The International Court of Justice is preparing to lower the legal threshold for “genocidal intent”; not in South Africa’s case against Israel, which everyone is watching, but Gambia’s suit against Myanmar, which gets less than 1% of the coverage.

If you have rarely, if ever, heard of the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim ethnic group facing a systematic military campaign of mass killings, sexual violence and village burnings, that is exactly the point. Despite the urgency and gravity of their humanitarian crisis, they are not the reason the government of Ireland, purported “human rights” groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and U.N. Special Rapporteurs such as the contemptible Francesca Albanese are seeking this new ruling.

To understand why the aforementioned parties see a need to move the goalposts is to reveal their true agenda. A bar is lowered when conduct one wishes to condemn does not remotely clear the current one. This cast of characters has attempted to slander Israel as “genocidal” for decades and has always suffered from the same problem: The facts do not merely fail to support the charge; they refute it.

Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, when roughly 1.4 million people lived there. By 2023 the figure had passed 2.1 million—a rise of better than half in 16 years. Not incidentally, that is one of the highest growth rates on earth. Whatever else was happening in Gaza across those 16 years of alleged extermination, mass murder wasn’t it. No genocide in recorded history has produced that result because that is not genocide. The word has a meaning, and the people deploying it against Israel have always known that the meaning does not fit.

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer, constructed the word “genocide” in 1944 out of Greek and Latin to name what was then being done to his own family members—49 of them were murdered in the Holocaust. He created the term so that the world would never again be able to say it had no language for what it was watching. But now advocates are pushing to redefine his word to tie that vile crime to Jews as perpetrators rather than victims.

There is a name in psychology for what is happening here: projection. The charge is not an analysis of Israeli conduct; it is a confession of the accuser’s own intent, laundered through the accused.

Hamas has never been coy about its intentions. Its 1988 covenant does not call for a state, border or negotiation; it calls for genocide, the real kind, without exaggeration and without prevarication. It quotes a hadith in which the stones and trees call out to Muslims to come kill the Jews hiding behind them. And lest one imagine this is merely some form of theological hyperbole, Hamas leaders said proudly after Oct. 7 that, if given the chance, they would repeat the massacre of that day again and again until Israel is annihilated.

That is a program for implementing Hitler’s Final Solution, stated in public in the organization’s own words. Thus, those who march for Hamas and cannot say the word “Hamas” without an apology attached accuse Israel of the very crime they are marching to see committed against Jews. They describe their own ambition and put Israel’s name on it.

Consider, as well, a fact that ought to end the argument and never does. John Spencer, who chairs urban warfare studies at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and has spent a career studying the subject, has stated that Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any military in the history of warfare. This encompasses measures that the United States did not implement in Iraq or Afghanistan, or, for that matter, by any other army anywhere. Evacuation warnings, roof-knocks, leaflets, phone calls, published corridors, daily pauses: Every one of them surrendered surprise, which is to say every one of them risked the lives of Israeli soldiers. Israel has paid for Arab civilian safety in Jewish blood, repeatedly and deliberately.

Hamas spent those same months doing the precise opposite, with equal deliberation. It built its command posts under hospitals and its rocket launchers beside schools; it blocked the corridors Israel opened; and it fought in civilian clothes from inside apartment blocks. This was not indifference to Gazan life, but a deliberate strategy that depended upon needless deaths. Hamas understood that every Arab child killed in a building it had turned into a bunker would be charged against Israel, because it knew that the world has blood-libeled Jews for deaths caused by others for millennia.

The present day is no exception, and this is where the West’s moral scolds come in.

The Hamas strategy depended upon the campus encampments, celebrity statements, U.N. rapporteurs and newspaper editorialists. They were not incidental to Hamas’s calculation; they were the mechanism. Every professor and pop star who blamed Israel for collateral damage caused by Hamas encouraged Hamas to cause more Arab deaths. If you want to know who was responsible for Arab children dying in Gaza, start with Hamas, and continue directly to the people who guaranteed that those deaths would be profitable for the terrorists.

Nor was that the full extent of their culpability. Objectively, if someone is being tortured, starved and forced to dig his own grave, as Evyatar David was until his release, then someone whose only contribution is to slander his rescuers as “genocidal” is a barbarian who is at least indifferent to torture and starvation, if not wanting it to continue. If someone is being sexually assaulted daily, as Arbel Yahoud was, someone slandering her rescuers as “genocidal” is a deviant. And if a months-old baby is murdered with bare hands by his captors, as Kfir Bibas was, someone slandering his rescuers is simply a monster.

QED, the governments of South Africa, Ireland, Iceland, Brazil and several other states—like Cuba, Nicaragua and other “paragons” of human rights—are dominated by barbarians, deviants and monsters. To those with a working moral compass, this is no exaggeration.

So let us understand what the judges at The Hague are being recruited for: They are being asked to take a word that the Jewish people gave international law—purchased at a price no one should have to pay, much less repeatedly—and file its edges down until it can be turned around and weaponized against the Jews.

The judges should be told the rest of it too: A threshold low enough to convict Israel is quite low enough to convict the United States, Britain and every First World peacekeeping force that has ever been forced to fight in a city. That is not a warning. It is the plan.

Lemkin wanted a word so that the world could not plead confusion. It is worth noticing who is now working so hard to make it confusing again.

Photo: Raphael Lemkin, courtesy of the American Jewish Historical Society/Center for Jewish History, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

For two years, Motaz Azaiza was the West’s eyes in Gaza. TIME named him one of its 100 most influential people. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. CNN, The Guardian, and GQ Middle East all featured his work, as did UNRWA. Now, in an Arabic-language podcast called Taqarrab, Azaiza has told us what his eyes actually saw – and what he decided the rest of us should not.

He also admitted that every reference to the war in Gaza as a genocide, including his own in speeches across America, was a lie.

“I saw the vehicle of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and there were [Israeli captives] there,” he said. “People got out, watched, beat them, hit them, and I followed them and filmed. But I did not publish those videos.” Why not? “I understood that Israel would use those videos to identify every person who was there and eliminate them. I did not want to be responsible, even indirectly, for the deaths of those people.”

Read that carefully, because the coverage has mostly framed it as a mere lapse in journalistic ethics. Azaiza did not fail to obtain the evidence. He obtained it, and he weighed it. On one side of the scale were Israeli hostages being beaten by a mob; on the other, the safety of the men beating them. And he chose the mob.

