Basic HTML Version
8 HASHALOM April
2017
April 2017
HASHALOM
9
JEWISH WORLD
In the land where Jews feel welcome,
anti-Semitism is on the rise
By Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe
This weekend, Jews the world over celebrate the festival of Purim, a
highlight of which is the public reading of the biblical book of Esther.
In 10 fast-moving chapters, it recounts the first recorded attempt
at a Jewish genocide. The Persian emperor Ahasuerus (known to
historians as Xerxes I) allows himself to be persuaded by Haman,
a powerful courtier, that the Jews are a disloyal and disobedient
minority who ought to be eradicated. The emperor signs an edict
authorizing Haman and his followers “to destroy, to kill, and to
annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, women and children, in
one day.” But the plot is foiled thanks to court intrigues involving
Mordechai, the leader of the Jewish community in the imperial city
of Shushan, and the courage and faith of Esther, the young Jewish
heroine who becomes Ahasuerus’s queen.
On the Jewish calendar, Purim is a joyful day. Families distribute gifts
of food, alms are lavished on the poor, children (and even adults)
wear costumes - and at every mention of Haman’s name during the
reading of Esther, the congregation breaks out in a raucous din of
boos and noisemakers.
It’s easy to celebrate Purim with hilarity when Jews feel safe and
welcome, and in modern times there is nowhere on Earth they have
felt safer and more welcome than the United States.
Last month, the Pew Research Center released the results of a
survey showing Jews to be the most warmly regarded religious
group in America. It was Pew’s second such survey in three years,
and both times the finding was the same. “We love our country, and
America loves us right back,” wrote David Suissa, the publisher of the
Los Angeles Jewish Journal, after the Pew numbers came out. Jews,
who know only too well what it means to be a hunted minority, have
been blessed to find in America a degree of benevolence, respect,
and freedom unparalleled in their long and precarious history.
But Purim arrives this year amid an alarming surge in anti-Semitic
menace.
Since January, Jewish community centers and organizations
nationwide have been targeted with anonymous bomb threats - at
least 140 such threats to date. At Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia,
St. Louis, and Rochester, N.Y., hundreds of gravestones have been
toppled or smashed. In Evansville, Ind., a gun was fired through the
window of a synagogue classroom.
During the recent election cycle, Internet trolls from the so-called
alt-right unleashed repugnant attacks on Jewish journalists who
questioned or criticized the rise of Donald Trump, often suggesting
that they prepare to die in a new Holocaust. Equally horrific anti-
Semitic eruptions have come from the left, especially on college
campuses, where virulent hostility toward Israel often boils over
into undisguised hatred of Jews.
Thus the paradox: In the nation where Jews are more welcomed than
ever, animosity toward Jews is more palpable than ever.
To many on the left, the upwelling of anti-Semitic incidents and
rhetoric is plainly connected with Republican politics. Trump’s strong
appeal to white nationalists, the Jew-baiting memes and tropes that
showed up in his ads and social media, and his seeming unwillingness
until quite recently to explicitly condemn anti-Semitism - while
Trump may harbor no personal ill will toward Jews, he has too often
enabled, and pandered to, those who do.
To many conservatives, meanwhile, it goes without saying that
contemporary anti-Semitism is overwhelmingly a product of the
hard left, which seethes with bitterness toward the Jewish state.
The anti-Zionist boycott campaign, the Israel “apartheid” slander,
the ominous atmosphere in academia - all of it has had the effect of
moving bigotry from the fever swamps on the fringe ever closer to
the mainstream.
Both camps make a legitimate point. Jew-bashers can be found on
the left and the right; often it is the only thing they have in common.
In our hyperpolarized political atmosphere, it isn’t surprising that
anti-Semitism has become one more excuse for partisans to point
fingers at each other. But history’s oldest hatred has never been
limited to one party or ideology or worldview.
Anti-Semitism is an intellectual sickness, a societal toxin that is
endlessly adaptable. Jews have been tortured and tormented for not
being Christian and for not being Muslim. They have been brutally
persecuted for being capitalists, and just as brutally persecuted
for being Communists. They have been hated for being weak and
easily scapegoated - and hated for being strong and influential. Jews
have been killed for their faith, for their lifestyle, for their national
identity, for their “race.”
A key teaching of the Book of Esther is that once the plague of
Jew-hatred gets in the air, almost any environment can nourish it.
Another is that Jew-hatred does not subside on its own. It must be
confronted, denounced, and defeated.
“We love our country, and America loves us right back.” That has been
manifestly, wonderfully true for decades, but will it continue to be?
Elsewhere, the post-Holocaust taboo on overt Jew-hatred has long
since crumbled. Can that now be happening in the United States?
Pray this Purim that the answer is no. For if America succumbs to
the anti-Semitic derangement, it isn’t only Jews who will suffer.
Jewish tombstones lay vandalized last month at Mount Carmel
Cemetery in Philadelphia.
WITHBESTWISHES
TOOURCOMMUNITY
JAKAMaR