Antisemitism in America and Fall 2022

Antisemitism in America: How do you know when it’s time to pack the kiddish cup, the tallis, the baseball card collection and leave?

My blogs ordinarily start with the pretty pictures. For this blog, the pretty pictures from the fall of 2022 are located at the bottom.

I have really struggled with whether I should publish this blog. If I had a brain in my head, I would just go take a nap. Clearly, I’m an idiot. The situation in the U.S. continues to worsen. With Trump announcing his candidacy and with the Republicans taking control of the House, the entire situation has the potential for becoming crazier and uglier. The increase of antisemitism is in the news daily and the incidents are ever more virulent. It feels as though silence is just not acceptable. Nu, the idiot speaks. My purpose is to share my honest thoughts; to encourage you to think … and then perhaps to act. Hate is learned. We can all do better to teach empathy, compassion, and tolerance.

I am rereading James Michener’s, The Source. While I was in high school, my girlfriend’s stepmother, who was not Jewish, told me that I had to read it, and she gave me a copy. It was the most profound read. It became my favorite novel of all time for good reason. It is a brilliant piece of work. The Source chronicles the entire history of the Jewish culture from the earliest evidence of human activity in the Galilee until contemporary times. He does so by taking us through an archeological dig at a fictional site. He fictionalizes the historical events as the archeologists make their way through the physical strata and through time. He makes all these events so real. The history and the stories are full of insights about my people.

What does a discussion of antisemitism in America have to do with The Source? Thank you for asking. The history of the Jewish people is about the indiscriminate slaughter of our people going all the way back to our very beginnings. We go through decades or sometimes centuries of living in peace with our neighbors or as a minority society among people who can become killers at a moment’s notice … and unfortunately, almost in all cases, they do. Jews have been massacred everywhere and in all times. It is really a miracle that we still exist.

Not only have Jews been killed everywhere, we’ve also been banished from everywhere. With the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the diaspora, we began the first major exodus from a homeland. This banishment and/or fleeing has been repeated many times all over the globe. Jews know how to pack quickly. My family was forced out of Russia/Ukraine during the pogroms. For my family that didn’t escape, they were either killed during the pogroms, starved to death by Stalin or killed at Babi Yar during the Holocaust. For the small number who were able to live through this onslaught, they were probably disappeared as Jews during communism in the Soviet Union. My Zadie was in touch with one of his nephews who had remained in Russia. My Zadie once sent him a tallis. They lost touch shortly thereafter. I always wondered whether there might have been a connection (that his nephew was wearing his tallis in a gulag).

This hate has never been particularly rational. Unfortunately, for all of humanity, we come prepackaged to be suspicious of and to dislike or hate ‘the other.’ It is little wonder that the best of Judaism, Christianity and Islam teach about the acceptance of ‘the other,’ as each of these religions recognizes the fallout from this prepackaging. All of us are born with a blank slate. There is nothing about our way of life or our language that is genetic. All of who we are is learned. We learn our way of life within the group in which we are born. It is a function of this learning that our culture is thought of and felt to be natural and right. The corollary to this socialization process is that those who have a different way of life are felt to be wrong and unnatural. It has always been this way. For most of human existence, we didn’t live in diverse societies; we pretty much stuck to our own caves so long as resources were stable. As cities developed, and different groups of people began living together, the complications from the fear of the other became magnified. For centuries, we have been trying to figure out how to not be suspicious and kill each other. It is clearly a work in progress.

Over the many centuries, so much of the killing of Jews was attached to the teaching that the Jews had something to do with the killing of Jesus. I don’t know who was responsible for killing Jesus. There weren’t any pictures taken and no one wrote about it when it happened. It became an oral tradition until people began to chronicle the events many years after. Jesus never converted to Christianity … there was no such thing in his time. He was a Jew. At the time, the Romans made a hobby of crucifying Jews. There was nothing special about Jesus. Jews were being crucified regularly. The Source does a great job of describing all the different ways Jews have been slaughtered through the centuries. It is gruesome stuff. It has only reinforced for me how important it is to hold on for dear life to our traditions, because so many millions and millions of people have given their own lives to sustain this way of life. The tenacious will to remain a Jew has been stronger than the will to live. Think about that. For thousands of years. So many Jews have been killed in the name of Jesus who was a Jew. Always a Jew. Like me.

