After a week mired in controversy surrounding another round of anti-semitic statements from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar in which she questioned whether Jewish Americans were truly loyal to the United States, the past few years of GOP leaders blaming America’s ills on shadowy cabals of “globalists” who seem to share the same characteristics inherent in many of the tropes that have been historically used to demonize Jews, the question bears mentioning, should Jewish Americans be worried for our future in the United States?
As significant factions on the left and right have been resistant to condemn such rhetoric, Jews have grown increasingly worried with how we are vulnerable to the rise of a politics fueled by emotions and blame rather than facts.
Moreover, with hate crimes on the rise across the country, and with the FBI’s 2017 statistics finding that 58 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes targeted Jews, these concerns have unfortunately manifested themselves in reality. Such fears are furthered by Omar’s latest statement since we know how allegations that Jews were not truly “loyal” members of their nation have served as one of the many reasons for why many of our ancestors left the countries in which they lived before.
My family left Eastern Europe for the United States in the early 1900s when pogroms forced Jews to flee the region rather than meet their ruin. After arriving in America, my ancestors enjoyed the wonders of what it is to become an American.
My grandparents’ generation fought in WWII, they created family businesses, my parents spent their careers as public school teachers, and I, as a lawyer, have taken an oath to support our Constitution.
This trajectory, despite our county’s significant shortcomings at times, is what America’s civic culture is designed to make possible, and is what has made our country a unique place for the Jewish people as well as so many others. Our culture is one built upon a system of ideals and shared values as opposed to any specific creed, and is, therefore, designed to offer a promise that America will be a uniquely welcoming place.
And yet, today many of us have real concerns for our future. Our concerns are not solely because of the words of any individual politician, but also because of the reality that history continues to move and repeat itself. Jews leaving their countries of origin is, unfortunately, not a thing of the past.
Tens of thousands of Jews have emigrated from France over the last decade and nearly 40 percent of British Jews stated in a recent poll that they would “seriously consider” emigrating if Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
None of this is to say that hope should be lost. Instead, the adversity the Jewish community faces should serve as a reminder for all of us to hone in on what makes America special.
In creating a system where shared values can rise above immutable characteristics, our country has built a home for Jewish Americans where, despite our concerns, we do not feel “othered” in the way we did in so many countries where our ancestors previously resided.
It is our hope that our fellow citizens will reject those bigotries that have caused us harm in the past and still do today so that my generation of Jews can tell the generations that follow us that America will always be our home.
Peter Fishkind
Great Neck
