Beware of antisemitism’s ‘third rail’

Make no mistake – we will all suffer if progressivism becomes Judenrein, for it will serve to normalize the social exclusion of Jews elsewhere. Surely we have learned by now where that can lead.

By GARY C. GAMBILL, JPOST

Palestinians walk past a sign calling for a boycott of Israel painted on a wall in Bethlehem

Make no mistake – we will all suffer if progressivism becomes Judenrein.

In an address before the EU parliament last month, Conference of European Rabbis president Pinchas Goldschmidt said that European Jews feel like they are standing in the middle of a railroad track with trains bearing down on them from both directions.

One train is “radical Islam and Islamic terrorism,” he said; the other is “the antisemitism of old Europe, the extreme Right.” Both “are existential threats” for European Jews, he warned. “Both trains have to be halted before it’s too late.”

Rabbi Goldschmidt’s analogy aptly summates why European Jews feel sufficiently threatened to be emigrating in record numbers. The vast majority of rampant anti-Jewish violence on the continent is committed by Muslims, and most of the rest is perpetrated by individuals (and sometimes groups) that can be broadly characterized as right-wing. Anti-Jewish violence in the United States, which “rose dramatically last year” according to the Anti-Defamation League, displays a similar breakdown.

But there is third train on an adjoining rail, advancing more slowly. This one isn’t producing physical assaults on Jews, or even (in most cases) explicit expressions of antipathy to Jews. However, it is fueling a different kind of Jewish emigration, made all the more disturbing by the fact that it elicits far less public attention and outrage.

Militant anti-Zionism first emerged in force in the West in the late 1960s, fueled by the growing popularity of far-left ideologies, hostility to allies of America, and Israel’s sweeping military victory in 1967.

In an era when open expressions of hostility to Jews had become taboo, antisemitism – a unique Western prejudice two millennia in the making, with a remarkable ability to find expression across the political spectrum – surely helped swell the chorus of voices rejecting Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. But a case could be made that it was not the driving force of the movement.

No longer. Militant anti-Zionism has become centered around the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, whose singular purpose is introducing defamatory anti-Israel language into the bylaws and resolutions of NGOs, political parties, student groups and other institutions advancing unrelated, mostly leftist or progressive, agendas.

These hijackings invariably drive large numbers of Jewish activists (and others outraged by antisemitism) out of the host movements, contributing to their decline. This pattern is most evident in the trajectories of the American anti-war and Occupy Wall Street movements, in the turmoil rocking Britain’s Labour Party this spring and most recently in the firestorm that erupted following the Black Lives Matter movement’s adoption of a formal manifesto in August charging Israel with genocide, which led to angry denunciations by its progressive Jewish allies, such as T’ruah and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston (JCRC).

Of course, sabotaging progressive causes doesn’t exactly advance the movement’s declared aims. On the contrary, it weakens the very currents in Western society most sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. And while the movement claims it seeks to “pressure Israel” to end its “oppression of Palestinians,” its liberal use of Holocaust inversion (claiming Israelis are as bad as Nazis) and tactics glaringly reminiscent of inter-war antisemitism in the West (boycotts, blacklists, etc.) underscore that it isn’t really aiming to persuade any Israelis.

It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the departure of Jews from organized progressive causes is less a byproduct of militant anti-Zionist activism today than its overriding purpose. In a recentTablet article, entitled “Why I Am Finally Raising My Voice Against Jewish Erasure in the Anti-Racism Movement,” activist Carly Pildis recounts how merely mentioning her Jewish faith in progressive circles today brings hostile reactions. “I never once brought up Israel to these colleagues, but Israel was discussed at me, angrily, many times,” writes Pildis, best known for her efforts to stop the 2011 execution of Troy Davis for killing a police officer.

Jewish erasure is perhaps most evident on college campuses. In an October 2 New York Timesop-ed, the president of the Brown Coalition for Syria, Benjamin Gladstone, recounts efforts by BDS activists to cut him out of planning for a student demonstration calling for admittance of Syrian refugees because of his high-profile involvement in campus Jewish organizations.

He also notes that they circulated a petition against a lecture by transgender rights advocate Janet Mock because it was sponsored by Hillel. They “would rather have no one speak on these issues than allow a Jewish group to participate in that conversation.”

