Our so-called Jewish leadership have yet to learn an extremely important lesson from Nazi Europe. When Jews were herded to the death camps, it made no difference whether they wore peyos and beards or dressed as fashionable Westerners. When anti-Semites start coming after the Jews, they start with those who look Jewish, but in time they find the rest.
Anti-Jewish fervor in America today cannot be compared to the atmosphere in Europe in the 1930s and ’40s. The uncomprehending quietude of Jewish leaders today, however, ominously parallels the passivity of upper-echelon German Jewish society during the rise of Nazism.
In pre-Nazi Germany, Jews were very much assimilated and accepted in genteel society as long as they looked and acted as proper Germans. When anti-Jewish attacks began in Germany, the targets were obvious-looking Jews and their shops. Little, if anything, was heard from those upmarket Jews who had seamlessly blended into Germans culture. But perhaps, by then, it was already too late for them as well.
Don’t for a moment believe it can never happen here in America. If our official Jewish leaders continues to bury their heads in the sand while obvious-looking Jews are beaten on the streets of Brooklyn, in time it will be their heads that will be ruthlessly pulled from the sand and attacked as well.
Believing that we’re in the same boat as other culturally-lionized victims of discrimination, these professed leaders hide from the obvious – it’s the Jews they’re after, stupid – in order not to rock that boat. But not speaking out loudly and clearly, shying away from, G-d forbid, identifying with the very-different-than-me Jew who is today’s target will eventually lead to a very frightful future for all American Jews.
Anti-Semitic sentiments existed in Germany, and the rest of Europe, way before Hitler was ever born. These beliefs exist in America, too. But now they’re blossoming like wild weeds in this fertile cesspool of hatred for Israel.
If America’s leaders – Jewish and non-Jewish – act complacent as this hatred blooms, it is only a matter of time before the event we remember by declaring “Never Again” will happen again. Hate has a way of growing slowly, gradually taking on steam and then growing exponentially until it bursts out of control. Then what?
