Chapter Twenty-five: Summary and Guide to the Future

“[A]lmost all periods of great violence… have caught the Jews by surprise and found them unprepared… there was no thought of attacks and major violence—at least not in their country, their house.” 
(Alex Bein, The Jewish Question)

“Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.” 

(Robert A. Heinlein, Assignment in Eternity)

Introduction

In relating “the greatest story ever told” the gospels depict only what are considered Jesus’ final two years of life. While the four gospels do not always agree in details of their shared narrative, events leading up to the crucifixion agree on one point: it was “the Jews” and not the ruling Romans who were responsible for Jesus’ death. This, despite agreement between the four accounts that the trial was before the Roman governor as is typical in cases of capital crimes such as insurrection against Rome. The gospel charge of “blasphemy” would have been of no interest to Rome so would not have involved its governor. As for the charge itself, “blasphemy” according to Jewish law of the time involved uttering the “hidden” name of God and would, if found guilty, have been punishable by stoning. Crucifixion was an exclusively brutal Roman punishment intended as example to people considering joining the insurrection. Josephus describes tens-of-thousands of Jewish rebels dead by crucifixion.

Which raises the credibility of the gospels and Paul’s epistles as history? According to scientific analysis Paul’s earliest epistles were actually written two decades after the scriptural accounts of Jesus’ death which means any reference by Paul to “Christ Jesus” is legendary by definition. That the earliest gospel in the canon appeared +/- 70 CE, or two decades after the earliest Pauline epistles describes the gospels even less reliable as history than the author of the epistles. And while these sources are literary inventions regarding the person of “Jesus,” still do they likely represent what had to have been contemporary fear and yearning among Jews of impending and real defeat facing Judea, the period describing the emergence of the emerging “Christian” community.  

In effect Christian scripture comprising Paul’s epistles and the four gospels describes the struggle of the sect heretical and so rejected by “normative” Judaism, competing with the parent to attract converts. The emerging “scripture” most likely represents an anti-Jewish polemic whose impact would, two thousand years later, result in the nearly successful effort to “exterminate” those described by Christian scripture as deicides, Christ-killers.

The Jewish Problem: Origins

As Episcopal minister William Nicholls describes,

“The very presence of the Jewish people in the world... puts a great question against Christian belief… cause[s] profound and gnawing anxiety.”

From its earliest beginnings Christianity described itself “inheritor” of God’s Covenant, Christianity as the “New Israel.” Augustine, apparently among most moderate among the Adversu Judeaos tradition, based his theology on traditional scriptural representations of “the Jews” as Christ-killers. Augustine’s influence on Church policy continues, as reflected in Vatican Council II (1965), the conclave that also produced Nostre Aetate “absolving” present-day Jews of guilt for the death of Jesus. Still, according to Vatican Council II the Church remains still, "the new people of God.¹” And thirty-five years after Nostre Aetate, in its closing summary of the Vatican’s 2010 Special Synod of Bishops for the Middle-East,

“We Christians cannot speak of the ‘promised land’ as an exclusive :right for a privileged Jewish people. This promise was nullified by Christ²... In the kingdom of God… there is no longer a chosen people.”

What then is Christianity’s Jewish Problem? Reduced to its basic description, the Problem is that Jews persist in surviving. The early Church was deeply troubled because Jewish survival represented an inexplicable challenge to Christian claims to have replaced the parent religion. Had it not been for Augustine’s “witness” explanation providing for the survival of at least some Jews alongside Christians it is likely Jews and Judaism would not have survived the fourth century following the marriage of Church and Empire.

Christian Love, Christian Hate

Christian anti-Judaism represents a lethal and eternal danger to Jews. But how did this come about? Rosemary Ruether, the renowned Catholic theologian, clearly describes the Jewish Problem as “the left hand of Christology,” the right hand being Jesus’ gospel message of “love” (Ruether, Faith and Fratricide). From its beginnings Christianity described itself the “new” Israel having “replaced” the “old” Judaism in God’s favor. Yet Jews, described according to its scripture as deicides and rejected by God were still allowed by God to survive and practice their “replaced” religion. It is this continuing existence of Jews and Judaism that challenges Christian claims to having “replaced” Judaism that threatens the legitimacy of those claims. Jewish existence is Christianity’s Jewish Problem, the continuing existential threat described by Dr. Nicholls as a “profound and gnawing anxiety” at the heart of Christianity.

In “Matthew,” as in the other three gospels, the Roman governor before whom Jesus stands trial is depicted as “clueless,” as sympathetic with the accused rebel against Rome. But the “Matthew” gospel takes matters a step further. Not only does Pilate “find no fault” in Jesus, but portrays the Jewish mob demanding Jesus’ death as condemning all Jews and forever guilty as Christ-killers: “His blood is on us and on our children!³“ The path to the Holocaust begins with Christian scripture and the “Matthew” gospel in particular.

If “Matthew” painted all Jews forever as deicides justifying punishment then “John," written a half-century later, added its own twist by placing in Jesus mouth the charge, “You belong to your father, the devil⁴, and you want to carry out your father's desires.”

With the Late Middle Ages, a period of dramatic social change and natural disasters, including the Black Plague, life and faith were under constant threat and seemingly outside human agency. A malevolent and invisible presence was believed at work. And if Satan was never quite visible, his “children” lived nearby and they were always available as outlet for Christian anxiety. It was from the period of the Middle Ages that many antisemitic stereotypes common to Western society today owe their origin.

With the erosion of ecclesial governance in recent centuries the Jewish Problem might have been expected to diminish, even disappear. Instead, with secularism’s legal “emancipation” of the Jewish people antisemitic political parties appeared in opposition not just to legal equality, but to the very presence of Jews in the new nation-states. How explain that antisemitism survived the end of Christian religious dominance?