Although a resounding failure in its declared aims, the BDS movement has been increasingly successful in pushing Jews out of organized progressive circles. While few conservatives lose much sleep over turmoil infecting the far Left and liberals continue to balk at calling out “progressive” antisemites, little is being done to combat this trend. Even university administrators, as Winfield Myers warned in The Miami Herald last February, typically object to Israel boycotts only on academic freedom grounds, while tolerating the movement’s hate speech.

Make no mistake – we will all suffer if progressivism becomes Judenrein, for it will serve to normalize the social exclusion of Jews elsewhere. Surely we have learned by now where that can lead.

The author is a research fellow at the Middle East Forum.

October 25, 2016 | 80 Comments »

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  1. @ yamit82:
    No.Jews tried to return but were stopped or massacred or driven out even when they could manage it. The settlement projects under first French and then British and American protection and occasionally just with Turkish permission made it possible to build the Yishuv that developed into Israel starting in the early 19th century with Baron Rothschild. I read that Rothschild boulevard was just renamed, “Innovation Blvd.”

  2. @ Sebastien Zorn:

    The Exile is the theological root of all of the “evils and troubles”, including the Shoah, that have befallen us since we were sent out in disgrace from the good Land that God had chosen for us to possess in perpetuity.

    Our people’s perverse alchemic conversion of Punishment into Reward was foreseen by the Prophet Ezekiel when he said, in God’s Name, that: “‘I scattered them among the nations and they were dispersed among the Lands; according to their way and according to their acts did I judge them. They came among the nations where they came, and they desecrated My Holy Name when it was said of them, “These are the people of HaShem, but they departed His Land.”‘” (Ezek. 36:19-20). Clearly, the Jews’ very presence in the Exile, in and of itself, constituted, and continues to constitute, a Chillul HaShem. This is so because the Gentile nations saw that, contrary to God’s Wishes, the bulk of the Jewish people were more than content to remain among them forever. And, astonishingly, the subsequent Crusades, Inquisitions, Farhouds, Fatwas, Pogroms and Jihads which periodically plagued our people prior to the Shoah not only did not diminish their unrequited love for the Exile and, consequently, cause them to yearn for the return to the Land of their forefathers, but rather, such regular eruptions of Gentile hatred towards the Jewish people instead stiffened their resolve to make themselves more palatable to their Gentile neighbors, thereby further exacerbating the original Chillul HaShem inherent in the Jewish people’s presence in the countries of the Exile.

    While the Shoah did not create the State of Israel, the absence of the State of Israel did create the Shoah. It is often alleged that the existence of the modern State of Israel was the direct result of the Shoah; but this is certainly False. For, Israel exists neither due to Europe’s alleged guilty conscience over its complicity in the Shoah nor due to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (commonly known as the Palestine Partition Plan) issued in the wake of the Shoah — which resolution was nonetheless rejected by the Arab leadership of Mandatory Palestine as well as by each and every Arab and (non-Arab) Muslim state which was then a member of the United Nations — but due only to the fact that the God of Israel enabled the renascent Jewish State to militarily defeat the seven Arab states which, together with local Arab militias drawn from Arab-populated communities throughout the Land of Israel, had subsequently sought to annihilate the Jewish State from the face of the Earth. Yet, it is undeniably True that the Shoah was the direct result of the non-existence of the modern State of Israel. For, had the Jewish State already existed when Nazi Germany, arose from the ashes of World War I, virtually all of those who perished in the Shoah would, instead, have been forcibly expelled by Nazi Germany, to a welcoming Israel; and, consequently, there would have been no Shoah.

    “‘Then they will know that I am HaShem, their God; for, having [previously] exiled them to the nations, I [now] gather them back into their Land and leave none of them there [among the nations]. I will never again hide My Face from them; for, I will pour out My Spirit upon the House of Israel — [this is] the Oration of the Lord HaShem.’” (Ezek. 39:28-29).

    Yes, because it is the Foundation Stone of God’s Plan, the State of Israel will endure until the arrival of the Messiah and beyond; but the blind and “stiff-necked” Jews of the Diaspora, like the generations of the Exodus and pre-Shoah Europe, may not live to see it.

