s only Jewish-majority nation … valorizes the homicidal campaign against its existence, and seeks to hold members of the Jewish diaspora to account for the sins of a country they don’t live in.” Notice the elisions: Foer blends together anti-Zionism, support for a “homicidal campaign,” and targeting Jews. (Even the caricature of anti-Zionism is incorrect, as many on the left support a democratic state where Jews would still be a majority, but all would have equal rights.)  Certainly most of the anti-Zionists and Islamists do not attack Jews because they are Jewish.  I’m sure Jewish and Islamic physicians share patients as before, both in America and in Israel.  But as we learned in Pittsburgh, where the slain doctor was a college friend and in Monsey where I was raised, it only requires a few real threats to be deadly, irrespective of how the majority behave.  What matters is the failure of condemnation.  That is new.

This conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism is far greater than a few articles. As reported in the Forward, after Oct. 7, the Anti-Defamation League changed its criteria to define a much broader swath of anti-Zionist activity as antisemitic; anti-Zionist protests account for 1,317 of the 3,000-odd “antisemitic” incidents the organization tracked in the three months after Oct. 7. So they agree that Oct 7 is a demarcation point that changes what is acceptable levels of intimidation. As Forward reporter Arno Rosenfeld wrote, “a large share of the incidents appear to be expressions of hostility toward Israel, rather than the traditional forms of antisemitism that the organization has focused on in previous years.”  Except that these incidents are directed at American Jews because they are Jewish.  Much like Venn diagram circles that intersect.

The extremism of some left-wing responses to the war is indeed troubling. I agree with Foer’s dismay that “a disconcertingly large number of Israel’s critics on the left did not … share that vision of peaceful coexistence, or believe Jews had a right to a nation of their own.” But are they antisemitic? Yes.  Their Venn Diagrams also intersect with other things. And what about Jewish anti-Zionists (many of whom are friends of mine) — are we really to believe that they are all trapped in some neurosis of self-hatred?  Or do they have a political view to which many of us object?  I’m not sure I know any Jewish anti-Zionists who think that Herzl, Ben Gurion, and Holocaust refugees who settled in Israel were a blight on world history.  I think they don’t want the people there now to have to move on like they did in Spain.  There are criticisms of the government and have been since Begin made Likud the dominant party nearly fifty years ago.  The gripes are with policies and innocent human pawns, not with Jewish sovereignty.

I am a progressive Zionist. Even if the dream seems dim today, I believe in a two-state solution with justice for Palestine and security for Israel. But while Foer’s language of “a nation of their own” sounds benign in principle, in practice, it has meant a nation that displaces another people and denies its 5 million members basic civil rights. Except that it was prompted by a number of attacks that made an offense the best defense.  That rarely appears in these essays from either side.  Nor does the other reality that peace has been achieved among other former antagonists that acknowledge the reality of their neighbor Israel.  For all the talks and proposals, the Palestinians, or the Egyptians before them, never had to submit their wish list of what it would take to reconcile, while the Israelis and the Americans did.  Baseball may have had the right idea.  Each states their demands. The more reasonable is accepted with little negotiation.  Deals are often better when each side has an incentive to consider that if too demanding, they lose.  Moreover, an entire generation of American progressives has grown up during a period in which Israel’s right-wing governments have successfully undermined any efforts toward peace and coexistence. It is not antisemitic to oppose this. For many people, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, it is just.  Begin was the first right wing government.  The Abrahamic Accords came with Netanyahu at the helm.  Jews visiting Petra started in 1983.  It is much less the government than the partner’s trustworthiness.

Right-wing antisemitism remains the greatest threat

The moral panic regarding antisemitism also overlooks an essential truth: that although antisemitism on the left is real, and arguably escalating, it still pales in comparison to antisemitism on the right.  Until they both become deadly.  The right has had lethal episodes for a while.  From the American left, this is new.

After a shocking upsurge during the Trump administration, right-wing antisemitism has now reached unprecedented proximity to power. One particularly serious example: Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina. Robinson is an antisemite and Holocaust denier. In 2017, he wrote that “there is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered.” (Robinson is also a sexist, homophobe, and Islamophobe.)  He hasn’t been elected yet.  And once in office, NC has laws that limit his implementation of policies that target Jews for harassment.  Compare that to DEI programs at our universities, which while well intended, function as zero sum game to promote one identity, whether of color or LGBT over previously excluded minorities who have proven themselves, as in Jews and Asians.  There is political power of people you never see and leverage against you by people that you encounter daily.