Up until very recently, the Church has been the strongest promoter of this story. I have little doubt that when the passion was read on Easter, Jews went to hide in the woods or began packing. In my mind, the celebration of Easter in the Church should just involve a long apology to Jews and every other group of people that the Church has abused for so many years. Their mission to convert the heathens has involved so much abuse and so much death. And it is all nonsense! What would Christianity be if Jesus died of natural causes? The story defines Christianity. It had to be this way, or there would be no Christianity. Jesus was just another rabble rouser to the Romans. So, the Romans got rid of him, as they did with any of the Jews who caused them trouble. The Jewish people have a long history of rabble rousing in societies. The rabble rousing emanates from the strong Jewish value of Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) and from the significance of justice in our culture. Jesus was, in fact, a very good Jew.

It was only the people who came after Jesus who got the story constructed. That’s the way these stories work … in all religions. In those days, they were all oral traditions that eventually were written down. Their accuracy … who knows? Please think about how often we question the accuracy of the news that is reported to us as it is presented almost immediately after, or sometimes, during an event. How accurate are the recollections of people who are presenting events who were not even alive to experience those events firsthand.

The Church has had a very long history of promulgating antisemitism. One of the more recent and virulent examples involved the activity of Father Charles E. Coughlin. He was a priest in the Detroit area who started a weekly radio broadcast in the 1920s. His sermons attracted an audience in the tens of millions. In the 1930s, these sermons took on a profascist and antisemitic focus. I’m sure you can find some of these broadcasts online. They are disgusting. It wasn’t until the war broke out in Europe and his vile ideas became a threat to the war effort that the National Association of Broadcasters forced his program off the air. The Church returned him to his pulpit, and he didn’t retire until 1966. The Church didn’t get rid of their clergy; even when they knew of a history of abuse (including killing) of women and children; for instance, at the Indian Mission Schools in Canada and the United States.

I lived and worked at a Catholic mission for two years. I developed a strong connection and love for the people I worked with, from the clergy to the volunteers. I taught social studies at the school which included lots of history about the one true religion. I married a Catholic woman, and we had a wonderful relationship until she passed away. I have no issues with people who are Catholic. I was the first Jewish person my wife ever met. She grew up in a small, rural community. Ohio has a lot of small, rural, homogenous communities where Jews are still believed by some to have horns and tails (not fins and scales). They learn this crap in the same way that people with xenophobia the world over learn these horribly destructive fables. These are the places where ‘to Jew down’ is a part of the lexicon without any thought to the idiom’s connections to Jews or what it means or to just how dangerous these conceptions are to the Jewish people. Pauline once heard one of our friends say something about the frugality of Jews. I don’t remember the context, but I do still feel the sting, so it wasn’t meant as a compliment about our responsible habits of saving and spending. Pauline, who was ordinarily a passive person, vigorously responded to this person that she didn’t know any more generous people than Jews. All the preconceived notions of people can be challenged by the reality that comes with life experience.

The issue emanates from The Church. In Catholicism, there is an opinion. It comes from the top (the Vatican) and that decision is announced to all below. The Church is very much a top-down proposition. To be clear, I have issues with the Church; not with people who are Catholic. Half of my family is Catholic, and I love them in the same ways I love the Jewish side of my family (suspiciously).

The last time Judaism was remotely top down was 70 CE when the second temple was destroyed by the Romans in Jerusalem. The diaspora and the rise of the rabbis began the very much bottom-up approach that I would say characterizes everything about Judaism. Even in those days, varied opinions existed about the interpretation of everything. Otherwise, you don’t get the rabble-rousing Jesus. We are so bottom up that when you start hearing references to The Jews, it is time to become way more than wary about who is saying such a thing and what exactly they mean. It’s a good bet that you will find an antisemitic conspiracy theory attached thereto and a reason to go hide in the woods.

By the way, a wonderful, sad, and poignant story about hiding in the woods was written by Mala Kacenberg, Mala’s Cat (2022). I highly recommend this autobiographical work about her experiences during the Holocaust. My use of the concept, hiding in the woods, is so unfortunately a very real thing.

