A horrendous two weeks for the Jews of America. And the World.
This has been a horrendous two weeks for Jews in America.
First, came the deaths on May 22 of a young Jewish couple at the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. – Yaron Lischinsky of Israel and Sarah Milgrim of Kansas City. They both worked at the Israeli Embassy, where they met and fell in love.
They were planning to travel to Jerusalem together three days later, but were shot dead by a ranting pro-Hamas Palestinian sympathizer because they were Jews who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Yaron, 30, and Sarah, 26, had planned the trip to Jerusalem for Sarah to meet Yaron’s parents, and Yaron had purchased the engagement ring he planned to present to her in Jerusalem.
Sarah’s mother, Nancy Milgram, got the call from the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, telling her that Sarah and her boyfriend were dead.
If this story does not bring tears to your eyes, here’s another.
This past Sunday, a group of about 30 people from the Boulder, Colorado, area gathered in downtown Boulder for their weekly walk together in support of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
Again, a crazed pro-Palestinian man went on an attack – not with a gun, but with bottles of gasoline that burst into flame as he threw them into the crowd. Twelve men and women, ranging in age from 52 to 88, were set on fire. At least two of them were injured horrifically with burns over much of their bodies and are in critical condition.
One witness said she saw four women lying or sitting on the ground after the attack with burns on their legs, according to Reuters news agency. One of them appeared to have been badly burned on most of her body and had been wrapped in a flag by someone, the witness said.
Rabbi Marc Soloway of the synagogue attended by several of the victims said the attack "brings up horrific images of our past. Just the idea of somebody who literally has their body on fire in the middle of the mall in Boulder, Colorado, it just defies belief."
The 88-year-old victim, a woman, was a Holocaust refugee who fled Europe. One of the victims was a professor at the University of Colorado.
Antisemitism arrived in America soon after the Pilgrims landed
Antisemitism may or may not have come to America with the Pilgrims, but it definitely had arrived within a couple of decades or so.
Peter Stuyvesant, who governed the New Amsterdam Colony beginning in 1647 was an outspoken and active antisemite. He described Jews as deceitful and repugnant, also “hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.”
In 1654, when 23 Jewish men, women, and children arrived at New Amsterdam, fleeing the persecution in the colony of Recife, Brazil, Stuyvesant sought to have all Jews banned from his colony. His superiors at the Dutch West Indies Company overruled him.
Still, he banned Jews from holding public office, opening a retail shop, or establishing a synagogue. He also banned them from serving in the colonial militia, then levied a special tax on them for not serving.
Such antisemitic beliefs carried over into the United States of America after it was created in 1776 and still were evident among those in power.
During the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant, a future two-term president, would order all Jews expelled from areas of three states in which he was locked in battle with the Confederacy – Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky. He alleged that the illicit cotton trade in these states, which was helping to finance the Confederacy’s war efforts, was being run “mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders.”
However, following in the footsteps of the European countries, in the twentieth century, the hatred and name-calling turned to murder and attempted murder of Jews because of their religion.
In late 1957 and continuing through most of 1958, there were five bombings and three attempted bombings of temples, synagogues, and a Jewish community center, all but one of them in the Southern U.S. The attacks were believed to be perpetrated by people who wanted to kill or wound Jews because many of them were supporting and helping to finance the Civil Rights movement.
These bombings occurred in Nashville, Tennessee, Gastonia, North Carolina, Miami and Jacksonville in Florida, Birmingham, Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, and Peoria, Illinois. There were no deaths, but Jews throughout the United States were frightened.
When the violence reached into the Midwest at Peoria, I recall being shocked and wondering whether the synagogue in my hometown, Lincoln, Nebraska, would be attacked.
And then, in 1977, at a synagogue in St. Louis, Missouri, a white supremacist began shooting at guests leaving a bar mitzvah. One man died; two others were wounded.
In 1984, members of a white nationalist group murdered Alan Berg, a widely known Jewish talk radio host in Denver.
More murders of Jews in the U.S. because they were Jews: Pittsburgh, 1986; Brooklyn, 1991; Brooklyn, again, 1994; Los Angeles, 1999; Los Angeles, again, 2002.
In 2003, there was a murder in Houston that was particularly chilling. Ariel Sellouk, a Jewish man, had become good friends with a Muslim man. They socialized together often, drinking, playing darts, dating girls. But then, they stopped seeing each other as the Muslim man undertook a deep commitment to Islam. More than a year later, the Muslim man initiated a reconnection with Sellouk. First, they had drinks at a bar, then the Muslim man invited Sellouk to his apartment – where he brutally murdered him with a knife, slitting his throat and nearly decapitating him.
More murders of Jews just because they were Jews: Seattle, 2006; Washington, 2009; Overland Park, Kansas, 2014; Charlottesville, Virginia, 2017, in a riot that Donald Trump, president at the time, declined to condemn.
Pittsburgh, again, 2018: Eleven Jews shot and killed at Tree of Life Synagogue, and six more wounded; the deadliest attack ever on a Jewish community in America.
And yet, it continued: One dead Jew and three injured at a synagogue in Poway, California; seven dead Jews and three injured at a Kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey; one dead Jew and four injured at a Chanukah celebration in Monsey, New York; one dead Jew in an attack on a professor at Moorpark College in Thousand Oaks, California.
The Hamas war against Israel: A war against the Jews of the World
The thing that is different about the current wave of violent antisemitism in America is that it stems directly from Palestinian support of Hamas in a war started by Hamas with its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
More than 1,200 Jews were murdered, many of them in viciously brutal ways, while family members looked on in horror and the perpetrators celebrated in joy.
Another 250 were taken hostage to be tortured. Most of them have been released in prisoner exchanges. But 35 of them would die in captivity, and 20 remain imprisoned by Hamas.
Both the Israelis and Hamas are convinced that they are fighting for their existence.
The difference is that those who support Hamas have taken their fight to the Jews of the world. Thus continues the multi-thousand-year effort to annihilate the Jews.
Magnified and sanctified is the great name of God throughout the world, which was created according to Divine will. May the rule of peace be established speedily in our time, unto us and unto the entire household of Israel. And let us say: Amen.
(First verse of the Mourners’ Kaddish, the Jewish prayer in memory of the dead.)
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Wonderful commentary, thx!