  3. bernard ross Said:

    honeybee Said:
    My Grandmother’s sister came over first and lived in NYC with her children . She sewed buttons on clothing to earn money to bring her sisters and a brother over.
    What year was that, how did she travel as a woman alone with children… the travel alone would be expensive for the lot of them in a time when women did not make much money?
      

    She was married , Her husband was to ill to work. Her children were born in NYC, I was about 1900, she was tough.

  4. @ honeybee:
    @ bernard ross:
    bernard ross Said:

    You should read more, Jews were restricted in settlement and travel, most were very poor…

    I find this, at once, funny, poignant and moving:

    “…So the fairy tale, the happy-ending story, comes naturally to me. I was born as poor as anyone I know, but that’s not enough reason for me to pull a long face when I go to work. Maybe, if the Book of Fate had left me where I logically belong, which is to say, a grocer or a small merchant in what is now Romania, or even if I had become a man of some consequence in my native country, Easy the Hard Way I might feel the urge to tell what a harsh, bitter world this is. But it hasn’t been that way to me. “I’ve finally figured you out,” the late Robert Benchley once said to me. “All you’re doing in your pictures is telling the story of your own life. At the crucial moment, the great man, Stokowski, or someone like that, nods his head. Deanna gets her wish, the orchestra is saved, everyone is happy and can go home and get a good night’s sleep. And this is because it’s always happened to you.” Bob was right. So here’s a warning. This is a happy story, with a happy ending.

    In our town the postman was easily the most popular man. Children chased after him as he made his rounds. People smiled at him when he passed, as if they hoped that he would reward them with a letter. I alone grew to dread his comings and goings. He reached our house about nine o’clock in the morning. I always tried to arrange it so I would not be there when he came.

    I had nothing against the man. It was my Uncle Geza who was the real cause of it all. Uncle Geza had gone to America a few years before, in 1907 to be exact. He had hardly settled down in the new world before his letters began to be filled with what we knew to be the most obvious tall tales, not to say downright lies. Uncle Geza was that kind anyway. In our family he was considered something of a sporting character. He lived in Budapest whereas we lived in a little town in Transylvania. My mother-Uncle Geza’s sister—was a strict woman; we children overheard fascinating rumors about Uncle Geza and the many girls who had fallen in love with him, of how he gambled and spent his evenings listening to gypsy music in dimly lit cafes. This was before he went to America, of course.

    Naturally none of us believed the fantastic stories he sent back. He wrote that it was nothing for every family to have a bathtub of its own. He wrote that the police didn’t bother anyone unless he caused trouble. Uncle Geza said if someone didn’t like his job, he could just leave it. In the six years he’d been in America, he’d changed his job three times. Once he’d told the owner of the factory that he wished a plague would overtake him, and there was nothing the owner could do about it. He said he had moved from New York to Philadelphia without asking anyone’s permission and that he did’ not even have to report to the police. It was obvious that he regarded us all as ignorant country cousins prepared to believe anything…”
    Easy The Hard Way, by Joe Pasternak. New York. 1956.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Pasternak

    Also, you referred to the primary role of secular Jews in re-establishing Israel. Quite true. This fascinating article about Jabotinsky: http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/warrior-of-zion/

    contains my all-time favorite quote from anywhere from his famous letter to Weizmann who was insisting that Israel was to be a (Democratic) Socialist state:

    “I can vouch for there being a type of Zionist who doesn’t care what kind of society our “state” will have; I’m that person. If I were to know that the only way to a state was via socialism, or even that this would hasten it by a generation, I’d welcome it. More than that: give me a religiously Orthodox state in which I would be forced to eat gefilte fish all day long (but only if there were no other way) and I’ll take it.”

  5. honeybee Said:

    My Grandmother’s sister came over first and lived in NYC with her children . She sewed buttons on clothing to earn money to bring her sisters and a brother over.

    What year was that, how did she travel as a woman alone with children… the travel alone would be expensive for the lot of them in a time when women did not make much money?

  6. honeybee Said:

    yamit82 is neither heartless of insensitive. There are many things about him of which you are unaware.

    I agree, I have followed him here for years and have great respect for his opinions, thought processes and contributed facts here. He has opened my eyes on many occassions with interesting perspectives and is open to challenging issues with original thoughts.