Per journalistic norms, photographs are often withheld to protect victims from further harm. Azaiza hid his photos for precisely the opposite reason: he didn’t want Israel to arrest or neutralize the perpetrators. Innocent civilians had been kidnapped, already sexually abused, and his concern was with the people that beat them and rejoiced at Hamas’ crimes. Jewish suffering was the one category of footage he decided to withhold.

He also told us that he was not alone. “Photographers in Gaza have become accustomed to lowering their cameras the moment someone says something bad about Hamas,” he said, “because anyone who dares to show reality is persecuted relentlessly.” Every image that came out of Gaza for two years passed through that filter. What the world was shown, Azaiza told us, was what Hamas permitted it to see.

Every award and platform he was given rested on the notion that Azaiza was providing us with a “raw” and “unfiltered” account. And that was never true.

But the most important confession in that interview has gone almost entirely unnoticed.

Azaiza is angry at Hamas. Not, Heaven forbid, for October 7. “I support armed resistance,” he explained. Let us be clear about what “armed resistance” meant that morning: families murdered in their beds, women raped, a music festival turned into a killing field, babies carried into Gaza as hostages – soon to be murdered. Azaiza’s objection is not that Hamas slaughtered civilians. It’s that he wanted “results.”

And then he addressed the fact that Hamas didn’t lay down its weapons for two full years. “You could have agreed to that already on October 11, 2023. Why was it so important that tens of thousands would be killed?” “You brought us back to the Middle Ages,” he said.

Sit with that for a minute. Arguably the most celebrated Arab photographer of the entire war said that the war could have ended four days after it began, had Hamas accepted then what it ultimately accepted later. It was, for Hamas, a choice, and he condemned Hamas for choosing instead to let Gaza burn.

Which means, of course, that there was no genocide.

In no genocide in human history have the victims controlled the off switch. The Jews of Europe could not end the Holocaust by releasing hostages. The Tutsi could not stop the machetes by giving up arms. The Armenians, the Cambodians, the Yazidis – none of them could halt their own extermination by agreeing to terms. Genocide requires intent to destroy a people for who they are. In such cases, if the victims lay down what weapons they have, the killing accelerates.

There was no genocide in Gaza, but a war, and every day it continued was because Hamas made a decision. Azaiza knows this, because he lived it. He said so in his own language, to his own audience, with no Israeli spokesman anywhere in sight: Hamas, not Israel, was to blame for two years of death and destruction across Gaza. That is quite an admission, coming from a man who toured America decrying a “genocide” that, per his own statements, never was.

And that brings us back to Ms. Rachel, and to the entire chorus of celebrities, professors, U.N. rapporteurs and editorial boards who have spent the same two years hurling the same bogus charge of genocide against Israel. Just last week, pledging $1 million to Palestinian causes, Ms. Rachel invited “every wealthy White celebrity to match it and speak out against the genocide in Gaza.” Her “friend Motaz” has now told her that the deaths she laid at Israel’s feet were Hamas’s choice, made deliberately and prolonged needlessly. Put two and two together, and he called her a liar.

Do not expect a retraction, much less an end to their friendship. Azaiza called himself a liar as well, but don’t expect his reputation to suffer. The genocide libel was never built on reality; like every blood libel before it, it was built on the need to blame Jews for deaths caused by others.

The Talmud teaches a key principle: hoda’as ba’al din k’meah eidim dami – the admission of a party to the case is like the testimony of a hundred witnesses. Motaz Azaiza hid the footage because he was no impartial observer, but a propagandist on behalf of the terrorists. He still supports the senseless murder of Jews, for which reason he despises Israel. Yet he has admitted to the world that Hamas could have ended this war in October of 2023, and chose not to.

That is an admission worth a hundred witnesses. It is time the people who made him famous chose to listen.

Photo: Motaz Azaiza attends UNRWA USA’s Gaza 5k event in Dallas, 9-28-2024, by FeaturingDallas, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In the court of trendy international opinion, a court consisting of Israel bashers and Jew haters of all stripes (including some Jews), Israel stands convicted of perpetrating a genocide against the people of Gaza.

Here’s how not to defend ourselves against such a libel, which not coincidentally is the approach that we have largely taken: it is to argue the facts and the evidence.

Facts and evidence are irrelevant when the charge itself is rooted in rancid bias, blatant Jew hatred, calculated and intentional lies, trendy witlessness, and mob pandering. The charge itself is meant to weaken our resolve and doubt the justice of our struggle for survival and is one of the primary tools in the arsenal of our enemies (hence, the genocide accusation first arose on October 8, weeks before Israel invaded Gaza in order to destroy Hamas, the ruling entity in Gaza, which had launched its massacre of Israel civilians on October 7).

Facts and evidence do not matter when the libel itself is meant to appeal to emotions, not logic or reason. Trying to counter an emotional argument with logic is doomed to fail, and each time we do so, we wonder anew why our counterclaims are not resonating.

We have responded, cogently but ineffectively, with facts. Our soldiers have routinely endangered their own lives – some have been killed and wounded – in order to avoid inflicting harm on Gazan civilians.

-Hamas as a regular tactic hides its weapons among civilians, hospitals, schools, and mosques and other locations generally held to be sacrosanct in any conflict.

-Hamas uses civilians as human shields and has deliberately killed their own civilians and counted them among the victims of Israeli attacks.

-Hamas has starved its own people, depriving them of aid (foolishly) provided by Israel during the war, and blaming Israel for the consequences.

-Hamas has staged obviously false scenarios of killed and wounded civilians (remember the NY Times’ cover picture of a “starving child,” whose bony frame was, in fact, entirely attributable to his cerebral palsy, which, surprise!, was not caused by Israel,).

All true, but not really relevant to the information war, as is our emphasis on questioning whether “Gazan civilians” are really innocent. Suffice it to say that “civilians” who held our hostages in their apartments and starved them are not “innocent,” nor are children who were used by Hamas fighters to run weapons, food, and supplies between depots and hideouts. Children, yes; innocent, hardly. This too is immaterial to countering the rabidly vicious charge of genocide.

The most egregious example of a truth that misses the mark in this battle is constant reference to the “civilian-to-combatant ratio of casualties,” in which our conduct of this war grades out as the best in the history of urban conflict. G-d bless John Spencer and his erudition and articulation of this data, which serves the constructive purpose of reassuring ourselves of our morality but does not convince our detractors in the slightest.