The Jewish Problem in the Modern Era

“They own, you know, the banks in this country, the newspapers. Just look at where the Jewish money is.” (General George S. Brown⁵, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs)

That anti-Judaism, almost unnoticed, made the leap from Christianity-as-religion to Christendom-as-secular (Europe and its post-colonial states) is, for some readers, problematic. Western society emergent from feudalism was less a dramatic revolution than a gradual evolution. And as with all evolutionary processes the “present” carries within it past experience. Judeophobia had been part of Christendom’s source documents and history for eighteen centuries by the time Europe emancipated the Jews. The image of “the Jew” both religious (Christ-killer) and social (usurer) was deeply ingrained in western culture, part of modernity’s historical inheritance. As Ruether describes anti-Judaism the “left hand of Christology” so might we describe antisemitism the “left hand of western secularism.”

German caricature from 1929 depicting Jewish greed. (Wikipedia)

How does Judeophobia pass from generation to generation? Most the most obvious path is by direct contact with Christian source documents describing Jews in negative terms. Such descriptions as Christ-killers (Matthew 27:25) and “you belong to your father, the devil” (John 8:44) have inspired Jew-hatred for centuries. According to the 2011 census some eighty percent of Americans are Christian it seems safe to assume that most Americans have had at least some contact with scriptural anti-Judaism. Antisemitism as prejudice represents common shared beliefs reinforced by historical stereotypes describing Jews as a threat justifying exclusion, and more. Recall that 1939 Roper poll of Americans attitudes: “Fifty-three percent believed that ‘Jews are different and should be restricted’ and ten percent believed that Jews should be deported. ⁶”

That survey, immediately following Germany’s Kristallnacht, is significant in describing both “moderate” and “extremist” antisemitism as fairly constant over the decades. ADL’s 2011 survey discussed previously arrives at very similar results. What comes through from these varied surveys is that, despite public opinion strongly favoring Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, when it comes to Jews at home two in three surveyed agree with an array of stereotypes from moderate to extreme antisemitism.

Social stressors today don’t compare to levels facing Americans in 1939. The Great Recession did not turn into another Great Depression and America’s wars today are tiny and distant compared to that taking place in Europe and threatening to involve the United States. The “rule” by which antisemitism rises and falls apace with societal stress holds, and describes the relatively low levels evident today. But even during the present lull antisemitism is still in evidence.

Recent examples of scripture-inspired antisemitism include Representative Don Manzullo from Virginia insisting that, “Mr. Cantor, [also from Virginia] an observant Jew, would not be "saved.⁷” Cantor, at the time House Majority Leader, did not respond directly to Manzullo which, in his position both political and religious would have invited a media event. But later, in an April, 2012 he referred vaguely to "the darker side" of America that has, “not always gotten it right in terms of racial matters, religious matters, whatever.” In fact Manzullo’s views regarding Jews and salvation is fairly common in a country described in which 80 percent of its citizens are Christian and describe America as “a Christian country.” Some years before Manzullo’s comment Jerry Falwell, a leading Evangelical minister, famously remarked that  "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.⁸”

But anti-Jewish prejudice is also an inheritance from secular sources also inspired by religious prejudice. In July, 2013 the chairwoman of the board of a Florida town announced at a board meeting that they were "not to be up here jewing over somebody's pay.⁹” “Jewing” refers to the medieval stereotype of Jews as usurers, a role imposed on them by the Church. Her words were caught the attention of the media and surprised and offended by the national attention insisted, “I am not anti-Semitic and there was no malice toward anyone." The term “jawing,” she insisted, is commonly used in everyday speech so her use of the term should not color her as an antisemite. Among her public supporters was the Jewish editor of the local newspaper, David Adlerstein:

"I have heard the expression on more than one occasion around these parts in my dozen years at the paper… it doesn't offend me, unless it's used to describe someone who cheats you. But haggling and dickering? To me, it's a proud trait of my tribe, and it's a solid cut above cold-hearted stiffing someone with a pious grin.”  (emphasis added)

Adlerstein describes his father as having “worked his entire life for the Anti-Defamation League." As for himself he is a "proud Jew" with a Jewish education, having attended Brandeis University. In earlier chapters two similar situations were described in which local lawmakers used the term “jewing“… (one apologized saying it was “spontaneous,” a childhood remnant from everyday use). But Sanders, the chairwoman described above, provides as clear an example of how deeply embedded antisemitism is in the psyche of Western societies; how “normal” referring to Jews in a disparaging manner is; even for some Jews.

Antisemitism: conscious and unconscious

If anti-Jewish prejudice sometimes achieves respectability in everyday usage, there exists a deeper and more sinister level of antisemitism in age-old stereotypes. Generally considered “impolite” at best and dangerous at worst, such stereotypes tend to remain dormant and out of consciousness until stress, personal and/or social, demands an outlet, scapegoat. These “unconscious” stereotypes are of both religious and secular origin, but even “non religious” stereotypes may refer to scriptural sources. The first century “Christ-killer” myth, for example, also finds expression in the more secular “blood libel” canard in which Jews are imagined kidnapping and murdering Christian children for ritual purposes. In 1913 a Russian Jew named Menahem Beilis was arrested on charges described as “ritual murder” of a boy. He was eventually acquitted, but not before spending two years in jail awaiting trial.

At about the same time as Beilis arrest another Jew, across the ocean in the United States faced similar charges in the rape and murder of a 13 year old Christian girl employed at the pencil factory he managed. Despite strong evidence implicating the prosecution’s chief witness Frank was convicted two years later. The trial ended the lawyer representing the prosecution’s witness, a black janitor also employed at the factory, told the press that even he believed his client guilty. Frank appealed his conviction.

Impatient with the appeals process a mob consisting of members of Georgia’s social elite, including a Georgia superior court judge, drove Frank 100 miles to the farm of the local sheriff. There, overlooking the girls home, Frank was lynched the following morning.