The analysis, the discussion, and the argument about the interpretations and the meanings of everything in our holy scriptures is fundamental to the Jewish faith. There is no singular point of view. If you ask twenty-five Jews to provide you with the meaning of anything, you are likely to get twenty-five different answers. There is no organization that dictates what we’re supposed to believe. There is little in the way of dogma because opinions are constantly debated and there’s almost never an ultimate conclusion or resolution. Also, our societies and cultures are constantly changing, and so too are analyses and interpretations.

There is an agreement about the broad structure. But as we all know, it is all about the details … and the details are up for debate, for thousands of years. Each temple has a spiritual leader, the rabbi. Rabbis most definitely do not agree with each other about all these details, and they aren’t dictating to their congregants what they are required to believe. There is lots of education, and thus lots of learning, and then people are left to their own processes and conscience to figure it out. At the end of the day, each of us has to determine whether we’re going to behave like a mensch or a schmuck.

There is no The Jews (à la Dave Chappelle). The Jews infers a structure or process that does not exist … anywhere. If there were such a thing as a space laser, The Jews would argue for thousands of years about what it is and whether we should try to use it to cure cancer. If there were the possibility of aiming it, as Marjorie Taylor Green has claimed, there would be no agreement about what we’re supposed to aim it at – other than perhaps Marjorie Taylor Green.

Over the many centuries, so many different rationalizations for killing Jews have emerged. The Church’s Jesus theme was only one of them. It is one of the more important themes, because if you really want to get the peasants clamoring for their pitchforks and axe handles, they killed Christ has been a remarkably effective rallying cry. And the real purpose of this hateful proclamation, espoused by the aristocracy was, hey, look over there at those people who have no way of defending themselves (because we don’t let them have an army or weapons), and not at us who are keeping you poor and subjugated. Please look up the very long and horrible history of scapegoating Jews.

There isn’t anything particularly novel about antisemitism in America. First, as noted about the fear and loathing of the other, America has hated every group that arrives. Chinese, Japanese, Irish, Italians; every new group who made their way to America was disliked and distrusted. The irony, of course, is that all of us arrived at one time or another. The Native Americans were the first to come to the Americas, and they lived here without our interference for thousands of years. While we were stealing their land and their way of life, we also hated them as we have every other group. And while we were bringing slaves here to the Americas, we weren’t even considering these people as human. Our indigenous peoples were at least considered a smidgen more human than Africans. Our constitution and bill of rights has always been aspirational.

Ken Burns recently had a PBS series on America during the Holocaust. It is a good resource to understand the virulence of antisemitism in America. America doesn’t have a very long history, but antisemitism has existed from our very beginnings. You don’t have to dig very deep to see the evidence everywhere. People are quick to point out Washington’s letter to the Jews in Rhode Island to demonstrate how welcoming America has been to Jews. That’s great. But for every indication of welcoming, there are so many more examples of the distrust, the prejudice and the discrimination toward Jews. These sentiments have always been evidenced by some segment of the wealthy and powerful in America. I sure hope the Ford Motor Company has special programs to fight antisemitism, because their founder sure propagated a ton of this crap.

Jews don’t own the banks. We don’t run the media. Jewish people generally share an incredibly strong value on education. It is drilled into our heads from the earliest age. While playing with your Lincoln logs, your parents are talking to you about the importance of scoring well on the SATs. Study and education goes on for a lifetime. You can’t have enough education. I have been saving for my grandchildren’s college educations from before each of them were born. I don’t give them birthday presents; I put money into their college funds. Five minutes after their birthday parties, they don’t remember who gave them what. If I can get them through college without loans, they’ll remember me for longer than five minutes. Consistent with my values, that is the legacy I would like to leave for them. Many Jewish people have received a lot of education and have therefore gone into the professions. A lot of Jewish people became entrepreneurs and started their own businesses. When my grandmother came to America, her family moved to Columbus. She used to tell me that when she was growing up, Mr. Lazarus was selling odd shoes out of a horse drawn cart. Lazarus became the largest and most prominent department store in central Ohio. This happened a lot, in the largest cities and in the smallest towns.

