Monday, September 16, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
Why I have requested anonymity for this piece:
There is intense social pressure on American Jews to be against Israel, especially on campuses. I am a professor at a liberal arts college where there is intense hostility to Israel; my Zionism has already caused me to be an outcast on my campus. Were I to publicly take the next logical step—conclude that drastic political changes are required to stem the public tide of Jew-hatred, even as drastic as supporting the presidential candidate “they” all uniformly despise—I sincerely believe my personal safety would be in question. That is why this essay both needs to be published, and to be anonymous. The situation is that dire.
As a Lifelong Jewish Democrat It Pains Me to Say This: Put Your Own Oxygen Masks on First!
That somber moment when the flight attendant says, “Though we do not anticipate a change in cabin pressure,” so heavy with portent (at least for those of us with darker dispositions), and then the sage advice: “If you’re traveling with someone who may need assistance, put your own oxygen mask on first.” Sage, if perhaps unnecessary, given the normal human instinct for self-preservation: I’m reminded of the Seinfeld episode in which a fire breaks out at a children’s birthday party and George knocks children and elderly out of the way in order to escape. A moment of levity back then, the final calm, perhaps, before the storm, back when being Jewish was still somewhat cool.
This may just be my darker disposition speaking, but I believe the cabin pressure has changed.
If you don’t already know this, or perhaps have been out of the country—or off the planet—for the past year, a brief survey should catch you up. Franklin Foer summed it up back in March with his Atlantic article, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending.” That title, though perhaps optimistic in using the present continuous rather than past perfect, nails it. Combine it with Jacob Savage’s 2023 article, “The Vanishing: The Erasure of Jews From American Life,” documenting the disappearance—a euphemism for “exclusion”—of Jews from academia, from all sorts of leadership positions, cultural institutions, activist organizations, legal positions such as judgeships, prestigious fellowships like Guggenheims and MacArthurs, and so on. An article from just last week by Joshua Hoffman is entitled, “American Jews are increasingly excluded from leadership positions—because they are Jewish.” Being Jewish is also increasingly uncomfortable—another euphemism—in medical schools, law schools, and (anecdotally, though not yet well documented) business schools. The vanishing is complete in the CUNY system, once extraordinarily friendly to Jews in the American city with the largest Jewish population, now the largest urban university in the country with some 25 campuses and approximately 230,000 people—where “of the Top 80 senior leadership positions including campus presidents, as of April 2023, there were ZERO Jews remaining.” Five years ago the ever-prescient Liel Leibovitz urged Jews to “Get Out” of the elite American university system, where they were so clearly unwelcome; well that call has been heeded, if not by the Jews themselves then by the administrators and admissions officers who have kept them out, as the percentages of Jews in the Ivy League has plummeted over the last decade or two. As Armin Rosen’s article last year put it, we have witnessed an “Ivy League Exodus.” Back to “The Vanishing”:
Eric Kaufmann finds that just 4% of elite American academics under 30 are Jewish (compared to 21% of boomers). The steep decline of Jewish editors at the Harvard Law Review (down roughly 50% in less than 10 years) could be the subject of its own law review article.
Put it all together and we have seen what can only be called a purge, a purge of Jews from public life, from leadership, from elite institutions, and, most forebodingly of all, from the pipeline itself. If Jews are being hounded out of medical, law, and business schools, the next generation of physicians, lawyers, and businesspeople will be sparse with Jews. If Jews are being hounded out of elite universities and graduate programs—if the past year of relentless demonstrations and riots expressing hatred and sometimes violence toward Jews on major campuses doesn’t convince you, then nothing will—the next generation not just of leaders but specifically of professors will be sparse with Jews. If that is the case then universities will only continue becoming less and less friendly (euphemism for more and more hostile) toward Jews, and that Jew-less pipeline will propagate itself and intensify, becoming ever emptier of Jews as Jews nearly entire disappear from all aspects of public life.
This is not just my darker disposition speaking.
It seems to me an objective fact that, while we were distracted, living it up with our bagels and schmears and Curb Your Enthusiasm bingeing, the cabin pressure itself plummeted—and now, like George Costanza, we need to follow Leibovitz’s advice, and get out.
What getting out looks like in practice can take many forms in many contexts, but there is one immediate, pressing way it should manifest itself.
I am, like so many largely secular American Jews, a lifelong Democrat. There are many obvious reasons for this. So many such Jews see themselves as “liberal,” as caring and empathetic, they stress Judaism’s concern for the oppressed and marginalized, they are attracted to at least their own conception of Judaism’s famous notion of tikkun olam (“repairing the world”), yes they were largely all in on supporting BLM, #MeToo, the various rainbow coalitions, and they see all that as better aligned with the traditional Democratic party than by the Republican. These Jews want to be good people and do good things. True to that, they haven’t merely made major contributions over the years to science, medicine, education, business, and culture, throughout our “Golden Age,” but, given their nature and ambitions, used their success and status in these endeavors to become philanthropists and benefactors. We are all aware of the disproportionate number of Jewish names on hospitals and university buildings, just for a start. America has been good to the Jews, and the Jews returned the favor, in being good citizens, in being good for America. Jews want to continue to do good, and so many, as I myself have for years, see the Democratic Party as the better fit to do that good.
But now, my fellow Jews, we can only continue to do that good, as Jews, if America allows us. If, within the next generation, we are excluded from leadership positions, from medical, law, and business schools, from elite colleges, from all areas of public life, where exactly will we be? In the past year we have seen so many of those university buildings with Jewish names being vandalized, graffiti’d, having hostile messages projected on to them, even getting renamed by rogue students. What Jewish benefactors will there be to donate those buildings and support their programs, if there are no Jews among the leaders in American society?
Jews can only do all the good they like to do, they are driven to do, which their Judaism teaches them to do, if they are allowed to flourish in society. We’re not asking for a handout or any “privilege”—the code word that has been weaponized to motivate the purge—but the same opportunity to work hard for what we achieve that we seek to afford to others. Nor are we asking for it all. We are not the fictional, defamatory Elders of Zion that used to be the exclusive delusion of right-wing antisemitism but has increasingly been coopted by the left. We are very big on sharing, on diversity, on inclusion. We are very big on fighting injustice, on helping the marginalized and the oppressed improve their situation and status. Most of us were all in on the social justice movement of the past decade, even as we were increasingly aware that we were among its primary targets. I remember deciding to continue supporting the Black Lives Matter movement even after reading the vile antipathy to Israel included on its online platform.
But now: Never mind the obvious concern about our being excluded, ghettoized, discriminated against, and marginalized ourselves; we cannot be expected to contribute to the general good at the cost of our committing collective suicide.
We simply cannot do all the good we want to do if we are vanished.
And it is precisely all this that is in play across the spectrum.
As a lifelong Democrat it pains me to say this, but it seems obvious to me that the assault against Jews will only get worse under a Harris administration. I won’t fully make that case here, though others have, for example here and here; I’ll only say that the social and political forces that the Biden-Harris administration has succored, the far-left wing of its party that it continually appeases, the numerous Jew-unfriendly political appointments and policy decisions they have made, and the continuous hostility to Israel that goes along with the occasional proclamations (and sometimes appreciated gestures) of support strike me as the upper cabins opening up and the oxygen masks dropping down. Where has the Biden-Harris Justice Department been as university, and K-12, antisemitism have exploded over the past year? Just this week twenty-four state Attorneys General issued a letter warning Brown University of legal and fiscal consequences should Brown choose to divest from Israel; twenty-two of the twenty-four work for Republican administrations, while Democratic administrations seem almost universally disinterested in combatting the antisemitic divestment movement sweeping over dozens of campuses. Add to these concerns the fact that all indications are that Harris atop the ticket will be even less friendly to Israel and to American Jews than Biden-Harris, starting with her personnel choices and her regular expressions of compassion and empathy toward the pro-Hamas cohort of her constituents.
I now ask every liberal Jewish Democrat to honestly confront the facts about the Jewish purge presented above, begun some years ago but deeply accelerated during the Biden-Harris years and especially during the past year, and honestly ask themselves whether a Harris administration will likely slow, simply accept, or accelerate that purge. As a lifelong Democrat I share the antipathy to Trump, both on the personal level and the political, and though it pains me to say this I must admit: Trump just stated that “there has never been a more dangerous time since the Holocaust if you happen to be Jewish in America,” and for once I agree with the man. As a lifelong Democrat I find Trump to be profoundly flawed, not to be trusted, and far from a panacea regarding the problems above—but it also seems obvious to me that on this one question, at least, the question of Jewish life and status in America, a Trump administration is less likely to accelerate the purge and possibly might slow it, or at least try.
I have a close friend, another lifelong Democrat, a fellow secular liberal Jew, a committed Zionist whom I deeply respect but whose antipathy for Trump (like many) outweighs the concerns just sketched. His response to these concerns was to say that he cares deeply about several issues: the environment and climate change, upholding democracy, and Israel and American Jewish life, among others. Though he agrees with my analysis he plans to vote for Harris, saying that he will vote on the first items and lobby hard on the Israel-Jewish item.
I understand that, and even respect it, but I think it’s shortsighted.
That so many Jews want to “do good,” to give back to the country that gave them so much, to support the oppressed and the marginalized, is wonderful, a true reflection of the second rhetorical question of Hillel’s famous saying: “And if I am only for myself, what am I?” But we cannot forget the first part of it as well, which, in my view, not only chronologically but logically and necessarily must come first: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Nobody can be asked to help others at the cost of committing collective suicide. Nobody can help anybody else unless they have the resources to help. You cannot be for others unless you are first for yourself, even if you see being “for yourself” as the means toward the end of being “for others.” That’s of course why you must put your oxygen mask on first, because you cannot be of assistance to anyone else if you are dead.
This friend is a lawyer, a committed Zionist but one who must keep his Zionism on the down-low because, you know, it could cause complications for him, both professional and personal. He wants to continue doing all the good things we as Jews are prone to do, save the environment, save democracy, support the marginalized, which traditionally manifested itself through the Democratic party and liberalism. But the way things are going, the way the purge has accelerated especially since October 7, if word of his Zionism gets out—he may well be out of a job, if not on the receiving end of one of the pogroms—yes pogroms—that have already occurred in his (by the way very Democratic) city.
Not a whole lot of good you can do when unemployed, or beaten up, or ostracized into the ghetto—or dead.
For the greater good, for all the good you admirably want to do: you need to save yourself first.
Hillel of course concludes, “And if not now, when?” Well, apparently, we do for the moment have an answer to that otherwise rhetorical question: November 5, 2024. I can’t help but think that, for the greater good, secular liberal Jews like me, lifelong Democrats, might be best advised to hold our noses and vote for—no, I can’t bring myself to say it, and I feel so bitter at the Democrats for putting me in the position that I find myself actually preferring the victory of that man.
But say it I must: If you can vote for that man, then do it. But if you cannot—at least do not vote for Harris.
It appears I am not alone in reaching this difficult conclusion, as there are reports that Jewish voters are gravitating away from the Democratic nominee in unprecedented numbers. But for those remaining Jews, still perhaps the majority, please consider, lastly, that the fact that I must publish this anonymously for my own safety is itself the best argument for its conclusion.
The purge tolerates no dissenters.
An earlier version of this article appeared here.
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