This man isn’t a misguided high school teacher or student activist. He may become the next chief executive of the ninth most populous state in our union. He’s been highly praised by Donald Trump. This is extreme antisemitism at the highest levels of the GOP.

And, of course, there’s Elon Musk, who despite his Auschwitz apology tour has platformed — and personally reposted — hardcore antisemites, including Trump. Not to mention Kanye West, now known as Ye, whose public antisemitism has aligned with a sharp right-wing political turn, and whose most recent album went to the top of the charts.  But he doesn’t deny people on the left access to his platforms either.

No one accused of antisemitism on the far left has a platform comparable to either of theirs. Again, none of this is to excuse the presence or tolerance of antisemitism on the left — only to put it in perspective.  Actually I think DEI affects a lot more Jews diligently striving to be their best self a lot more than anything Ye can influence.

Yet in Foer’s telling, they are merely two manifestations of the same phenomenon. “In the era of perpetual crisis,” Foer writes, “a version of this narrative kept recurring: a small elite — sometimes bankers, sometimes lobbyists — maliciously exploiting the people. Such narratives helped propel Occupy Wall Street on the left and the Tea Party on the right.”  Or in another era of Mayor Lindsay, my HS era, you live in squalor because of your Jewish landlord and his partner at the furniture store.  Some would say the quest for rights without accountability.  My assessment of the Palestinian avocates today.

But wait a minute. Occupy’s narrative is accurate, but the Tea Party’s is not. Occupy rails against the 1% — they exist. The Tea Party rails against imagined “elites” — now imagined, as part of the QAnon conspiracy theory, as cabals of globalist pedophiles. And when a single protester in Zuccotti Park raised an antisemitic banner, people intervened, and the movement reaffirmed its opposition to antisemitism. There is no equivalence here.  Or really, one is more credible than the other.

Likewise, Foer claims that “America’s ascendant political movements — MAGA on one side, the illiberal left on the other — would demolish the last pillars of the consensus that Jews helped establish.  That’s the one part where he seems accurate. They regard concepts such as tolerance, fairness, meritocracy, and cosmopolitanism as pernicious shams.” Really? Rightly or wrongly, the left thinks they’re fighting for fairness and tolerance — or at least against starving a million children as part of a brutal war. Or BML or DEI.  Noble concepts until you start excluding people who would like to be helpful.  These long pre-dated the Gazan casualties. The right is fighting for an American nationalist ethno-state. There is simply no symmetry here.  I think more likely there is a gap between what they claim they want and what they will insist upon if returned to power.  Moral Majority has been around a long time, as have megachurches.  So has the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Never heard a peep about a legislative repeal.  Not a word about restricting the cultural practices of those already here.  The Asian and Middle Eastern restaurants in the Deep South are pretty safe.  If migrant workers are needed to harvest rural crops in George Wallace country, the hiring will go on as before.  And from our end as Jewish multicultural advocates that enabled our achievements in the wide culture, we have no reason to restrict their hunting hobbies.  Abortions ended in my lifetime.  My OB text, circa 1975, still had a chapter on septic abortions which disappeared.  I doubt if the Christian nationalists, for all their rhetoric, want that medical condition to return.

Terrified, tribalistic and isolated

The moral panic over antisemitism isn’t just factually unsound. It’s helping make American Jews more isolated and paranoid.  But with reason.  We weren’t that way last Rosh HaShanah.

It’s obvious that American Jews are feeling disoriented, terrified and traumatized by Oct. 7, as well as by much of the world’s mixed response to that day’s horrific violence. The trauma of the last several months — experienced, in various forms, by Jews, Muslims, progressives and many others — has contributed to the degeneration of our public discourse on the war.  The public discourse on a lot of other things had not gone well before that.

But our moral panic is at once born of this trauma and making it worse. It has caused Jews to become even more terrified and tribalistic. Terrified isn’t the right word, nor is tribalistic.  After the Pittsburgh massacre took my own medical friend, the condemnation was universal.  The condemnation of the Simchat Torah attack is a long way from universal.  And we haven’t done well protecting each other.  On the Jewish Trump side, there are calls to purge Jews who find him objectionable from some mainstream organizations that they dominate.  And it has precedent.  The heavy-handedness of Hillel International on its own chapters that challenged the Zionist litmus test of the parent organization took place before the current millenium.ro The reality is that most of us go to shul at the appointed times, though with enhanced security.  Companies have not withdrawn their Hechshers in solidarity with the anti-Zionist or anti-Jewish pressures.  Hiring goes on as before.  If we were economically prosperous before, that has not been reversed.   It has undermined our solidarity with other vulnerable groups at precisely the time at which we are threatened by the nationalist right. Forgive me, but a number of progressiove organizations expressed their hostility to Jewish participation in their movements years ago.  And it has fed the illiberal campaigns of right-wing culture warriors, who have preyed on American Jewish fears to further their own agendas. Or they understand Maslow’s hierarchy.  You protect your safety before you seek the higher noble principles. We are being fed a diet of hyperbole and misinformation, and we are reacting out of fear.  Except that elements of that fear are both legit and ever closer to home.

