American Jews, Is the Honeymoon Over?

With over 3500 years of continuous existence as a people, it’s hard to point to any specific moment in Jewish history and say, “this is unique:” as the Biblical idiom has it, “nothing is new under the sun.” Yet with the anniversary of the horrific attack by Hamas on southern Israel fast approaching, things have changed dramatically for the seven million Jews who call the United States their home.

American Jews, especially those who to migrated to these shores after the pogroms in late nineteenth-century Russian Empire, frequently voiced the notion that the United States was “The Golden Land,” with democratic values that relegated the medieval antipathy to Jews firmly in the distant past. Jews reciprocated to the newfound freedoms by contributing to American society on a scale vastly disproportionate to their tiny percentage of the population, which barely broke two percent. Access to higher education, freedom from antisemitic restrictions in business, and a general environment of democratic opportunity allowed Jews to give back to society by developing science (over 100 Nobel laureates), culture (Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures), and the economy (Google, Facebook, Starbucks, just to name a few).

Jews loved America, and for the most part the appreciation was mutual. This was especially true for the second half of the twentieth century, when the Greatest Generation liberated the Nazi Death camps. The apple-cheeked young soldiers from Idaho, who may never have met a single Jew in their lives, suddenly came face-to-face with the darkest implications of Jew-hatred.

Hearts expanding with compassion and sympathy, the post-war generation entered into a profound period of philosemitism, as average Americans saw Jewish history the way most Jews understand it: a long existential struggle for survival in hostile environments, culminating in the event that literally gave the world the word “genocide,” coined by a Polish-American Jew named Raphael Lemkin, seeking a way to describe an act of such heinous enormity that no existing vocabulary could contain it. When the bedraggled survivors of the Holocaust joined with the older Jewish community to establish the State of Israel in 1948, successfully defending the old-new land against an invasion of five Arab armies, Americans cheered.

Sadly, that honeymoon era seems to be ending. Recent polling indicates a profound split between younger and older Americans: while less than 10% those over 55 support Hamas in its conflict with Israel, fully 41% of Americans aged 18-24 identify, amazingly, with the terrorist organization. We certainly see the reflection of this generation gap on many college campuses, where it is no longer unfashionable to voice vulgar Jew-hatred in public. Israel, as a modern nation-state, is not exempt from criticism, and in fact dissent from its policies and politicians is a lively part of the vigorous Israeli democracy. The selective outrage of these young critics, however, and the glaring double standard applied to America’s ally is often indicative of an undercurrent of simple antisemitism.

In every occasion, Jewish communities have found ways to rebound, often remarkably so, from devastating tragedies.

So wither American Jewry, as the cultural mood of the youth of this country, once so welcoming to the Jewish people, seems to be heading in a darker direction? Jews of the United States can look to the past for historical precedents, many of which may yield new strategies to survive the current challenges. The Crusades ravaged the Ashkenazic heartland in the 11^th century, but sages such as the famous Bible commentator Rashi devised legal innovations to rebuild the shattered communities.

Regime change a century later in Spain ended the idyllic period known as La Convivencia (“the coexistence”) and drove the family of Maimonides from their ancestral home, but the great philosopher was able to replant the family in Cairo, establishing a dynasty of leadership that cared for Jewish minorities throughout the Mediterranean basin for centuries.

The seventeenth-century peasant uprising under Bohdan Khmelnitsky drove tens of thousands of Jewish refugees to western Europe, but economic and communal restructuring allowed the Jews of Ukraine to rebound to their previous population numbers.

In every occasion, Jewish communities have found ways to rebound, often remarkably so, from devastating tragedies. The current expression of hostility emanating from some circles of American youth might not bode well for the Jewish vision of the United States as “the Golden Land,” but historical experience suggests that the energetic, ebullient and enthusiastic Jewish minority will find new ways to adapt. As the Hebrew expression goes, Am Yisrael chai—the Jewish people live.

Dr. Henry Abramson is a noted Jewish historian and dean of Touro University’s Lander College for Men