Another canard originating in the Middle Ages describes a secret gathering of rabbis intent on subjugating Christendom. Nearly one thousand years later that canard would inspire what is believed to be the czar’s secret police and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion would become a best seller. The Protocols would later be take up and published by Henry Ford, and soon after described by Hitler as a justification for the Holocaust. Consistent with a tradition in which “the Jew” conveniently serves persons with opposite social and political and ideologies following the Russian Revolution the West imagined Jews as directing Russia’s ambition to overthrow capitalism, while Communists saw Jews as capitalists and enemies of the working class! In effect both saw “the Jews” according to the same medieval myth of a secret plot against Christians that inspired the Protocols. The myth continues to capture the imagination of antisemites in the United States today. Among the better known groups and movements are the Christian Identity Movement, the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party who describe the United States as controlled by a “Zionist Occupation Government” (ZOG).

A more bizarre but easily understandable stereotype describes Jews as possessing horns, hooves and tail, all stealthily camouflaged in special clothing designed for the purpose. It is also believed that Jews, consistent with their patrilineage with the devil,  Jews give off a sulphuric odor (John 8:44). Medieval in origin, the Nazis made extensive use of this and other scriptural stereotypes portraying Jews as grotesque beasts.

Antisemitism and Jewish Survival

The period of the Great Depression provides an excellent example of the seemingly spontaneous explosion of antisemitism in Germany and the United States. In response to high levels of unemployment and unrest among the unemployed reformists were elected to return the countries to stability. In the United States the Democratic Party representing “liberal capitalism” with Franklin Roosevelt as president was elected, while in Germany “radical capitalism” represented by National Socialism headed by Adolf Hitler was elected. Both leaders entered office weeks apart in 1933.

Hitler, sponsored by America’s wealthy and enjoying Corporate America investment quickly developed its own military industrial complex and with a non-union regimented workforce was quickly on its way to its “economic recovery. That the Versailles Treaty forbade Germany its rush to arm Hitler’s American backers seemed entirely unconcerned.

Meanwhile America was still hampered by unions and a reluctance to build its military. Corporate America grew restive, an impatience that quickly turned to its abortive coup, its dream of installing a fascist state in America. Although the coup itself failed American industry, “too big to fail,” was able to continue its support Nazi Germany even after Hitler declared war on the United States in 1941. As described earlier surveys the spread and intensity of antisemitism in the United States closely mirrored that in Nazi Germany before and during the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.

Put more directly, all conditions existed for a global final solution whose success depended only on the outcome of a war which Roosevelt and Churchill considered to favor Germany as late as 1943! Which raises the question, had Corporate America’s coup succeeded or; had Hitler not loyally followed Germany’s war-time ally Japan in declaring war on the United States after Pearl Harbor or; had America, under a Lindbergh administration joined Hitler in what many influential Americans agreed a worthy and holy Crusade against “Judeo-Bolshevism:” Would the fate of American-Jews have been different from that of European Jewry? The United States also had concentration camps housing Japanese-Americans. But had one of the conditions above prevailed; a stretch to see them housing Jews?  

In 1933 German Jewry were aware of the danger represented by Nazi antisemitism but, with only pogroms for precedent they were unequipped to anticipate the full measure of danger facing them. Even so influential a German-Jewish leader as Martin Buber discouraged flight. Hitler, he counseled, was just another passing German infatuation. By 1941 Auschwitz was in operation and even those most disbelieving across the West could no longer deny media descriptions of the horrific implications of the Final Solution. While both German- and American-Jews insisted their country “exceptional,” would American-Jews more likely have overcome denial had the United States accepted Hitler’s offered alliance? Would American Jewry have chosen differently than German Jewry?  

Antisemitism and Jewish Denial

If such as a final solution to the Jewish Problem was unprecedented in 1933, how is it possible that today, nearly seventy years later, most Jews still insist the Holocaust “unique,” cling tenaciously to such consoling explanations as the Shoah as aberration born of the sick mind of a single individual? If even Jewish historians maintain such explanations despite awareness of abundant evidence from 2000 years of anti-Jewish persecution: the name for intentional disregard of facts pointing to an anticipated future danger is Denial.

Are American Jews in 2014, nearly seventy years after Auschwitz; will American Jews in face of a future resurgence of antisemitism approaching, as today in Europe, levels described by responsible authorities as approaching the 1930’s overcome Denial and accept that the horrible prospect applies also to the goldene medina?

The recent and nearly successful Final Solution was not an aberration “perpetrated by a mad man.” It was the most recent effort in a long and continuing historical process. Annihilationist antisemitism manifest in the 20^th century represents warning, describes our future, our alternative to failing to act. Might the United States be that departure from European Jewish experience American Jews insist? With notable exceptions, including its involvement in the Holocaust, antisemitism in America has been less physically dangerous than in Europe. In itself this does encourage Jewish faith in America as “exceptional.” A more nuanced reading of the history of Jews in America suggests other. Antisemitism in the United States rose dramatically as Jews fleeing Russian pogroms began arriving in greater numbers in the late 19^th century. Opinion polls from the decades before and during the years of the Holocaust describe American attitudes towards Jews close to that Nazi Germany! But despite ADL polling repeatedly describing American antisemitism at consistently high levels, Jews living in the United States, and ADL itself, choose not to accept the evidence and doggedly insist that America really is “exceptional.” Certainly an understandable psychological need for a traditionally defenseless minority persecuted and physically threatened for two-thousand years. But a “need” with the potential for tragic consequences.

