The American Jewish establishment, as Hunter S. Thompson might have put it, is decadent and depraved. This is an unpleasant thing to say, not to mention rather worrisome, but it is nonetheless the truth, and it is imperative to acknowledge it. The rot set in quite a long time ago, but it reached something of an inflection point in May 2021 during Israel’s brief conflict with Hamas. With astonishing speed, one of the few pogroms in American history broke out in cities across the country from New York to Los Angeles. During the conflict and for months afterwards, Muslim-American thugs intimidated, vandalized, harassed, and physically attacked Jewish individuals, institutions, and businesses — including my father’s shop in Boston, Massachusetts. Moreover, religious, political, and cultural leaders from both the Muslim community and the progressive left denied, minimized, or openly endorsed the pogrom, leaving American Jews — who had long regarded these communities as allies — dumbfounded.
Most dumbfounded of all was the American Jewish establishment. Their reaction was striking because it was, in essence, no reaction whatsoever. They were so shocked and stunned by the outbreak of violence that, for the most part, they simply went silent. Although there were eventually some statements made and lamentations issued, they were obviously the work of people whose brains, to put it crudely, had melted. It was quite clear that the Jewish establishment simply had no idea what to do. As the poet Haim Nahman Bialik wrote more than a century ago, “They stood not firm on the day of wrath.” In response to an outbreak of antisemitic savagery, the establishment acted like the last emperors of Rome, who guzzled vintage wine while the barbarians crested the seven hills of the eternal city. This has terrible implications for the American Jewish community, because if its leaders cannot stand firm on the day of wrath, then it is in serious trouble. It is essential, then, to ask why and how this dereliction of duty occurred.
One reason is ideology. One does not need to be a conservative Republican — and if I lived in America, I would not be one — to recognize the ideological stance of the American Jewish establishment. Indeed, the establishment has identified itself so thoroughly with the progressive left that it has become an object of humor, with American Judaism sometimes mocked as “the Democratic party platform with holidays.” There is nothing per se wrong with being a progressive, but in the case of the May pogrom, it was one of the main reasons the establishment stood not firm. First, the pogrom was committed almost entirely by Muslim-Americans, and on the progressive left, Muslims are considered a caste of holy innocents, victims of horrendous oppression with whom absolute solidarity must be shown in all circumstances. That Muslim-Americans had gone on a rampage of racist violence against the American Jewish community was so utterly dissonant with this ideological stance that it stunned the establishment into silence.
Even more horrifying, one imagines, was the betrayal by the progressive left itself. Decades of alliance, solidarity, and affection had been betrayed within a matter of days, and in the most barbaric manner possible. In a single moment, the establishment discovered that the progressive left’s most treasured values — anti-racism, tolerance, abhorrence of violence and injustice — did not apply to the Jews, and as such, did not apply to the Jewish establishment either. The antisemitism they had only ever seen, or chosen to see, among the deplorables of the American right turned out to live in their own house, and it was punching them in the face. Some of their best friends… Years of friendship and labor turned out to be worthless, repaid with contempt, hatred, and barbarism. That this proved to be impossible for the establishment to fathom is not, perhaps, particularly surprising.
Nor is it surprising that, in response, the establishment resorted to simple denial. They decided to pretend it hadn’t happened, that the day of wrath never occurred. No alliances were severed, no demands were made, no interfaith gatherings were canceled, no political funds were withdrawn, no unified denunciation was signed, no demands for change were conveyed, and no recriminations were forthcoming. Nothing. And there was a reason for this: to have admitted to what actually happened in May 2021 would not just have psychologically destroyed the American Jewish establishment. It would endanger its very existence. The establishment would have had to admit that, for decades, it had been living in a fantasy world; that as a result it had failed in its only real task, which is to protect the American Jewish community; and that the only honorable thing to do was resign and hand the reigns over to more capable people. The establishment had one job, and it could not do it. But this was unthinkable, so it decided that, somehow, it wasn’t true.
But there were deeper forces at work beyond the ideological. There was a systemic dysfunction at the heart of the establishment’s failure, one that has yet to be discussed, and it was essentially a class issue.
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