Democratic Party Shadows over Passover 2019
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
I had a good first night of Passover seder in my new Nashville home thanks to some friends who took us to the impressive local Chabad .
Chabad, to their credit, likes to make sure no Jew is left out on the holidays. (There were plenty of gentiles at the festivity as well.) Also to their credit, this consistently outreaching branch of the Hasidic movement is determinedly upbeat, looking to the future and the joy of life for all. L'chaim!
But even with this positive atmosphere, my mind drifted off and I kept thinking of Isaac Singer's post-Holocaust novel Shadows on the Hudson because there was clearly a shadow over Passover 2019.
For the first time in decades, anti-Semitism is growing in the United States. The old-line Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League want us to believe this is being caused by a rise in white nationalism. This is no more than reactionary self-hypnosis leavened with a bit of nostalgia for the days of Father Coughlin. (Here's an irony for you. Coughlin's anti-Semitic newspaper was called " Social Justice .")
While there are and always will be — in a nation of three hundred and twenty-plus million — racist lunatics like the madman who shot up the Pittsburgh synagogue, such people, like the KKK today, are rare and considered extreme pariahs in our country. Tragically, they may do violence, but they have no influence on our culture. Indeed, they and their ideas are abhorred, as they should be.
The truly dangerous anti-Semitism, however, is coming from within the Democratic Party and its allies, often masquerading under the thinnest veneer of anti-Zionism. This growing bigotry has its origins in a vile alliance of the left and militant Islam (despite the obvious misogyny and homophobia of Islam — the left doesn't care, for some reason). It has infected our college campuses to the degree that Jewish students often feel threatened and if they are supporters of Israel or (gasp!) Republicans, are forced to go underground in a democracy .
Even worse, this rising anti-Semitism has distorted one of our major political parties beyond recognition and we only have two. It has been going on for some time, but has reached an apotheosis of late with statements from congresspeople that would have fit very well coming from the mouth of the very Father Coughlin.
The wretched irony of this is that this party has been supported by a majority of Jews for as long as anybody can remember. It's as if none of these people learned the lessons of Berlin in the thirties when secular and left-wing Jews thought they would escape the Nazi onslaught.
Many of the Jews in our Democratic Party are educated people who must know this, so that their maintaining this position, not speaking out against the rise of anti-Semitism in their own party, can only be ascribed to cynical selfishness, immorality, or outright cowardice.
I'm not even going to mention the names of the several Democratic Party Jewish leaders, because we all know them. Very few have said anything — their media allies, many of whom are also Jewish, even less. They claim to be "liberals" and "progressives" but those words have become a meaningless desecration of the English language. They apply to nothing.
I wonder what these people were thinking at the seder table last night as the story of the Exodus from slavery in Egypt into freedom was once again told. Surely they had heard it as children. But evidently, the message didn't get through.
Roger L. Simon — co-founder and CEO emeritus of PJ Media — was nominated for an Academy Award in screenwriting for adapting Isaac Singer's post-Holocaust novel Enemies, A Love Story . It was after the publication of that novel that Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
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“But even with this positive atmosphere, my mind drifted off and I kept thinking of Isaac Singer's post-Holocaust novel Shadows on the Hudson because there was clearly a shadow over Passover 2019.
For the first time in decades, anti-Semitism is growing in the United States. The old-line Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League want us to believe this is being caused by a rise in white nationalism. This is no more than reactionary self-hypnosis leavened with a bit of nostalgia for the days of Father Coughlin. (Here's an irony for you. Coughlin's anti-Semitic newspaper was called " Social Justice .")
While there are and always will be — in a nation of three hundred and twenty-plus million — racist lunatics like the madman who shot up the Pittsburgh synagogue, such people, like the KKK today, are rare and considered extreme pariahs in our country. Tragically, they may do violence, but they have no influence on our culture. Indeed, they and their ideas are abhorred, as they should be.
The truly dangerous anti-Semitism, however, is coming from within the Democratic Party and its allies, often masquerading under the thinnest veneer of anti-Zionism. This growing bigotry has its origins in a vile alliance of the left and militant Islam (despite the obvious misogyny and homophobia of Islam — the left doesn't care, for some reason). It has infected our college campuses to the degree that Jewish students often feel threatened and if they are supporters of Israel or (gasp!) Republicans, are forced to go underground in a democracy .
Even worse, this rising anti-Semitism has distorted one of our major political parties beyond recognition and we only have two. It has been going on for some time, but has reached an apotheosis of late with statements from congresspeople that would have fit very well coming from the mouth of the very Father Coughlin.”
That is exactly what I said a couple of weeks ago, and got criticized for it.
I think that the article author along with Levin, Prager, will along with a few others be leading a Jexodus that has been talked about before. The nexus between the way things are going in Israel with Netanyahu and their high tech free market capitalist economy and the way things are going in the democrat party as it moves more progressive more secular, and more pro Islamist, is going to leave the American Jewish population with interesting choices. The number of Jews in the GOP base has been increasing if slowly to date. That Trump and the GOP are so overwhelmingly pro Israel 🇮🇱 is another dilemma to be considered.
Buzz,
That is not what happened in Germany. The German Jews actually thought they had been accepted into German society. Right before the Nazi spring, nowhere on earth, were Jews accepted as citizens as they were under the Weimar Republic.
It is interesting that Buzz does not condemn the language of this article. It is obviously extremist anti-Democrat propaganda which uses inflammatory and deceitful rhetoric, "slyly" comparing Democrats to the very Nazis who perpetrated the holocaust.
Keep America Great Again's seeds are becoming more and more extremist, condemnation of that FACT is few and far between and indeed open to deletion. Not a good look.
You do realize that the article was written by an American who is obviously Jewish????
FACT - In 2018 82% or American Jews voted Democratic up from 73% in 2016.
With what has been happening since the 2018 midterms, I'd be willing to bet there will be a downward trend from those percentages.
No way of knowing for sure until the 2020 election.
I don’t think that takes into account American Jews who live and work in Israel and vote here into account.
You are right that there is no way to know for sure. Why there would be an upward trend toward democrats as they move away from Israel and Republicans and Trump cement their relationship with Israel is the question to be asked.