Author Archives: First.One.Through

Organized and Disorganized Antisemitism

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Analysts have been attempting to place anti-Semites and anti-Semitic attacks into neat buckets for a long time. Recently, people have described the hatred as stemming from three main sources: the alt-right and the alt-left, and in Europe, Muslim antisemitism while in the United States the third category is Black antisemitism. Some argue that groups like the Black Israelites are essentially alt-right Black supremacists, while others consider they are alt-left members of the Black community who “punch up” against the perceived wealthy Jewish landlords and bankers and established white society. Perhaps followers of the Nation of Islam are a mixture of all the groups.

There is merit to this approach but I would suggest that there’s an advantage at looking at the global antisemitism as coming in two main forms without getting into particulars of the attackers’ skin color or religion as it clarifies how to deal with the hatred: organized and disorganized antisemitism, which should be fought directly and swarmed aggressively, respectively.

Organized Antisemitism

Organized antisemitism is easy to recognize because its actions and words are consistent. There is no surprise when a member of the group takes action against a Jewish person or property, as the language of hatred and disdain are in plain sight.

Consider one of the most anti-Semitic groups in the world today, Hamas. It drafted its foundational charter in 1988 based in large part on the Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the worst possible reading of the Koran.

When Hamas launched wars against Israel in 2008, 2012 and 2014, there was no surprise. When it fired rockets against civilians in Israel, no one was shocked. This is a group that does not simply want to have an Arab Palestinian state, they want to rid the land of Jews whom they view as “sons of apes and pigs” and nefarious Nazis, not simply “colonial invaders.”

Fatah, the competing Palestinian political party is only slightly less organized in its Jew hatred. It does not have a charter which demonizes Jews; they prefer to do that on a daily basis with specific actions. These include naming schools and parks after terrorists, paying salaries to terrorists who kill Jews, and having a law which calls for capital punishment for any Arab selling land to Jews. Their party leader and president Mahmoud Abbas wrote his doctoral dissertation on Holocaust denial and he routinely denies that Jews have any history or ties to Jerusalem and bemoans the “Judaization” of Judaism’s holiest city.

It is no surprise that the Palestinian Arabs are the most anti-Semitic according to polls by the ADL, as their two principle political parties function as organized anti-Semitic organizations.

In the United States, organized antisemitism can be found as well.

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the most infamous hate group in the country. It hates Blacks, Jews and others who are not White Christian. It was birthed at the end of the Civil War and was effectively reestablished after World War I in the 1920’s. Some claim that it was the rise of the KKK and its anti-immigrant policies that led the United States to curtail immigration years before the stock market crash of 1929.

Black anti-Semites exist alongside White anti-Semites. The leader of the Nation of Islam is a proud anti-Semite who calls the Jews “vermin” and “Satanic” to a standing ovation of thousands of people.

The largest organization that promotes Jew hatred is the United Nations. While it does not state that it is against Jews in its literature, its actions clearly treat the sole Jewish State as a pariah entity, condemning it more frequently than the other 192 nations combined. It holds Israel to a double standard and doesn’t bat an eyelash when member states talk of destroying the country.

Many media organizations are also overcome with antisemitism, such as Al Jazeera and The New York Times. They routinely call Israel racist and exaggerate real or perceived crimes committed by Jews and under-report when Jews are victims. They claim to be balanced and even-handed but their words make clear their systemic culture of Jew-hatred.

The commonality of the organized anti-Semitic groups are their consistency. They do not waiver in their attitudes towards Jews. They trade in tropes and peddle the vile. They call out the Jew consistently, day by day, page by page. They use their podiums to encourage others to join the jihad, the riot, the pogrom, and the genocide of the Jews and the Jewish State.

Hamas’s 2014 war against Israel, the 2016 United Nations Security Council resolution declaring that Jews living in their holiest city of Jerusalem is illegal and the 2018 alt-Right shooting of a Pittsburgh synagogue are recent examples of organized antisemitism.

Disorganized Antisemitism

Disorganized antisemitism is not carried out by established organizations but by individuals and newly formed groups. They are inspired by the organizations which spout Jew-hatred, but don’t necessarily belong to them.

Consider the European riots against Jews in 2014 while Hamas waged its war against Israel. Many people in cities throughout the continent attacked local Jews, incited by local imams, an antisemitic press and a United Nations which routinely vilified Jews and the Jewish State’s defensive war.

The 2015 attacks by West Bank Palestinians against Jews was called a “stabbing intifada” carried out by “lone wolves.” Those attackers watched Palestinian TV and heard the words of their leaders to kill the Jews. They may or may not have been active politically but they had been brain-washed Jew-hatred for years.

Black Americans have been told by their leaders that they have suffered from rich Jewish landlords and bankers. Therefore it may not have been a surprise when they shot up a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, NJ and axed Jews in Monsey, NY.

People have tried to downplay disorganized antisemitism as a non-issue; one-off attacks committed by desperate people which can be ignored. The liberal approach portrayed the attackers as as much the victims as the actual victims, whether the perpetrator was a disenfranchised Black man or beleaguered Palestinian. They refused to recognize the individuals’ inherent guilt or call out the organized antisemitic infrastructure as being culpable for inciting the antisemitic voices in their heads.

So newer organizations have begun to take shape which adopt the models of the prior organized antisemitic groups. BlackLivesMatter produced a manifesto calling Israel an apartheid state and the Woman’s March snuggled up to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Zionists were labeled as monsters and a new crop of antisemites were born.

Carmen Perez, Bob Bland, Tamika D. Mallory, and Linda Sarsour attend the TIME 100 Gala on April 25, 2017, in New York. CHARLES SYKES / INVISION / AP)

The Appropriate Response

It is easy to address organized antisemites: block them at every turn. Cancel the subscription to the New York Times and don’t watch any videos produced by Al Jazeera or AJ+. Push the United States to block anti-Israel UN resolutions, defund anti-Israel UN organizations like UNRWA and run foreign policy directly between nations and not via the corrupt UN regime.

Shout down anti-Semites who want to march or speak in your town, whether they be the KKK or the Nation of Islam. Call members of Congress to not accept endorsements from people associated with these groups.

And in regards to the blossoming anti-Semitic organizations like BLM and the Woman’s March, demand that they change their platforms or be treated in the same manner as the established antisemitic organizations.

As for the “lone wolves,” surround them, do not empower them. Bombard them with actual facts about Jews and the Jewish State to counter the antisemitic propaganda they have been taught. Engulf them with a robust Jewish presence, letting them know that Jews will not disappear the way they did in Hebron in 1929, and that they should get used to seeing them as neighbors.

A peaceful world of coexistence must be built on some plain truths, and those include honest assessments of relationships. It is time to aggressively COMBAT organized antisemitism and SWARM disorganized antisemitism. The future security of Jews depends on it.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Big, Bad Lone Wolves of Terrorism

The Personalisation of War

The New York Times All Out Assault on Jewish Jerusalem

The New York Times Excuses Palestinian “Localized Expressions of Impatience.” I Mean Rockets.

While Palestinians Fire 400 Rockets, the United Nations Meets to Give Them Money

The United Nations Can Hear the Songs of Gazans, but Cannot See Their Rockets

The United Nations’ Incitement to Violence

The War Against Israel and Jewish Civilians

Bitter Burnt Ends: Talking to a Farrakhan Fan

The Nerve of ‘Judaizing’ Neighborhoods

Black Lives Matter Joins the anti-Israel “Progressives” Fighting Zionism

In The Margins

Considering Nazis and Radical Islam on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day

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Is the Southern Poverty Law Center Part of the Problem of Anti-Semitism?

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The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) bills itself as the “premier U.S. non-profit organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists.” In reviewing the articles and analyses on its website, one can see a particular bias in covering hate groups and victims: aggressively monitoring alt-right white supremacist groups while doing very little work on other hate groups, and focusing on anti-Black, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ acts while doing very little work about anti-Semitism.

And it matters, because the average Jew suffers more hate crimes than any other group in America with the pace of hate crimes increasing rapidly, and more hate crimes are increasingly being committed by non-Whites.

SPLC Ignoring The Murder of Jews

On November 12, 2019, the SPLC wrote an article about the FBI Hate Crimes Report of 2018. The article focused on:

  • Blaming white supremacists and President Trump for attacks: “This uptick in violent hate crimes comes on the heels of FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in July, when he said the majority of domestic terrorism investigations are connected to white supremacy. Given President Trump’s incendiary – and often false – rhetoric about immigrants, it is not surprising that the FBI reports a nearly 14 percent increase in hate crimes against Latinos in 2018. A president’s words have consequences, and this administration continues to normalize the bigotry that motivates hate crimes. Earlier this year in El Paso, we witnessed one of the deadliest white nationalist, anti-immigrant acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.” But the article didn’t say that anti-Black hate crimes declined by 1.3% in 2018; anti-Jewish crimes by 9.5% and anti-Muslim by 27.4%. What’s more, while the total hate crimes against those groups went down, the anti-White hate crimes JUMPED by 20.1%, the largest one year increase since 2012.
  • No discussion of anti-Jewish murders. The report noted an increase in anti-LGBTQ hate crimes and that the largest percentage of hate crimes were against Blacks. But it said nothing about the facts that an average Jew was three times more likely to suffer a hate crime than an average Black person. It said nothing about the slaughter of Jews in Pittsburgh, the largest mass shooting of Jews in U.S. history. NOTHING. The words “anti-Semitism” and “Jews” never even made the article, even as the number of murders reached 1.0% of total hate crimes for the first time since the FBI has kept such statistics, mostly due to the killing of Jews.

That article was not an aberration in focusing on White perpetrators and ignoring Jewish victims.

Go to the site’s tab on “Hate & Extremism.” The only hate groups featured are all White supremacist, even though it claims to track 1,600 hate groups, many of whom are anti-White.

In an article describing the “Year in Hate” on February 15, 2017, the  SPLC bemoaned the increase in anti-Muslim hate groups which it claimed was not unexpected. Why?

“By far the most dramatic change was the enormous leap in anti-Muslim hate groups, from 34 in 2015 to 101 last year — a 197% increase. But that explosion was not unexpected. Anti-Muslim hate has been expanding rapidly for more than two years now, driven by radical Islamist attacks including the June mass murder of 49 people at an Orlando, Fla., gay nightclub, the unrelenting propaganda of a growing circle of well-paid ideologues, and the incendiary rhetoric of Trump — his threats to ban Muslim immigration, mandate a registry of Muslims in America, and more.”

Read that highlighted section again: a Muslim extremist killed 49 members of the LGBT community in a horrible hate crime, and rather than call attention to the victims being LGBT and the perpetrator being Muslim, the SPLC reoriented the reader to state that presumably White people are anti-Muslim because a Muslim killed gay people. Huh? SPLC, are you warning us that White people are the real problematic haters because they don’t like Muslims slaughtering gay people?

The article capturing the year in hate mentioned “Muslims” fifteen times, while “Jews” was referenced just three times. This despite there being 834 hate crimes against Jews and 381 against Muslims, according to the FBI in 2016. Where’s the focus and where’s the problem?

When the SPLC addressed the shooting of Jews in Poway, CA on April 27, 2019, it focused on the perpetrator: “Once again, a young white male has apparently been influenced by dangerous online white supremacist propaganda. And once again, we see how this propaganda can lead to terrorist acts.” But when the attacks in Jersey City, NJ were committed by Black people, SPLC seemed to be confused as to whether the two killers belonged to the Black Israelites which SPLC labels as a hate group, while noting “many Hebrew Israelites are neither explicitly anti-white nor antisemitic and do not advocate violence, there is a rising extremist sector within the movement.” Maybe the killers were part of the group, maybe not. The group is considered a hate group, but many people are not really racists. It’s very clear, thank you. It seems that uniquely among the 1,600 hate groups the SPLC tracks, there may be some “very fine people” (to quote Donald Trump) among the Black Israelites.

When Jews were attacked again on Hanukkah 2019, SPLC said “When any one of us is attacked, we are all at risk. This is a time in which the voices for good cannot be silent. Stand with the Jewish community and SPLC as we continue to challenge the rise in anti-Semitism. As Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote: “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.” Thank you for your recent concern. You’ve been absolutely mum for years.

People have described Jews as the canary in the coal mine when it comes to hate crimes but what happens to the miners when the person who claims to be in charge of watching the canary is in fact staring at everything else but the canary? The canary dies and the miners are too sick to even escape.

And here we are.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has systematically ignored the plight of Jews in America for years while it solely focused on white supremacists attacking Blacks and Muslims. In doing so, it has failed the Jews and it has failed America.

Protester in New York City’s March Against Hate, January 5, 2020 (photo: FirstOneThrough)

Related First.One.Through articles:

First the Attackers Were Radical Islamic Extremists

I See Dead People

The New Trend in Hate Crimes: Black Murderers and Jewish Victims

Don Lemon, Here are Some Uncomfortable Facts about Hate Crimes in America

Covering Racism

Where’s the March Against Anti-Semitism?

Black Antisemitism: The Intersectional Hydra

Criticizing Muslim Antisemitism is Not Islamophobia

Between Right-Wing and Left-Wing Antisemitism

Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism

Is Columbia University Promoting Violence Against Israel and Jews?

The War Against Israel and Jewish Civilians

Black Hate Crimes of 2018

Anti-Semitism Is Harder to Recognize Than Racism

Fact Check Your Assumptions on American Racism

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The Heartwarming Story of My Guilty Demise

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Imagine that from tragedy sprang hope. That from murder, came unity.

It’s a beautiful image of rebirth that gives us hope that the world can be a better place. It’s the stuff that makes us get up each morning with a sense of optimism.

Does that story truly work for ALL scenarios? Does the sentiment described above have a uniquely linear orientation to be truly positive, or is it an uplifting message regardless of the actors and their roles?

Consider a different scenario than the one that actually played out in 2014, when an “incel,” an involuntary celibate man by the name of Elliot Rodger went on a killing spree in California because girls would not go out with him. Imagine that in the days following his murders that various women from sororities at the university took his message to heart and went out of their way to be nice to all men they encountered. Wouldn’t that have been a heartwarming gesture for the many men who felt neglected by women?

That approach of “restorative justice” did not happen. Rodger was roundly denounced and the incel community was labeled as a dangerous group that unjustly targets women. These celibate men were further marginalized by society and denounced for having horribly hateful ideas which only gained legitimacy in the cramped echo chamber of their social media consoles.

The victims did not reach out to their attackers, as society played out its normal process of criticizing the perpetrators. It made no demand of the victims, as to do so would have suggested that they were not truly innocent but had a shared responsibility in the attack against their persons.

People rallied to the victims, not the attackers.

If immediately after the attack, a male member of the university school board said that the voices of the marginalized men must be heard and that women should be kinder to men, people would not have come to his defense. Women’s groups would have demanded his resignation by the end of the day.

But our world doesn’t always operate consistently. For 99.8% of the world, there is a common language, which could be called base 10 in mathematics. For Jews, there is a different standard, base 666; it is the calculus based on the formula that Jews are evil and can never be truly innocent.

So people came to defend a Black member of the Jersey City school board who said that the Black murderers of Jews had a valid point that Jews were “brutes” ruining the community. People considered that Jews caused their own demise for moving into a predominantly Black neighborhood.

Because dead Jews are not the same as dead women.

Such attitude is not limited to the non-Jewish world. Even in its own progressive papers, Jews are called upon to consider how their own actions cause people to hate and kill them.

The New York paper The Jewish Week ran a story on January 3, 2020 about the aftermath of the shooting death of people in a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, NJ just weeks earlier. It was a story meant to inspire.

The article noted how Blacks and Jews “United” for a holiday charity drive. It described how Jews and Blacks came together to bring food and toys to the Black community in Jersey City for Christmas.

I had to read the article twice to make sure I caught the facts underlying the message.

The article did not write about the Black community delivering presents to the Jews for Hanukkah as would have met the natural linear thinking of reconciliation. No, no. Too simple. This was a story where the Jews tacitly admitted their guilt at being killed for not being good neighbors and not getting to know the people in the community.

Hannukah 2019 was turned into the holiday of Purim, where everything was upside down. Not only were Jews killed but they voluntarily handed out sweets to their attackers and apologized for getting their dirty Jewish blood on the attackers’ hands. Another “al chet” to consider during Yom Kippur: too many al chets.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Eyal Gilad Naftali Klinghoffer. The new Blood Libel.

The Nerve of ‘Judaizing’ Neighborhoods

The New Trend in Hate Crimes: Black Murderers and Jewish Victims

Empowering Women… To Murder

What Kind of Hate Kills?

There’s Nothing Worse Than Terrorism in France

The Death of Civilians; the Three Shades of Sorrow

On Killing Terrorists

The Misogyny of Treating Women like Victims

Black Antisemitism: The Intersectional Hydra

“Occupation”-Washing Honor Killings

For The NY Times, Antisemitism Exists Because the Alt-Right is Racist and Israel is Racist

The Personalisation of War

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The March of Silent Feet

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An estimated 25,000 people marched from Manhattan’s City Hall over the Brooklyn Bridge on January 5, 2020. The message from the group organizers – mainly Jewish alphabet groups like UJA, AJC, ADL and JCRC – was “No Hate. No Fear.” The signs were everywhere, but few of the marchers uttered the words.

Placards during march over the Brooklyn Bridge, January 5, 2020 (photo: FirstOneThrough)

Various politicians lined up to address the TV cameras but not the audience before the march took place, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Senator Chuck Schumer. The masses then followed the politicians over the bridge to a park in Brooklyn, escorted by scores of police and members of CSS, the Jewish Community Security Service.

Senator Chuck Schumer talking to the cameras before the march.

The people came from beyond the five boroughs including Westchester, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington D.C. and Canada. There were a few people in town from Florida and Israel who joined the protest, as well as a number who used to live in Quebec and France. The attitude of the crowd was much the same: frustration but not trepidation.

The tagline of the event was roundly dismissed: “No hate?” That’s an absurd concept. People hate as naturally as they love. Hatred will never be vanquished. However, we should seek and do our utmost to advance a world with no blanket hatred of groups of people. Hating a person because of an action may be warranted, but not a collective. But even more pressing, no violence – that’s what people truly demand.

Marcher over Brooklyn Bridge during March Against Hate, January 5, 2020 (photo: FirstOneThrough)

The march took place in the shadow of growing violence against Jews in the tri-state NY/NJ/CT area including shootings, stabbings, punchings, assaults and throwing bricks in people’s faces. And not just any faces – Jews, specifically. The march’s motto was deaf to that point.

The audience tacitly showed its disapproval when the march’s principal orchestrator, Michael Miller, CEO of the JCRC urged the crowd to repeat after him “No Hate. No Fear. No Hate. No Fear.” Generic hate? What about antisemitism specifically? Very few people echoed Miller.

However, the crowd was enthusiastic to the remarks made by Devorah Halberstam, mother of Ari Halberstam who was killed while riding in a bus over the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994. She demanded justice for victims with real punishments for perpetrators of hate crimes. She urged everyone to be proud Jews and not hide their religiosity. Her declarations resonated: Jewish Lives Matter.

Devorah Halberstam, mother of Ari who was murdered for being Jewish in 1994, addressing the March Against Hate (photo: FirstOneThrough)

Other members of the Jewish community also addressed the crowd including David Harris, CEO of the AJC, Eric Goldstein, CEO of the UJA, and Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL. They each sought to address the problem but without naming names.

They called out the noxious hatred from the alt-right, people who committed the horrible murders in Pittsburgh and Poway, and they also said that the problem was not limited to the right-wing fringe, as the attacks in Jersey City, Brooklyn and Monsey clearly showed. But they did not say clearly that the alt-left was a problem, nor Black antisemitism nor Muslim antisemitism. They simply noted antisemitism was not limited to the alt-right and also stemmed from some people in “minority groups.”

If the alt-right can be condemned, why can’t the other anti-Semites be called out?

It was good and proper that the leaders noted a certain “congresswoman from Michigan” who condemned the shootings in Jersey City as a work of white supremacists, who then had to delete the tweet when it was revealed that it was the work of Black people, and then never said another word on the subject, obviously showing she doesn’t give a damn about antisemitism.

It was appropriate that speakers condemned another certain congresswoman who said that the Jews buy off members of Congress to support the evil Jewish State.

While inelegant, the contortions to avoid naming their names (Tlaib and Omar) was perhaps smart: there is (perhaps) nothing to be gained by turning antisemitism into a partisan issue. AJC’s Harris noted that antisemitism is not a Jewish issue but a non-Jewish issue in which Jews have a vested interest. As such, it would not serve the cause to make it difficult for people of all political and religious backgrounds to advance the mission.

But why not clearly call out Jew-hatred instead of generic “hate” in the placards? Why not denounce the alt-left as much as the alt-right for fanning the flames of Jew-hatred? Why was it only an angry mother who was willing to state the obvious and call for action?

Jews have always been the most targeted group of hate crimes in the United States according to data from the FBI: almost three times as likely to suffer a hate crime as an average Black person, and 2.4 times and 1.8 times as much as an average Muslim and LGBTQ person, respectively. But historically the attacks against Jews were principally against property. However, over the past five years, attacks against their persons have increased, and since 2018, murder.

So, at long last, the leaders of Jewish organizations held a march against the most common form of hatred, long after women held marches in D.C., gay people held sit ins, and Black people gathered in their Million Man March. But there will be no manifesto like BlackLivesMatter nor direct finger-pointing at antisemitic Congresspeople to be stripped of their committees, antisemites on schools boards to be removed from office, nor condemnation for politicians who block funding for security at religious schools.

Because at the end of the day, the leadership of American Jewry’s alphabet soup want to play politely. They will demand nothing from politicians, just donations from Jews. The leaders believe that most American Jews simply want to be left alone, to be anonymous; part of the wallpaper of the American scenery. Modern Jews may worry about the spike in antisemitism but believe in their hearts it’s still only a problem for the broadcast devout. As such, the leadership will ruffle few feathers and enjoy the thrill of hobnobbing with the powerful.

Secular Jews came out to defend the visibly ultra-Orthodox in a march of silent feet, still believing such hate will either dissipate on its own, or pass them over as they turn to their right under cover of whiteness or their left among their intersectional brethren with genuine genuflectional guilt.

Will it take more mayhem to demand more of ourselves and our leaders, or we will be wise enough to demand new leaders like Devorah Halberstam?

Related First.One.Through articles:

Where’s the March Against Anti-Semitism?

First the Attackers Were Radical Islamic Extremists

I See Dead People

Chanukah and Fighting on Sabbath

Pride. Jewish and Gay

Criticizing Muslim Antisemitism is Not Islamophobia

Between Right-Wing and Left-Wing Antisemitism

Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism

Is Columbia University Promoting Violence Against Israel and Jews?

The War Against Israel and Jewish Civilians

Israel’s Nation-State Basic Law Advances a Two-State Solution

Anti-Semitism Is Harder to Recognize Than Racism

Omar and Tlaib’s Antisemitic B.D.S.

For The NY Times, Antisemitism Exists Because the Alt-Right is Racist and Israel is Racist

The Crime, Hatred and Motivation. Antisemitism All The Same

Black Antisemitism: The Intersectional Hydra

Linda Sarsour as Pontius Pilate

Mayor De Blasio is Blind to Black Anti-Semitism

Time to Define Banning Jews From Living Somewhere as Antisemitic

The Antisemitic Youth

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The Nerve of ‘Judaizing’ Neighborhoods

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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights notes that every person has a right to own property. It would appear that such right is very limited for Jews, as they are most unwelcome in certain neighborhoods. This Jew-hatred is found in both White and Black neighborhoods, and seemingly endorsed by several liberal politicians and media outlets as well as the United Nations.

In the Jewish Holy Land

For over 1,000 years, Jews have been expelled from their homes and lands and pushed into ghettos in scores of countries. The situation continues today with politicians and media question why Jews would even live in certain places.

  • In June 2014, BBC’s Nicky Campbell questioned why three Jewish teenagers were hitchhiking in the West Bank, only to get themselves kidnapped and killed. “Palestinians would say perhaps these people were in the West Bank illegally.” His logic was that Jews cannot live in certain places, so they only have only themselves to blame when they get killed.
  • In October 2014, the Obama Administration’s Josh Earnest said “The US condemns the recent occupation of residential buildings in the neighborhood of Silwan by people whose agenda provokes tensions.”  The message is clear: Jews buying homes and living in eastern Jerusalem is terrible because the Jews are stirring tensions, not because Arabs are consumed with Jew hatred.
  • The New York Times described these Israeli purchases of homes in the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem in the same language Hitler used to describe Jews as nefarious schemers: “In the dark of night, under the protection of Israeli security forces, Jewish settlers took possession of some 25 housing units in six locations around the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem… Many of the properties had been rented out, but they were strangely empty when the settlers arrived… Through a multimillion-dollar series of complex and shadowy transactions spanning several years, Elad engineered the largest private settlement initiative in decades.” The Jews must have been ding something illegal; they have no real rights to buy these homes.
  • A few days later in October 2014 the New York Times portrayed the residents of Silwan as peaceful Arabs who were set upon by crazy Israelis who moved next door: “An influx of right-wing Jewish settlers who have acquired property in the area in recent years have made the neighborhood a flash point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The Jews were the extremists and caused violence, not the other way around.
  • The sentiment of the NY Times would continue through articles and editorials and get more and more direct that the Jews are 100% to blame for buying homes where they shouldn’t. In February 2015, Nicholas Kristof wrote “nibbling of Arab land is just plain wrong.” The physical land for the alt-left is permanently Arab and no one but an Arab should ever live there. It’s the exact language of the KKK stating that no Black person should live in a White neighborhood or Muslims and Latinos move to a White country. It is also directly in contrast in international law in the Palestine Mandate that specifically stated that “No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.”
  • In speech-after-speech, leaders of the Palestinian Authority continue to claim that Israel is trying to “Judaize” Jerusalem, as if Jerusalem hasn’t had a majority Jewish population for 150 years.
  • The United Nations has echoed the charge and demanded that Israel not change the “demographics or character” of Jerusalem.
  • By September 2015, the liberal media only began calling the Jewish Temple Mount the “al Aqsa Compound” in its articles. When using the term “Temple Mount,” it would add qualifiers like “Jews call it…” or “Jews believe that their ancient Temple stood there.” This was a new standardization, much like the term “West Bank” is the accepted norm for the media, while “Judea and Samaria” are terms that only right-wing Jews use. The media got the lesson plan that the land is Arab and Jews are colonial invaders.
  • And in time for Christmas 2015, The New York Times Roger Cohen wrote that Jews living in Judea and Samaria “makes violence inevitable,” not because of Arab antisemitism, but because of “Messianic Zionism.“

Liberals understood Arab sentiment and it wasn’t antisemitism. The violence was purely the Jews fault for living in places which shouldn’t have Jews. Arabs don’t want to kill Jews, they just want them to get the hell out of their town.

It was therefore no surprise when Obama let United Nations Security Council pass Resolution 2334 in December 2016 declaring that it is indeed illegal for Israeli Jews to live in the eastern part of the Jewish holy land.

In America’s Black and White Communities

There’s one country other than Israel with over 5 million Jews, but the United States has over 300 million people, making the Jews a very small minority, rather than the ruling majority. Still, their small number is too big a presence for many.

  • Over the past decade, many Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn were being priced out of their neighborhood so they sought cheaper housing in Jersey City, NJ. The New York Times covered the trend in August 2017 and remarked how Black residents objected to these newcomers, not because of antisemitism, but because the Jews were “pushy” and “conservative” and involved in “illegal” activities.
  • The NY Times would not write about the White community of Mahwah, NJ which ripped down a Jewish eruv that facilitates more Orthodox Jews to move into the neighborhood in June 2017. The online petition with over 1,000 signatures contained some of the most vile Jew-hatred comments including “Our town is such a great place and if these things move in they will ruin it. they think they can do whatever the hell they want and well be known as a dirty town if they move in. Please keep them out to maintain the quality of Mahwah” and “They are clearly trying to annex land like they’ve been doing in Occupied Palestine. Look up the satanic verses of the Talmud and tell me what you see.” Pure alt-Right Jew-hatred.
  • In May and June 2019, the progressive mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio could only blame Donald Trump and the alt-right for the spike in attacks against Jews, even when a disproportionate number of the attackers were Black people, saying “The forces of white supremacy have been unleashed and … those are profoundly anti-Semitic forces,” and “I think the ideological movement that is anti-Semitic is the right-wing movement,… I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological is very much from the right.”
  • In April 2019, leaders of the Black community said that the “white invasion is an ‘insidious onslaught’ to African-American life” and something must be done to “stop the occupation.” Intersectional language brought by BlackLiveMatter as part of its August 2016 platform, connecting Jews in Jersey to Jews in Jerusalem. Keep ’em out.
  • After Jews were slaughtered by two Black people in Jersey City in December 2019, several leaders of the Black community were clear that they felt the killers were only REacting as a form of self defense: “Black homeowners were threatened, intimidated, and harassed by I WANT TO BUY YOUR HOUSE brutes of the jewish community.” 

In the United States, Black and White communities are trying to keep Jews out of their neighborhoods. They see these newcomers as “invaders” threatening their way of life, whether in “inner-city neighborhoods that have been culturally and racially defined as black communities” or “I live in Mahwah and want to preserve the community as it is.”

In 1900, there were roughly 50 countries with over 25,000 Jews. Today, that number stands at just 17 countries, as antisemitism decimated Jews throughout Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. The remnant principally lives in just two countries, Israel and the United States, home to over 80% of world Jewry. And many people object to their presence in those locations as well.

The hatred and objection to Jews living somewhere is not new. However, the various forms of absolution granted to these anti-Semites from both the left and right are alarming and must be condemned as unambiguously as the sentiment itself.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Time to Define Banning Jews From Living Somewhere as Antisemitic

The New York Times All Out Assault on Jewish Jerusalem

Your Father’s Anti-Semitism

The Remarkable Tel Jerusalem

Squeezing Zionism

New York Times Lies about the Gentleness of Zionism

Criticizing Muslim Antisemitism is Not Islamophobia

Between Right-Wing and Left-Wing Antisemitism

Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism

The War Against Israel and Jewish Civilians

Related First.One.Through videos:

1001 Years of Expulsions (Schindlers List)

Jewish Migration Since 1900 (Diana Ross)

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2019 First.One.Through Summary

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The blog First.One.Through continued to grow in 2019, with more plans for 2020.

Year Articles   Words  Average Length
2014 107         62,534 584
2015 144       143,239 995
2016 132       117,961 894
2017 106       104,462 985
2018 117       102,591 877
2019 129       107,917 837
TOTAL 735       638,704  869

More articles were written and they have been shorter, following the feedback from various readers. In the future, some longer articles and analyses will be available for download, just by submitting an email address. The longer feature publications with extensive analysis will be shared in this format going forward.

While readership in the United States increased significantly, the volume from other countries declined from last year, particularly the Scandinavian countries, many of which dropped off the top 15.

Country Change 2018/19
United States 13%
Israel -7%
Canada -4%
UK -17%
Australia -10%
South Africa -3%
Netherlands -26%
India 155%
Germany 27%
Jordan 1771%
Hong Kong 0%
American Samoa NA
Norway -31%
Belgium -3%
Sweden -52%

Both Jordan and American Samoa jumped onto the top table as readers came for the article Prostitution and the Hijab. People in Jordan were also big readers of Jordan’s King Abdullah II Fights to Retain His Throne.

Overall, the most popular articles of 2019 were:

Facebook continues to be an important source for the readership, and Twitter much less so. For 2020, look for Twitter to be used more frequently.

Other news sources continue to re-post the articles, as intended. All that is required is a link to the original article on First.One.Through. Some of those online sites included:

Of course, it’s always welcome when people source the articles either in their articles or when they add comments as done by the following:

The FirstOneThrough YouTube page has slowed down significantly since August 2018. While no new videos have been posted in seven years, until August 2018 there was an average of over an hour a day of video watched on the channel. Just over 200 hours of video were watched on the channel in 2019.

The most popular videos of 2019 were:

Please share and comment on all of the original material.

Wishing you a wonderful 2020.

Is Antisemitic Graffiti a Hate Crime?

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CNN reported on a situation in London, England on December 29, 2019, of antisemitic graffiti being painted across the city.

The article read:

“Police in London are investigating anti-Semitic graffiti found scrawled across shop fronts, restaurants and a synagogue as a possible hate crime.

Images of the Star of David and messages apparently relating to the September 11 attacks were painted on buildings in the north of the city on Saturday evening, authorities said.”

Is there any question that anti-Semitic graffiti is a hate crime?

The FBI defines hate crimes by breaking down both “hate” and “crime.” It does this being mindful of the First Amendment noting “Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.”

Vandalism is clearly part of the definition, as is deliberately targeting a religious house of worship or tying the commentary to a group’s religion as it states: “FBI has defined a hate crime as a ‘criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.‘”

In England, the definition of a hate crime is much the same: “The term ‘hate crime’ can be used to describe a range of criminal behaviour where the perpetrator is motivated by hostility or demonstrates hostility towards the victim’s disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity. These aspects of a person’s identity are known as ‘protected characteristics’. A hate crime can include verbal abuse, intimidation, threats, harassment, assault and bullying, as well as damage to property.”

The case in London is seemingly so clear cut, why is there a question about the incidents being hate crimes?

When mosques were burned in Sweden, why was The New York Times quick to point out the anti-Muslim sentiment of the act, but when synagogues in France were fire-bombed and Jews attacked, the Times noted that there was just a “tinge” of anti-Semitism?

When vandals destroyed a Jewish cemetery in the United States, why was the Times reluctant to clearly label the attack on Jews?

Why does the United Nations go through great lengths to distance religion from hate crimes when the perpetrators are Muslim, but does it explicitly without pause if the extremists are Jews?

There are huge swathes of the world – including the United Nations and progressive politicians and media – which are having a very tough time recognizing hate crimes against Jews even as they magnify them against other minorities, while at the same time going out of their way to label Jews as perpetrators of crimes while minimizing crimes committed by other religious groups. These continuing actions make them accomplices to the war on Jews, and arguably subject to prosecution as well.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Anti-Semitism Is Harder to Recognize Than Racism

Chanukah Donuts: Brooklyn 2019

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The annual Chanukah pilgrimage in search of great donuts went to Brooklyn again this year. Due to the horrible tragedy that struck the Satmar community in Jersey City, NJ a few weeks ago, the first leg of the trip was in Williamsburg where the Satmar community has a large presence. We set out to try the donuts of seven different bakeries of which two were standouts. Later we headed to Boro Park where we sampled four bakeries which were all very good.

Williamsburg

Oneg Bakery, 188 Lee Avenue

The best donuts of Williamsburg were at Oneg Heimishe Bakery.

The store is small and the selection of donuts is limited but that says nothing about the quality of the food. The caramel and custard filled donuts were outstanding. They were overflowing with delicious centers which were very tasty and not too sweet. The dough was light and the icing was very good. An overall rating of an 8. Considering that the donuts only cost $2.00, lower than many others, if felt like a 9.

Oneg also was the only bakery we visited that carried “frittle,” essentially small and light pieces of fried dough with sugar which are made only on Chaunkah. They were quite good. May I add that the babka from Oneg is among the very best in New York.

Black and White Bakery, 520 Park Ave

The Black and White Kosher Bakery is not that close to the other bakeries but worth the trip. There is a mix of dairy and pareve donuts, plain and fancy, with prices ranging from $1.75 to close to $5.

The donuts were heavily filled with the taste of the fillings getting a range of reviews from amazing to just OK. The dough was very good, perhaps not as good as Oneg due to the freshness of when we arrived (jelly donuts decline in value as rapidly as a BMW). Overall an 8.

Traditional Kosher Bakery, 123 Lee Ave.

A very simple store with a simple name. It serves a number of non-baked items as well as some other baked goods including a cinnamon stick (OK) and a nut/craisin/cinnamon loaf which was terrific. The plain jelly donut had a very tasty raspberry jam but the dough was tough, heavy and thick. Overall, a 6.

Steinberg’s 701 Bedford Ave.

Steinberg’s exterior has no signage whatsoever. The store is clean and decent size with a pretty good selection of donuts. Some of the jelly donuts were assembled in sandwich-format rather than center infused.

The donuts had a very nice amount of filling, but unfortunately, not that tasty. The icing fell apart and onto the floor on first bite and the dough was not that fluffy. Overall rating of 5.5.

Kaff’s, 73 Lee Ave.

Kaff’s was one of the largest bakeries we visited in Williamsburg and they had a nice selection including two fancy choices with elaborate toppings. Regrettably, the dough was too heavy and the filling, while plentiful, was not on par with the presentation. Overall score of a 5.

G’shmak 164 Wallabout Ave.

G’Shmak was a real disappointment. While thrilled to have a halavah donut which had great flavor, everything else was lacking: The donuts had very little filling and the dough was very heavy. Huge piles of garbage near the entrance did not add to the experience. Overall rating 3.

Sanders 159 Lee Ave.

We stopped into this nice store – twice. Each time we were told that donuts were about to be ready, and each time kept waiting. On the second visit, the person at the store said that he had three small donuts in the back which he could give us, and after five minutes he confessed he had none and that we should return yet again. Nope. Gets a 0. The gluten-free cookies were also not great.

Boro Park

Boro Park bakeries had a much better consistency of high quality donuts than Williamsburg. I would recommend any of the four we visited. Here they are in rank order:

Gobo’s, 1524 New Utrecht Ave.

Gobo’s is a new addition to the Boro Park donut crawl and it did not disappoint. They have a different kind of jelly donut which is based on a churro, a cinnamon fried dessert. It was magnificent, with a slightly crunchy exterior, light and flaky dough, with a light creamy inside. An incredible treat and different than every other donut on the crawl.

The more traditional donuts were also very good with excellent dough, heavily filled. Toppings and icings remained on the donut. Overall rating of a 9.0.

Sesame, 5024 13th Ave

We typically go to the Sesame in Flatbush, but decided to try the location in Boro Park due to the proximity of our other stops. The bakery was a knock-out, just like the Flatbush location.

There are dozens of flavors to choose from, including unusual ones like pistachio. The donuts score at the top of the charts in every category: delicious and plentiful fillings, light and tasty dough, flavorful icing that is not overly sweet that stays atop the donut. An incredible treat, whatever flavor one tries. Scores a 9.0.

Taam Eden, 4603 13th Ave.

Ta’am Eden has long been a subtle favorite, a great counter-balance to Sesame. Both have fantastic dough and tasty fillings, but Ta’am seems to not want to overwhelm. The donuts seem smaller than Sesame and the filling doesn’t ooze out all over the place. But such amazing flavor, with new options like Passion Fruit and Pina Colada (seems like you can get some vitamins in donuts these days). The toppings were perfect in that they were very flavorful and remained in place. Overall an 8.5.

Weiss Bakery, 5011 13th Ave.

Weiss is simply an all-around great bakery. Compared to the other stores like Sesame which basically only serve donuts on Chanukah, Weiss adds donuts to its delicious repertoire, but doesn’t try to redefine its store.

The donut fillings are full and very tasty as were the toppings. The dough was not on par with Ta’am Eden or Sesame, and therefore got an overall score of 7.5. However, the store was handing out donuts to children who participated in a Boro Park scavenger hunt, worth an extra point for being a great member of the community!

Here is a chart summarizing the ratings for the 2019 Donut Crawl. Feel free to share the article and peruse and share the other articles on First.One.Through which focus on Jews, Judaism and Israel.

Happy Chanukah!

Related First.One.Through articles:

Brooklyn’s Holiday Donuts

The Last of the Mo’Kichels

A Sofer at the Kotel

Ruth, The Completed Jew

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Chanukah and Fighting on Sabbath

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Shuls, Jewish schools, community centers and kosher supermarkets have become battlegrounds in the United States over the past few years, much as they have been in the rest of the world for a long time. The spike in violent hate crimes against Jews has dwarfed those committed against any other group with recent murders in Pittsburgh, PA, Poway, CA and Jersey City, NJ.

Jewish communities all over the country are debating how to respond.

In 2015, New York City managed to push through a bill over the objections of several progressive politicians and organizations, to reimburse private schools – including Jewish day schools – for their security forces. That effort may have saved dozens of lives.

Synagogues are now debating whether they need to hire police officers to guard their houses of worship, or at least have people within the community be on alert, perhaps armed.

Many synagogues have turned to a group called the Community Security Service (CSS), which has been actively working with Jewish communities around the country for several years to help them prevent and prepare for emergency situations. As stated on their website:

“CSS provides a wide range of security services at no cost to the Jewish community. From securing thousands of events every year to helping secure facilities, we are the community security experts. Our teams are part of the community, trained by the community, here to protect the community, acting as a key force multiplier for law enforcement. CSS thrives to preserve our way of life and respect Jews from every walk of life. Our organization is supported by Jewish leaders, organizations, and law enforcement. Through our organization, the Jewish community receives the highest level of security training, our teams become the eyes and ears of the community, partnering up with law enforcement to help secure our community in an undisruptive, seamless way.”

Yet even with the training of the CSS and the spike in deadly attacks, many rabbis remain uncomfortable with Jews carrying weapons or using radios on the Sabbath, as it is considered a prohibited activity on the holy day.

It is therefore worth recounting the story of Chanukah, at least a particular one of the lesser known stories.

While many people are familiar with the story of the Maccabees defeating the Syrian-Greeks in battle and purifying the Temple of their pagan rituals, not all of the battles went well. As recounted by Josephus (37CE – 100CE), the Jewish historian in The Antiquities of the Jews in Book 12, Chapter 6, after the priest Matthias began the revolt, he and his sons fled into the desert:

“Many others did the same also; and fled with their children and wives into the desert; and dwelt in caves. But when the King’s generals heard this, they took all the forces they then had in the citadel at Jerusalem, and pursued the Jews into the desert. And when they had overtaken them, they, in the first place, endeavoured to persuade them to repent, and to choose what was most for their advantage; and not put them to the necessity of using them according to the law of war. But when they would not comply with their persuasions, but continued to be of a different mind, they fought against them on the sabbath day: and they burnt them, as they were in the caves, without resistance; and without so much as stopping up the entrances of the caves. And they avoided to defend themselves on that day, because they were not willing to break in upon the honour they owed the sabbath, even in such distresses. For our law requires that we rest upon that day. There were about a thousand, with their wives and children, who were smothered, and died in these caves. But many of those that escaped, joined themselves to Matthias, and appointed him to be their ruler. Who taught them to fight, even on the sabbath day; and told them, that “Unless they would do so, they would become their own enemies, by observing the law [so rigorously,] while their adversaries would still assault them on this day; and they would not then defend themselves: and that nothing could then hinder, but they must all perish, without fighting.” This speech persuaded them. And this rule continues among us to this day; that, if there be a necessity, we may fight on sabbath days.“

Over 2,100 years ago, Jews observed the Sabbath to such a degree that they allowed themselves to be slaughtered rather than put up any resistance. More men, women and children died during one of the first Sabbaths of the Maccabean revolt, than died at Masada 200 years later. But few remember the story.


Judas The Maccabee Defeats His Enemies,
painting by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld (1794-1872)

During this Chanukah which is celebrated against a backdrop of terrible violence against Jews, let us remember all of the stories of the holiday, and make sure that every Jewish place of worship is completely prepared to handle any situation which may arise.

Wishing you a happy and very peaceful Chanukah.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Today’s Inverted Chanukah: The Holiday of Rights in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria

What Kind of Hate Kills?

Covering Racism

Where’s the March Against Anti-Semitism?

The New York Times All Out Assault on Jewish Jerusalem

I See Dead People

The War Against Israel and Jewish Civilians

I Understand Why the Caged Jew Sighs

The Reform Movement’s Rick Jacobs Has no Understanding of Tolerance

The Holocaust Will Not Be Colorized. The Holocaust Will Be Live.

Calls From the Ashes

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The Tikkun Olam Brigade and the Taped Banana

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The fancy Art Basel art fair in Miami sold a remarkable item for $120,000 in December 2019: an actual ripe banana duct taped to a wall.


“Comedian” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan

The “work of art” called “Comedian” was produced by a famous Italian artist. The Perrotin gallery which featured the work stated that the work “offers insight [into] how we assign worth and what kind of objects we value.”

For the thinking individual, the insight is clear: in modern times, we defer to “experts” who put significant money behind ideas, regardless how patently foolish. The fact that an artist represented by an art dealer would feature a work at a large art fair and have someone pay a tremendous sum to purchase the work, seals the deal that this must be serious art. Any individual who would observe the stupidity of the scene would be mocked rather than the other way around as the experts and market have spoken.

Perhaps when this concept was broached by Marcel Duchamp one hundred years ago, the notion of challenging our idea of “art” was novel and thought-provoking. But we’ve already done that. Does this work cover any new ground?

Is this work “Comedian” a joke on society which doesn’t get the opportunity to either ponder or laugh at the exhibition as it cannot fathom stripping the experts of their anointed titles? Is it the masochism we must endure to belong to the elite club? “I want to be in this community of the sophisticated, so will nod as a dutiful supplicant. Yes, we can see that art can take different forms. Yes, we can see that people value items differently. Yes, everything can be art, everything can be beautiful, everything can be valuable. Shame on me for being judgmental to view art as art and beauty as beauty. I hope that I didn’t say any of that aloud as thinking in such manner would exclude me from the very club I wish to join.”

OR… perhaps it’s the exact opposite: the experts are telling us – begging us – to no longer believe them. The masses will spend money as pleases them; the art dealers will feed the masses as they need to make a living too. And the artist, well he’s in on the joke. He named the artwork “Comedian” because he knows that people slipping on a banana peel is low brow humor, just as the work is a cheap poke at the art world and all of us that want to be a part of it.

Either way, pondering art and value is two sides of the same auction paddle. It’s a discussion that the art world has already rehashed for one hundred years.

No. This work is new for the post-2015 world, in which social media reigns. The goal is no longer art, it is popularity. Something that can be liked, shared and retweeted is the essence of value.

Society no longer values beauty or talent or experience. It wants the joke. A quick hit of something to laugh at, to share.

Consider that the United States voted a complete political novice to the presidency in 2016. Americans decided that they had too many politicians named Bush and Clinton already. Out with experience and in with the brash entertainer. Society reached a point that the number of Twitter followers is a better proxy for what the country craves, more than policy. Kim Kardashian for VP in 2020.

The “Comedian” was neither art nor beautiful nor “inherently” worth $120,000; it was simply Tweet-worthy. The artist and the purchaser got value from the work because the masses shared the picture and story repeatedly. As such, the answer to Perrotin gallery’s proposition had a range of answers: the value ascribed to items in a capitalistic society is based on the one outlier who pays the highest price, but also factors the wide attention of the public.

In the search for popularity, experts abdicate their leadership roles. They are now mere “influencers” who peddle their brands and platforms.

The echo chamber becomes a perfectly designed loop where the tastes of the masses is endorsed by their “experts” which in turn make the masses feel wonderful. The platforms become elevated by these same Twits who Tweet, encouraging more of the same.

Why actually lead and educate, when the re-tweets come so fast and furious?

Tikkun Olam

The situation of experts abdicating their positions based on knowledge and experience is not confined to the art world. Today’s religious leadership is being led by the masses as well.

Religious leaders do not talk about religion, a subject in which they are theoretically theological experts. Instead, they focus on politics, as that is what their congregants (read audience) really want to hear.

Consider the Union of Reform Judaism which had its biennial in December 2019. A main focus of the multi-day affair was to discuss reparations for American slavery. The rabbi leading the charge did not quote Leviticus nor the Talmud nor any rabbinic sages like Rashi or Rambam. He quoted Ta-Nehisi Coates, a Black atheist, to make his point.

There is a wide swath of American Jews who relate to Judaism only through the prism of peoplehood and not through the orientation of reading of the bible. As many non-Orthodox streams of Judaism do not believe in God, they view the bible as merely a divinely-inspired text written with the patriarchal philosophy of thousands of years ago. They have therefore comfortably shifted their prayer books and devotion to modern liberal artists like Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Their values begin with political figures and opinions such as from Michelle Obama’s book, and then consider Judaism. Religion is redefined in their political image.

Like the provocateurs in the art world who questioned what makes art “art,” Reform Judaism of 100 years ago asked people to consider what makes Judaism “Judaism”?

Both questions have matured over one hundred-plus years, and like the art world, Judaism has its own “Comedian” for the world of social media and popularity: it’s called “Tikkun Olam.”

The leaders of the Reform movement are marketing Tikkun Olam, or repairing the world, to the rowdy receptive audience of liberals – Jews and non-Jews alike. These potential pew-sitters are highly engaged in politics – particularly since Donald Trump entered politics in 2015 – so they meet their congregants there on the political battlefield. The reformed rabbis know what the progressive crowd cherishes – “Social Justice” – and the clergy repeats back to the parishioners their own political credo with the blessing that it’s kosher. It’s an inversion of the old teacher-student model, where the teacher no longer educates the ill-informed student about Judaism, rather the teacher must learn and incorporate the students’ passions and find an anchor in the bible. Such is the activity of a movement trying to stop its rapidly declining numbers.

Both Value (as in art) and Values (from religion) as currently determined by the bold fringe and loud masses of a post-2015 politically-charged and social media-connected world are seemingly disconnected from historic teachings and knowledge.

Traditionalists are aghast and will have none of it, while the progressives welcome the change as they seize the day from the prior generation.

Traditionalists see the taped banana as an object of interest but not art, just as Tikkun Olam is an appealing notion but not Judaism. Being neither art nor religion does not mean they have no value, but are not characteristic.

Liberals see things in reverse, where value defines everything. For them, Tikkun Olam is the essence of Judaism; a taped banana is bold art.

Both the non-Orthodox progressive leaders and the Orthodox traditional leaders will give their targeted audience their want, so they can manage the chaos of a charged and changing world. But the traditionalists will be leading with the knowledge of experts over thousands of years, while the modernists will be leading with values of the masses at the moment.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Rick Jacobs’ Particular Reform Judaism

The Reform Movement’s Rick Jacobs Has no Understanding of Tolerance

J Street is Only Considered “Pro-Israel” in Progressive Circles

Beyond Judaism’s IPO

On Heretics and Slanderers

Fake Definitions: Pluralism and Progressive / Liberalism

The Non-Orthodox Jewish Denominations Fight Israel

An Orthodox Rabbi at the Capitol

Obama’s “Values” Red Herring

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