And then there was American eugenics

Among the leading ideologies promoting fascism in Germany, inspiring wealthy Americans and Corporate America to support Hitler in the decade before his rise to power was American eugenics. Decades before the rise of Nazism in Germany American eugenicists had been advocating racial purity for America, its own Aryan Master Race. It was American eugenicists who trained and guided German “scientists” and physicians towards its own Rassenhygiene: Nazi eugenics. As American eugenics described Jews a “race” Nazi eugenics defined and redefined “Jew” first as Unfit, unworthy of inclusion within the “Volk;” eventually as non-human, a “pathogen” threatening the entire human race! The gas chambers still active in American prisons was an innovation of eugenics intended to eliminate America’s Unfit.

With the collapse of the German state and the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, the full impact of eugenics ended the project of “human betterment through selective breeding” in both Germany and the United States. But across Christendom the Jewish Problem persists and antisemitism, as repeatedly demonstrated by Anti-Defamation League surveys, remains fairly stable across the decades. According to ADL’s most recent survey in 2011 fully twelve percent of Christian Americans self-reported as “extremely antisemitic, or about fifty million Americans.

Antisemitism in Europe is again growing “respectable,” open and widespread. Eighty years after Nazism antisemitism is again returning to political legitimacy in Europe.

Exceptionality and Jewish denial

Imagine that all “Jews” in the United States, including those invisible by choice (the assimilated) and “Christians” (with a single Jewish grandparent) awake one day to the realization that no place in the Diaspora, not even the United States, as Joe Biden already warn, is safe for Jews. Our principle model is that of pre-Holocaust Germany. How did so many German Jews fail to appreciate the depth of danger before it was too late? Would we in America choose differently?

Among the reasons influencing those who chose to remain was pride: German Jews took pride in their identity, “German-Jews.” Believed in their fatherland, that good Germans would, in the end, stand by them. Perhaps with a recent precedent of a recently unfinished “final solution,” perhaps then they might have responded differently to Hitler’s repeated threats, to their neighbors gradual distancing. Professor David Engel,¹⁰ a scholar of the Holocaust at New York University suggests not. In addition to strong loyalty to their fatherland Engel describes other barriers standing in the way of the émigré including “financial loss, separation from family and friends, loss of social status, and the hardships of building a new life in unfamiliar surroundings.”

Clearly the decision to leave one’s home will always be difficult. But in the end those who chose to leave survived.

American Jewry today has two advantages over German and European Jewry in 1933. The Holocaust is recent history, an undeniable warning for the future. Jews today know that that which was unimaginable just a few decades earlier, the Holocaust, is a historical fact which cannot be denied. And today there exists that welcoming refuge absent in the 1940’s: an armed and militarily capable Zionist refuge for all Jews in need: guaranteed under Israel’s Law of Return.

Israel, the Diaspora and the Jewish Solution

This book, with its implications for the dire future facing the Jewish People in our western Diaspora, was emotionally difficult to research, more difficult to write. Throughout I was forced to confront my own loyalties, hesitations and doubts. As does prejudice feed antisemitism so also do our preconceptions regarding the appearance of “normalcy” surrounding us and reinforced by years of experience color our denial of the implications of “dismissible” history. How even question the possibility that our long-time neighbor; that the non-Jewish parent of our spouse could, as in Germany, stand by passively, or worse be party to another Holocaust? But that which began as an uneasy feeling regarding our security in the West seen against the backdrop of centuries of unprovoked persecution forced me to confront reality, to arrive at the conclusion that threads through this volume. The Jewish Problem described by Rosemary Ruether as, “the left hand of Christology” grew out of and is as old as Christianity itself. Anti-Judaism inspiring antisemitism is, as she describes, an essential and integral part of that religion. All streams of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, share the same scriptures, the same primary theology. And all share the same pre- and post-Reformation history of anti-Jewish persecution. Two thousand years of the Jewish Problem remains unresolved, “a negative and alienated expression of a need to legitimate its revelation in Jewish terms… even up to this day.” (Faith and Fratricide, p. 94)

At every turn in my writing Ms. Ruether seemed always “just around the corner;” her insights not only into “fratricide” based on scripture of her book’s title, but its absorption by western secularism itself born of Christianity:

“When Hitler came, armed with an antisemitism that translated the older antipathy to the Jews into racist form, he turned the negation of Jewish existence into brutal fact and executed—something the Christian Church had never done—the ancient death-wish against the Jews with the technology of genocide.“ (p. 13)

“In Hitler, the Fuehrer empowers himself with the ultimate work of Christ to execute the “Final Solution to the Jewish question.”(pps. 224-5).

If a renowned Catholic theologian is capable of so honest and unflinching critique of her own religion’s Jewish Problem and its “solution,” why then are we Jews, victim to that persecution and inevitable conclusion determined to deny those same facts upon which she resolutely confronts?

Many Jewish historians, writers and thinkers prefer the Shoah “a departure from history,” an aberration better seen as the result of conditions specific to Germany between the wars. It has even been described by Jewish religious authorities and artists as mysterious, as if the God of the three Mosaic religions would provide six million Jews as burnt offering in an obscure and horrendous lesson to mankind!

One-and-a-half million Jewish children murdered, their mother’s compelled to witness a mystery provided by God? And will the Final Solution finally achieved also be an act of a merciful God providing yet another “lesson” to Mankind?

A Jewish Solution to the Jewish Problem?

Germany is described as among the most “enlightened,” scientifically advanced and cultured countries of the early 20^th century. Yet it was just such a country that democratically placed in office a regime publicly promoting a radical antisemitic agenda. And their designated victims, in face of increasing social isolation, avoidance by long-time friends and neighbors; restricted, then banned from their professions and livelihood: even as antisemitism intensified Jews in Nazi Germany insisted, prayed that their fatherland was, as they needed to believe, truly the Diaspora exception they clung to.  

