The four Jewish Rabbinical organizations deciding to boycott the annual conference call with President Trump are politically driven. They are simply another embodiment of the polarization of the American people. One might even see the nation now as the Divided States of America. What is sad is that these Rabbinical groups would place politics into their religious leadership of these organizations. That is a new situation where religious leaders decide on whether or not they are going to attend an event with the President which is an annual event to mark and celebrate the Jewish High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, on purely political motives. Their claims that this is over Charlottesville tragedy is purely fabricated out of whole cloth as most of these Rabbis also boycotted President Trump at the AIPAC conference when he spoke. Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner has written an op-ed on March 25, 2016 in the Jewish Journal expressing “deep anguish over Donald Trump’s appearance at the conference.” Additional rhetoric in his op-ed depicted his exact duplicity as he wrote, “As a religious movement, we do not endorse or oppose political candidates. Still, along with several other rabbis and lay leaders, I decided that I had to register my opposition and growing concern with the tone, rhetoric, and violence that have come to define Donald Trump’s campaign by not staying in the arena when he spoke.” Add to that, Rabbi Pesner is completely aware that as a religious leader his place is to provide support to his congregants but apparently the good Rabbi has chosen his congregants so carefully that he knows none supported the Trump campaign and thus they all supported his disrespecting one candidate while giving support through his presence the other candidates.
But we should not leave out the names of the entities which have decided that this President is unworthy of even the decency of a phone call to commemorate the Jewish High Holidays, a completely nonpartisan event. The Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism are the groups whose leadership has declared their membership of Rabbis are to boycott the Presidential call as the representatives of their congregations. One can only wonder how many of these Rabbi’s congregants just might have voted for President Trump or might actually take pride simply that their Rabbi would take the call from the President celebrating the High Holidays simply because of the honor of the office of the President. The article about the boycott probably made the best statement when they opened with the following introduction before getting to their apparent support of the Rabbis refusing to take the Presidential call stating, “For years, the presidential conference calls were a nonpartisan holiday tradition: President Barack Obama would speak by phone with hundreds of rabbis in advance of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in what participants described as a meeting of minds, largely free of raw politics.” Wonderful, for years, since the Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton, this has been a politics free event without any grandstanding or other political jesters. No longer will this be the case and we seriously doubt Charlottesville was anything beyond cover for a purely political protestation and more carryover from the defeat of the inevitable one, Hillary Clinton.
International Socialists as Communists vs National Socialists as Nazis
This is simply more of the reaction and partisan furor over the election of Donald Trump after the fake news system failed to deliver the overwhelming predicted victory of Hillary Clinton. The leftists were so convinced by their own propaganda that they have been completely incapable of coping with their failure to retain the Presidency. These Rabbis are simply a symptom and nothing more. We witness the complete frenzied refusal to accept the election of President Trump but there is a far more serious problem starting to explode within the American political scene. The problem is not just with the scene in the United States, we have the effects from the leftists on the policies concerning Israel. The American group J-Street who claim to be the alternative to AIPAC for Israeli policy and also the only true peace advocates have been out screeching to the media that President Trump has destroyed all hopes for peace between the Israelis and Arabs. J Street on Thursday attacked the Trump administration for refusing to endorse a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict. J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami attacked State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert for her comments made Wednesday, August 23, 2017 (see entire briefing below covering many subjects from Egypt to Cambodia as well as the Israeli Arab peace process), stating, “We want to work toward a peace that both sides can agree to and that both sides find sustainable. We believe that both parties should be able to find a workable solution that works for both of them. We are not going to state what the outcome has to be. It has to be workable to both sides. And I think, really, that’s the best view as to not really bias one side over the other, to make sure that they can work through it. It’s been many, many decades, as you well know, that the parties have not been able to come to any kind of good agreement and sustainable solution to this. So we leave it up to them to be able to work that through.”
What is interesting are the exact complaints registered by the J-Street leadership which we need discuss. Their problem with the position stated by the State Department and President Trump on numerous occasions is that there will be no supposition of any condition for the resulting form of any peace agreement in the Israeli Arab negotiations. J-Street were distressed that the Administration stated position does not include the demand that there be a “two state solution” and Ben-Ami claimed, “displayed dangerous ignorance about the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what it will take to end it. The Trump administration has spoken often of its desire to broker a comprehensive and transformative peace agreement in the Middle East. Early steps taken by the special envoy and others suggested a real interest in constructing a viable approach to achieving that objective. But there is no way to accomplish that goal without a two-state solution.” This was according to Haaretz who simply love to print everything that J-Street claims as it fully backs their leftist post-Zionist slant on the news. J-Street has consistently supported making an Arab Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria and dividing Jerusalem and using the Green Line as the defining border and the labelling of any Jewish manufactured or grown goods from the area. J-Street has also taken a position against any “settlement growth” in Judea and Samaria. Unsurprisingly, these are also the demands made by the Arab Palestinian Authority (PA). Why a presumably pro-Israel group would support the exact same demands as the PA which is working towards, as they have stated, the destruction of Israel as the Jewish homelands is far beyond reason. The media also, from the press briefing, are stunned and in disbelief that the Trump Administration is allowing the two sides to find whatever solution the two are able to agree upon, whether that be a two state solution or some form of shared political and security arrangement no matter what form as long as both sides are able to agree.