  7. yamit82 Said:

    European Jewry was becoming very assimilated in Western Europe and most major Eastern European capitals.

    actually I beg to differ. Althought your documentary was interesting I noticed it was created entirely from the perspective of american jews. My view is that it was only the relatively wealthy or academically advanced who were becoming “very assimilated”, especially in eastern europe. I got a different picture from my grandparents who left eastern poland, lived in germany and then had to flee. They lived through cunning, money and luck… most of those left behind in poland were killed with one of my granfathers sisters escaping to Israel. My grandmother from the same area her father or grandfather was a rabbi. She escaped and her sister and husband. My uncle and father were walked across the border given to friends in Holland who put them on the last kindertranport ship to UK. They lived with gentiles and thought they were orphaned. I dont beleive they got any Jewish training through that period. And yet, after the war, they found each other,migrated to NYC and maintained their Jewish upbirnging and made sure I got mine too. They were stronly connected to supporting Israel and I as a child would be always knocking on doors for donations to Israel. The NYC Jewish community was strong and much of the public school system had jewish teachers and principals. We went to public schools which did not damage Jewish education and afterwards went to hebrew school in a little brownstone synaguoge for 4-5 years. In fact, I beleive that my Rabbi who taught me and Bar Mitzvahed me went later to Israel. I saw his name in a book about a group of them who studied with a famous rabbi in europe before the war. His name was Avigdor Affen, a wonderful man with a wife and children.
    yamit82 Said:

    German Jews who got out early and to Palestine survived most of the others did not.

    I dont know if this is true, I think lots of them got out, but lots did not. I think Jews went to where they could, it was not always choice…. dont you remember the history of those trying to get out? Even the US sent children back.
    One of the things I saw in this documentary was the narrative of the relgious Jews of eastern europes anti zionism. This was likely one of the major causes of practicing orthodox Jews ending up dead. also I do not agree wholeheartedly with the narrator position of the relgious community keeping the Jews alive with Torah. Another perspective is that they used Torah to maintain their influence and used their influence to keep Jews from leaving. It appears that it was mainly secular zionists who made the big push to re create Israel…. and the religious sector tried to prevent and discredit it. Interestingly many do the same today. In many ways the religious sector has used Torah to divide Jews, investing themselves with “divine guidance” through the centuries to arrive at “halachic” decisions which exclude jews, many of these conclusions appear to me to reflect a galut perspective.

    Defying ban, more haredim ascend Temple Mount
    More haredim ascended the Temple Mount over Sukkot than ever before, despite many haredi rabbis prohibiting Jews from going up.

    Glick has blamed the Israeli policy of restricting Jewish access to and freedom of prayer on the Temple Mount for the UNESCO vote denying any Jewish connection to the holiest site in Judaism.

    “UNESCO’s resolution last week reminds us that 50 years of neglecting the Temple Mount led the world to make a mistake and think we are admitting we have no connection to the place.”

    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/219346

    One cause of BDS etc is the general anti zionist perspectives of the religious sector who are only surpassed by the left. The Jewish tribe is divided by ideologies, thoughts invented by men,,,,, confounded and confused by babbling fools.

  8. bernard ross Said:

    You should read more, Jews were restricted in settlement and travel, most were very poor…

    My Grandmother’s sister came over first and lived in NYC with her children . She sewed buttons on clothing to earn money to bring her sisters and a brother over.
    My Grandparents bribed the German border guards to let them travel to Hamburg to board a ship to the USA. Once all together they traveled West because my Aunt husband had TB.

  9. @ bernard ross:
    Thank you. Well said. I might add that where there is smoke there is fire. If a lot of people are hurting, even if you know nothing about it, that’s a good reason to tread carefully. The two statements you pointed to were bad enough, but when he cited that stuff about the Wheat being separated from the chaff (I know it’s in the Torah and Talmud – but that’s what I mean about rationalization – they were trying to find a meaning, and a way to go on. it’ s like that old gallows humor joke:
    “Rabbi Altmann and his secretary were sitting in a coffeehouse in Berlin in 1935. “Herr Altmann,” said his secretary, “I notice you’re reading Der Stürmer! I can’t understand why. A Nazi libel sheet! Are you some kind of masochist, or, God forbid, a self-hating Jew?”
    “On the contrary, Frau Epstein. When I used to read the Jewish papers, all I learned about were pogroms, riots in Palestine, and assimilation in America. But now that I read Der Stürmer, I see so much more: that the Jews control all the banks, that we dominate in the arts, and that we’re on the verge of taking over the entire world. You know – it makes me feel a whole lot better!”
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_humour

  10. yamit82 Said:

    Can’t relate to individual or personal tragedies.