Indeed, when we trot out the “civilian-to-combatant ratio of casualties” in order to confute the claims of our slanderers, we have already lost the information battle because we are fighting on their battlefield. Does anyone know or care about the “civilian-to-combatant ratio of casualties” in Russia’s war against Ukraine? Turkey’s war against the Kurds?

In the battlefield of lies, truth is always at a disadvantage, and it could well be that truth is always at a disadvantage anyway. As Mark Twain attested, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” And perhaps the greatest of all the lies in this context is the purposeful distortion of the term “genocide,” coined in 1943 by the renowned Jewish international lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, to describe what the Nazis attempted to do to the Jewish people: “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.”

That is what the Holocaust was, and one reason the tendentious and malicious international community delights in indicting Israel is to minimize the Holocaust as a prelude to denying that it occurred or that it was unique. It is not by any definition what happened in Gaza or is happening in Gaza, but we also convince no one when we refer to the relatively low level of deaths in Gaza compared to real genocides that have occurred across the world – the Holocaust, the Holodomor, Cambodia, Rhwanda, and others.

So how then can we refute this blood libel rooted in emotion – the emotion of Jew hatred? By defusing their emotional argument. Israelis, Jews, Israeli diplomats and media types should respond to the genocide libel quite simply. Here is a sample response to the shrill sloganeer or perverted politician who utters this accusation:

“By your definition of genocide – the death of any civilians in war – every war is a genocide. In every war, civilians are killed, usually unintentionally, but dead, nonetheless. If so, then every country is guilty of genocide. The United States perpetrated genocides – by your definition – against American Indians, and against Germans and Japanese in World War II, as did Britain and all the Allied countries in the latter conflict as well. China, Japan, Russia (Russia is still at it in Ukraine), Germany, France, Spain, the Arab countries, and most African countries are all perpetrators of genocide. Turkey accuses us of genocide, having committed a real genocide against Armenians over a century ago. One would think they would know what a genocide is.”

“If every war is a genocide, then it behooves aggressors – like Hamas – to not start wars of aggression. But if they do start wars, they should not then cry “genocide,” or have their useful idiots in the West cry it, in order to avoid the condign consequences of their aggression and evil.”

“And if every war, by your definition, is a genocide, why do you obsess on Israel and its justified war of self-defense? Why not campaign against Russia, the United States, China, Turkey, and other perpetrators? Could you be motivated by, hmmm… Jew hatred? Is Israel, according to you, the only nation on earth that does not have the right to defend itself? Is Israel, according to you, the only nation on earth that has to justify its right to exist? Are Jews, according to you, inherently evil and so the more you defame, oppress, repress, torture, injure, and kill them, the better?”

“You know who thought that? The Nazis, who committed a real genocide. So put the placard down and take a good look in the mirror.”

And there the discussion with the spiteful scoundrel ends.

As for us, it is good to remind ourselves that none of this is new. As King David warned us, our history is replete with recurrent examples of enemies who wish to destroy us, with weapons and words: “For, lo, Your enemies are in an uproar; and those that hate You have lifted up their head. They conspire with cunning against Your people and take counsel against Your treasured ones. They have said, ‘Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may no longer be remembered’” (Tehillim 83:3-5).

And their ancient and modern technique inspired this prayer: “G-d, deliver my soul from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue” (Tehillim 120:2).

Amen.

Photo: Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, courtesy of the Coalition for Jewish Values

As the summer came to an end, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel stood before a room of Jewish Democrats and reached for the Book of Esther. Jews, she intoned, have “a moral imperative to place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest and, yes, even our own survival.” It is, she said, “perhaps up to us now to follow in Esther’s path and sacrifice the comfort, safety, and security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity.”

For many decades, I have read the Book of Esther at least twice each year, following along on the holiday of Purim as it is read from a scroll in the original Hebrew. And to say that I do not recognize the story Nessel is telling would be an understatement. It seems far more likely that Nessel went to the Bible in desperation, as she sought to defend the unconscionable as somehow moral.

Esther, needless to say, did not sacrifice her people. On the contrary, the cause for which she risked her own life was their survival. When Mordechai first asked her to approach the king unsummoned, Esther hesitated, because unauthorized entry to the throne room was punishable by death. Mordechai’s admonishment to her is one of the most quoted lines in the entire book: “Who knows whether you have attained royal position for such a time as this?” Her obligation was to save her nation.

That is not a minor detail that Nessel got backward. It is the whole point of the story. Esther used what power she had, at personal risk, in open and unapologetic defense of her people. To invoke her name while asking American Jews to set aside “even our own survival” for someone else’s cause inverts the text entirely.

It also inverts the American ethos, which recognizes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable human rights, with life first among them. No person should be expected to sacrifice the safety of his or her community for some purportedly noble cause. Given Jewish history, to make such a demand of Jews is particularly vile. One could hardly find a better example of demonizing Jews for being Jews than to cast Jewish concern for our own survival as a failure of virtue. Nessel may be Jewish, but what she said was unquestionably antisemitic.

And if she wishes to “save the rest of humanity,” she should note how previous groups and governments have fared after they acted with hatred toward the Jewish community. No elected official should advocate for America to follow a millennia-long, unmitigated record of disappearance into the dustbin of history. When Esther saved the Jewish people, she also, for a time, saved the empire that had turned against them.

The great sage Hillel taught all humanity a better approach with three simple questions: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” Note the order. Self-preservation comes first, not as selfishness but as the precondition for everything else a person or a people might contribute to the world. A community with no desire for survival has nothing left to give.

Nessel’s underlying message was stunning: in order to support her party, one must disregard Jewish survival. She claimed that permitting bigotry and hate were prerequisites in order to back her ideology. And while I would argue that, overall, this is certainly not the case, it is most emphatically true regarding several of its candidates, including in her home state. In that regard, at least, the citizens of Michigan would be advised to listen carefully.

Photo: Dana Nessel by Showtime, licensed under CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

One year ago, the voice of Charlie Kirk was silenced by an assassin’s bullet. The Torah teaches, however, that a voice is not silenced when a person leaves the world, as long as others study and learn from his words. The message that Charlie shared cannot be lost with him.