Having enjoyed American support, both personally and ideologically for a decade Hitler considered the United States Germany’s natural ally. In particular was there much support among Corporate America to finish the unsuccessful American led effort after WWI to overthrow Russia’s Communist regime, an effort described by Hitler a “crusade” against Judeo-Bolshevik Russia. And there should be little doubt that had he not “loyally” followed his Pacific Axis ally Japan in declaring war on the United States in December, 1941 that the “War in Europe” might well have ended in Pax Germanicus; a Nazi Europe facing an isolationist America whose elites were already sympathetic towards Hitler.

Much is made of America’s legal protections embodied in its Constitution and Bill of Rights; the political checks and balances embodied in its tri-cameral government division between Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. And, while we may not always agree with policy, as check and balance they seem to work pretty well. At least in times of economic and social calm. But in times a stress Democracy grows unstable. As during the Great Depression when even the institution of the American Government grew unstable. 

Threatened by striking workers, of WWI veterans demanding promised but not delivered benefits in 1932 America’s social elite decided, through its industrial holdings to take matters into their own hands and overthrow the recently-elected president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. Constitutional guarantees, as noted above, can only exist in an atmosphere of economic growth and social calm. And the possibility of a populist and charismatic leader arising in the United States, as in Germany, 1933, can not be wished away. Antisemitism thrives in the West in times of social turbulence. It is in this context that we are obligated to understand Pascal’s Wager and Jewish survival: do we stay or do we leave?

In flight from pogroms in the 1890’s Jews imagining their “goldene medina” could not have known that Congress, reflecting public opinion, was frantically attempting to limit refuge to Jews seeking it in America. That Congress was publicly seeking to limit Jewish immigration was certainly known to American Jews who despite knowing still referred to America as “exceptional.” It took two decades for the legislative wording limiting Jewish immigration to come together, but when it was finally voted on in 1924 both houses of Congress voted it into law by overwhelming majorities.  And arguably the president almost legendary in Jewish eyes as protecting Jews doggedly hid behind the 1924 law to trap Europe’s Jews within reach of the Final Solution.

Is Jewish faith in an American “exceptionality” contradicted by exceptions such as widespread antisemitism which peaked during the Holocaust? America during the slaughter of Europe’s Jews had a choice: to provide a moral “light unto the nations” by providing refuge. Instead the example it chose was to refuse entry to Jews caught in the jaws of Auschwitz, Hitler’s Final Solution to the Jewish Problem. Does this describe a country “exceptional” in the history of Western antisemitism? Or does this rather provide affirmation of Jewish denial in face of danger? In his 1990 book, The Jewish Question, Alex Bein observes,  

“almost all periods of great violence, at least since the Middle Ages, have caught the Jews by surprise and found them unprepared… the persecutions began with particular severity and intensity especially when the Jews position was so secure and their relationship to their environment well ordered that there was no thought of attacks and major violence—at least not in their country, their house.”

We Jews today stand at a crossroad. Two thousand years as persecuted minority has conditioned us to sense that which Vice President so elegantly reminds we know in our bones, “that no matter how hospitable… There is really only one absolute guarantee, and that’s the state of Israel.” How is it that  a Christian leader of that we refer to as the exceptional country so clearly describes that which we so easily deny? Consciously or not we prefer to avoid the obvious danger by repeating endlessly the failed efforts of the past. Assimilation is no assured option since American eugenics described “Jew” as race, and Germany passed legislation describing degrees of “Jew” according to a single grandparent. The legal precedent eliminating “assimilation” as protective option is now far less secure. As for “conversion” providing security, it was never more than a hit-or-miss protection during the reign of theocracy. What relevance to secular society conversion? To paraphrase Richard Wagner, “holy water does not change a Jew into a Christian.” Almost always ecclesiastical “welcome” turned to deep and deadly suspicion regarding the sincerity of the converted. And even after generations suspicion at the “sincerity” of children and grandchildren of converts still resulted in being hunted by inquisitors, tortured to confess their “insincerity” and burned at the stake. Neither did the hunt for the “insincere” end at Atlantic shore but followed Spanish and Portuguese converts and their descendents across the ocean to the New World.

In an earlier version of my closing chapter I suggested possible alternatives and temporary refuges outside Israel in the unlikely event that all Diaspora Jewry would en masse and spontaneously choose immigration. In the years since it has become increasingly clear that the internet has allowed antisemitism to leap the boundaries of Christendom and is today an increasingly global problem. What was a few decades ago a threat born of and limited to Christendom is today spreading into a global cult attacking Jews of the Diaspora and Israel, the state of the Jews. And even as the massacre of civilians rages daily in Arab countries and African Christians and Muslims daily engage in revenge slaughter; somehow Israel dominates media reporting as “occupier” of the West Bank, seemingly the more heinous crime.

And so this present conclusion to my book ends on a somewhat different, even more sober note. As Diaspora Jews face another eventual Holocaust in the West and antisemitism spreads in also in the non-Christian world, I recall that between 1948 and 1952, as Israel struggled to create social infrastructure and a functioning economy; even under those conditions Israel remained true to her Zionist obligation as refuge and sought out and welcomed refugees from the West’s Holocaust remaining still in German DP camps and Jews at risk across Arabia. At a time of poverty and great sacrifice Israel, with a population just over 600,000 Israel managed to absorb 711,000 immigrants!

With today’s world increasingly facing famine and dwindling water resources Israel is the world leader in innovative agriculture and sea water desalination. A world leader in medical and computer technology, Israel’s economy is strong and expanding. Previously dependent on outside sources for energy Israel today is essentially energy independent and a net exporter of natural gas. Were the miracle that every Diaspora Jew facing our uncertain present and certain dangerous future to spontaneously pick up and emigrate to Israel absorption would not be easy, but it would be achievable, and successful.

Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish People created Israel to serve as refuge to our threatened Diaspora. With his 1882 pamphlet Autoemancipation Leon Pinsker inspired the first Zionist youth movement, Hoveivei Zion. And within months of its appearance a handful of young Jews laid the foundation for Rishon LeZion (First to Zion), today a thriving city of 230,000. Refuge for our threatened people is the reason the Diaspora created Israel. When the need again arises; when the Lessons of History are understood and our Diaspora appreciates the eternal threat Jews face in the Diaspora Israel is remains refuge for our tiny surviving remnant.

I can think of no better ending for this book than to quote three pillars of Zionism, three who saw clearly the Problem even if there was yet no name for it among Jews:

Leon Pinsker:

“Judeophobia… is hereditary, and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is incurable.¹¹”

Theodore Herzl:

“We might perhaps be able to merge ourselves entirely into surrounding races, if these were to leave us in peace for a period of two generations. But they will not leave us in peace… We are one people--our enemies have made us one without our consent.¹²”

In the end the survival of the Jewish people rests upon the choice of each individual. Certainly not an easy decision since it comes down to abandoning the comfort of an accustomed lifestyle, and life change is often uncomfortable. That the choice involves entering a new culture and language makes decision that much more difficult. German Jewry struggled with this same choice and many chose the familiar, and died for their choice. At bottom it may be the German-Jewish choice, trusting friends and neighbors to remain loyal and collectively protective to weather the storm. Which, for German-Jewry, proved fatal. How judge, how choose where a lifetime of experience is challenged by a swiftly changing world demanding decision? Our advantage over our German experience is that their tragedy stands as example which, in context of a two-thousand year prior history of persecution may, if we allow, provide us a different outcome. Are we doomed to remain traditional Victim to the mood of the Diaspora, to remain tragically bound to a fate previously experienced: that this homeland, as we insisted in Germany is, “exceptional”?

If the choice is between survival and Victimhood, life or martyrdom what does History say? Two years before Germany crossed the border into Poland and the Einsatsgruppe began to systematically murder Polish Jewry Ze’ev Jabotinsky described the Jewish Problem for the Jewish People:

“Eliminate the Diaspora or the Diaspora will eliminate you!”

Postscript: An American Holocaust?

A 1939 Roper poll¹ concluded that 61% of Americans described Jews as different and should not be treated like other Americans; 53% felt that Jews should be “restricted; 10% “believed Jews should be deported. This in the months following Krystallnacht!

America the Exception

Antisemitism in America between Congress’ 1924 Immigration Restriction Act through the Roosevelt Administration’s “hands-off” policy regarding the unfolding Holocaust is of a fabric with European history. Is there a lesson in official and popular antisemitism in the post-Holocaust American experience? Can a line be drawn from the trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to the House Un-American Activities Committee hunt for “communist Jews” in Hollywood? Is there significance that in 1987 a Jew would be sentenced to life in prison for spying for Israel while a Christian Navy officer would only face discharge for spying for Saudi Arabia? Do these represent a series of unrelated incidents, or a pattern of discrimination? And if a pattern, were these government actions contrary to or consistent with the “will of the people”? Surveys of American opinion during the period demonstrate a strikingly close relationship between government policy and public sentiment.

For generations American Jews have insisted that the United States represents a departure from Old World antisemitism, that American history reflects not just tolerance, but enthusiasm towards Jews and Judaism. But faith expressed by American Jews in the exceptionality or our homeland has an immediate precedent. Before the Holocaust German Jewry, and on better evidence, had already proclaimed their fatherland “exceptional.”

The best evidence against the assertion of American “exceptionality” is represented by polling for antisemitism in the United States beginning in the 1930’s and continuing to present. Beginning with that 1938 poll finding that 60% of non-Jewish Americans hold a “low opinion of Jews” followed by a 1939 poll describing 53% felt Jews should be “restricted.” The 1939 poll also described that a “hard core” of Americans would have approved of deporting American Jews, a “hard core” percentage that remains fairly consistent from then to now according to serial Anti-Defamation polling of antisemitism in America.  

Sentiment regarding American Jews did not improve even after Auschwitz as the full dimensions of the Holocaust were public knowledge. Polling taken between 1940 and 1945 described large numbers of Americans viewing Jews as representing a greater danger to the United States than any other minority. And “35 percent [admitted] it would not affect their vote if a candidate for Congress described himself an antisemite.”

Polling taken between 1939 and 1945 consistently reflected widespread antipathy towards American Jews. What is notable is that the polls were taken against the backdrop of media reports describing Germany’s persecution of Jews progressing from “restricting” (1933), to “isolating” (1935) and finally to “murdering” (1939-45). As reports of the Krystallnacht pogrom; of Heydrich’s Einzatsgruppe slaughter of one and a half million Jews the year before Auschwitz opened to automate the process of murder by gas and cremation. Through the entire reign of antisemitic terror American attitudes not only failed to indicate sympathy for Hitler’s victims, it seemed to feed Jew-hatred in the United States. As the Shoah progressed antisemitism in America increased!

How antisemitic America?

B’nai Brith recognized the need for a Jewish defense organization long before that organization’s young Georgia director was arrested for the murder of a young girl employee in 1913 led to the creation of its Anti-Defamation League. Frank was eventually convicted by court viewed as biased, and was lynched by a mob of Georgia “elites” in 1915 while appealing his case.

ADL’s “Berkley Studies,” a Five-Year Study of Antisemitism in the United States,² is the first effort to produce a comprehensive survey of antisemitism in the United States. Berkley Studies was initiated twenty years following the liberation of Auschwitz. Comprising seven volumes each highlighting a facet of antisemitism in America, Volume One, Christian beliefs and anti-Semitism³ surveys clergy attitudes towards Jews and would be profitably read alongside Catholic theologian Rosemary Reuther’s brief volume, Faith and Fratricide.⁴ Between the two the reader is provided an excellent introduction to both American antisemitism and the historic roots of the Jewish Problem in Christian anti-Judaism.