The J-Street disagreement and accusational attitude towards the Trump Administration after their love affair with the Obama Administration is simply another example of the bias towards the left by American Jews. This has become something which has been somewhat distressing to many Israeli Jews. Many are confused and do not understand why the American Jews are taking sides which would cripple Israel and possibly injure Israel severely if their positions were to become fact. Seeing American Jews taking the identical position as the PA confuses them but part of the reason for the position of the American Jews comes down to the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party has, of late, taken the same outlook to a solution between Israel and the Arabs which is fully-supportive of the positions stated by the PA. This was the position taken by President Obama who favored not only the PA but also to have a Middle East where the major power would be Iran instead of Israel. Candidate Clinton had stated repeatedly that she supported the Obama position on the Arab Israeli peace as well as empowering Iran such that they would replace Israel and the Saudi Arabians as the strongest in the Middle East. The Obama Clinton positions were near identical and were both anti-Israel and post-Zionist if defined by Israeli terms. The Jews in the United States have turned to where their politics supersedes their religion and when their politics clashes with their Judaism, their leftist policies take precedence over Torah. This will continue to place a wedge which will force the Israelis and the American Jews further and further apart over time. Israel is becoming more religious while the American Jews are becoming less religious and this will lead to something problematic in the near future unless something should come to pass which would force the American Jews to be forced to defend their Jewishness.
The coming of the near future for American Jews will be their dissolution through assimilation. Within the next twenty to thirty years, the numbers of Jews will dwindle greatly. Most of the Reform and Conservative congregations now are largely made up of five time a year Jews with a small core of Jews who actually follow the religion. The Reform Jews probably have virtually, if not, no religious Jews remaining and their congregations will dissipate into nothing, as the next generation is not raising their children within the faith. The Conservative congregations will also start to disappear with the next two generations. The one shining and hopeful reality is there is one group of Jews who are growing in numbers, and those are the Orthodox and the Haredi Jews. What is also of interest is that these two groups are more-supportive of President Trump than the other denominations. The Orthodox and Haredi Jews are more conservative politically and generally more supportive of the Israeli side of the Israeli Arab conflict. This bodes well for Israel but not so much for the influence of the Jews in general in the United States. The leftist Jews are leaving the fold and will water down their performance of Jewish customs and observance eventually making them not Jewish except by genealogy. There is one thing which could alter this trend which is hopefully unthinkable. That would be anti-Semitism raising its grotesque head to the point where Jews were singled out and had legal restrictions placed upon the community.
This has been an occurrence which has often come about when the Jews in regions were assimilating to a dangerous point where it threatened their existence and the rise of hatred forced the Jews to return to their faith. The Jews in Persia were assimilating to a great degree to the point that the Queen to King Ahasuerus was a Jewish woman named Esther. Then Haman came forth gaining a royal decree that all Jews were to be put to death, when Esther informed the King that she was a Jewess, the King made a second decree which did not countermand the first, that was not permitted by Persian law, but he ruled the Jews were permitted to be warned of the date and may defend themselves. Hamas and his sons did not fare well and were hanged. This is celebrated as Purim with the reading of the Megillah of Esther. The Jews again were almost completely assimilated under the Greek rule. The Hellenist Jews were liberal and following the ways of the Greeks until the Maccabees revolt which is celebrated as Hanukkah and the lighting of the lights. Under the Romans the Jews were never allowed to assimilate and actually managed to revolt and remove Roman rule twice, one resulting in the destruction of the Second Temple and the next in the first dispersion and the rumors of another revolt brought the second and near total dispersion. This spread the Jews over much of the Roman Empire and some even beyond their borders as they fled from Rome altogether to escape persecutions. The Jews in Germany actually served in a higher percentage than other groups even including the Lutherans in World War I and many were highly decorated. The Jews were all but completely assimilated in Germany leading into World War II. The Nazis took care to separate the Jews from the rest of the German population and the resulting genocide of the Jews of Europe is recorded in the Holocaust where two-thirds of the nine-million European Jews were murdered, six-million Jews.
The Jews of the United States are reaching very high level of assimilation and it would be unfortunate if Charlottesville protests would be the first sign. But do not let anyone be fooled about where the main threat to the Jews derives; it is from amongst both the far-right and the far-left. One side is comprised of Nazis and white supremacists while the other side has BLM and Antifa which are but a minor example. The new anti-Semitism is largely expressed as anti-Israelism, anti-Zionism and the convergence of Islamic antisemitism and Christian Replacement Theology. There were likely a close number of anti-Semites on both sides in Charlottesville, but do not expect to ever hear that from the mainstream media as for them the leftists are perfect people who would not have butter melt in their mouths. The Jews in the United States may also awaken in another twenty years, if not sooner, to find themselves being reproached regularly in the public sphere before it gets radically worse, just a warning of that which we hope never happens.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 