If Charlie stood for one thing, it was values. He advocated for the dignity of every person and group, recognizing the spark of the Divine in every human life. He championed peaceful and robust discourse. He spoke often of the importance of family and children, which he also demonstrated through personal example.

For countless Jews in America and Israel, Charlie was a true friend and ally. At a time when standing with the Jewish people became increasingly difficult and, in some circles, socially and professionally costly, Charlie Kirk stood with us proudly, publicly, and without apology.

Charlie understood what too many influential Americans have forgotten: Israel is not merely a modern country or a political project. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to which Jews have prayed to return for thousands of years.

His support for Israel was not contingent on polling, applause or political convenience, but rooted in moral clarity. Charlie recognized that Israel stands on the front lines of a much larger struggle between civilization and barbarism, freedom and tyranny, life and those who glorify death.

He understood that antisemitism is never only a Jewish problem. Hatred may begin with the Jews, but history teaches us that it never ends with the Jews. A society that tolerates the demonization of Jewish students, the celebration of terrorism or calls for Israel’s destruction is a society surrendering its own moral foundations.

After the horrors of October 7, when Hamas terrorists murdered, tortured and kidnapped innocent men, women and children, Charlie did not equivocate. He did not retreat into comfortable language, much less the moral rot that took over much of American academia. He defended Israel’s right to protect its citizens and confronted the poisonous spread of antisemitism, recognizing these as part and parcel of his efforts to promote peace, justice, and moral virtue.

Charlie recognized the connection between faith, family and freedom. Although he was a committed Christian, he respected the Hebrew Bible, defended the Jewish roots of American civilization, and encouraged young people to reject the emptiness of radical secularism. He called them back to belief, responsibility, marriage, parenthood and service to something greater than themselves.

Along the way, he consistently demonstrated his concern for ideology over identity. In one notable confrontation, Charlie faced the late founder of “Cosmic Judaism,” who rose to promote socialism by dismissing the value of Jewish Day School education and the clear gap between public and private schooling overall. Charlie could not conscience a purported rabbi calling a Torah education “brainwashing,” and rejected the questioner’s claim to accurately speak for Judaism. “No, you absolutely take the Torah literally,” he interjected. “It’s literally the Torah!”

In an age that rewards caution, Charlie was fearless. In a culture drowning in carefully rehearsed talking points, he spoke directly. He specifically entered hostile spaces because he believed truth should never fear a debate.

We must realize, then, that his murder was not simply another senseless crime. It was an attack upon the American tradition of resolving disagreements through argument and persuasion rather than intimidation and bloodshed. This, of course, is one of many key lessons the Founding Fathers learned from our people.

Judaism also teaches us to answer darkness by creating more light. We answer hatred with moral courage, and answer those who attempt to silence truth by speaking it more boldly.

Charlie left behind a wife, children and a movement that continues to carry his mission forward. Our prayers remain with his family, whose loss is beyond measure. May they find comfort in knowing that his life changed millions and that his friendship will not be forgotten by the Jewish people.

May his courage inspire a new generation to stand for values and against antisemitism, to defend life, marriage, Israel, and the freedom to speak the truth. And may we honor him not only with words, but by continuing the work for which he gave his life.

Photo: Charlie Kirk by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

American Jews are dealing with the reality of distressing Jew hatred, manifested by sporadic physical attacks and more prevalent verbal confrontations. Worse, it has become mainstreamed in the Democratic Party, with elected officials and prominent nominees unafraid to spew hatred against Jews poorly disguised as anti-Israel “activism.” Some of these Democrats are poor excuse for Jews, such as Bernie Sanders, while others, like Chuck Schumer, are so blinded by ambition that they pretend it doesn’t exist or rationalize its presence by blaming Israel.

Increasingly, this is becoming a viral strain in the Republican Party as well, engendering an insipid debate over who is or isn’t an anti-Semite, and ignoring its true causes. Why, indeed, has Jew hatred exploded in America and become commonplace across the world? Is it because of Gaza, as if Israel should have just accepted the October 7 massacre and the brutalization of its hostages, licked its wounds, and prepared for the promised, next massacre? Is it because the world has suddenly determined that Israel – alone among countries and Jews unique among nationalities – really has no right to exist? Burundi and Bhutan have an undisputed right to exist – but not the Jewish state of Israel?

That doesn’t seem credible, and for the apparently abrupt escalation in Jew hatred we must look elsewhere. As is often the case, history is quite instructive.

The United States was founded upon religious tolerance. Indeed, there were very few Jews living in colonial America (not many more than 1000 Jews lived there during the Revolutionary War), and Jews were treated well – better than well. In President George Washington’s famous letter to the Newport Hebrew Congregation in 1790, using language literally borrowed from Moses Seixas, Washington wrote:

“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Tolerance? No. Jews are no different than any other group in America and are not “tolerated” but fully accepted.

As such, Jew hatred was largely unknown for almost the first century of the United States. Sure, there were some states that took time eliminating electoral provisions that barred any non-Christians (i.e., Jews) from holding public office, and General Ulysses Grant temporarily banned all Jews from entering the Tennessee territory during the Civil War, but there were few recorded attacks on Jews and Jews lived essentially unimpeded lives.

Could this be attributable to the dearth of Jews in America?

Possibly, but not necessarily. There are plenty of Jew-hating countries in the world today where no Jews live. Jew hatred can flourish without Jews, as long as there are a sufficient number of Gentiles reared with this spiritual and psychological malady.

Even the large influx of German Jews to the United States in the mid-19th century did not provoke any Jew hatred, perhaps because they were generally assimilated, their temples and services reminiscent of churches, their day of rest not Shabbat but Sunday, and their intense desire to blend into American life, which they did quite successfully. In fact, there was far more fear and hatred of Catholics in 19th century America than there was of Jews.

Of the 300,000 Jews who lived in the United States in 1880, more than 200,000 were German Jews. But in the next forty years, more than two million European Jews came to America, such that by 1920, the Jewish population of the United States had increased tenfold, to over 3,500,000 people.

By the early 20th century, Jew hatred had become more common in the United States. Leo Frank was falsely accused of murder, freed, and then lynched. A host of Jewish “defense” organizations arose (they all still exist). Jews were hassled on the teeming city streets. The 1920’s university quotas and job restrictions limiting Jewish opportunities became standard and even persisted into the 1950’s when civil rights laws cracked down on private conduct that had any public nexus.