For many centuries in Europe, Jews were not allowed to own land. To find a way to live, they went into the cities and developed work that they were permitted by the greater, and often hostile society. The Church did not allow its own people to be money lenders. Society needed money lending for all the same reasons as exist today (think banks and mortgage companies). Bada boom, bada boom, there are Jews that became money lenders. And then the Jews were hated for being money lenders. That’s not very nice. The Jewish people have gravitated toward the professions that were permitted by the greater society.

Well, in America, there has always been discrimination against Jews in hiring. When Jews were not allowed to join prominent law firms or physician’s practices or large established businesses, they started their own. Jews were forced to do so because of this discrimination. And then Jews are hated for being successes in these professions or for having successful businesses. That’s not nice in so many ways.

I encourage you to read Jay Michaelson’s article in Rolling Stone entitled: There Are Lots of Jews in Hollywood. Let a Rabbi Explain Why. (December 11. 2022).

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/jews-in-hollywood-kanye-west-dave-chappelle-rabbi-explains-1234645366/amp/

Michaelson’s article does a great job of explaining how discrimination against Jews has resulted in all these successes in the professions, in entertainment and in business that have been turned on its head and manifested as prejudice. It’s amazing … but again, nothing new.

We killed Jesus. We own the banks. We own the media. We’re too powerful. We’re too wealthy. You don’t have to look far or dig too deep to come up with reasons to hate Jews. All of it is centuries old. That it is irrational is pretty much irrelevant. It has become a part of the fabric of American culture, and it is passed down from generation to generation. For people who don’t have the opportunity or don’t take the opportunity to have their virulent misconceptions challenged, it is just duck soup to perpetuate and disseminate this hate.

Hating Jews is learned. How do you stop Jewish hate? Stop teaching it.

Most of the banks are owned by Christians. Most of the media is owned by Christians. Most of the wealth in America is held by Christians. I don’t hate Christians. I do, however, resent that Christians make me celebrate Christmas starting the day after Halloween. Hating Christians would be irrational, unreasonable and, honestly, thoughtless (which feels like a kinder description than moronically stupid).

Allow me a very personal perspective. All my grandparents came to America from Eastern Europe. They came with nothing, primarily because they were fleeing for their lives. They didn’t know English; they had no education or trade. They literally came with the clothes on their backs. My father’s father worked at a gas station during the depression. He and my grandmother had six children and they were dirt poor. My grandfather died of a heart attack underneath a car while he was working on it. My grandmother had to go to work in a factory to support herself and her family. There was no social safety net. As a senior, my grandmother lived in subsidized housing and used food stamps. My mother’s father started a tailor business with an Italian man. My Zadie made the pants; his partner made the jackets. They worked 80 hours a week to make a living. All my uncles served in the military during World War II and came home and worked in the trades. One of my uncles went to work for the post office. My father was the only one of my uncles or aunts who went to college (on the GI Bill). He got a business degree from Western Reserve. He never was able to get a good job because he came back from the war sick, and he had a difficult time finding employment in a large company - because he was a Jew. All my cousins and my brother and sister and I went to college. We inherited nothing because there was nothing to inherit. I went to school on grants and loans, and then received teaching associateships to go through graduate school. My brother and I have doctorates. My sister has a master’s degree. What we have, we’ve earned. Almost all the Jewish people I grew up with and those who have been my friends in adulthood share similar stories to what I have described. None of them own banks. None of them are media moguls. They are all highly educated.

I’ve had colleagues in the past who assumed that I had everything handed to me on a silver platter, because I’m a Jew. We all have money. When I hear it, I’m never quiet about it. I push back because it angers me. The assumption that I didn’t have to work as hard as them, really pisses me off, and they hear about it. If we are silent, we allow these prejudices to continue. When I hear someone use the term ‘to Jew down,’ I push back. I explain what it means and where it comes from, and I ask them to never use it. I’m nice about it because almost always, they have no idea what they’re saying. But we can’t be silent.

