What happened to the life force maintaining Jewish identity?

Immediately post war, there was great sympathy for the Holocaust survivors.

This was easy because Arab nationalism had not yet started in earnest, and attention was not paid to the blood

There was a brother linkage between Mufti and Hitler and the Jew hatred that predated current Iran and ISIS-Jihadism.

Decline in Jewish population from 4% to 2% should be met by the utmost trepidation.

What happened to the life force maintaining Jewish identity? 

A multi-faceted answer:

In my pre-Bar Mitzvah period (circa Lech Lecha 1948), I recall not understanding in synagogue for the High Holy Days, the hate for Christianity expressed by a Holocaust survivor sitting on the same bench.

He recounted friends and neighbors, Catholic and Protestant, who followed the Nazis and happily did Hitler’s bidding.

Safely as a kid in America, it took time and years to understand the orthodox Jewish feeling of linking American evangelicals to European Christianity, and seeing them as missionaries who did not kill Jews but sought to negate Jewish identity through Jesus.

This was a revolutionary change for American evangelicals to become Christians United For Israel.

Intermarriage under no circumstances can be viewed in a positive light for Jews. In almost all cases these parents choose Christianity, not Judaism, as the religion these babies will be raised in.

For me, this explains why so-called “Jewish lobby meetings” are usually not kosher are Democrat, and they do not understand the import of cultural lag and normalcy bias.

I mention “cultural lag” and most folks don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. 

In short, what was is not today’s reality.  George Meany and Lane Kirkland and Jack Kennedy and Scoop Jackson and Bayard Rustin and black railroad worker labor leaders were DEMOCRATS when that meant loyalty and love and devotion to the Constitution of the United States.

“…The Republic for which it Stands…”

Today it means Jeremiah Wright’s “God Damn America!” and Obama’s hatred of Israel and liberal hatred of Judaism and Christianity. It means loyalty to the Moslem Brotherhood and the Arab Spring to encourage rise of virulent Arab Jihadism and that ISIS brand of nationalism plus Iran as nuclear power and Hegemon.

Let’s also contrast Pope Francis and the Castro brothers to John Paul II’s use of the pulpit in Cuba to speak of freedom and justice.  Francis never saw or gave comfort to “The Ladies in White.”  So, 50 years worry not just about Israel and Judaism, but now Christianity as well.

It is an extremely fair statement that Zionism resides in Gary Bauer and CUFI more than in the broad expanse of the Jewish world from reform to the ultras who go on a continuum from progressive social justice (largely non-God, to casual observance), to acceptance of many features of BDS by the secular Jewish liberals who reject Zionism as another form of imperialism.

To the ultras on the religious right:

They expect the Messiah and temper their Zionism with criticism that a secular Israel does not fit the bill and only now is nascent unification effort bearing some fruit in academe and the IDF.


Contributor – The Bunny Rabbit