    It’s called “impaired empathy”
    yamit82 Said:

    My paternal great grandfather came to America in 1870 and my maternal grandfather came to America in 1905.

    this may explain it. I have long thought that 2nd generation plus american Jews could not relate to the Jewish experience in other lands. Perhaps its because they were relatively very lucky and grew up in a much more comfortable and less anti semitic environment with freedoms to work and especially to travel and their parents being 1st generation americans probably had little to tell them of their parents plights. All their info came second hand.
    yamit82 Said:

    I always questioned later in life why my family somehow made the right decisions to leave Europe and others stayed put???

    Didnt you get the story of your grandparents migration from them or your parents? It sounds as if it might have resulted from pogroms in Russia. Your sentence belies to me your lack of understanding of Jews AND others situation in those days. It wasnt about “decisions”… folks did not have the money to travel, folks did not have planes to travel on,… many could not even go on expensive ships or live far inland which would have neccesstitated dangerous travel for Jews. Jews mainly left as a result of danger, trajedy, pogrom etc… there was usually a precipitate cause as opposed to a thought out “decision”. In todays times, and in the america of your youth or young adulthood, it was much easier to make such decisions… you got a little cash together and got on a plane. I noticed you did not give the story of your grandparents travels to america.
    My grandfather left poland either before, during or after WW1 for germany. He lived in eastern poland likely in the “pale” where Jews were restricted. those areas meandered in masters between Germany, russia and now Ukraine. He learned electrical wiring in a town and then returned to his village in poland an wired it for electric, he rented bicycles to the polish army but left because they wanted to draft him. Luckily, he went to the western part of germany because when the shit hit the fan he could walk my father and uncle right across the border.
    yamit82 Said:

    t wasn’t because life was so good for most Jews in Eastern Europe that they stayed and most must have known the dead end lousy history for Jews in Europe, yet they stayed!!!

    You should read more, Jews were restricted in settlement and travel, most were very poor… you talk like a modern american Jew who had the freedom and money to get up and go… things were different then not only for Jews who were much worse off but also for gentiles.

  11. @ honeybee:
    honeybee Said:

    Interesting some Jews are like battered women and abused children in their thought processes.

    Yes, exactly! Excellent book about this: “The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege” by (Dr.) Kenneth Levin.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oslo_Syndrome
    https://www.amazon.com/Oslo-Syndrome-Delusions-People-Under/dp/157525557X

    Also, In that excellent talk about anti-semitism, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks pointed out how societies either say how can we do better or who can we blame? The fact that we have focused on the former is part of the reason for our survival and success but it is a two-edged sword. Taken too far, it leads to appeasement and also leads to self-destruction no less than the latter which he pointed to as the cause of destruction of the societies that turned on us.

  12. Sebastien Zorn Said:

    that.such rationalizations aremerely a way for powerless people to.gain some comfort

    Interesting some Jews are like battered women and abused children in their thought processes.

  13. Austin Said:

    Do you mean soul “rending”.

    I can’t spell worth a load of “horse pucky”. I have discovered I can’t distinguish certain vowels sounds. Thank goodness for spell check.

  14. @ yamit82:
    Lo@ yamit82:
    Hurtful words.

    “WHEN WORDS ARE NOT BETTER THAN SILENCE, IT IS BETTER TO KEEP SILENT.” Kung Fu tv series pilot (1971

    Mimofant: (coined by Bertrand Russell): Someone who is sensitive as a mimosa when it comes to their own feelings but as insensitive as an elephant when i comes to others.

    Mark Twain:”No percentage in arguing with fanatics.”

    The Passover Haggadah.enjoins us.to imagine that it.was we ourselves not.our ancestors who were liberated from slavery.

