Editor’s Note: I really didn’t intend for this Substack to be primarily about Jewish concerns. I’d rather talk about a lot of other things most of the time, like American politics, cars and music, but the present circumstances weigh on the mind.
Perhaps you may be wondering about the “Jewish protesters” who occupied the Cannon congressional office building last week, calling for a ceasefire in the war on Israel started by Hamas. They call themselves with high sounding names like Not In Our Name, If Not Now, and Jewish Voice for Peace (see Postscript below). Maybe you also saw video of full-dress Chassidim marching with Palestinian flags.
“There must be some justice to the Palestinian cause, if even Jews support it,” is the message, spoken or unspoken, intended by those publicizing those protests.
Their self-professed Jewish status is used as validation of their pro-Palestinian and anti-Jewish position. That’s quite clear since they almost always preface their criticisms of Israel (and the mainstream Jewish community worldwide which overwhelmingly supports the Jewish state) with “As a Jew…”
It is true that surveys and polls show that about 10% of those who identify as Jews in America support the Palestinian cause. Those people are almost exclusively Jews whose hard-left politics have become their religion. For the most part, they do not adhere to traditional Jewish religious beliefs or practices.
Additionally, there is a tiny minority of strictly orthodox Jews, really a splinter off of another group, Neturei Karta, that has been vocally opposing the secular state of Israel for decades, ostensibly because they are upset in what they see as Zionist Jews trying to force God’s hand as it were to hasten the Jews’ redemption.
You should know that nearly 100% of “modern orthodox” Jews (i.e. the folks at your local Young Israel congregation, and many kippa-wearing Israelis) are Zionists of one form or another. While it is true that many mainstream “black hat” orthodox Jews have some level of ambivalence about the secular nature of the Jewish state the vast majority of orthodox Jews, including the largest Chassidic community, Lubavich/Chabad, support Israel even if they aren’t fabrenter Zionists. The vast majority of orthodox Jews in Israel, of all sorts, participate in the political process.
Just the other day I was at the major fundraising event for my grandson’s yeshiva, which is solidly black hat and I’d even describe many of the families there as chareidi, the term that traditional Jews use for those the general media often describes as “ultra orthodox” (look up the word orthodox and tell me how ultra adds anything other than a disparaging tone). The event started with the Star Spangled Banner, followed by HaTikva, the national anthem of Israel, with many in the audience singing along with both songs.
I’ve seen clips of Chareidi rabbis giving blessings to soldiers in staging areas. The rebbe of the Boyaner Chassidim distributed gifts of inspirational books to soldiers along with chocolates for their wives. Somehow I found that particularly touching. It’s one thing to think of the soldiers who are defending you and yours, it’s another to think of their families back home.
Those gestures of solidarity may seem small but they are significant and are far more representative of strictly orthodox Jews than the pathetic few who march with Palestinians. Of couse they are not as significant as the literally thousands of Chareidi men in Israel who have given up their religious deferments to enlist in the IDF since Oct. 7.
Religious Jewish anti-Zionists are statistically insignificant, but the ten percent of American Jews who support Hamas in this war make up a large enough fraction to be of concern.
Some of the phenomenon is undoubtedly related to the political corruption of our educational system by those on the political left. When California’s official ethnic studies curriculum for the state’s public schools can accurately be described as Jew-hating, it shouldn’t surprise use when high school and college kids march and chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” (i.e. Israel will be eliminated along with its Jewish population) and justify slitting the throats of Jewish babies and burning them alive because they want to hang with all the cool kids. They don’t understand that a keffiyah is a hipster swastika.
Jewish kids can get indoctrinated just as all the other victims of our current miseducation systems do.
However, that 10% of Jews who are Jew-haters is really nothing new. No Jew is perfect and many Jews are far from even good. We have had our share of criminals and gangsters. I’m a Detroiter and the Purple Gang is part of our history here.
Every society has its criminals and dregs but Jewish history also, sadly, has far too many incidences of renegades and apostates who turned on their former community, provoking some of the worst incidences of Jew-hatred ever.
Some, like Pablo Christiani and Nicholas Donin, were driven by the zeal of their conversion to another religion. The provoked censorship of Jewish texts, forced disputations, spread blood libels, and even incited murderous violence.
Others, like those who volunteered to serve in the NKVD’s “Yevsektsia” Jewish section, whose job was primarily to persecute rabbis and traditional Jews living in the Soviet Union, were motivated by emotions other than faith.
Jews living under Nazi occupation served on Judenrats, the sham governing bodies the Germans set up in the ghettos, probably thinking they’d be saving their own lives and those of their close kin. Jews served as kapos, overseers in the concentration camps, often brutally treating other prisoners. While we can philosophically regard those Jews as also Nazi victims, today the words Judenrat and kapo, are about the worst slurs a Jew can use for another Jew.
Perhaps those slurs will come to mind the next time you see Jews supporting those who slaughter us.
There was a time when the term “self-hating Jew” had some currency, in an earlier era when Jews from more traditional backgrounds eagerly tried to shed any sign of being a member of the tribe. I’ve seen it applied to today’s renegades but it’s always seemed to me that they don’t hate themselves. The love themselves and think they’re morally superior to other Jews. It’s the Jewish Jews that they hate.
Sometimes people use the term JINO, Jews In Name Only, but that has a much broader application since there are many Jews who are not religiously observant at all (by the standards of any of the three major denominations) but are not positioned in opposition to the well-being of the Jewish community.
As mentioned, kapos and those who served on Judenrats are considered victims of the Nazis since they were under duress. Today’s renegade Jews are under no such pressure, other than their own perception of wanting to be accepted by the intersectional, radical left.
If self-hating Jew, JINO, kapo, and Judenrat Jew don’t quite fit what, then, to call them? Well, I’m leaning to “As a Jew” Jews.
Postscript: Leftist Jews like to misappropriate Jewish terms and symbols. They might wear a kippa or a tallit (prayer shawl) to one of their protests, but I’d bet my next Social Security check (I’m 68) that they rarely, if ever, don a tallit and pray the traditional morning prayer service. Most of them couldn’t recite the Shema (Deut. 6:4), Judaism’s foundational creed, without making an error.
If Not Now stole their name from Pirke Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, a section of the Mishna devoted to our sages’ favorite aphorisms. The great rabbi Hillel said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself alone, what am I? If not now, when?” Outside of the catchy slogan, of course they ignore the other 99% of what Hillel taught.
Another saying of Hillel’s recorded in Pirke Avot seems appropriate for those leftist Jews feeding the crocodile, thinking it will eat them last:
..He (Hillel) saw a skull floating on the face of the water. He said to it: because you drowned others, they drowned you. And in the end, they that drowned you will be drowned.
As for Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, the term is taken from the Aleinu prayer recited at the end of all Jewish prayer services. Aleinu in general is about submitting to God and talks of tikkun olam b’malchut shadai, repairing the world under the kingdom of God. I have yet to hear a single progressive Jew trumpeting the term tikkun olam also include that part about God being in charge.
Wonderful and educational article as always. If you continue to write I’ll continue to read
Appreciate your message and thank you sharing Ronnie. I always learn something from your posts.