The Last Days Of ‘Everlastingly Happy’ At The Edges

Posted on August 8, 2024 by First.One.Through

Roman Vishniac (1897-1990) was a famous documentary photographer who captured images of what turned out to be the end of a thriving Eastern European Jewish community. His photographs and story are captured in film and several books, which serve as witness to Jewish life as it existed before being extinguished in the Holocaust.

Vishniac did not try to capture only old Jews or poor shtetl Jews, although his images do bring stories like Fiddler On The Roof to the real world. He captured all kinds of Jews who lived full lives in cities and towns, without the foreboding knowledge that death was coming as individuals and as a collective.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) captured Russian villages and Jews in his paintings in the decades before Vishniac. Jews had been relegated to live in the Pale of Settlement on the western ends of the Russian Empire for hundreds of years, and Chagall’s early paintings were somewhat peaceful despite the various pogroms which decimated much of the Jewish community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

On October 7, 2023, roughly 3,500 people came to southern Israel near the Gaza Strip to celebrate life and music. The Tribe of Nova music festival was an annual all night electronic music experience which drew mostly secular people from around the world. They celebrated with friends and family near Jewish communities whose residents strove for coexistence with their neighbors in Jew-free Gaza nearby. No one knew that Palestinian terrorists were going to descend on the party and the kibbutzes to slaughter and torture as many people as the Arabs could find.

In eastern Europe and Russia, Jews lived in confined areas at the edges of where host countries decided Jews may live. The Jews lived the best they could under the restrictions, until political powers decided that they didn’t want Jews anymore. The militaries either slaughtered the Jews or expelled them.

While Jews originated and always lived in the land of Israel, modern Zionism sought to give Jews autonomy in their homeland again. While the reestablished Jewish State was formed in 1948, the country fought many wars against neighbors which found a Jewish State an insult to Islam.

Believing that the Israeli army kept them secure, Israelis danced the night away on October 7, just three kilometers from where the Palestinian group Hamas governed the terrorist enclave of Gaza, with a well-publicized plan seeking the death of Jews and destruction of Israel. Thousands of Gazan terrorists invaded Israel and butchered and slaughtered more Jews on a single day than any day since the Holocaust.

Jews danced and lived on the edges, on narrow slices of the world where they were informed they were entitled to live. In the end, whether from their own antisemitic governments or neighboring genocidal armies, they were targeted for annihilation.

The United States Now

What are the lessons for the largest diaspora community the world has ever known, with nearly 6 million Jews accounting for two-thirds of the global diaspora? Or other western democracies like Canada, the United Kingdom and France?

Jews have achieved financial success and attained leading positions at many global companies. They have built schools and hospitals, industries and factories. They have no restrictions on professions or where they can live, how they can pray or what they eat.

Yet the feeling for Jews post-October 7 feels tense. Unsafe.

The presidents of America’s leading universities came to Washington, D.C. and said that they would not combat Jew-hatred on their campuses. The best they could offer were chaperones to escort Jews to their classes or dorms as they confront open and approved intimidation and harassment.

Many American politicians in liberal cities are openly saying that they will not protect Jews. Jews living in the suburbs of New York and St. Louis fought aggressively to oust antisemitic politicians (Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush), with the defeated members of Congress then threatening to come after them.

Are these the new edges in the West in 2024, the straight line on campuses from dorms to classrooms, as well as suburban towns outside of liberal cities? Are universities and cities generally becoming off limits to Jews? Are Jews being told to simply accept that they can live happy lives on the edges?

Jews know history. They carry it in their DNA. They know that any restrictions form the contours of confinement. There is no safety in ghettos, only marked addresses for future annihilation.

*Marker for location of massacre of the Jews of Lisbon on April 19, 1506*

President George Washington penned a letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, RI on August 18, 1790 which said “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Yet Jews are feeling a deep erosion of that sentiment, that they are part-and-parcel of the fabric of the great country, as leaders of both academia and government assist persecution and inflame bigotry against the most persecuted people in the world.

Excluding Jews in any form, place or time is against the foundational principles of the United States. It cannot be accepted for America to be America.

American Jews will not fight for a slice of land on the edges of society in which to live. They have seen the destruction of fellow Jews when they stay politely in the alloted corners. Whether traditional or secular. Whether in Israel or the diaspora.