    Is it.really too much trouble to extend a sympathetic ear to your Jewish brothers and sisters who lost everything and everybody within memory?
    Do you not understand that.such rationalizations aremerely a way for powerless people to.gain some comfort . “If only we.do better, we will be protected.” oslo is the product of the same mentality.

    Are you really so clueless?

  15. @ honeybee:
    Do you mean soul “rending”. If you do I can well understand your feelings. I lost perhaps up to 200 relatives and mishpacha, and I always used to wonder and ask how it was we were so lucky to leave there well in time. ..

    My grandfather and mother, along with 4 of his brothers and others, set out to go to America. It took 6 weeks for the fishing sail boat to get to southern Ireland from Hambourg. The family originally set out from a Latvian town on the Western Dvina River, (which runs into the Gulf of Riga) named Friedrichstadt, which the Yidden called Nyra. I think the Latvians call it Jaugenpils or etc. In those days it was part of Russia.

    They lived on “black bread and salted herrings”, which eventually ran out, water too. They were just floating around off the coast of Cobh, the port of Cork City. (My dear mother’s family was already there). The fisherman told them it was America. A coastguard boat spotted them, and towed them in. That’s how they ended up in Ireland, where they made their way to Dublin.

  16. yamit82 Said:

    . I always questioned later in life why my family somehow made the right decisions to leave Europe and others stayed put???

    It is a soul rendering burden for me.

  17. birdalone Said:

    It is so terrifying, and pervasive, that I moved 900 miles, back south, and now only speak about Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State, with Baptists.

    Now ain’t that the truth. Don’t forget the Evangelicals that think you just spoke to Moses yesterday .
    G-d love’em

  18. bernard ross Said:

    tell that to the 7 brothers and sisters my grandfather lost

    Can’t relate to individual or personal tragedies. My paternal great grandfather came to America in 1870 and my maternal grandfather came to America in 1905. I know of no relative lost to Hitler. I always questioned later in life why my family somehow made the right decisions to leave Europe and others stayed put??? It wasn’t because life was so good for most Jews in Eastern Europe that they stayed and most must have known the dead end lousy history for Jews in Europe, yet they stayed!!!

    European Jewry was becoming very assimilated in Western Europe and most major Eastern European capitals. Without Hitler most would have totally assimilated but for Hitler in a few generations….. Few were Zionists and most turned their backs on Palestine… German Jews who got out early and to Palestine survived most of the others did not.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeNlLA8Jix8

  19. yamit82 Said:

    Throughout our history there have been weaker elements who have shirked the sacrifices which Judaism entailed.

    An itinerant Rabbi of the 1st century AD spoke of that very problem. As in the salt of the Earth and separating the wheat from the shaft.

  20. bernard ross Said:

    “lots of Jews make me want to forget I am a Jew these days” Bernard Ross

    First Zorn, tries to take my place a “smart a–” and now try to take Deborah’s place a wisdom-speaker. THIS MUST STOP.

  21. Sebastien Zorn Said:

    They are. But to say that they are not Jews?

    Of course they have a choice of opting out of Judaism and being a Jew…..Most Jews historically did opt out and is the main reason there are so few Jews today.

    Throughout our history there have been weaker elements who have shirked the sacrifices which Judaism entailed. They have been swallowed, long since, in the great majority; only the more stalwart have carried on the traditions of their ancestors, and can now look back with pride upon their superb heritage. Are we to be numbered with he weak majority, or with the stalwart minority? It is for ourselves to decide.”

    – Cecil Roth, A History of the Jews
    (Oxford University: Shocken Books, 1961) pg. 423

  22. @ birdalone:

    Just posted – excellent analysis of what I have observed:

    http://www.city-journal.org/html/democratic-party-prayer-14816.html

    The Democratic Party at Prayer

    The problem with the “Jewish Vote”

    Jonathan Bronitsky
    October 25, 2016

    …If not Israel, what does fire up Jewish-Americans? In short, the Jewish precept of tikkun olam (“repairing the world”), construed by modern mainstream denominations to mean “social justice.” This isn’t surprising, given American Jewry’s perennial penchant for liberalism.

