American antisemitism: Necessary questions for now
As antisemitism and its manifestations increase, no doubt a lot of mixed families will have some thinking to do, perhaps some decisions to make.
By PHILIP GOLDUpdated: DECEMBER 15, 2016 18:49Nefesh B’Nefesh(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
When a journalist conjures up a mighty story or column idea and then discovers that there’s nothing there, three possibilities arise:1) There’s nothing there.2) There’s something there; you just haven’t found it.3) There’s nothing there now. But there will be.The subject under consideration is American antisemitism, without question growing in virulence and popular acceptance, if not quite yet respectability.That, and some questions that need to be asked. Now.First, as the pox spreads, what will be the role, if any, in opposing it of gentile families with Jewish members? Since the 1950s, half or so of all American Jews have married outside the faith. That makes for a lot of non-Jewish relatives.So what’s a Jew? Within Israel, Jewish descent is strictly matrilineal; in the United States it’s measured by self-identification.... and, perhaps increasingly, by those who identify you as such, like it or not. That’s a lot more Jews than show up in the various estimates.No doubt, not all these interfaith clans like their situation, or each other, very much. But as antisemitism and its manifestations increase, no doubt a lot of mixed families will have some thinking to do, perhaps some decisions to make.I came to ponder this phenomenon, up close and personal, last month.
A very dear friend whom I’ve known forever: Catholic to the core. A couple of years ago, her stepdaughter married a young Jewish man, modern Orthodox, strong ties to Israel. As the US election slithered toward its close, my friend’s Facebook and other acquaintances, Trump supporters all, grew ever more openly antisemitic, even though they knew of her tie. After the election, the swastikas started going up, and threats and insults started coming down; this in a very affluent Philadelphia suburb. Her friends shrugged it off as “kids.”My friend’s response: “It starts with the parents.”An estimated 70% of America’s voting Jews chose Mrs. Clinton over Mr.Trump. Not exactly a statistic designed to endear the tribe to him. His inner circle includes those who are comfortable with the alt-right, that growing network of white supremacists and such. Mr. Trump’s foreign and national security advisers and officials, and Congress, may have a diminishing desire to write the Zionists any more blank, or even large, checks. And let’s face it: There are more ways to damage Israel than by not publicly pressuring it into an impossible-to-obtain “peace agreement” with the Palestinians.So where does this lead? Perhaps to www.adl.org, the website of the Anti- Defamation League and its links. As always, the key indicator (which I’ve yet to find anywhere) is not the number of incidents – it’s the response, or lack thereof, of law enforcement.Active and passive non-enforcement encourage “incidents” far more effectively than the most strenuous official condemnations reduce them. Perhaps when that statistic takes its place, we’ll know a bit, or a lot, more.Another indicative site might be www.nbn.org. That’s Nefesh B’Nefesh, a magnificent (I speak from experience) outfit dedicated to bringing North American Jews to Israel.Aliya has held relatively steady for the past few years at a few thousand a year.A spike in queries might be a good indicator of growing seriousness. So would a spike in applications, especially among young families.Which brings us back to halachic strictures. During the Russian aliya, these had to be eased, given the former Soviet Union’s official atheism and generally shoddy record-keeping by all concerned. Not everyone was happy with the laxity, and for more reasons than the religious. Should a significant number of American self-identified, non-halachically kosher Jews want to emigrate, what might be the government’s response? And how did we get to the point that I’m even writing these words?Of late, I’ve been rediscovering some of the old classics on German culture between the World Wars. Every so often, they stop extolling Jewish genius long enough to mention Jewish naïveté. “It can’t happen here. At least, not to me. And anyway, I’m baptized, married out, atheist, rich, well connected, whatever.” All true. And it all missed the point. If you were Jewish enough for the Nazis... or a gentile too closely connected to the Jews....H. G. Wells, no Judeophile, once wrote that, before 1914, everybody proclaimed the inevitability of war but no one really expected it to happen.To them. After the war and the peacemaking fiasco, everybody expected things to get worse and worse and collapse entirely. Someday.In the United States of America, it is happening. Now. How the Jews – however Jew might be defined – and their gentile others deal with it matters.Now. The State of Israel, someday, perhaps sooner than anyone expects, also.The writer is sure glad he made aliya when he did.