*Marker of location where 200+ Jews in Vienna who had refused to convert to Christianity were burned at the stake in 1421.*

American Jews will fight for all of America and to continue to be integral part of the great nation, unafraid.

*Student at George Washington University demanding protection from intimidation, harassment and discrimination, May 2024*

American Jews hold fast to Washington’s Newport letter, as he signed “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.”

Alas, what make antisemites everlastingly happy is harassing Jews until they experience the pogroms and expulsions of Fiddler On The Roof today.

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Of Kings On July 4th, In Newport, RI

Posted on July 4, 2022 by First.One.Through

The refreshing breeze came through the open windows in the Congregation Jeshuat Israel Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island on Saturday morning. Better known as the Touro Synagogue named for its first cantor Isaac Touro (1738-1783) and his son Judah Touro (1775-1854) who was its benefactor, the small building was lightly filled for Sabbath services on the July Fourth holiday weekend.

*Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island*, *July 3, 2022*

America’s oldest synagogue which opened in 1763, was a logical place for Jews to come to celebrate America’s birthday. In addition to being the only Jewish temple still standing in the United States from colonial days, America’s first president, George Washington (1732-1799), wrote a letter to the congregation in August 1790 which affirmed religious liberty:

“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.“

Washington made clear that all religious groups were not simply “tolerated” but very much a fabric of society. It was an incredible message for Jews to hear in the nascent country, as members of a persecuted faith who had first fled from Europe and then Brazil due to the Catholic Inquisition empowered by local governments.

My appreciation for religious liberty in this amazing country brought me to that synagogue for America’s birthday. As I climbed the few carpeted steps to recite the haftorah that Sabbath, my mind considered the text I read, which also tied Judaism to the founding of the United States.

The haftorah this July 4th was for Parshat Korach, which read from Samuel I: 11:14 – 12:22. The portion relayed how the Israelites demanded a king, and how the Prophet Samuel rebuked them for their plea. Samuel communicated that God had met their every need so it was shameful that they would seek to follow the example of other nations for a king to rule over them. Samuel anointed Saul to be the first king of the Jews but it was done reluctantly, as he admonished the Israelites that God is actually the only king.

America’s founding fathers believed as much.

Thomas Paine’s (1737-1809), pamphlet Common Sense of 1776, called on the colonies to rebel against the king of England – and against all kings. He cited the story of the Hebrew Bible above in making his case:

“As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of scripture; for the will of the Almighty as declared by Gideon, and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by Kings…. Near three thousand years passed away, from the Mosaic account of the creation, till the Jews under a national delusion requested a king. Till then their form of government (except in extraordinary cases where the Almighty interposed) was a kind of Republic, administered by a judge and the elders of the tribes. Kings they had none, and it was held sinful to acknowledge any being under that title but the Lord of Hosts…. Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a curse in reserve is denounced against them. The history of that transaction is worth attending to…. The hankering which the Jews had for the idolatrous customs of the Heathens, is something exceedingly unaccountable; but so it was, that laying hold of the misconduct of Samuel’s two sons, who were entrusted with some secular concerns, they came in an abrupt and clamorous manner to Samuel, saying, ‘Behold thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways, now make us a king to judge us like all the other nations.’… That the Almighty hath here entered his protest against monarchical government is true, or the scripture is false.“

Paine argued vociferously against trading one sovereign (British) for a new one in America. He and the other founding fathers instituted a system of government where there was no place for a hereditary monarchy but a democratic republic with leaders chosen by the people.

George Washington was that first leader in this new experiment in governance. Not only did he believe that a monarchy was distasteful but also in the power of God. When he resigned his military post in 1783, he wrote of handing over “the Interests of our dearest Country to the protection of Almighty God.”

Seven years later, Rhode Island was one of the last colonies to adopt the U.S. Bill of Rights which enshrined that “all men, have an equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and that no particular religious sect or society ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others.” Washington’s letter to the Touro Synagogue just a few months later, cemented not just the “free exercise of religion” but that Jews will be protected as full citizens as part of the nation’s foundational laws, not the whims of a monarch.

The fame of the Touro Synagogue is very much tied to Washington’s letter which affirmed religious liberty. It should not be a surprise that Washington wrote such letter to the Jews, whose bible served as an inspiration for the American constitution and views of both religion and leadership.