    When Pew asked three years ago, “What’s an essential part of being Jewish?,” “caring about Israel” (43 percent) was rather handily beat out by “leading ethical/moral life” (69 percent) and “working for justice/equality” (56 percent). So Israel shouldn’t be thought of as the litmus test for whether particular counties or even districts with substantial numbers of mainstream Jews will lean Left or Right. A far more accurate approach would involve posing questions about, for instance, Black Lives Matter, income redistribution, or gay marriage. If there is a dual loyalty among mainstream American Jewry, it doesn’t involve a tension between the U.S. and Israel. Rather, it involves a conscience-splitting conflict between the traditional liberalism of the postwar period and the identity-obsessed progressivism of the twenty-first century.

    I emphasize the term “mainstream” because non-Orthodox Jews (i.e., Jews who aren’t “Torah observant”) currently make up 90 percent of American Jewry.

    A much more precise assessment would simply give greater weight to the reality that mainstream Judaism in the United States—as a religion—means, above all, devotedly pulling the lever for the Democratic Party. For when push comes to shove, social justice readily gets pushed to the front and Judaism and Israel promptly get shoved to the back.

  23. @ Ted Belman:
    O.K. Ted, understood. I just sent another which didn’t print. Put in a good word for me with WordPress which should be changed to WordFress, because that’s what it’s doing to my posts, even without salt.

  24. Something is happening to my posts. Have posted 3 times answering (in a sort of way) Sebastian Zorn, and none was printed. In my last, I attributed it to WordPress’ hatred of me having made it into a “thinking computer” whilst the efforts of hundreds od computer scientists have been vainly trying for years to succeed.

    We’ll see if this is printed.

    Using Edit…Well Wadda Ya know…. I’ll be blowed… and other Popeyean(?) expletives.

  25. honeybee Said:

    Did you watch O” Reilly ” last night. He had Judith Rubin a progressive commentator for the ” Washington Post” one his program. The women is nuts !!!!!

    nope, I try to avoid women who are nuts… been there, done that.

  26. yamit82 Said:

    Don’t knock antisemitism, best thing that happened to Jews since the bagel was invented.

    tell that to the 7 brothers and sisters my grandfather lost.yamit82 Said:

    “If you ever forget you’re a Jew, a Gentile will remind you.” Bernard Malamud

    “lots of Jews make me want to forget I am a Jew these days” Bernard Ross

  27. Assimilation has proven fatal to Judaism in America.
    Not-orthodox American Jewry has chosen ‘progressivism’, in the guise of Tikkun Olam, over Zionism, in 2016.

    It is so terrifying, and pervasive, that I moved 900 miles, back south, and now only speak about Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State, with Baptists.

  28. @ Sebastien Zorn:

    Never allow your enemies to define you. Nor JEWISH victims or holocausts. Only the Torah defines who and what are Jews. Secular assimilated Jews went to the ovens not understanding why.That was the real tragedy. Religious JEWS understood. Over 2000 years of pogroms, inquisitions and Holocaust make it clear, Judaism says it unequivocally: “It is an eternal law, Esau (the non-Jew) hates Jacob (the Jew).” This is the eternal law – it is immutable.

  29. @ yamit82:
    Tivadar (he was actually Hungarian Jewish not “Viennese”) Herzl was the most famous example of somebody who discovered that we don’t exactly have a choice — even without Jewish Law and matrilineal descent and all that jazz. The Nazi defintion of a Jew was somebody with Jewish grandparents. There was a group somewhere in Russia, I think, that the Nazis encountered who were gentiles who had converted to Judaism very recently and married only amongst themselves. They left them alone. They murdered Jewish converts.
    It’s one thing to call anti-semitic Jews, traitors. They are. But to say that they are not Jews?
    They wish.
    yamit82 Said:

    @ Sebastien Zorn:

    Missing your point, if you have one????
      

  30. @ yamit82:
    yamit82 Said:

    If an American Jew is not pro Israel (Zionist) they are not Jews

    You see, my father was a Catholic priest, Greek Orthodox, but I think he started out as a Jew, then he became a Catholic priest.http://www.azquotes.com/author/9615-Walter_Matthau

    I can’t find it but I recall reading somewhere that he said, “We had to come to America to become Russians, Poles Hungarians, Germans or whatever.

