Clearly, we have entered another dimension. How shall we respond?
I wonder when it will hit them.
When will it dawn on the political parties, the national media, the talking heads? A revelation to revel in. When will they figure out that at least some Jewish voters may now be up for grabs?
Both major political parties, both the left and the right, are infected with hate. In a fallen world, where do we belong?
Parts of the left are submerged in a volcanic bath of anti-Israel rhetoric that crosses into antisemitism. We stand at the lava’s rim, the heat almost unbearable.
This takes the form of a young person making a joke about Jews and money at a party, in front of a Jewish peer, everyone having a good laugh. Or it’s a college discussion of Palestinian pain and supposed Israeli evil, just to sound woke – or so students have told me. It’s Jews on the left no longer feeling welcome in left-leaning spaces, afraid to doomscroll, doomed to stumble on something painful.
Among some on the right, it’s all supremacy and conspiracy theories. Social media comments are filled to the top with this stuff. It’s a view of Jews having tremendous power and media control, never mind that if we did have control, you would never know it. Because we would control knowledge of the control. Duh.
I guess you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to be an antisemite.
“Jewish supremacy is the greatest threat to the world today,” says Dan Bilzerian on social media; the right-soaked influencer has tens of millions of followers.
Meanwhile, the decades have taken Tucker Carlson from earnest, bowtie wearing neocon on CNN to red-faced, angry purveyor of antisemitic tropes. Honestly, he looks like he needs to sit down and chill out before he gives himself a heart attack over all our evil.
I mean, did you see the cover of today’s Chronicle? Jews braiding plastic bags into bedding for the homeless. Who do we think we are, controlling all those plastic bags?
Up is down. Two plus two is five. The knish is without mustard. Clearly, we have entered an alternate universe.
Or maybe we’re back to the one that existed before I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, when America’s grandfathers were heroes for defeating the hands behind the Holocaust, and Jews were people they helped rescue.
Today, more than ever before in my memory, we’re outsiders.
But I have this theory that at least some of those who have othered us – or have capitulated to it -– will realize that we are needed after all. That is the nature of democracy. It’s part of why I have so loved the U.S. Constitution all my life. It’s a trampoline, not just paper. It can give us our bounce back.
Today, many on both the left and the right can ignore that we feel marginalized, that we are frightened. But that may change as we enter a new kind of nationwide games – not the Hunger Games but the Hamish Games.
Which party can make us feel at home? Which political movement can be our cozy, familiar spot?
That may be who gets our votes. In states with hundreds of thousands of Jews that can be razor thin in presidential contests – Pennsylvania and Florida. Not to mention millions of Jewish voters in congressional districts in states like Illinois, New York, New Jersey and California.
And here in Wisconsin, we are small but mighty, tens of thousands of us in a purple state where presidential elections are typically decided by fewer than 30,000 votes. Our two U.S. senators, Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin, each won in recent years by fewer than 30,000 votes. That tiny margin gave us a pair of senators who represent us all, yet agree on nothing.
We American Jews of the next quarter century are going to have a choice – when selecting from among the political parties, the opposing movements, will we choose left or right?
Antisemitism is not the only issue, but it’s a big one. And on other issues the political parties have taken to shifting around like a soccer ball in a bad flight’s overhead compartment. Who can truly say for certain, how aligned we will all feel with which party when that nutty plane lands for an Election Day?
As things have headed south in the current moment, I’ve taken some comfort in the knowledge that we will be free to stand up against hate at the ballot box.
I invite you to join me in watching both sides, with a ruler in hand, a scorecard. Let’s remember. Let’s take notes. Let’s see what’s most hamish for us, and what’s not, and then let’s send a message in the years of elections to come.
America must do better. We should hold it accountable.
Rob Golub is editor of the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
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