JEW!

  Is Representative Josh Gottheimer correct?

"... as we were going into the bakery someone from the crowd derisively screamed ‘Jew.”  ... members of the Working Families Party disrupt the event by screaming ‘Jew’ at me. What has our country come to?”

Is this true in fact and deed? Have we, this country, fallen into the same cesspool of anti Semitism that has seemingly engulfed Europe, never mind the Middle East and Asia where it has been endemic! Never mind the islands of the Caribbean and other places of disasters despite Israel always the 'firstest and mostest' there. It seems that humanity chooses to be tainted by this horrific trope for all eternity. 

However, despite incidents of anti Semitism here, our Founder, Washington, wrote a letter to the Jewish community of Newport insisting on their welcome and equality within this new country. Hayim Solomon funded the revolution much to his own financial detriment. Despite quotas, Jews were able to advance in all areas of life, be it medicine, scholarship, business, in all areas of life. We won Nobel prizes for America, top Math awards, and broke so many lines of restriction, be it here in Florida or Madison Avenue or any other deluded areas who thought that America would stand for this. Not in the long run. We had found a home. 

We were safe, as safe as a Jew could be in a land not our traditional homeland. Even when that county became a reality, the world rejected and continues to reject it, judges it by a double standard, insisting that a land founded by Jews, a Jewish state, could not possibly be accepted within the international family of nations. No, for in their hate filled, hateful, twisted, biased minds, the Wandering Jew had to wander for all eternity.

America was good for us. It was called by Jews in bloody Europe the "Goldeneh Medinah" - the Golden Land, where opportunity and safety, a future, a safe family, education, were all within the realm of possibility. Even as waves of hatred, of virulent antisemitism swept Europe, especially from the time of the Dreyfus scandal and continuing through bloody pogroms in Russia and eastern European countries, the slaughter of the Holocaust, even as British ships fired upon refugee ships and worse, sent them back to the places of slaughter they had just survived, despite some slurs, life was good here for us. We returned the loyalty by contributing, taking on roles of importance and benefit to this country. We became philanthropists, donors for hospitals, organizations, universities, spearheaded the civil rights movement and more.

In those same countries of Europe anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head once again. A Jew in France is forgetting the past, and like members of the Jewish Police in the ghettoes, or members of the Judenrat who aided the Nazis in roundups, perhaps he feels he will be immune to the fate of the rest of his nation, his people. It will not be so. We learned that through a bloody lesson indeed. But we thought that here, in America, the Golden Land, we were safe, Americans, one and all, proud of our country, fighting its wars, developing its future. Now, now we are finding a different reality.

Now we have open Fascists within the national political and governmental entities. Now, we have a deranged woman, a member of Congress, shouting "... that is exactly why I came to Congress. To work to see America restored to the Christian principles that have given rise to the greatest nation the world has ever known. Merry Christmas."

"Let us celebrate the true reason for the season, the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ!" 

(Just as an aside, remember, Jesus was born, lived, and died, as a Jew.)

If the hairs on your neck and arms are not raised, if goosebumps are not appearing on your body, then you need to pay attention to what is happening outside your limited world, your bubble you thought so safe within the borders of this blessed country.      How many more times must we hear those shouts, those statements that always led to pogroms and bloodshed, to rape and death, to violence beyond all imagination, enough to awaken protest voices all the way over here in America, our safe land. Safe no more? Or has that become a statement. Safe no more. No longer in doubt. No longer a question. Now, a reality.

Jews throughout the ages have become ultra - sensitized to prejudice. They know that one hatred is never enough. Always, the hate, the blame, the dissatisfaction, the outlets of rage, devolve upon the Jewish people. Always and forever. Is America to be no different? We begin to doubt as the haters, the shouters, the defenders of a "Christian" nation gain power and raise their voices.

Old hatreds remain, viable, growing, refreshed by people not worthy of their positions and places within this nation. The Dreyfus scandal once again is relevant in France as it is here, right now. Will the Jewish people have a spokesman as powerful in voice as Emile Zola? Will the haters be defeated, at least for a time? As a Jewish woman, I am fearful. As a mother of Jewish children, a grandmother of Jewish grandchildren, I worry. And I worry for the other children, non-Jews, who will fall under the wild, uncontrollable wielders of the hammers of hate. No one benefits in a world such as that. No one succeeds, for all live in doubt and fear. There is no progress, for hatred is a backwards movement.

As an American, I hope that my country will do what is right. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope.  I pray.