Jews, Fight Back!
Rabbi Aryeh Spero
The rash of physical attacks against Jews in Brooklyn and even Manhattan began almost a year ago. We have cell phone and street camera footage of many of the attacks, and they are coming from assailants bellowing Alahu Akbar and from younger Black and Hispanic men often yelling dirty Jew. They sneak up on Jewish-garbed citizens using bricks, stones, breaking bones, smashing eyes and do so, at times, as groups. There was no mainstream media discussion about any of this until a few weeks ago and the major Jewish establishment organizations were basically silent as well. Even now, none of these Jewish organizations are flexing their muscles or evincing anywhere near the type of outrage we should expect.
You can be sure that if the attackers were white or Jewish or if the victims were Black, Muslim or Hispanic, the establishment alphabet Jewish organizations (ADL, AJC, NYF, JCRC, Conference of Presidents, and Federations) would be the very first organizing protests against racism, accusing America of systemic racism, and pontificating about something rotten within American society. Thus far, their response has been tepid and without any passion or urgency.
My grievance is not why general society is doing little, since most American citizens have no clue about what is happening in places called Boro Park, Williamsburg or Crown Heights. But the major secular Jewish organizations do know! Nor am I perplexed about why this is not at the top of the bucket list of many office holders and politicians. After all, the "machers" from the Jewish organizations are not knocking down their doors nor raising Cain, something Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, CAIR, and Ocassio-Cortez would certainly do if their people were being assaulted by outsiders. Beyond doubt, the establishment Jewish organizations would themselves be knocking down the doors in behalf of those other, non-Jewish minorities. They, as they always do, would be proclaiming "how the most important Jewish value is the protection of minorities and fighting racism". Actually, it is President Trump who has made more of an issue over the anti-Jewish remarks coming from the mouths of high profile members of minority communities than our own Jewish establishment "leadership".
Many running Jewish organizations and non-Orthodox synagogue and temples have for decades made helping other minorities the centerpiece of their ideological life and, thus, will never spotlight the anti-Semitism coming from members of the minority community, since it would shatter all they believe in. It might get in the way of "dialogue", which is their most precious template, though it usually is a dialogue of what we Jews can do for you and not what you can also do for us. Years after the 1992 Crown Heights pogroms, the ADL finally acknowledged that its unwillingness at the time to defend the Lubavitch community was their loyalty to the Black civil rights movement, something they did not want to jeopardize.
Involvement and pre-occupation in Black civil rights is for most Jewish groups "their spiritual life and the continuum of their days ". And still is, while recently adding sexual lifestyle rights, abortion-on-demand, open borders, and promotion of Muslim immigration. Jewish groups are in the forefront of demanding even higher levels of Islamic immigration, knowing full well that it's precisely the recent influx of Muslims into Europe that accounts for the last fifteen years of beatings and murder of Jews in France, Belgium and Germany. These Jewish organizations call their support of Islamic immigration a "Jewish value", ignoring that a cardinal Jewish value is protecting Jewish life and safeguarding Jews.
Many American Jewish leaders, including rabbis, consider these issues more important than mere tribal Jewish concerns, while others have convinced themselves that it constitutes Judaism itself, universalism taking precedence over those matters of Jewishness that are labeled "parochial" and "tribal". For them, more important than Jewish survival is the survival of progressivism and left liberalism, which is their guiding light. They have redefined Judaism to conform to their real love and passion, namely, leftwing progressivism. This is their "religion" and creed and they are zealots for it. Even the few Jewish holidays observed have been stripped of the uniquely Jewish component and replaced by universalist themes that abhor the Jewish particular in favor of the concerns and aspirations of others.
Besides, one doesn't get brownie points nor can one preen with virtue-signaling when he is focused on his own "tribe". In contrast, the Muslim and Black leaders are not interested in showing how virtuous they are, rather how they can muscle their opponents to acquiesce to their demands and needs. Virtue signaling is a vanity, an affliction. A people in constant need to display to others or affirm their own moral superiority will eventually not defend itself and puts its survival at risk. Virtue signaling is but another form of social climbing.
II
This devaluing of things specifically Jewish explains how the major alphabet Jewish organizations have allowed our Jewish children on college campuses across the country to be bullied, spat upon, harassed, and forced to renounce support of Israel. The ADL and big city Federations have the funds to counteract the BDS movement on campuses, the know-how in doing so, and the financial and PR/media clout and savvy to demonize the BDS movement and the Muslim students behind it as full fledged racists engaged in uncivil, despicable conduct not acceptable on campus or anywhere. But, they haven't. In fact, the ADL has assertively come out against those states proposing legislation against BDS.