    His mother, Rose (née Berolsky), was a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant who worked in a garment sweatshop, and his father, Milton Matthow, was a Russian Jewish peddler and electrician, from Kiev, Ukraine.[4][5][6] As part of a lifelong love of practical jokes, Matthau himself created the rumors that his middle name was Foghorn and his last name was originally Matuschanskayasky (under which he is credited for a cameo role in the film Earthquake).[7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Matthau

    Albert Brooks, “Looking For Comedy In the Muslim World” (2005). Amazon Instant Video has most of these movies streaming at very low cost ($3.99 to rent, usually.)In the interview scene, a woman in a chadoor asks him sternly if he’s a Jew and he replies confusedly, “Not this minute.”
    Trailer: https://youtu.be/x5Jq1BxHkPs

  31. @ Sebastien Zorn:

    If an American Jew is not pro Israel (Zionist) they are not Jews. Zionists by definition rejected the attempt by assimilationists and “reformers” to jettison Jewish national identity. While Zionists ranged in terms of religiosity from the Orthodox to the radical-secularist anti-religious, they were united in their celebration of Jewish nationality, especially in its main manifestation – Jewish statehood in Israel. Thus, Zionism is necessarily and quintessentially a negation of the assimilationist “Liberalism as Judaism” orthodoxy that dominates American (and other Western) Jewry.

    Zionism must necessarily play an Opposition role to liberal pseudo-Judaism within the Diaspora. Zionism is in essence the movement of Jewish national survivalism, and so must negate Jewish assimilationism and the pseudo-religion of “Liberalism as Judaism”.

  32. It’s a paradox. From personal experience, I agree with the article. While, I condemn Sanders’ political collusion with anti-semites, living, as I do in a Left-wing environment, for years, now, I have been stopped on the street randomly by people just assuming I was Jewish, trying to convince me to hate Israel or treating me with hatred because the Left had made Anti-Zionism a dogma; in real life, there is no difference between Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism.
    People who try to establish one are engaging in (one of my favorite expressions right up there with anti-disestablishmentarianism) hermeneutical exegesis (nothing to do with the historical gesus), which has been loosely explained as trying to figure out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
    As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks pointed out, we Jews,as a “race” (however un-reality-based) the ultimate victims of racism, have been targeted as the ultimate racists in order to revive the racism against us, in Orwellian fashion.
    Weirdly, Sanders as the darling of the Left, with his outwardly Jewish appearance and mannerisms, made this ubiquitous hostility evaporate. Now, I am greeted with friendliness where-ever I go, Black and White, American and Foreign, rich and poor, every-body’s friendly in this crazy Socialist town (NY).
    Whatever crazy form it mutates into in different centuries, anti-semitism is, in fact, the oldest racism.

    Star Trek_Racism

    https://youtu.be/vi7QQ5pO7_A

  33. @ bernard ross:

    Tried to say this nonsense has happened before in the 30ties. But there are certain word that are forbotten.
    Did you watch O” Reilly ” last night. He had Judith Rubin a progressive commentator for the ” Washington Post” one his program. The women is nuts !!!!!

  34. author tells jews to beware leaving an alliance of Jew haters.
    Author is worried about Jews leaving an empty shell of a movement which long ago hijacked the movement…. duh, zionism is racism?
    Author is so regressive that he still advises Jews to suicidally strengthen anti semites, jew haters and jew killers.
    LOL, “progresivism left progressivism”….. progressivism is only progressivism if its followers follow progressive goals. Todays “orogressivism” is the opposite, that’s why its anti semitic. Fool jews following ludicrous labels always find themselves in silly conundrums like those postulated by this silly article. Progressivism is irrelevant, only specitic agenda and platform are relevant.

    Today Jews support those who hate Jews, go figure, and this article laments the fact that Jews are leaving such folly.

    anti semitism, honor killing, lying propagandaism is todays faux progressivism… only lunatic suididal Jews remain with such groups.

    I see no causes or goals of todays “progressivism” which Jews should support.
    I see anti semitism, anti zionism, BDS, rioting black lives matter, defending muslim anti semitism and jew killing, spreading lies about jews and Israel, destabilization, chaos, rioting, violence, intolerance…. all these are associated with progressivism… I see no rioting conservative mobs on the street exhibiting these behaviors.
    Jews seeking labels not substance are dangerous.

    Todays “progressivism” is the “third rail”, run as fast as you can for the exit.