Before the mentally ill Donald Trump began his run for president, America was in a much better place than where we are today. If people who have horrible conceptions of Jews are discouraged from sharing their dangerous ideas, then no one hears them. If fewer and fewer people hear these ideas, then those who hold these notions begin to feel isolated in this thinking. Most importantly, if children don’t hear these ideas from their parents as a part of their socialization, they don’t learn them from the most important role models in their lives. And if there is an economic and social cost for spewing venom, for instance as punishment in the workplace or being criticized or ostracized by a group of friends, there is going to be some thought given to saying stupid stuff out loud.

Trump didn’t invent antisemitism. Here’s what he did. He normalized Jew hate. He gave antisemites the green light to spew their venom far and wide and to act out in some frightening ways. His relationship with David Duke, with Ye, with white supremacists – I’m not going to review the guy’s greatest Jew-hating hits. If you aren’t familiar, please read a book and/or a newspaper.

It is constantly pointed out that the former president can’t be antisemitic because his daughter, son in law and grandchildren are Jewish. That is totally unconvincing. Just watch the nut bag. His antisemitism is unmistakable and out in the open, just as all his maniacal behavior is out there for all to see. That Jared and Ivanka are silent is their shame to carry. In trying to make sense of their failure to call him out, I believe that their greed forces them into silence in the same way that the GOP has been forced into silence by their unmitigated lust for power (and therefore wealth – they go hand in hand).

Jared and Ivanka, your dad is a mentally ill and dangerous nut. Woody Allen used to be my culture hero. I admired his perspective on life and loved his work. As his very weird behavior came to light, I let him go. You can’t be a culture hero if your behavior is so out of whack with acceptable values. You guys can do it. You can dig yourselves out of the unethical and immoral hole you are wallowing in. You can be decent human beings and ask him to stop allowing yourselves to be the rationale for not being what he clearly is. I don’t think you can be a good Jew and be quiet about this.

What Trump accomplished was to remove the negative consequences people could experience by either acting on their hate of Jews or espousing their insane and dangerous ideas. Jews will not replace us. What are we going to replace you with? Educated people who don’t hate the other? Morons. Anyone who felt isolated because they only heard the Jew hate from the other crack pots playing soldier out in the woods while stockpiling their ammunition, raisons, and bottled water, now felt perfectly okay about marching down the street with their tiki torches shouting out Jew hate. He gave them permission. He also gave permission for every Jew hater out there to say their stupid and dangerous stuff to their children. So much for teach your children well.

Everyone who voted for Trump is not antisemitic … but he does get all the antisemites. And clearly, there are a lot of them! There are so many of them that the vast majority of the Republican party is afraid to alienate them and so they remain silent about the Jew hate. The stuff they say to rationalize what Trump does is dangerous. They have become so corrupted by power that they are willing to risk the lives of people in this country who are the targets of the white supremacists. This lust for power and wealth will destroy us. Consolidated wealth and power are entirely antithetical to democracy and what a free-market economy and a free society are supposed to be. We’re not going to have them both. Those are just the facts.

And it is important to point out that if you vote for Trump or others that espouse and permit this kind of antisemitism, you are complicit. Beyond all his immoral and unethical behavior, so much of what he has done is illegal. He belongs in prison, not in the White House.

When considering the possibility that McCarthy could return the likes of Marjorie Taylor Green or Paul Gosar back into positions of power, I don’t become fearful; I become angry. Their ideas are not just whacky; they are dangerous. McCarthy is not alone. Unfortunately, his entire party has been silent so as not to alienate the sizable Jew hating portion of their base. They can’t run on ideas or ways to help the American people, so they need to consolidate their hold on the most unseemly constituency in America. The Republicans held the White House and both the House and Senate and couldn’t come up with a single piece of legislation to fix our incredibly broken health care system. They voted against the affordable care act (Obama Care) more than 20 times. They had the opportunity to fix our immigration system. Nothing. It is easier to complain about it and blame others. They forced a supreme court on all of us that is bound and determined to foist their own religious beliefs on all the American people, while totally ignoring the incredible religious diversity of the American people, including the many who practice no religion. So much for the First Amendment. They ran up the largest debt and deficits in American history while giving the sweetest tax breaks to the wealthiest among us. They’ve shown us what they are going to do with power. You give them power at your own risk. They have no agenda, so they have to rely on the dangerous nuts that love Trump and his disgusting prejudices toward the other.