What changed? Was it the mass influx of Jews that attracted Jew hatred?

No – it was the mass influx of European Gentiles. While two million Jewish immigrants came to America in that period, that number was dwarfed by the more than twenty million Gentiles who came – Poles, Germans, Russians, Italians, Irish, Slavs, and others. These immigrants, arriving from lands where they imbibed Jew hatred with their mother’s milk, brought their Jew hatred with them.

Jew hatred was never indigenous to the United States. It was imported, along with these millions of immigrants. Some of it was religious based – Polish, Irish, Italian Catholics reared on Jew hatred in their native lands – and some of it was sociologically based. Some of these newcomers, the lowest tier on society’s totem pole, simply sought out an ethnic group long despised in their native land, and disparaged them, persecuted them, and harassed them.

In a very short time, this imported Jew hatred spread to the establishment as well, and Jews (and blacks) became conventional targets for discrimination. For Jews it didn’t last or even sting as much because we were successful, skilled at adaptation, ambitious, educated, social climbers, and blessed. Law firms, hospitals, and country clubs didn’t want us? We just made our own, and better ones too. And built businesses. And Hollywood.

In time, and the Holocaust played a role in this as well, Jew hatred receded from American life (although you wouldn’t know it from the billions of dollars spent for many decades combating it) and became unfashionable.

Jew hatred is again fashionable, and not because the culture changed, or Israel became too bellicose, or Netanyahu is unlikeable, or Jews are too successful. The same dynamic that swept America over a century ago has repeated itself in the last thirty years – the large influx of Muslims, especially radical Muslims, who have brought with them the endemic Jew hatred that characterizes their native lands.

Millions of Arabs and Muslims have immigrated to the United States in the last fifty years, many claiming refugee status because of the depraved conditions in their countries of origin. To be sure, not every Arab or Muslim is a rabid Jew hater (any more than all of the twenty million European Christians who came to the US were), and many have become productive citizens, embodying the American ethos. But many have not.

Armed with literal fortunes in money – donated by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Muslim countries – they have poisoned the American bloodstream with their radical ideas, even insisting in some locales on the implementation of Sharia law. They have infiltrated local school boards and endowed university chairs, not surprising then that most Jew hatred in America has emerged on college campuses. Their culture is one of hatred of Jews and Israel, if not America itself. And it did not take long for some of their most radical imports – immigrants or children of immigrants, like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Zohran Mamdani, and others – to achieve important political positions.

They did it very slyly, cleverly, and surreptitiously. Who would have thought that a radical Muslim NYC mayor could preside next month over the 25th anniversary of the Arab terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001? It is because their PR teams and useful idiots in the media immediately identified the major crisis in US life after 9/11 as “Islamophobia,” statistically insignificant as a social phenomenon but dominant and pervasive as a deflection. What better evidence than the universal hesitation to characterize the attacks of 9/11 as “Arab” or “Muslim”? Instead, it is just a date, 9/11, no perpetrators need be identified, for propriety’s sake.

Not only is “Islamophobia” used as a shield against exposing odious behavior on the part of Muslims, but it also rests on a fundamental hypocrisy. “Islamophobia” is premised on the reasonable idea that all Muslims should not be blamed for the detestable acts of a violent few, or even many. Yet, that same deference is not showed to Jews, who must be held accountable, hounded, beaten, attacked, vilified, and persecuted for the (righteous) acts of the State of Israel.

It is not just that “Islamophobia” is a crock of drivel as a real phenomenon, but rather that it is employed as armor against any criticism of even the most radical Muslims, and in turn is used as a weapon that has intimidated many Americans into silence and acquiescence in the transformation of their country.

Similarly, the infiltration of billions of petrodollars into the university system in the US has changed curricula and radicalized students. When American campuses erupted in anti-Jewish fury on October 8 (!), with spirited defenses of the Hamas massacre and vile accusations of genocide in Gaza even before Israel had responded militarily (!), these campuses had literally been preparing for years for just such a moment. Tents, signs, fences, loudspeakers resolutions had all be readied in advance, and pressure points against vulnerable Jews had already been identified.

And, just like a century ago, the Jew hatred that emigrated to America along with the Arabs and Muslims, slowly spread to other classes as well – including some American blacks and Hispanics (who are disproportionately assaulting Jews in NYC for no discernible reasons) and the old WASP class that has long resented Jewish success.

Undoubtedly, the Jew hatred in Europe over the last several decades has a similar provenance – the large, and until recently, unstoppable incursion of Arabs and Muslims into the UK, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and elsewhere. It is no surprise that all those countries, like the USA, has been visited multiple times by Arab mass terror attacks, and no surprise that Jews are repeatedly victimized there. The Jew hatred in Australia and New Zealand follows the same pattern – Muslim immigration that is accompanied by Muslim Jew hatred. But go ahead and blame Israel for it.

Is there a solution to this problem? A century ago, time played the largest factor and Jew hatred receded within several decades because of our prosperity and societal integration, each a divine blessing of sorts. But time may not be our ally here. And the hoary staples of outreach and dialogue will be of limited value when dealing with an entrenched, religious-based hatred, which is not to say it won’t be tried, and when it fails, tried again.

America is changing. Its establishment is reproducing itself far below replacement rates and thus it is becoming ever more distant from the Enlightenment roots that spawned the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Hence, the current demand of the Socialists to gut the Constitution, the product of dead, white, European males. Jews, who do have a homeland that will welcome them happily if they so choose, will mostly try to ride out the wave, making deals with the devil when necessary (including turning on Israel), and wondering why the US continues to elect more and more radical Jew haters rather than the pareve Protestants who made the US such a palatable home for so many for so long.

Is it possible that the children of radical Muslim immigrants will over time mainstream and Americanize, what once was the dream of every class of immigrants? It certainly is possible, but the early returns are not good. The children of radical Muslim immigrants are just as radical but they have sufficiently acclimated to American society to perceive how to attract votes, money, and support, how to camouflage the most despicable ideas behind the toothiest and oleaginous smiles.

Immigration changes every nation, and many for the better, the United States among them. But some types of immigration transform in ways that obscure the national purpose and obliterate the founding ethos. That is what has occurred in Europe and is occurring now in the United States.

This is one of the ways in which exiles come to an end.