To be sure, some progressives responded abominably to Oct. 7, and continue to use irresponsible, incendiary rhetoric about Israel. And we need to be very consistent about identifying them and what they are about. We spend too much effort fighting with each other. There are outrageous things happening on some college campuses. And we have to be openly oppositional to that with negative consequences for outrageous activity. But let’s not lose the thread here. The real crisis is not leftists on campus but white nationalists, insurrectionists, election deniers, science deniers and conspiracy theorists seizing two if not three branches of the federal government. Actually it is the loss of partnership with the progressives that make these people confident that their majority will eventually emerge.  And we are not the ones who undermined that uneasy but protective partnership. That is the Titanic. College activists are the string quartet playing on the deck.

Finally, the consequences of this fatalistic view that antisemitism is everywhere, and that it can never be eradicated, are dark indeed. Professor Shaul Magid has called it “Judeo-Pessimism,” taking a cue from “Afro-Pessimism,” a view that holds that racism can never be eradicated.  Like medical conditions, rarely cured, mostly successfully managed.

For Judeo-Pessimists, antisemitism is a kind of immortal, recurring hatred that simply is part of Western culture; again, Foer describes it as a “mental habit, deeply embedded in Christian and Muslim thinking.” As such, antisemitism can be fought but never destroyed.  That seems to be where anti-Semitism has gone historically.  And as Bari Weiss recommended in her book on this, the best defense is to be the most visibly honorable Jew you can be,

The natural endpoint of such a view is perpetual paranoia, together with an extreme form of right-wing Zionism.  Not at all.  Zionism has always been part of our consensus.  What we have stopped doing internally is seeking the Middle.  It tells us that we cannot trust the international community, and can only trust Jewish strength.  It dismisses human rights concerns, since the oppression of our enemies is the regrettable price of Jewish survival. Often it is.   Because if we are always and everywhere oppressed, then the Jewish future lies not in engagement with wider society, but in our strength in opposition to it.  Not at all.  Even in our darkest times, we have always had buffers, whether the Turks and Dutch of Inquisition times, Righteous Gentiles during Nazi domination, and the liberal ideologies in America that Franklin Foer and Dana Horn described in their essays.

This is a bleak vision, and reflective of the trauma which gave birth to it.  The Lachrymose View of Jewish History has its element of accuracy.

To be sure, there are good reasons to be scared right now. But the human capacity for freedom lies in our ability to transcend that fear — to recognize it and not be controlled by it. We can recognize that the better angels of our nature are not naive, but are wiser and more trustworthy than our passions, even when they are felt strongly. Moral panic is not the way forward.

Rabbi Jay Michaelson is a contributing columnist for the Forward and for Rolling Stone. He is the author of 10 books, and won the 2023 New York Society for Professional Journalists award for opinion writing.

 

Not Renewing

In the pandemic, I acquired some new electronic subscriptions.  Prior to that, I wanted to obtain two periodicals as a semi-annual initiative, one Jewish, one Mental.  Thus began subscriptions to The Forward and The Atlantic.  Both are on auto-renewal.  The Atlantic writing has been superb, The Forward more spotty, but good choices each.  I even contribute my own comments periodically to The Forward with responses from their editor or journalists.

The Pandemic also brought a few enticing electronic subscriptions.  I purchased the computer version of Curiosity Stream for a bargain price the first year, slightly higher at auto-renewal but still a good value, though watched less.  And Bari Weiss, NY Times defector, author of a very fine work on anti-Semitism, attracted me with her Substack site, initially titled Common Sense, then renamed to Free Press.  It was also on auto-renew, not really a bargain.  Several months ago I took it off auto-renew.  This subscription expires in a few days.  While it has a few hundred thousand subscribers, enough to hire staff, I find it too much of an echo chamber.  Basically they created a pinata of Progressive ideology and invited readers to poke it with their verbal sticks.  A soapbox for the illiberal.  Not for me.

That leaves me with $50 to subscribe to something else.  Maybe I will, maybe not.