Most of the republicans have remained silent about Trump hosting a couple of monumental antisemites for dinner at his home. Some of them have finally gotten around to condemning his action. You should be jumping out of your shoes to condemn his accepting these people into his life after announcing his candidacy for president. That it took a week for some of them to speak up does not cause me any great comfort. They are focused on weighing their response against their hold on power as opposed to acting from any sense of morality. Their silence is despicable.

The whole Ye thing is just crazy. I’m glad that he is paying an economic cost for his Jew hate. People who hate Jews also hate Blacks. This is such an important piece of the American puzzle for us to get a handle on. When I see Jews involved in supporting Trump, I feel so much disgust. I feel the same way when I see Blacks supporting him. What you have to ignore to be able to find your way to support this bigot is unfathomable to me. Trump is not just some hateful nutbag who means to do harm to people. He was and wants to be president of the United States where he has the means to actually harm people. Why would you be okay with this?

I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating. When I was a young boy, I remember driving in the car with my father through a neighborhood not far from where we lived. He told me that Blacks and Jews were not able to buy homes in that area. It was in the deed restrictions that a home could not be sold to a Black or Jewish person. People who hate Jews also hate Blacks. Blacks and Jews. Jews and Blacks. We’re interchangeable for the white supremacist maniacs. When I hear Jewish people say something derogatory about a Black person, it makes my stomach turn. When I hear a Black person say something derogatory about Jewish people, it makes me sad. We came to this place in America in such different ways, and our histories and experiences in America have been so very different.

But we know how it feels to be marginalized, to feel the hurts from prejudice and the real pain of discrimination. We have fought together in America for the same cause. It was seen in the young Jewish people who were killed in Mississippi while trying to register Black people to vote. It was seen in the relationship between the Reverend Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. It was seen in the Jews who served as members and in leadership positions in the NAACP. We have shared this civil rights partnership for a very long time. Yo, Ye, you are confused, and your confusion is dangerous.

Michael Eric Dyson reached the following conclusion in an essay he wrote for the NY Times:

Ye, Irving and the rest of us would do well to remember that African Americans and Jews are passengers on the same ship facing the ferocious headwinds of bigotry and hatred. The author and psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon said he learned to be “responsible in my body and soul for the fate reserved for my brother,” understanding that “the antisemite is inevitably a Negrophobe.” That is a lesson we should all learn. (NY Times, November 20, 2022)

Social media accelerates and magnifies the stupidity. And the stations and websites that propagate the hate contribute substantially to the danger. Some of this is driven by real hate and some of it is driven by greed. Where the motive for participation comes from is irrelevant because it results in the same phenomena. People are being hurt or killed. Lives are at risk. We see it every day. I have armed guards in my synagogue any time there is a reason for us to congregate. This hate is being acted on and manifested daily. The mentally ill maniac has removed any of the reticence that existed among these confused and ignorant or dangerous people. What was being achieved slowly but incrementally through education and economic and social consequences was destroyed by his support of these people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the history of my people while reading The Source, while watching the news every night, and while thanking the police who are armed to the teeth in my temple lobby. How do you know when it is time to go? In the entire history of the Jewish people, we’ve been forced to leave almost everywhere. In some cases, we were warned. In other cases, the warning came at the same time we were being slaughtered. In all cases, it wasn’t any great surprise. For one thing, this hate and killing is as much a part of our history as the Passover Sedar. So many of our holidays, in fact, are remembrances of one or the other of these horrible events or series of horrible events. We remember. We always remember those who have lost their lives for no other reason than being a Jew.

So, when Ferdinand and Isabella threaten conversion or death, who should be surprised? How many pogroms have to take place in Tetieve Russia/Ukraine before it becomes apparent that it is no longer a safe place for a Jew. How many lives had to be destroyed or people killed in Poland or France or the Netherlands or Germany before people concluded that living meant fleeing.

No one ever wants to leave home. No one is looking for the kind of adventure that fleeing involves. No one really knows how they are going to live … they only know that they want to live and that they want to save the lives of their family. Ellis Island was filled with the stories of people who weren’t drawn here by economic opportunity or democracy, although both ideas are very nice. They were literally fleeing for their lives.