Photo: Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, courtesy of the Coalition for Jewish Values

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary was a clarifying moment. By endorsing the winner, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) abandoned all pretense of serving as a shomer, or “guardian,” of the beleaguered Jewish community. It is not just that Schumer indicated that he would endorse even an antisemite for political gain; it is that he did.

El-Sayed has not hidden his attitude toward Jews, which wallpapers slogans about Israel and Zionism over classical antisemitism. No one of intelligence could fail to see the similarities between his beliefs and those that overtook Germany less than a century ago.

He regards the Jews as a collective threat, stating without evidence that the Israeli government is “just as evil as Hamas,” the genocidal terrorists responsible for the worst anti-Jewish massacre since the Holocaust. El-Sayed claimed that rescuing hostages from torture and rape, and neutralizing those genocidal terrorists, constitutes “genocide.” Jewish lives, in other words, have no value in his view.

In a modern spin on the old “Chosen People” myth, he accuses Jews of racism, calling the only Middle Eastern country that gives both Jews and Arabs civil rights an “apartheid” state. And like his ideological forebears, he considers a boycott of Jews an appropriate “response.” Perhaps worst of all, El-Sayed used these depraved lies about Israel to justify violence against Jews in his home state. This is no different than the Nazis blaming Jews for the violence of Kristallnacht in 1938.

No one who values Western civilization or basic human decency would consider El-Sayed remotely fit to be a U.S. senator.

This brings us back to Schumer, who is placing political gain ahead of moral principle. During the primary, he backed the more moderate, pro-Israel candidate Rep. Haley Stevens. But once El-Sayed prevailed, Schumer immediately pivoted and was quite forthright about why. He issued a statement with Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) that declared they were “united by a common purpose” with El-Sayed: “taking back the Senate.”

To Schumer, party cohesion and electoral math come first, while the character of the nominee takes a distant second. That is why he and Gillibrand both supported the now disgraced Senate candidate Graham Platner in Maine, despite his Nazi tattoo and a series of scandals, until a sexual assault accusation from a former Platner girlfriend sent them scurrying like rats abandoning a sinking ship.

For a lesson in moral courage, Schumer could learn from Boy George, who released a new song, “Od Nirkod” (“We Will Dance Again”), standing with the Jewish community at great professional and personal cost. In fact, he could study a political leader Schumer himself has accused of antisemitism in the past: U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump has openly stated that El-Sayed hates Jews and Israel. Though entirely accurate, one could dismiss this as political posturing based upon party affiliation. This, however, would fail to recognize Trump’s penchant for repeatedly getting it right about hatred of Jews and Israel. He demonstrates this most clearly not when his targets are his political adversaries or adversarial college administrators, but his fellow Republicans.

Trump has distanced himself even from former allies over antisemitism, pushing back when they cross into anti-Jewish bias and conspiracy theories. He forcefully rejected former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and actively campaigned against soon-to-be-former Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), both Republicans.

After podcaster Tucker Carlson’s interviews with a series of antisemitic bigots and his subsequent attacks on Trump’s policy on Israel and Iran, including claims that attacked Jewish organizations, Trump declared that Carlson “has lost his way,” is “not MAGA” and does not represent “America First.” Trump has said his movement has no room for antisemites.

This difference in attitude has an obvious practical impact upon the two parties. The most powerful Democratic leaders, including one who proudly trots out his personal Jewish identity whenever it suits him, treat fighting antisemitism and the demonization of the Jewish state as secondary to gaining power.

Leaders on the other side, including Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), dismiss erstwhile allies and refuse to include them and their bigoted views for political profit.

This is what Jews in America need: not calculations of which candidate is electable in a purple state, but clarity on who will defend their security and legitimacy without apology.

El-Sayed’s primary victory, coupled with Schumer’s subsequent endorsement, demands a moral choice that transcends political inclinations. True friendship with the Jewish community is evaluated based on actions and adherence to principles, rather than on birth certificates or party affiliations. In this regard, the Democrats’ record is not even close to that of the Republicans.

Photo: Chuck Schumer official photo by U.S. Senate Photographic Studio/Jeff McEvoy, public domain (U.S. federal government work), via Wikimedia Commons

At its recent Board of Governors gathering (June 2026), the Jewish Agency for Israel issued a statement declaring that “a diverse, pluralistic and tolerant Judaism has been and remains one of the cornerstones of Zionism.”

It is a pleasing sentiment. It is also untrue – provably so, from the movement’s own founding documents.

The cornerstone of Zionism was never a theology. It was peoplehood. Theodor Herzl built the movement on a single premise, stated plainly in Der Judenstaat: “We are a people – one people.”

Precisely because the Jews of 1897 could not agree on Judaism, Herzl’s achievement was to set religion aside as the basis of the enterprise. Would the Jewish state be a theocracy? “No, indeed… We shall keep our priests within the confines of their temples in the same way as we shall keep our professional army within the confines of their barracks.” Religion – in every form – was to be respected and contained, not enthroned as a founding value.

Herzl’s oft-quoted promise that “every man will be as free and undisturbed in his faith or his disbelief, as he is in his nationality”, was a pledge of civic liberty extended to all future citizens, Jew and non-Jew alike. It was freedom of conscience – not a declaration that competing denominations constitute Zionism’s foundation. To read it otherwise is to confuse a civil right with a religious ideology.

History of the Jewish Agency

History is even less kind to the Agency’s formulation. The movements that today carry the banner of “pluralistic Judaism” were not Zionism’s cornerstone; they were among its most determined opponents.

The Reform movement’s Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 declared: “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine…” In July 1897 – weeks before the First Zionist Congress convened in Basel – the Central Conference of American Rabbis resolved its total disapproval of any attempt to establish a Jewish state. In 1942, Reform rabbis founded the American Council for Judaism for the express purpose of fighting Zionism.

The Reform movement entered the World Zionist Organization only in the late 1970s and fully reconciled with Zionism only in its 1997 Miami Platform. A cornerstone cannot be laid one hundred years after the foundation – least of all by those who opposed the construction.

The Conservative movement fares a little better in this history – yet its record, too, refutes the Agency’s claim. Solomon Schechter, the architect of American Conservative Judaism, endorsed Zionism in 1906 – but as a bulwark against assimilation and an ally of traditional Judaism, not as a warrant for pluralism.

He did so over the public objections of his own seminary’s patrons, and his successor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Cyrus Adler, remained a committed non-Zionist. Institutionally, the movement joined the World Zionist Organization only with the founding of Mercaz in 1976. Where early Conservative Zionism existed, it was an argument from peoplehood and tradition – which is precisely our point.