Some Jewish organizations have jelly-like offered programs speaking of the downside of general "hate and intolerance", not willing to call what is happening on campus by its real name: anti-Semitism and real Jew hatred. I have no question these Jewish leaders would invoke the specific term Islamaphobia if the victims were Muslim, likewise with anti-Black or anti-Hispanic activity. Truth be told, some of the Jewish leaders are reluctant to call BDS anti-Semitism since their own college-age children and grandchildren sympathize with BDS, identify with the Palestinian Arabs, and too easily and self-righteously condemn Israel.
Nor does it help that many of the college deans and professors are themselves Jewish and have chosen to protect their jobs rather than stand up for harassed Jewish students; something Black or Muslim professors/administrators would never do to their people. ( Ron Lauder is refreshingly singular, in that he just announced he is no longer donating to Columbia University, which this week is sponsoring Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, a proud and vocal anti-Semite.)
This obsession by liberal Jews to universalize everything Jewish sends a message that by itself the Jewish people and their needs are insignificant and must take a back seat. Even the Holocaust has been universalized by many Jewish organizations and rabbis so that now Jewish groups are labeling detention centers at our southern borders as concentration camps, and ICE and Homeland security as Nazis, and Trump, the lover of Zion and Brooklyn's Jews, Hitler. By universalizing Judaism they belittle its need for existence as something in and of itself.
Worse, many within American Jewry have fashioned an avant garde Judaism that consists of belittling Jewishness and being over-the-top critical of Israel while adoring its enemies, what is called Peter Beinart/Thomas Friedman Judaism. They sit around in their Upper West Side salons and bash Jewish Jews and Israel. I know of no Irish here in America who want to dismantle Ireland and no Frenchmen living in the U.S. who spend vast amount of time demonizing France. In contrast, there are awfully high percentages of American Jews, more than any ethnic group in the world, who spend enormous time, energy, and money trying to bring down and defame the country of their origin, Israel. This form of self-hate is pathologic…and unique among mankind. Something craven and suicidal is happening to much of American Jewry, something unnatural.
III
It is true that all the establishment Jewish organizations and liberal rabbis vociferously condemned the attacks on the synagogues during this last year. But, those attackers were characterized as right wingers. Jewish organizations are always eager to attack anything considered right wing. They see that as their mission. But, their failure and silence in the face of dangerous, loud, and undeniable anti-Semitism coming from a wide variety of liberal/progressive sources, including the social justice warriors, leads to one inevitable conclusion. The major Jewish organizations will not imperil the Left or the "social justice" causes; they have chosen liberalism and the Democrat party over particular Jewish needs. Jewish politicians such as Chuck Schumer, Eliot Engel, Nita Lowey, Steve Cohen, Jan Schakowsky and Adam Schiff, for example, have been silent about the Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ocassio-Cortez anti Semitism and hatred of Israel.
Furthermore, many Jewish groups will insidiously parlay anti-Semitism in the hopes of tarnishing Trump and his supporters and to further their decades-old efforts to characterize conservatives as anti-Semites and racists. A previous editor of The Forward once said: "Our greatest enemy is "majority-ism", in other words, the American white, Christian majority. Most Jews still feel that "minorities" are their allies and, wrongly believe, that white and Christian Americans are the ones to fear and even loathe. Ari Gordon of the AJC said so recently when he announced: "Jews and Muslims are natural allies in fighting off the bigotry out there and protecting our shared democratic freedoms". As a pulpit rabbi, especially during my Manhattan years, I was upset to hear the nonchalant bigotry of many brethren against southerners, whites and Christians, especially targeting those patriotic whites who displayed their love of America. At the end of the day, liberal Jews generally feel more comfortable around minorities and want to belong to the political and social Left, no matter what.
This past Sunday we held a rally in front of the NYC City Hall on lower Broadway regarding the attacks against Jews here in Brooklyn. I ended my speech by saying it's obvious we can't depend on the leaders of the major Jewish organizations. They are not really leaders, rather big shot bureaucrats. It seems we are witnessing once again the Rabbi Steven Wise phenomenon from the 30s and 40s, to wit: no leadership, self-glorifying photo ops, fancy dinners, bland statements, meetings and dialogue, eagerness to be seen sitting at the table. We, the grassroots, will have to defend the Jewish people, defend ourselves in our neighborhoods.
At the rally, we chanted: "Jews Fight Back". It's time Jews carried an aura of self-respect, an aura of self-value, so that would-be perpetrators know their attacks come with a downside for them.
Rabbi Aryeh Spero is president of Conference of Jewish Affairs, author of Push Back, and of Why Israel Matters to You. conferenceofjewishaffairs@gmail.com
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