In every one of these cases, some people get it figured out. If they didn’t, there would no longer be Jews. And there are Jews. Not a lot of us, relatively speaking, but we remain in existence after thousands of years. We continue to exist by virtue of our stubborn adherence to our way of life and our beliefs. We continue to exist because enough of us know when it is time to pack the kiddish cup, the tallis and the baseball card collection.

I have no doubt that the notion of home is so strong and so compelling that the signs of danger have to be right up in one’s face before thinking about the suitcase. Change and the unknown represents an enormous barrier to a decision to leave. The power of rationalization must be so incredibly strong.

It can’t happen here. This is the home of Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. We aren’t savages here. How could a civilization with our history and our culture possibly kill all their Jewish citizens? Our history teaches us that holding on for dear life to the notion that it can’t happen here is a death sentence.

Is America immune from humanity’s past over all these thousands of years. Are Americans a different kind of human being from all those who have lived across the centuries and across the globe. Should we feel safer here than we have in all those places where they ultimately lost their homes or for too many, their lives. If that is the case, perhaps Americans could possibly be a different subspecies of Homo sapiens.

So unfortunately, I do not believe we are any different. It can be as natural for us to distrust the other as our ancestors who lived in caves many thousands of years ago. We indiscriminately slaughter in the streets every day. Sometimes we blast away in a synagogue or a Black church or a grocery store or a gay nightclub. We slaughter the marginalized in the same ways that it is done in other places. And few countries allow the average Joe to own an unlimited number of guns, rifles, and ammunition as we do here. Perhaps we are the only place that allows this … which by the way is totally nuts. One of these days, we might stop ignoring what a well-regulated militia means. Or maybe not.

Now, you can say that some of the killing sprees that go on in other countries (Russia, China, Iran, Syria …) are carried out or supported formally by a government. But my response would be that Donald Trump was President of the United States and will be running again in 2024 … and he is going to be allowed to run as far as I can tell. He doesn’t carry the weapons, primarily because he is also a coward. But he carries the ideas, and he offers up the accelerant. What’s the difference? You might see this differently, but if you do, there are good odds that you are not a Jew, Black or gay.

Should we count on Kevin McCarthy to save us? How about Jim Jordan or Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas. Or how about Marjorie Taylor Green or Rashida Tlaib? These are officials who are significant parts of our government. Can we count on any of them? Is Elon Musk going to become a champion to save us? How about Tucker Carlson? Can we count on him to defuse antisemitism? You can’t be any more mainstream than our Congress people, supreme court justices and nationally recognized media professionals. Our government and our media and our social media are loaded to the gills with people who want to do us harm or for whatever reason will be silent (complicit) about our existence.

The rise in antisemitism in America is highly concerning. But what has made this situation so much more dangerous is the mainstreaming and normalizing of antisemitism. We have had the president of the United States using hate as a vehicle to create support for his political ambitions. And we have one of the major political parties going along with these dangerous antics to support their own political ambitions. At their worst, they are plugged into the most destructive conspiracy theories and at their best, they are silent (and therefore, complicit). While antisemitism (and racism) is as American as apple pie, we’ve entered an entirely new era of threats to minorities by having such a significant portion of our government involved in this virulent behavior.

So, how and when do we decide that it is too dangerous to remain. We are not in unchartered territory. The Jewish people have been through this very same situation throughout our existence almost everywhere on the face of the earth. When does the rationalizing and the denying stop and the packing begin. When do we stop saying not here and not to us?

I don’t have the answers to these questions anymore than my grandparents had those answers or all my ancestors who experienced these same horrible decisions. My grandparents made the decision to leave while their family members were being killed. I’m sorry their decisions weren’t made sooner, but that’s usually how it goes for most people across the ages. Leaving home usually means the decisions are made too late for some if not most.

