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January 29, 2020

Culturally, we Jews are disposed to seek out and help those who are demonized and treated unjustly. We lend our support to people and causes at home and abroad. At the same time, we are terrified of being identified as the “other.” We learn how to hide in plain sight. More than 2,000 years of statelessness and demonization and death at the whims of host countries will do that to a group. We are like a co-dependent family with a secret.

In the mid-19th century, some Jews were admitted to Germany. Many of those who thrived there distanced themselves from their poor, regrettable relations to the East.

The pattern continued as the German Jews moved to the New World, established themselves and renounced the Ostjuden (Eastern European Jews), whose existence, to the mind of the Yekkes (Germanic Jews), impeded “good Jews’ ” attempts at invisibility, which they called “assimilation.”

In the late 1800s, Adolph Simon Ochs, son of Jewish immigrants, took over The New York Times. It was a German Jewish success story. However, the Times downplayed the Holocaust as if it were “not quite the thing.” Assimilationist Jews today avert their eyes from the anti-Semitism of the euphemistically self-proclaimed “even-handedness” of the “mainstream press” in its stance on Israel, and the Jew-hating members of Congress whom the Democratic Party, the sole remaining minyan of American Reform, refuses to unambiguously denounce. What are they doing in Congress, these anti-Semites and the cowards who will not repudiate them?

I live in Santa Monica. I will not call my neighborhood a “moral leper colony,” but I will note that it is a beautiful island full of helpless unfortunates; a predominately Jewish enclave populated almost exclusively by the political liberal.

Liberal Jews are Democrats. What’s the harm?

Just after the horrific Oct. 27, 2018, synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, a group of the shul’s congregants were gathered outside. Stunned, shocked and grieving, a woman of about my age was asked by a newsman, “What should we do to avert such catastrophes?” Her demeanor changed from grief to abject loathing. She said, “Vote.”

She likely meant that anti-Semitism was a result of President Donald Trump. This is a delusional meme of the left, an indictment of a president who has acted in support of the Jewish state; who has, in effect, treated Jews as human beings, rather than as the Conditional Honorary Aryans some assimilationists aspire to be.

The synagogue massacre victims did not die because of anything Mr. Trump said. They died, as Jews have died for 2,000 years, because they were unprotected.

What of the Jewish left’s loathing of firearms? In response to new outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence, a congregant asked the board of a Los Angeles neighborhood shul for armed guards. She was told in confidence that such a request would “alienate” members of the congregation because they were anti-gun.

To Western Jews who fear being despised: Whom do you know who does not despise weakness? And whom do you know who does not respect strength?

Take note that these same congregants shop in Beverly Hills at jewelry stores and shoe shops that have armed guards. How can we understand their reluctance to protect their synagogues, its members and their offspring as a hatred of guns, then, and not a hatred of Jews, whose lives are, to them, worth less than the protected rubbish of Rodeo Drive? Terrified of being identified as a member of a despised clan, the liberal Jew will not even assert his right to live should a declaration of that right challenge his delusion of anonymity.

Jewish institutions in Europe are protected, by necessity, by armed guards. The Jewish state is protected by Israelis who will fight for their country, and their families. Meanwhile, the Diaspora Jews of the West, less threatened and more “settled,” turn our backs on our brothers and sisters in the East and their déclassé determination to exist. Jewish Democrats elect and abide political leaders who hope for the destruction of Israel and scoff at the notion that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

My neighborhood, known as “the Shtetl,” is covered with signs proclaiming moral superiority. “In this house, we believe: Love is love” (who doubted it?), “Black Lives Matter” (all right), “No Human Being is Illegal” (we note that no American has suggested human beings are illegal, but that our country has laws criminalizing behavior), and “All Immigrants Welcome.” Where once domestic morality was suggested by the display of a religious symbol, here it is announced by the publication of platitudes.

Yesterday, on my walk, I saw one of these signs, and to its side, another that read: “Protected by A.D.T.: Armed Response.”

So, then, nothing is “illegal” to this “New Believer,” but should anyone not authorized to step on his property dare to trespass, he’ll call the folks he hired to come shoot them. And, as gun control increases, those who cannot afford a guard service are welcome, when assaulted, to lie down and die.

The sign owner will purchase armed protection for his house, aghast at laws that allow one to fulfill the task oneself; and with a moral laziness, he will vote for a Democratic Party that tolerates anti-Semites, thinking “they don’t mean me.”

But the anti-Semites do mean you. And you, my neighbors, should write this down: Say the magic word about any other identity group, and your career is over. But who objected to “It’s all about the Benjamins”?

It can’t be “all about the Benjamins.” We are a cultural group that consistently votes against itself, its interests and its right to exist.

To Western Jews who fear being despised: Whom do you know who does not despise weakness? And whom do you know who does not respect strength?

The co-dependent family coalesces around protecting their secret. The secret of American Assimilationist Jews is that we behave like fools when we put up signs crying about humanity and then elect representatives — even Jewish representatives — who will not decry anti-Semitism.


David Mamet is an award-winning author and playwright.

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