To be Jewish in America these days is disturbing, even for those of us fortunate enough to have lived mostly free of antisemitic slurs or worse.
Sensitive gentile friends are prone to note their recent astonishment and dismay at the rising level of openly anti-Jewish speech and actions.
For us here at the Greenville hobby farm, we call Shalom Acres – Shalom meaning peace in Hebrew – such concern is comforting, not just for the show of support, but for reminding us that despite the savagery against Israel’s people on Oct. 7, civility still plays a role in the world.
That’s why we stand strong with Israel, while also feeling heartache for Palestinian civilians whom Hamas set up to die in an inevitable Israeli response against barbarism beyond imagination.
Judaic doctrine contains a pillar of support for such compassion. The Talmud, a primary source of Jewish theology, recounts an ancient lesson that is suddenly contemporary.
You don’t grow up Jewish without hearing at each Passover seder how God parted the Red Sea, giving Moses and his people a route to freedom while the pursuing Egyptians drowned.
And here’s the kicker: Exuberant over the good fortune of the Hebrews, angels prepared to break into song. But God silenced them, declaring, “How dare you sing for joy when my creatures are dying.”
We are mindful of that – but mindful as well of the senior Hamas official who recently declared that his murderous following will attack “again and again” until Israel is obliterated.
Our friends ask, how did a time come, in our own land, when such abhorrent exclamations find support?
On the streets and on university campuses, what were once unspoken thoughts or whispers have turned to shouts and violence.
History, even in many of our own lifetimes, teaches that thoughts and whispers are the way it starts. This is why we should examine what our former and wannabe president contributed to the volatile mix a few weeks before the Hamas attack when antisemitism was already increasing.
On his social media site, Truth Social, he shared a 2018 post from JEXIT, an organization that encourages American Jews to leave the Democratic Party.
This is what the former president, on a Jewish holiday (as was the attack on Israel), felt the American people should hear: “Liberal Jews” who did not support him in 2020 “voted to destroy America & Israel.”
One might steal a line from an incisive columnist, the late Molly Ivins, when in 1992 she wrote of Pat Buchanan’s right-wing rant at the GOP Convention: “It probably sounded better in the original German.”
Indeed, the original German comes close to the JEXIT post in a 1925 book of certain notoriety, Mein Kampf:
“Hence it is that at the present time the Jew is the great agitator for the complete destruction of Germany.”
Such are the poisonous mutterings that, whether supported or merely unchallenged, can mutate into so much more.
As for those angels of antiquity, we get that their time was not one for joyful song.
But for the human experience reflected in what we see gathering now, ours is no time for silence.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.