The Jewish Agency’s statement also invoked the Western Wall. For the sake of historical integrity and honesty, we refer readers to the Memorandum on the Western Wall, submitted in 1930 to the Special Commission of the League of Nations on behalf of the Jewish Agency for Palestine – the direct precursor of today’s Jewish Agency for Israel, written by the same Cyrus Adler, Ph.D., D.H.L., then president of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. In the section titled “Action Requested,” Adler wrote: “We now come to the request that we will make to your honorable body on behalf of the Jewish Agency: That you give recognition to the immemorial claim that the Kotel Maaravi (Western Wall) is a Holy Place to the Jews; that they should have the right of access to it for prayers to be conducted in accordance with their ritual in a decent and dignified manner; that the regulation of such services shall be under the direction of the Rabbinate in Jerusalem, who shall assume responsibility therefor.”

Such is all that is requested now – that which the president of the Conservative movement’s own seminary, writing for the Jewish Agency itself, requested then.

What, then, was the movement’s actual founding arrangement on religion? The Basel Program of 1897 contains not a single word of religious law. When the question arose, the Second Zionist Congress in 1898 resolved that Zionism would undertake nothing contrary to the precepts of the Jewish religion – a pledge of deference to traditional Judaism, offered to keep Orthodox Jewry within the tent.

The paper trail settles the matter. Language about “mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people” entered the movement’s platform only in the 2004 Jerusalem Program. It appears nowhere in 1897, and nowhere in the 1951 revision.

The Zionist movement’s own constitutional documents date the concept – and refute the words “has been.” And, let us be brutally honest, a politically (and financially) motivated phrase added to the World Zionist Organization Jerusalem Program by a small group of delegates does not redefine Zionism.

Some will object that Zionism was always a big tent, and that is true: the World Zionist Organization has housed secular, religious, socialist, and Revisionist factions for well over a century. But coalition politics is not theology.

A Congress in which Mizrachi and Poalei Zion (a movement of Marxist Zionist Jewish workers) sat together did not thereby declare all Judaisms equally valid; it declared the Jewish people indivisible.

Herzl’s Altneuland preached civic tolerance – its villain is the demagogue who would deny others a share in the commonwealth – but tolerance among citizens is not “pluralistic Judaism” as a creed. Both partners to the founding compact, the secular majority and the religious Zionists, would have rejected such a creed.

It would have shattered the coalition from either side.

Why does this matter? Because the Jewish Agency is a national institution, entrusted with the heritage of the entire Jewish people.

The Jewish Agency is the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world, serving as the primary link between the State of Israel and Jewish communities globally. It is responsible for facilitating aliyah, managing global shlichut programs, and strengthening Jewish identity. The organization is funded by global philanthropic efforts, including the Jewish Federations of North America, KKL/JNF, Keren HaYesod, and the Israeli government.

When it converts a contested contemporary agenda into a founding principle, it does not honor history – it rewrites it. Religious pluralism is a position some hold; but they can not smuggle it into Basel.

Zionism’s cornerstone was, and remains, Klal Yisrael – the unity of one people. That foundation is broad enough for every Jew who ever prayed, in any accent, “Next year in Jerusalem.” It requires no retroactive renovation.

Also printed in Israel National News as “A Cornerstone Laid a Century Late.”

Photo: Delegates at the First Zionist Congress, Basel, 1897, by the Government Press Office (Israel), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The newest kid on Israel’s political block, and this season’s general de jure, is Gadi Eisenkot, former IDF chief of staff and a relatively brief member of the wartime security cabinet. It has long been a tactic of the Israeli left to seek out a former general to lead its election campaigns in order to bolster its credibility on security matters, given its propensity for policies that weaken Israel’s security. And Eisenkot is what President Trump would call – and likely appoint – “right out of central casting,” tough-looking, son of Moroccan immigrants, career army man, and, most sadly, father of a soldier who fell in battle in Gaza. We all honor his service.

Nevertheless, most mature countries have moved away from the “general as president or prime minister” fantasy. The United States has not elected a general as president in almost 75 years (Dwight Eisenhower, in 1952) and only once since then has a general even competed for the presidency (Wesley Clark, in 2004). No other general has served as US president since the 19th century. No English general has served as prime minister in almost two centuries (the first Duke of Wellington). The general who assumes political power is the hallmark of banana republics.

Yet, many Israelis remain enamored with the general-turned-prime-minister model, and to our misfortune. As it turns out, the three greatest strategic blunders in the history of Israel were made by renowned generals who were elected prime minister.

It was PM Yitzchak Rabin, former IDF Chief of Staff acclaimed (rightly or wrongly) as one of the heroes of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, who foisted the Oslo Accords on the people of Israel in 1993. He thought that it was a grand idea to import into the heartland of Israel our sworn enemy, one with genocidal ambitions, and give them a governing authority and weapons.

What could possibly go wrong??

What went wrong was a wave of terror that left Israelis dazed and despondent, and thousands of Israelis dead and maimed.

Almost as egregiously, the Oslo Accords essentially announced to the world that the Land of Israel does not belong exclusively to the Jewish people. Since then, we have struggled to prove to the world that we are entitled to any part of the land of Israel. But Rabin was Mr. Security, being a former general, and Israelis bought it.

It was PM Ehud Barak, also a former IDF Chief of Staff, and lionized as “Israel’s most decorated soldier,” who orchestrated the withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon in 2000 in the dead of night, abandoning our Lebanese allies to their fates and leaving behind enormous stores of IDF weapons. This was in response to the campaign of the “Four Mothers” who mobilized much of society against the IDF remaining in Lebanon and Barak’s strong conviction that the IDF could return to Lebanon at any time to deal with terror.

Well. Instead, the hasty retreat emboldened Hezbollah to conquer southern Lebanon, which it did in due course, and build the elaborate underground terror infrastructure that we are slowly and painfully dismantling.

Additionally, Israel has since been forced to fight several wars in Lebanon, extracting a far greater cost in life than the number of soldiers who were killed annually while the IDF still occupied southern Lebanon in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Barak’s tactical retreat was widely perceived by our enemies as a timorous surrender that has engendered even deadlier conflicts.