Volume Seven in the series reviews the earlier six and summarizes the distribution of antisemitic attitudes among non-Jewish Americans: 31% were classified as “least antisemitic,” while 32% as “moderately antisemitic.” Of the remaining 37% classified “most antisemitic,” nearly half were classified as “extremist.” Even disregarding the category “least” the findings are startling. During the 1960’s ADL sampling described 69% of Americans were moderately to extremely antisemitic. But even those surveyed as “least antisemitic” agreed with one or two of the eleven antisemitic stereotypes surveyed. How many “stereotypes” defines an “antisemite”?

According to ADL’s 2011 Survey of American Attitudes Toward Jews in America: “Using the ADL Index, 15% of Americans [approximately 50 million] fall in the most intensive cohort.” (my emphasis)

While there seems to have been no polling of German attitudes towards antisemitism during the years before the Holocaust, historian David Engel estimates that the “hard core of Nazi true believers probably numbered about 10 percent of the adult German population.⁵” That figure of 10 percent lies comfortably within the range of ADL’s “Intensive” category of American antisemitism from the beginning of its polling of antisemitism in the 1960’s. As to polls by Pew and Gallup before, during and following the Holocaust, antisemitism in the United States exceeded that baseline by multiples.

Summarizing ADL’s 2011 Executive Summary:⁶

“Perceptions of disproportionate Jewish power in the U.S. continue to dominate the views of the most anti‐Semitic.

“In America, 31 percent believe Jews are responsible for the death of Christ, a number that has remained steady through the past decade.

“Remarkably, since 1964, approximately 30 percent of Americans have consistently believed that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to America, even though the makeup of the U.S. population has changed dramatically.”

Among other findings,

• Nearly half of all respondents agreed with the statement that Jews "stick together more than other Americans, and 33 percent said they believe Jews "always like to be at the head of things."

• One-quarter of Americans believe that Jews "still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust."

Christian Beliefs and anti-Semitism

The “What” of antisemitism in everyday America is well described in the 1965-70 Berkeley Study. And the Study was most successful in describing the “Why” of American antisemitism in its first volume, Christian Beliefs and anti-Semitism. Where its analysis is weakest is not providing a historical context for antisemitism. In short the study disregards the persistence of antisemitism throughout the Diaspora as an inheritance of two-thousand years of Christian history. And nowhere does it even mention the history of antisemitism in the United States avoiding entirely America’s choice as bystander as the Holocaust evolved.

ADL surveys and analyses are strongest in collecting data; weakest in analysis. And so readers of the polls are left with a vague and mysterious something, aggravated somehow, by economic and social strains among our non-Jewish neighbors.

Extensive and continuing surveys are not necessary to indicate that “education” has the potential to increase “tolerance.” Surveys consistently demonstrate that in general the higher the level of education, the greater the degree of political, religious and “racial” tolerance. The obvious logic of this has inspired and focused generations of Jewish effort on “education” in the hope of reducing antisemitism. It is this hope that inspires and is the focus of ADL activities. But the model is not supported by history. Germany provides just a singe example as possibly the most “educated” and “cultured” country of the inter-war period. By this model Germany should have been least likely to initiate and perpetrate the “extermination” of the Jewish people.

But an argument might be made that Germany was a land of two major religious groups Lutheran and Catholic, sharing a single ethnic identity. Unlike Germany the United States describes a “melting pot,” a mosaic of religious and ethnic populations. Should not anonymity within the “melting pot” provide for greater invisibility? If education has any significant impact attitudes towards Jews all models indicate it dwarfed by the rise and fall of economic and social stress. America’s baseline hardcore antisemitic category described by ADL as “extreme” has, over the decades, always remained above 10%, a level at or above Professor Engel’s “hard core” Nazis credited with carrying out Hitler’s Final Solution.

Fifty-million Americans according to ADL’s 2011 survey hold very extreme antisemitic views while two thirds are classified “moderate” to “extreme” regarding antisemitism. If the appropriate Jewish response to antisemitism is “education” as promoted by ADL, its own polling covering half a century has proven that approach ineffective for the purpose intended. 

“Exceptional” Zionism for Exceptional America

The year 1913 was a milestone in the history of Jews in America. In that year B’nai Brith’s created the Anti-Defamation League; and Chaim Weizmann, leader of the World Zionist Organization approached Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis to “temporarily’ serve as head of the World Zionist Movement seeking a new headquarters as war enveloped Europe. Not surprising that both organizations would be led by the most established and influential Jews living in America, those from Germany. Also not surprising was that both organizations came to reflect the attitudes and outlook of its German-Jewish leadership.

Where Zionism in Europe was a “revolutionary” movement of return to Zion, American Zionism was “reactionary” insisting, as Jews remaining in Germany, that their new homeland was, “exceptional;” that American Jews were fully accepted and assimilating: Jews finally arrived at their New Jerusalem in the Diaspora. Where European Zionism sought to reestablish its national homeland in Palestine to provide refuge for the Jewish people threatened by antisemitism American Zionism insisted America free of antisemitism and that the Diaspora is the true Jewish homeland. American Zionism, in order to be acceptable in the United States, would limit its mission to philanthropy in support of Europe’s needy Jews requiring refuge.

Is antisemitism’s dramatic rise in Europe today attributable to a decline in education and culture? Not yet seventy years after Auschwitz and racist political parties with an antisemitic ideology are sprouting across that continent. Echoes of nineteenth century Germany: street rallies with shouts of “gas the Jews,” physical assaults and murders reminiscent of the early 1930’s.