I’m sure not looking to my state government to save us. I truly believe that anything is possible in Ohio. I had the opportunity to closely observe our legislature for more than 30 years. It has always been a cesspool. Of late, it has become an even more toxic cesspool. If you have a fondness for democracy, Ohio never fails to disappoint. Our state is gerrymandered to the extreme. Our state supreme court handed down a decision that the legislature’s redistricting maps were unconstitutional – more than once. The chief justice was a Republican. The redistricting was unable to be resolved before the election, so we just voted using maps that suck (and are unconstitutional – details, details). Guess how the elections turned out in my ruby red state. I’m not at all certain that our governor is a vertebrate. We have Jim Jordan and now we have J.D. Vance. If Jews need any kind of protecting on the state level, I’m going to be searching for my safe place in the woods.

On the day that I am writing this, the following headline appeared in the Columbus Dispatch:

Ohio House passes bill to prohibit cities from stopping gun sales during riots

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/2022/12/01/

Please, read that headline more than once. We are amazing here. I have little doubt that the senate will pass it and that the governor will sign it. OH … IO.

The antisemitism on the right makes me angry. The antisemitism on the left is demoralizing. On more than one occasion, Trump has admonished American Jews for not voting for him. He claims that he’s done more for Israel than any president in the entire history of the US. Donald, we don’t vote for you because you’re a fascist who has no respect for our democracy or freedom; you are a bigot, a racist and antisemitic; your treatment of women is deplorable; you have no interest in doing anything for the American people; you are driven by greed, and I can’t think of anyone who is as narcissistic as you. And you are a crook. This mish mash of the American Jewish community and Israel is the basis of much of the antisemitism that emanates from the left. We are accused of a dual loyalty to the US and Israel. And we are held accountable for Israeli politics and policies.

There are many excellent articles and books which document this antisemitism on the left. I would encourage you to at least read two articles from the NY Times which do a good job of covering this issue. Both are opinion pieces.

Anti-Semitism and What Feeds It: Two years after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, the oldest hatred is flourishing across the political spectrum, by Bret Stephen (Oct. 26, 2020).

Anti-Semitism at My University, Hidden in Plain Sight, by Benjamin Gladstone (October 1, 2016).

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss was published in 2019. Her chapters on The Left and on Radical Islam are excellent in treating this subject. I highly recommend her book.

There is much to criticize about the Israeli government. I have my own concerns and particularly with the hard right turn they’ve taken in their last election. But I can find lots to critique in so many governments, including our own. I’m a Native American specialist. I could wax philosophic on the monumentally deplorable history of our nation in the treatment of these tribes, and that would include all of what goes on today. If we have an interest in identifying and ranking all the nations in the world as to how they treat their diverse communities, we could come up with a pretty long list before we got to Israel. And yet, Israel gets singled out in a unique way, and particularly by the left. If people want to boycott companies that operate in countries where their people are mistreated and worse, why not start with China or Saudi Arabia (or would that be against our economic interests, i.e., could you live without your iPhone)?

These are such dangerous times. We can only hope and pray that there are enough American people who vote for morality and the America that represents our highest ideals. Until those who lust for power come to believe that their association with the underbelly of our society causes them more political harm than help, we’re going to experience this struggle between good and evil. If the American people can’t bring us to this place, it will ultimately become time to pack our bags. Even here … in these United States of America. From a lifetime of observations, I don’t think when compared to the rest of the world, we’re all that special.

There have been so many Jews killed for so many years for no good reason. We’re dangerous because we breathe. I wonder if the evil morons ever consider how many great pieces of art and music they’ve destroyed, the potential cures for cancer and other medical breakthroughs, advancements in science and technology and the social sciences. It really boggles the mind to consider all the potential lost and all the families disappeared from this very long history of ignorance and hate.

We do live in a different world than the world my grandparents and all my ancestors lived in. We have the state of Israel and Israel has the law of return. We have a place to go. As hard as it would be to leave my home and my country, I am grateful for a place to go. This place to escape is so much more than many of my family members had; and too many of them paid the price with their lives because of it. Dear Mr. Netanyahu, please don't cock it up.

Not here. I’m not so sure.

Fall 2022

We had a spectacular fall in central Ohio with warm temperatures and lots of days with no rain. I had great opportunities to get out to shoot during my favorite season.

Boyer Nature Preserve

Cedar Bog Nature Preserve

Hard Road Park

Highbanks Metroparks

Inniswoods Metrogardens

Olentangy Trail

Happy Chanukah