The Beginning of the End

Professor Robert Wistrich, one of the world’s leading experts on anti-Semitism, laments that Jewish life in Europe is “finished,” dying “a slow death.”
 
In a recent Times of Israel article, he predicts that Jewish life in postwar Europe will come to an end within just two or three decades. In his view, it seems the current wave of European anti-Semitism will finish off the long history of the Jews in Europe that began when the First Temple in Jerusalem still stood.
 
Which is why he urges Jews to get out now.
 
“Any clear-sighted and sensible Jew, who has a sense of history, would understand that this is the time to get out,” Wistrich, who heads the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitismat the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,said. He added that European anti-Semitic “trends are far more powerful than people even begin to understand.”
 
And with today’s Europe so polluted with hatred for both Israel and Jews, I would argue that the United States is not too far behind.
 
In fact, by the look of things, the great golden age of American Jewry has already begun to end.
 
Throughout the ages, Jewish life in many countries experienced a golden age, a time of great prosperity and social acceptance. Yet perhaps nowhere else in history has the Jews enjoyed such a glorious golden age of economic, political and social achievement as in the United States where the majority of diaspora Jews live today.
 
Yet in Jewish history, every golden age is followed by destruction. And there are signs that the Jewish golden age in America has already begun its decline.
 
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s latest annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, the number of anti-Semitic acts in America is “at a disturbing level.” These include incidents of vandalizing Jewish property, school bullying and physical assaults that are “reported in significant numbers.”
 
What the audit doesn’t include is the explosion of vile anti-Semitic slurs, threats and images on websites, social networking sites and blogs. This outbreak of Internet Jew hatred, in the words of the Anti-Defamation League, “demonstrates that anti-Semitism in America is a serious and enduring problem.”
 
And then there are the little things that show that the American golden age today isn’t so golden.
 
Little things like the Internal Revenue Service singling out Jewish and pro-Israel nonprofits for extra scrutiny when applying for tax-exempt status.
 
Or like the majority of “mainline” Protestant churches in America adopting anti-Israel resolutions (these churches claim many members from Congress).
 
Or like a syndicated crossword puzzle appearing in several major newspapers across America that used “Jew” as the correct answer for the anti-Semitic reference, “Shylock.”
 
Or like the anti-Israel summer camps and institutes in Chicago and New York indoctrinating children as young as eight years old to hate Israel and teaching college students how to boycott Israel.
 
Or like Jews on U.S. college campuses being targeted by Muslim and anti-Israel groups founded by terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
 
Or like senior Obama administration advisors inviting radical Islamic preacher Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah to the White House for meetings in June. (Bin Bayyah, by the way, is a leaderof the International Union of Muslim Scholars, an organization that supports Hamas, calls for the end of Israel and whose founder publicly prayed for Allah to allow Muslims to commit the next Holocaust of the Jews.)
 
Or like President Obama picking Samantha Power as the U.S.’s next ambassador at the UN. (Samantha Power, a notorious critic of Israel, once suggested that the U.S. should sacrifice “billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel's military, but actually investing in the state of Palestine.")
 
Or like the White House canceling this year’s annual Jewish American Heritage Month celebration because of “sequester cut backs” — but keeping celebrations for St. Patrick’s Day, Memphis soul music and a major league soccer team.
 
No matter how seemingly trivial some of these may sound, they are all wake-up calls.
 
And we can choose to ignore these signs that we Jews have started to fall out of favor in the U.S., which in turn makes us especially vulnerable in an increasingly hostile atmosphere. Or we can choose to start thinking about getting out and making Aliyah before things get much worse, just as they have in Europe.
 
What makes the end of this golden age different from the others throughout our long exile is that we now have a homeland to welcome us. We have the good fortune of living in a miraculous age where there are now more Jews living in Israel than in any other country.
 
But if we can’t yet leave for Israel, we can at least choose to use these events in the meantime to strengthen ourselves — as well as those around us — with emuna, with the belief that these wake-up calls are from G-d, that they’re really for our best and that no one can harm us without G-d’s permission.
 
The golden age of Jewish life in America isn’t all that old. It only began after World War Two, nearly 70 years ago. Yet no matter how assimilated and accomplished the majority of American Jews are today, it seems like we’re heading into reverse.
 
It seems that America is on the road to becoming as dangerous as Europe.
 
And that doesn’t sound like much of a golden age.