Dear American Jews: Puh-leeze Get a Grip!
A massive freak out is underway because, in case you haven't heard, Trump is Hitler redux:
PHILADELPHIA—On November 8, 1938, Nazi paramilitary soldiers and German civilians looted and vandalized thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues. Jews were murdered. Up to 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps.
On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. The next day, a man discovered that someone had painted swastikas on an abandoned storefront in South Philly, placing the symbols next to Trump’s name and the words “Sieg Heil,” a salute used by Nazis during World War II. Maybe it was an anti-Trump protester. Maybe it was an anti-Semite. Either way, it underscored the ways in which Trump’s election has evoked the persistent Jewish nightmare: That America will become like Germany in 1938. Jews, who have a keen eye for the repetition of history, might be forgiven for worrying about the fragility of American democracy.
This is the scale of fear, grief, and anger about Trump in some Jewish communities across America...
Although I voted for him (the alternative being Mrs. Clinton and the Supreme Court she would have packed with ultra-leftist, "living Constitution" apostles) in the Presidential election, Mr. Trump was definitely not my first--or second, or third, or . . .--choice for the Republican nomination. He is often rude, crude, and bombastic; he is a man of bad moral character where women are concerned; he displays megalomaniacal traits; and on and on.
ReplyDeleteHowever, one thing Mr. Trump definitely is not, is an anti-Semite. Don't the people who levy this accusation know that his daughter, Ivanka, who energetically campaigned for her dad, married an Orthodox Jew and converted to Orthodox Judaism herself? Don't they know that Mr. Trump has surrounded himself all of his adult life with Jewish friends and business associates? Don't they care that "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" is one of the Ten Commandments?