Meir Soloveitchik
National Review, Feb. 22, 2024
“After two millennia of persecution experienced by Jews at the hands of others, it remains a wonder that a multitude of Americans — almost certainly many millions — ardently embrace their own version of Disraeli’s dictum, that God will treat America as it treats the Jews.”
Some people like Jews, and some do not.” With these words, Winston Churchill once divided humanity into two categories. Of these groups, Churchill certainly belonged to the former, so much so that a friend of his once reflected, “Even Winston had a fault; he was too fond of Jews.” Churchill’s own fondness for Jews, and wonder at Jewish history, was linked to his admiration of his predecessor as prime minister. In the same essay, Churchill cited Benjamin Disraeli as having said that “the Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.” Churchill concluded, “We must admit that nothing that has since happened in the history of the world has falsified the truth of Disraeli’s confident assertion.”
Should we seek to summarize our current state of affairs, we could do worse than employ Churchill’s words. Some people, very clearly, do not like Jews. On October 7 — that very day, weeks before Israel even entered Gaza — rallies celebrating Hamas’s massacre of Israelis could be found on the streets of American cities. Today, in my own neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, as I walk home from synagogue on the Sabbath, I am confronted by poster after poster of a hostage of Hamas that some fellow New Yorker has chosen to tear at, shred, or deface. As anti-Israeli hate consumed campuses, the blasé way in which the presidents of America’s leading universities commented before Congress about the well-being of their own Jewish students reflected, as John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, wrote, “how unimportant the feelings or concerns of Jews are within the sociological landscapes they tend.”… [To read the full article, click here]