Anne Frank House Closed due to overcrowding.
7:00 PM: If you are Jewish, or even if you are not Jewish, you may want to click the NYT unlocked link and allow Brett to help us understand the continuing worldwide ‘Jew Hunt’ — this is not an endorsement of any political party in America, in Israel, or even in Anne Frank’s old neighborhood. I am only reporting . . . .
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I do find it fascinating that there are members of our Jewish Community who have been influenced (often by their own children) who see Zionism and Israeli “crimes against humanity” as the fault of the Jews, much of which can be understood under the heading of: “who better to blame than your own” or equally tantalizing, coursing through the veins of American and European Academia, and currently permeating American and Academic settings, under the rubric of “blaming the Jews.”
Equally sad, there is a hidden self-loathing lurking behind a screen of ‘Zionism’ as if the return of the Jewish people, after being raped and murdered and driven out of their ancestral homeland, where the same fate would await them while merely seeking a place of refuge, albeit an unwelcome refuge in lands not their own. For recent generations of young Jews, Jewish history was thought to be either an exaggeration or a false narrative invented in order to subjugate peoples of color in America, especially with the newly minted ‘Indigenous peoples of the world narrative’.
Here is where facts have been ignored and the wrongs of history have been thought to be a fault of . . . . you guessed it, the Jews.
Now please understand that the study of History is important — at least important enough to understand both oneself (a self-understanding) and one’s identity (yes, a shared identity and a shared destiny).
Going Global: Here The New York Times’ Bret Stephens warns of the threat caused by the global rise in antisemitism, and the failure of Western governments to address it. (unlocked below).
A Worldwide ‘Jew Hunt’
If any doubts remained about the motives of the Amsterdam thugs who last week terrorized and assaulted Israeli soccer fans in droves, an investigation in The Wall Street Journal should settle the questions. <unlocked: https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/calls-for-jew-hunt-preceded-attacks-in-amsterdam-e3311e21?st=ZwCtDd&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Excerpt 1. It wasn’t merely a reaction to provocative behavior by some of those fans. It wasn’t just overflowing anger over the war in Gaza. It was something altogether darker.
“Maccabi supporters had traveled to the Dutch capital for a match with local team Ajax on Thursday night,” the newspaper reported, referring to the Tel Aviv club. “Little did they know that, earlier in the day, they had become a topic of discussion on popular messaging apps, where users were calling for a Jodenjacht, or ‘Jew Hunt.’”
Jew hunt: Grotesque as the phrase is, it can no longer surprise.
It is what the graffiti on a wall in an Oslo metro station promises: “Hitler started it. We finis[h]ed it.”
It is a wave of antisemitic hate crimes in Chicago, including “anti-Semitic flyers with rat-poison like pellets” found in Lincoln Park in April, a Jewish man shot while walking to his synagogue in West Rogers Park in October and two Jewish students at DePaul University assaulted by masked men last Wednesday.
Exceprt 2. Notice what these attackers aren’t saying. They aren’t expressing themselves in the faddish language of anti-Zionism. They aren’t denouncing Israeli policy or speaking up for Palestinian rights. They aren’t trying to make careful distinctions between Jews and Israelis. They are, like generations of pogromists before them, simply out to get the Jews — a reminder, if one was needed, of the truth often attributed to Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Which makes it even more remarkable how strenuously some people initially tried to obscure the nature of the Amsterdam pogrom. The media are rarely shy about calling out certain kinds of hate crimes as racist. Yet for days the word “antisemitic” was either put inside quotation marks or attributed to Dutch officials when talking about the violence. The identity of the attackers has been treated as a mystery, or a secret, beyond delicate references to people with “a migration background,” in the words of Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof.
Exceprt 3. The fate of societies that become ‘Judenfrei’ — free of Jews — has not, historically, been a happy one. The United States is still a long way from this point, thanks to a larger and more politically confident Jewish community, along with a national culture that traditionally has generally admired Jews.
But that culture is also under growing threat today, whether from Hamas’s fellow travelers in the Ivy League and the publishing world; Louis Farrakhan’s admirers in the Black community; or the alt-right inveighing, with a sinister wink, against ‘globalists’ and ‘neocons.’”
Here unlocked:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/opinion/amsterdam-antisemitism-jews-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Zk4.YzVW.zXqTCDkAaUcT&smid=url-share
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American University Jew Watch . . . what begins with the Jews, rarely ends with the Jews . . . .
The University of Rochester is conducting an investigation after hundreds of “Wanted” posters featuring the names and images of Jewish faculty, including the school’s Hillel director, were posted on campus …
Hundreds of ‘wanted’ posters were plastered across the University of Rochester campus. Jewish faculty members were targeted
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/us/university-of-rochester-wanted-posters/index.html
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Despite the hate and the vitriol, we live, we thrive, and we will endure . . . .
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Hirsch’s Mother weighs in on respect and grief and sorrow and ultimately, we are all in this together.
Limping toward the light: A letter from me in this moment: In this complex and loud world piled with confusion and brokenness, the most decent thing we can do is revive the lost art of respectfulness
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/limping-toward-the-light-a-letter-from-me-in-this-moment/
In an essay republished in The Times of Israel, Rachel Goldberg-Polin reflects on the role that respect plays in Jewish tradition. “When my girls and I are having a moment walking, breathing and smiling, and someone stops us and starts crying, they are robbing us of a moment of respite from the horror we are digesting. When I am walking alone, with a hat, glasses and my head down, it is me saying, ‘Please, oh please, let me breathe for a moment without having to also carry your pain.
Your pain is as real as mine, but I have no strength at the moment to carry yours too. I love you and am endlessly grateful for you loving Hersh. I love you for loving the hostage families. I love you for trying to help. But please, if you want to help me, let me go on walking. When you see me and our eyes cross paths, please, oh please, just smile and wave.
My knees are buckling from all the wounds people are sharing. I am just not formidable and powerful enough. Not yet. I am working on it. I wish to get there. Because I want us all to help lift each other, like the Amish do when they hoist up the frame for a new home they are all collectively building together. Let’s do that. But I am not robust enough… not yet.’”
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From the Parasha: what happens when a place is permeated with an extreme moral rot . . .
וַ֠יֹּ֠אמֶר אַל־נָ֞א יִ֤חַר לַֽאדֹנָי֙ וַאֲדַבְּרָ֣ה אַךְ־הַפַּ֔עַם אוּלַ֛י יִמָּצְא֥וּן שָׁ֖ם עֲשָׂרָ֑ה וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ לֹ֣א אַשְׁחִ֔ית בַּעֲב֖וּר הָעֲשָׂרָֽה׃
And he said, “Let not my lord be angry if I speak but this last time: What if ten should be found there?” “I will not destroy, for the sake of the ten.”
וַיֵּ֣לֶךְ יְהֹוָ֔ה כַּאֲשֶׁ֣ר כִּלָּ֔ה לְדַבֵּ֖ר אֶל־אַבְרָהָ֑ם וְאַבְרָהָ֖ם שָׁ֥ב לִמְקֹמֽוֹ׃
Having finished speaking to Abraham, יהוה departed; and Abraham returned to his place.
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Empires and their communities grow and proliferate (often dressed up and disguised as nationalist liberation movements, righting the wrongs of both history and of white rulers) — ultimately they and their sycophants find themselves consigned to the ash heap of history . . . where they belong.
Despite them and their evil – we the Jewish People will live, and we will continue to thrive, Zionists that we are and always will be.
Am Yisrael Chai,