The failed Ehud Barak – who later served multiple terms as Defense Minister – was succeeded as prime minister by Ariel Sharon, one of Israel’s greatest generals and a genuine hero of the Yom Kippur War who crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt, turned the tide of war, and forced Egypt to its knees. And his legacy as Prime Minister was the forced expulsion of 9500 Jews in 2005 from Gaza and the northern Shomron and the destruction of two dozen thriving communities.

That folly, twenty-one years ago this week, occasioned the speedy takeover of Gaza by Hamas, the construction of another elaborate terror network through diversion of all the billions of dollars of international aid that flowed into Gaza, constant terror attacks on Israel, multiple rounds of fighting, and all culminating in the catastrophe of October 7.

It is worth noting that all the generals who became prime minister claimed to know better than others what would provide security to Israelis and what would endanger our existence. They also claimed that their withdrawals were all easily reversible and that, if the need arose, the IDF could simply retake the territory surrendered. No harm, no foul.

The opposite, of course, was true; grave harm resulted from multiple fouls, all self-inflicted. And the land that each purported to surrender to our enemies in order to safeguard our security – land originally conquered and held at a high cost in Jewish blood – has mostly been retaken by saner heads (non-generals) responding to reality and not fantasy. That land has been reconquered, and again at a high cost in Jewish blood.

What then qualifies Gadi Eisenkot to serve as prime minister, other than that he has been designated as leader of the ABB (Anyone but Bibi) sect? He could be the exception to the rule but his tenure as Chief of Staff was unremarkable, mainly remembered for Eisenkot’s advocacy of a “small and smart IDF,” an IDF that relied more on technology than on manpower, something that debilitated us on October 7 and thereafter.

He threw the book at Elor Azaria, provoking indecision among soldiers that factored into the deadly terrorist attack last Friday. His brief tenure on the wartime cabinet was also undistinguished, noted for his advocacy for the release of the hostages at any price and opposition to initiatives that actually worked. Apparently, he still supports the establishment of a Palestinian state and has suggested that we learn to live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. He also currently favors the immediate entry of 150,000 Gazans to work in Israel, as if that hasn’t been tried before with devastating results.

It is not often realized that generals might be brilliant tacticians on the battlefield but simultaneously awful geopolitical strategists. Those are completely different skill sets. The affairs of state require the ability to navigate multiple and often conflicting interests, and on both the domestic and international stages. Clichés aside, does Eisenkot have an economic or educational policy, an objective more comprehensive than “Israel must win,” a position on the dictatorial excesses of the Supreme Court, or a desire to do anything other than topple Netanyahu?

The failed Israeli generals-turned-prime-ministers also had tenuous commitments to democracy, and especially to the rights of minorities, as evidenced by Rabin and Sharon’s contemptuous dismissal of their opponents and settlers. After all, generals are used to giving orders and are not always amenable to the give-and-take of democratic governance. Harry Truman, who chose not to run against Eisenhower, predicted that his successor would have a hard time getting things done: “He’ll sit right here and he’ll say do this, do that! And nothing will happen. Poor Ike-it won’t be a bit like the Army.”

If only that would be our problem! Our problem has been not military leaders turned prime ministers getting nothing done but in getting the wrong things done. Our problem has been generals spearheading and bulldozing their (and our) way into strategic calamities that cost us dearly in lives, treasure, international standing, and the fulfillment of our destiny.

A mature society knows better than to expect tough-looking generals to be successful politicians. A Jewish society should know to find leaders who can advance our national, spiritual destiny, until we merit true leaders as we had in days of old.

Photo: Gadi Eisenkot by Elad Malka, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Few Americans realize that one of the country’s most beloved entertainers was born Israel Iskowitz, the orphaned son of impoverished Jewish immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. He later changed his name to Eddie Cantor—the comedian, singer, actor and radio personality who entertained millions. But when European Jewry came under assault during the 1930s, Cantor never hesitated to speak publicly as a Jew, even when doing so invited criticism and placed his career at risk. When history demanded that he choose which identity would speak first, Eddie Cantor answered as a Jew.

As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence, Cantor’s example invites us to ask a larger question: How should Jews understand themselves while living in America? Are we Jewish Americans—or American Jews?

At first glance, the distinction seems little more than wordplay. After all, both phrases describe Jews who proudly call America home. Yet perhaps the difference is more than linguistic. It may reflect something deeper about how we understand ourselves.

The question is not whether we are patriotic. Nor is it how deeply we cherish either America or Judaism. Rather, it is which identity each phrase places first.

For some Jews, Judaism is understood primarily as a source of universal moral values—justice, compassion and creating a better world. For others, Judaism begins with belonging to the Jewish people, an eternal nation whose shared history, memory and covenant have shaped Jewish life for more than three millennia. Both perspectives see themselves as part of the Jewish people and embrace many of the same ideals, yet they begin from different starting points. And where we begin often shapes where we arrive.

Perhaps this helps explain why thoughtful, committed Jews can respond so differently to many of the questions confronting our community today. Recent disagreements over Israel, antisemitism, Jewish education, religious observance and communal responsibility have revealed differences that often run deeper than politics or religious affiliation. They reflect differing understandings of Jewish identity itself.

The point is not that one group loves America more than another. American Jews across the religious and political spectrum have every reason to feel profound gratitude toward this country. The United States has offered the Jewish people freedoms and opportunities unmatched in much of our history. Here, Jews have flourished as citizens while contributing richly to American life. That is a blessing worthy of celebration, especially as our nation marks this historic anniversary.

Yet gratitude alone does not answer the deeper question of identity.

For my part, I think of myself as an American Jew—a Jew whose family has been blessed to now make its home in America, while some of our children have built their lives in Israel. I cherish this country, pray for its welfare, and remain deeply grateful for the liberties it has afforded my family and generations of Jews before us. But my citizenship, precious as it is, does not define the deepest part of who I am. That identity was forged long before the United States came into being. It binds me to a people, a history and a covenant that transcends every country in which Jews have lived.

America’s 250th anniversary is a fitting moment to reflect not only on what it means to be an American, but also on what it means to be a Jew living in America. Whether we ultimately describe ourselves as Jewish Americans or American Jews, the more important question remains: which identity does each phrase place first? Our understanding not only shapes how we see ourselves, but also how we meet our responsibilities to one another, to our country and to the Jewish people.

Photo: Statue of Liberty, NY by William Warby, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons