By
William A. Gralnick
Let’s begin with the facts. American Jews represent barely more than 2.7% of America’s population. That’s roughly 5.5 million people out of 330 million. Worldwide the number is approximately 15 million not the 25-50 million so often thought. It is a population older than the median American population that is failing to reproduce itself, averaging about 1.7 children per family. It wouldn’t be called an endangered species yet, but is highly sensitive to that danger.
Picture credit public domain pictures
If you subtracted the Jewish population from greater New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and South Florida, there would be a mere smattering of Jews in the country. That means if you’re looking for Jewish culture, it is easy to find. If you are looking to sustain it, not so much.
To American Jews, the Holocaust is not only a horrid memory but also an obligation to never forget. Research has shown that even to the third generation of those six million (now likely over 7 million according to new research discoveries), there is a negative psychological impact. Jews feel in their bones that it can happen again. The news of the world tells that story every day. But for a Jew, there is a special nerve that twitches when neo-Nazis march, when a candidate for governor self-labels as a Nazi, when candidates at every level of government speak out about this being made into a Christian country, and a presidential candidate says that if he loses it probably will be the fault of the Jews. All of this is taking place in an environment of actively growing anti-Semitism here and abroad.
Picture credit public domain pictures
Then there is Israel. As I edit this, rockets from Iran are raining down on Israel; Jews are glued to radios and TVs for the news with fear in their hearts so, it is only semi-cute to say Israel is in a bad neighborhood. Again the numbers. Israel is the size of the state of Rhode Island. To drive its length takes roughly 9 hours. It is eight miles wide at its narrowest point. A Moslem state touches its every border; it is hemmed in well over 100 million Muslim people and the Mediterranean Sea. Israel has been attacked multiple times by Arab armies since its founding. A non-contiguous Moslem country, a near-nuclear Iran, now threatens its current existence. Frankly, to live in Israel is probably to need a psychiatrist and a ready store of anti-anxiety medication.
It is a complex place, Israel. There are Jews who live in Israel who don’t believe Israel is a legitimate state. They believe only the Messiah can establish the state. They live there while they wait. They are others who might be best understood by comparing them to Evangelical Christians. They believe every word of the Hebrew Bible and Talmud is the word of G-d. They believe current Israel and what is known as the occupied territories were given to the Jewish people by G-d. Whether one believes that or not, archeologists have found undeniable evidence of Jewish presence in the land going back over 4,000 years. The fact of the matter is that the first people to be called Palestinians were the Jews who exited from Egypt.
Picture credit public domain pictures
While a powerhouse of modern technology, Israel is a desert nation that learned how to turn the desert green. Still, there are many cities in Israel where you can get run over by the latest model car or knocked to the ground by a badly driven camel. Some say the national bird of Israel is the crane, as in construction crane, yet in almost every part of the country, goods can be seen being moved around on the backs of donkeys.
Another fact is that when England gave up its mandate and the United Nations created a territorial allocation of the land, the current Palestinians were given a state of contiguous land larger than what they are now fighting for. Their Moslem brother states gaslighted them with the promise to push Israel into the sea (no,that’s not a new threat—or wish) and give all the land to the Palestinians. That didn’t work out so well for the Palestinians, or the aggressors either. Did the Israelis act with anger and vengeance towards Arab Muslims within its borders during that first war? Yes. Has it defied political logic and Biblical law in governing Arabs? Yes. But don’t lose sight of the other facts. Israel survives and thrives against all odds. If you were in Las Vegas, you wouldn’t have bet on survival.
It is complex in other ways too. The three Abrahamic religions were all birthed there and maintain some of their holiest places almost within spitting distance of one another. And the verb fits what often goes on between the adherents.
Now we come to the current Middle East mess. Yes, it too is complicated. I have very strong feelings about the current political situation in Israel. I think Bibi Netanyahu is the worst thing that has happened to the Jews since Hamen (look it up). But I both love Israel and feel an obligation towards her. I’ve been to Israel over a dozen times. I spent 33 years of my career working for an American Jewish organization. I revere my faith, even if I could do better practicing it. And I believe Jews, as they have done throughout history, have as yet great and unaccomplished things to do in the role God gave us as a light unto the nations. And that dear reader is my problem, and the problem of the American Jew.
Let us begin with America, then go to Europe, and finally return to Israel. America has been for Jews, as for many others, the greatest place on earth to live and prosper, but let us think what many think is unthinkable. Let us see the end of the American democratic republic. Let us say we become a Christian nation, one with widespread censorship, and one where Jews are attacked by one part of that political spectrum and become “protected” people by the other.