The question American Jews should be asking is if, as proven, “education” fails as explanation for Germany and the Holocaust; if the resurgence of political antisemitism in Europe today is due to traditions born of two millennia of Western history and outside of “education’s” reach then clearly ADL’s approach to the problem fails to address the purpose that organization defines for itself: to provide an effective response to the continuing risk to American Jews. Where education would be most beneficial, would prove most effective is to provide education to the American Jewish community continuing in denial of the very real and continuing threat represented by life in the Diaspora, including and perhaps most endangered as largest community, America’s Jews. The Jewish Problem which Hitler was determined to “solve” did not appear with 20^th century Germany; nor with America’s elite attracted to eugenics and supportive of Hitler’s “experiment” in social engineering. The Holocaust was born of a 2000 year long history in Christendom. To dismiss the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem as the product of a “sick mind” is to encourage the same false security, the same sense of disbelief as provided German-Jewry victim seventy years ago by its own leadership. The Jewish Problem exists deep within the fabric of Christianity. The Holocaust was not unique to Hitler or Germany or even “modernism.” The Jewish Problem exists wherever Jews live in the Diaspora. 

Is an American Holocaust possible?

Westboro church member: quote is from Paul's epistle,1 Thessalonians 2:15

Anti-Judaism, the religious source for antisemitism, first appears in Christian scripture as illustrated in the above placard referencing Paul’s epistle, 1 Thessalonians 2:15. This theme, that “the Jews killed Jesus” repeats in all four gospel representations of the “trial and crucifixion” of Jesus. Such first century accusations transformed, in the hyper-superstitious Middle Ages, into caricatures of Jews that then burrowed into the substrata of Western culture: stereotypes surviving today demonizing “the Jews” that tend to resurface in times of extreme social stress and target Jews.

Throughout the history of Christianity Jesus Second Coming was a particularly dangerous time for Jews as unfulfilled anticipation would find relief in Jewish victims. Anticipation/disappointment first appeared among Paul’s early Christian communities with his early expectation that Jesus would return during his own life time (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, see below).

The year 1000, associated with what, for the faithful, was believed the anniversary of Jesus’ birth. Anxiety surrounding the anticipated Parousia may have inspired a wave of mini-Holocausts in which Jewish communities were forced to town centers and burned. When Jesus did not appear in the year 1000 on what was believed the anniversary of his birth, and again thirty-four years later considered the year of his death Jewish communities again became the object of frustration.

Superstitions born of the Middle Ages were prominent in Nazi propaganda during the years of the Final Solution and remain today. Usually dormant in the West’s cultural “subconscious,” they remain always available to re-emerge at times of intense social and economic stress.

Christian scripture condemning “the Jews”; subconscious cultural stereotypes describing “the Jews”: these represent the bedrock of anti-Judaism’s secular adaptation of religious Judeophobia. Antisemitism and Judeophobia both exist beyond reason and outside the reach of “education.” What hope of educating Christians whose scriptures, traditionally and for many today is believed to be “the inerrant word of God”? Catholic theologian Rosemary Ruether⁷ is more able than most Jews to recognize her religion inspiration for the Holocaust. “Nazism,” she wrote, “arose as the final repository of all this heritage of religious and secular anti-Semitism… In Hitler, the Fuehrer empowers himself with the ultimate work of Christ to execute the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish question.’”

Anti-Jewish stereotypes born of scripture and accumulated over the centuries are deeply ingrained in tradition, history and the cultural unconscious of Western society. With enormous and consistent effort the determined few may, by consistent effort and self-criticism, deny them expression even, perhaps, under extreme societal stress. Some individuals did achieve this during the Holocaust and are today honored in Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad v’Shem as “righteous gentiles.” That their numbers are tiny describes the limits to which “education” has any possibility of affecting the underlying issue. The more immediate question is not ADL’s interfaith outreach, its focus on educating those open to dialogue. Interfaith dialogue is always positive and worthy of effort and support. But limited resources should be apportioned according to achievable results. And significant success, as demonstrated by the ADL’s repeated surveys of antisemitism, suggests the investment would better be applied to Jewish education regarding the Jewish Problem and its consequences.

What accounts for our faith that, of all previous generations and in defiance of two thousand years experience that America is truly the “exception” to history? By what evidence do we arrive at our choseness, that American-Jews have “arrived,” that it is we who represent the sole exception to the evidence of two millennia of Diaspora history? Jewish insistence on homeland “exceptionality” expresses a millennial yearning, a need to belong, to be accepted. But reality is not just wish-fulfillment. Does not the evidence of centuries of rejection and persecution, the undeniable reality of the recent and nearly successful Final Solution: how deny that after two-thousand years of tenuous survival in the Diaspora that today, somehow, that Jews are inassimilable in the Christian West?  

And still remains the yearning, so powerful as to overwhelm even the clearest presentation of fact-based Zionist warning first sounded in the failed aftermath of the Emancipation.

Pinsker and Herzl raised the alarm decades before that which, even for them, was unimaginable, an effort to murder each and every living Jew in pursuit of a final solution to Christianity’s millennial Jewish Problem. Minus evidence for that horror we might have been able to hide behind Denial. Before the Holocaust we might have even believed, as did German Jewry, that any “homeland” in the Diaspora might have been the “exception.” But that was before the Final Solution. Can Jews today continue the self-deception, insist that the Holocaust happened over there? Does Jewish need for acceptance overwhelm judgment and reason, even at the cost of physical survival?

German Jewry clung to their faith in Germany-as-exception almost to the gates of Auschwitz. Jewish philosopher and then community organizer Martin Buber encouraged his fellow Jews to not leave, that as throughout history that the Nazi persecution too would prove temporary, that the “educated” and “cultured” neighbors would quickly tire of Hitler and National Socialism and put them out of office. For Buber Jewish flight would only prove Hitler correct, that Jews really were not “Germans,” that by remaining they prove Hitler wrong, deny him a victory. But in the end the “educated and cultured” Germans in whom Buber and many other Jews placed their faith remained silent, silent even as their Jewish friends and neighbors were loaded on to cattle cars for destinations “east.”