This is the evening of Tisha BeAv, the anniversary of the beginning of the destruction of our Temples. I read aloud in the synagogue the scroll of lamentations, and of course think not only of the destruction of the Temples: Lamentations relates much more to the suffering of the people. When I read I cry, and my voice breaks. And I think of the suffering of my people in MY lifetime. I was born in New York in 1937, an American Jew. My mothers maternal great grandparents come to the US in the 1840s. My father used to call her A Mayflower American. We were definitely NOT Jewish Americans: we knew we are Jews in our very being, in our genes, in our soul, who had the very good luck to be in the US instead of in Europe during the mass murder of Jews euphemistically called the holocaust [as if it was a natural catastrophe, not the planned and carried out premeditated mass murder]. My mothers first published book was named Why I, after one of the short poems and vignettes in that volume: Why I - Why was I born in the US and not in Europe? Why did my family survive? Part of the answer is - to set up a business in NY, so that while Jewish immigration from Europe to the US was prohibited, my father [aged 29 in 1940] could sign about 100 affidavits enabling 100 families to get visas into the US and thus saved their lives. The second obvious answer is - to sell the mansion we lived in and give the money to a messenger who bought the lives of 1400 Jews from the Nazis and got them to safety out of Europe. The third probably obvious answer is - to come to Tel Aviv shortly after the vote on partition on Palestine, and serve the young government in various capacities - a dollar-a-year-man, among other acts he did was [at the age of 38] to give his personal guarantee to Argentina so that they would sell meat to Israel who had at the time no foreign currency reserves - and Argentina accepted my fathers word and delivered. We came to live in Israel in 1948, while the War on Independence was still raging, we were bombed by Egyptian planes - a house on the next block was demolished. We had no shelter, of course, but out dining room was the shelter for all the people in all the apartments in our building because we lived on the ground floor. But my thoughts review the present. Antisemitism - lets speak simple English: Jew-Hatred - is rampant in Europe, is gaining in America. It is NOT only the Muslims. It is NOT only BECAUSE of the Muslims. Older people than I, and students of the 1930s, claim that Europe today is as bad or worse than it was in the1930s. Certainly Jew-Hatred in France has reached the situation where 2000 French Jews arrived in Israel on Aliya during the past month. Israel exists, and the European Jews have a place to escape to, in happy contradistinction to the 1930s. Eurabia is around the corner, unless Europes leaders take very urgent and strong initiatives. In the 1930s, Sinclair Lewis published a book called It Cant Happen Here. I really think it cant. But I may be wrong. What is happening in the USA is awful. Terrifying. It seems the US is going the way of Europe. Ask many Muslims, theyll tell you. Other Muslims do not want this to happen, they came to the US to better themselves, for the freedom of the US - but this was the reason Muslims came to Europe, and see whats happening there!! In Europe, in Germany, in the 1920s and 30s, many Jews identified as Germans of Jewish extraction. They were not in any sense religious. They were very successful as Germans: they owned department stores, banks, they were at the top of the Arts and the Entertainment industry, they were Minsters in the governments of Germany, France... top of the world. To the world, however, they were not Jewish Germans or Jewish Frenchmen: they were Jews who lived in Germany, who lived in France, and as Jews they were handed over to be murdered by the millions. I read the very disturbing writing of some Jewish people, mainly in the US, and understand they view themselves as Liberal Jewish Americans. The Jew-Haters dont see them that way. They see them like the Germans saw the German Jews: successful people at our expense. Many of the liberal Jews are upset that Israel does not recognize their brand of Judaism. They cant understand it. The secular Jews in Israel are even less observant than many of the liberal Jews in Europe and America. What is this obstinacy? Of course it is easy to blame in on Politics. Politics, of course, plays a part. But it is much deeper than politics. The issue of identity is very much part of the issue. The basic attitude is: IF a person identifies as a Jewish American - so he is an American - and he is not one of us!!! If, in times like these, these Liberal Jewish Americans denigrate Israel, believe every critical report of Haaretz, of Btselem, of Arab liars, in effect supporting Hamas - what kind of attitude can they expect from Israelis? Actually most of them are the Americans who supported and voted for President Obama - not once, but twice!! The first time they were, perhaps, blinded by the idea that a black man would be president. But after Obamas Cairo speech, after all his blatantly anti-Israel machinations, after it was clear that Obama is a catastrophe for Israel, they nevertheless supported him financially and voted for him - how can they expect Israelis to want to listen to them? Is this sinat hinam - on their part, on Israels part? On Israels part - no. We recognize the right of Jews to disassociate with us. We remember Trotsky, Kalmanowitz, so many Russian Jews who identified with the liberal causes of the 20th century, many who were later killed by their liberal leader, Stalin. We remember Henry Morgenthau, United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Roosevelt, who did not want to speak up to save the Jews of Europe, [just like other leaders of American Jews, like Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise]. We understand, and have pity on them. But they are not part of us. We pray for them, that they repent, that they do Teshuva, and we will welcome them with open arms and hearts.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 21:08:47 +0000
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