After the Jewish holidays, I asked a lot of my friends if their rabbis brought up Israel, Iran, and/or antisemitism when they went to temple. Most didn’t! It is just as sad that I no longer become enraged when the data from my informal survey reveal that fewer than 5% of Jewish leaders discussed these important issues that impact the lives of their congregants. I’ve almost come to expect the silence.
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And it isn’t only rabbis.
This conundrum extends into academia and other supposedly informed circles, too. On January 26, 2014, when hundreds of Parisian demonstrators chanted, “Jew, France is not yours,” I showed the video to a Jewish friend. His anxiety eased when a well-known, highly credentialed history professor watched the video and told us, “This is only one small incident, and there’s no need to be concerned.”
Subsequently, I took courses at a university’s lifelong learning center and asked the Director of Education, who happened to be Jewish, if he would show the November 15, 2016, film Hate Spaces, a documentary exposing antisemitism coming from the left and Islamists on college campuses. I still remember how quickly he walked away, saying, “It would offend people.”
Apparently, even among people who should know better—or at least should be willing to look—there is a powerful urge not to see what is directly in front of them.
Which brings me to dinner yesterday.
I went out with some women from a club I belong to. When I heard them disparage Trump, I spoke up, explained why I liked him, and asked why they didn’t. Almost all the ladies at the table looked like they needed hospitalization for epilepsy. It only got worse when I explained that if they keep their heads in the sand, there will be another Holocaust, more Mamdanis, and, eventually, perhaps someone like El-Sayed in the White House.
At one point during our dining experience, one of the nice Jewish Democrat ladies told her friend under her breath that the show Fauda depicts Israelis acting the same as Arabs. I told her that’s why they put the show on—to appeal to Jews who conflate Bibi and Israel with ISIS.
That is when I saw her physically looking like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, similar to the other two, who appeared to be having either grand mal seizures or progressive Parkinson’s. Her petite friend, whom she had been talking to, left her and escaped to the bathroom. She couldn’t rescue her.
I told them that if they see everything through their TDS—Trump Derangement Syndrome—lens, it is impossible for them even to consider how much he has done for Jews. Just closing the border to potentially millions more hate-filled Caliphaters—didn’t realize “hate” is in the word—is enough heroism for a thinking Jew.
I had to ask if they knew about Sharia, and of course they didn’t. But when they left the restaurant, they definitely knew how it could affect their children and grandchildren.
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The odd part, though, was that the one lady in the group whom I had always found to be a bit over-the-top obnoxious ended up agreeing with me. She said she had changed from being progressive to opening her eyes on 10/7. We became friends.
The other three passive, cloned, leftist appeasers were from the “go-along-to-get-along” school. But not last evening! They didn’t hear their usual talking points that Rachel Maddow et al. dish out. The truth was on the menu.
And that, I realized, was the point.
This may have been one of the only chances these women had to hear something that challenged their firmly held but unexamined ideology. They couldn’t respond with any degree of intelligence, logic, or common sense because, deeply buried in the backs of their minds, perhaps they recognized that at least some of what I was saying had truth in it.
Eventually, they couldn’t wait to race out of the restaurant. I’m sure they will never ask me out again, and good riddance to them.
But the evening left me thinking about something much bigger than one uncomfortable dinner.
For years, Jews have been confronted with warning signs about antisemitism, hostility toward Israel, radical Islamism, and what is happening on college campuses. Yet too often, the people who should be raising the alarm—rabbis, professors, educators, politicians, journalists, and other credentialed experts—either minimize what is happening or refuse to discuss it because someone might be offended. Our leaders do not realize they are culpable for legitimizing and emboldening our enemies.
So, who will warn the Jews when this has been occurring for quite some time?
Apparently, sometimes it takes one or two people at an uncomfortable dinner to get the word out.
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