We’ve seen that before. The period before the Holocaust, the passage of the Nuremberg Laws culminating in Kristallnacht, gives a picture of Jews persecuted by the right. In Moslem countries Jews had “special status” but they could not walk on the same side of the street as an on-coming Muslim. As for Christians, they won’t take us back to having to light Sabbath candles in the dark of a basement but they will isolate us from the mainstream, make our children pray in school, and in every way emphasize the “old” in what they thoughtlessly call the Old Testament. Many Jews will leave. If enough go that will leave fewer to politically protect those that stay. But go where? Europe, from where so many fled?
The political right is on the rise in Western Europe. In Austria, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the European Parliament the right has made notable gains. In England, the right-winger Nigel Farage, who was a long political failure, won a seat in Parliament. It continues to simmer in Eastern Europe where historian Lucy Davidovich once said children are fed anti-Semitism in their mother’s milk. Latin America?
It is ironic how many Latino Jews have lived with packed suitcases under their beds to be ready to flee to America. Now come the questions: will they go back and should other Jews follow? Here are some hints. There once were a half million Jews in Argentina. Now the number is more than halved. Argentina is infected by the lasting influence of the Nazis to whom it gave a post-war home. Then there is Argentina’s politics that still, 30 years later, turn a mostly blind eye to the bombing of the Jewish Center in Buenos Aires. Read this from AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) written four years ago, “Twenty-six years ago this month, Iran demonstrated its deadly terrorist reach in Argentina.”
“On July 18, 1994, in Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack ever, a truck bomb exploded near the Argentine Mutual Israelite Association (AMIA) Jewish community center building in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and injuring hundreds more. The Lebanon-based Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah, at the instruction of Iran’s top leadership and under the supervision of Iranian diplomats and intelligence officers, carried out the bombing.”
Picture credit public domain pictures
“Iran’s formation of terrorist networks around the world—which continue to expand to this day, particularly in South America—made the bombing possible.” Writing for the History Channel, Christofer Klein said, After Allied forces defeated Germany in World War ll, Europe became a difficult place to be associated with Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. Thousands of Nazi officers, high-ranking party members and collaborators—including many notorious war criminals—escaped across the Atlantic, finding refuge in South America, particularly in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil.”
“Argentina, for one, was already home to hundreds of thousands of German immigrants and had maintained close ties to Germany during the war. After 1945, Argentine President Juan Perón, himself drawn to fascist ideologies, enlisted intelligence officers and diplomats to help establish “rat lines,” or escape routes via Spanish and Italian ports, for many in the Third Reich. Also giving aid: the Vatican in Rome, which in seeking to help Catholic war refugees also facilitated fleeing Nazis—sometimes knowingly, sometimes not.”
Nor were Jews spared in the period of the “desaparecidos,” the disappeared ones, when people well, just disappeared, most never to show up again. From England’s The Guardian, we have this: “Jews were a prime target of Argentina’s self-styled “Western and Christian” military dictatorship during the “dirty war” of the late 1970s, accounting for a disproportionate number of the thousands of “disappearances”, a report has confirmed.”
“The 196-page report presented to the Spanish judge Baltazar Garzán in Madrid on the sufferings of Argentina’s more than 300,000 Jews during the dictatorship that lasted from 1976 to 1983 also reveals that at least two international Jewish organisations requested support from the governments of Brazil and the United States in case an evacuation of Argentine Jews proved necessary.”
“Jews represented more than 12 per cent of the victims of the military regime while constituting under 1 per cent of Argentina’s population,” said Juan Pablo Jaroslavsky of the Barcelona-based Commission of Solidarity with Relatives of the Disappeared (Cosofam), which presented the report this month.”
There is no room for a country-by-country exposition on the subject. Here’s one example. I met a Guatemalan Jewish leader who had in his garage the door from his car. It was his souvenir from a fortunately failed assassination attempt. No, it is unlikely Jews can or should head to Latin America. So, you see, unless Jews stay here in America the only other exit sign points to Israel.
Picture credit public domain pictures
Another irony. The first time a Jew goes to Israel they have an experience similar to the one so many Blacks have when they visit Africa. When an American Jew is talking on the street or in a restaurant about Christians that Jew often instinctively tends to speak in lower and guarded terms. That continues for a while in Israel until there’s a sheepish realization that almost everyone around you is Jewish just like Blacks don’t have to adjust their vocal and body language for being surrounded by whites because almost everyone around them is Black.
The last best hope then is Israel which could, if lost, be the end of the Jewish people as a people remaining just a remnant of what was until the last Jew remembers to turn out the light as he or she leaves the synagogue.
That is then the obligation; it is a sacred one.
And that is why, per capita, there are more Jewish psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers than any other group in America and more Jews per capita as their patients. Truthfully, I don’t know that as I fact, but I’d bet a lot on it being true, which is why the Jewish comedian has shaped the humor of America.
————————————————————————————————————————–
Author and Blogger, William Gralnick’s books and articles can be found at williamgralnickauthor.com and at atleastfrommyperspective.wordpress.com
Comentarios