National coalition of Jewish organizations demands end of immigration law enforcement
(See the related
entry about how people who identify too much with their immigrant background automatically support unrestricted immigration.)
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) has a project called Progress by Pesach:
Progress by Pesach is the national Jewish campaign to encourage the new administration and Congress to choose humanitarian immigration reform over the failed policy of exclusively relying on raids and enforcement tactics as a means of controlling immigration.
Passover is a time when we celebrate our freedom from bondage and remember when we were strangers in a strange land. Connecting our history to the struggles of immigrants today is the inspiration behind Progress by Pesach. [Emphasis added.]
Here are just a few of the many national Jewish organizations endorsing the project: the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith International, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Union for Reform Judaism. (The full list is below.)
Thus a galaxy of national Jewish organizations supports this campaign to end workplace raids and other immigration enforcement, all under the rubric that “we [Jews] were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
What they are explicitly saying, as a national Jewish coalition, is that as Jews, they are required by their Jewish tradition to seek to undermine American law and sovereignty and allow America to be invaded by a mass immigration of illegal aliens.
I have said before that when Jews declare that as Jews they are required to strive for open borders, when as Jews they demand U.S. national suicide, that allows critics to criticize Jews as Jews, and not just as generic “liberals.” This is the strongest case of that nature I’ve ever seen.
On another point, let’s consider the reference to Jews being “strangers in a strange land,” or “strangers in the land of Egypt,” which appears in numerous passages in the Torah, such as:
Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Ex. 22:21)
But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. (Lev. 19:34)
First, the Torah passages refer to an individual or small group of individuals who come from elsewhere, and who are living as and have become a part of the community. The passages are not referring to a mass criminal invasion by millions of illegal aliens from a neighboring country with a revanchist campaign to take over the host society.
Second, these commands are addressed to the Jews. Yes, Christian accept the Old Testament. But it’s Jews who makes these particular passages of the Torah their lodestar. So if Jews want to welcome all foreigners and to love all foreigners as themselves, regardless of how numerous, unassimilable, and hostile the foreigners may be, let the Jews do it in Israel, in their own country.
Third, these Jews using the Torah as their authority on U.S. immigration policy are not even religious Jews, but secular, liberal Jews (Reform Jews and Reconstructionist Jews don’t believe in the God of the Bible), who have transformed selected elements of the Jewish religion into a leftist political ideology to be imposed on non-Jews. Perhaps, just as Islam is not a religion but a political ideology aimed at the destruction of our country, secular liberal Judaism ought to be seen in the same light. People who stand for America, as distinct from people whose primary identification is with a distinct minority group, need to say to these Jewish organizations, “This is wrong. You as Jews, a tiny minority, have no right to be trying to impose your alienated liberal Jewish agenda on this country. If you want to be accepted by us, the majority, then you must accept this country, its laws, its sovereignty, and its culture, and stop trying to undermine them.”
* * *
Here is more from the Progress by Pesach page:
Become a part of the campaign!
* Take a minute to sign our “Immigration Reform, Not Raids” Petition.
* Join national monthly conference calls for faith advocates to receive national legislative updates and to learn about coordinated local faith actions. Click here to participate in these calls.
* Send a letter asking President Obama and congress to make progress on reform, and not raids, this year. Click here to send this letter to President Obama.
* Join Jewish communities across the country in hosting a “Welcome the Stranger” event. Welcome the Stranger is HIAS’ 90-minute educational program focusing on immigration from a historical and values perspective. Find out more about hosting a Welcome the Stranger event.
We encourage groups interested in furthering their involvement with the Progress by Pesach campaign to join the national Jewish Task Force for Immigration Reform. To join this listserv, email stephanie.grosser@hias.org.
Make sure to post your upcoming immigration event on our event calendar.
FACES OF IMMIGRATION
Each week we will feature a story about an immigrant to let people see a glimpse into the people most affected by our broken immigration system.
Week of February 23: Guido Newbrough
Immigrants detained by ICE at Piedmont Jail in Virginia have come to a halt after the death of Guido Newbrough, who died due to a lack of medical care in the detention center. Newbrough had come to the United States from Germany at age 6. He passed away from organ failure due to an infection after his request for medical care was denied. Newbrough was the second immigrant detained at Piedmont to die in detention in the last two years. Read more here.
Progress by Pesach is endorsed nationally by American Jewish Committee (AJC), Anti-Defamation League (ADL), B’nai B’rith International, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA), Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), Jewish Labor Committee , Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (JRF), National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), The Rabbinical Assembly, Union for Reform Judaism, Uri l’Tzedek: The Orthodox Social Justice Movement, and Women of Reform Judaism . Progress by Pesach is endorsed locally by Am Kolel Jewish Renewal Center (Rockville/Beallsville, MD), Jewish Community Action (St. Paul, MN), Jewish Community Relations Council of Southern Arizona (Tucson, AZ), Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington (Rockville, MD), Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (Chicago, IL), Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (New York, NY), Jews United for Justice (Washington, DC), MIKLAT! A Jewish Response to Displacement (Milwaukee, WI), and the Progressive Jewish Alliance (Los Angeles, CA).
To find out more about national Progress by Pesach efforts, contact Stephanie Grosser from HIAS at stephanie.grosser@hias.org.
To find out more about local Progress by Pesach efforts, contact Lauren Bastein at Jewish Community Action at lauren@jewishcommunityaction.org or Tom Walsh at the Jewish Council for Urban Affairs at tom@jcua.org.
Here is the
petition which will presented next month to President Barack “of-the-unknown-birthplace” Obama:
Tell the Administration you Support Reform, Not Raids
Dear Friends,
Please help us collect 10,000 signatures to send the clear message to the new administration from the American Jewish community that we want immigration reform, and not raids, in 2009. The petition is open until April 2nd, when it will be delivered to President Obama and to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.
I encourage the new administration and congress to choose humanitarian immigration reform in 2009. Our Jewish faith scripture tells us to “Welcome the Stranger” with love and compassion. However the singular focus on aggressive enforcement of outdated immigration laws creates a sense of fear and animosity between communities and the law enforcement that serves them. The policy of relying on raids and enforcement tactics as the sole means of controlling immigration has clearly failed.
Raids create trauma and hardship for undocumented immigrants and their families, by separating families and threatening the basic rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
The suffering caused by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in homes and workplaces underscores the problems with current U.S. immigration policies and the urgent need for reform. Please work to ensure our country sees progress in the direction of humanitarian immigration reform in time for Passover, in April 2009.
Sincerely,
Here is the form letter that HIAS asks participants to sent to the Stranger in Chief and to congressmen:
Urge the Government to Focus on Reform, and not Raids
Dear Friend:
Please take a moment to personalize the letter below to ask President Obama and your congressional representatives to focus on just and fair immigration reform, and not immigration raids, in 2009.
Click here to read HIAS’ Policy Resolution on Immigration Raids.
I encourage the new administration and congress to choose humanitarian immigration reform in 2009. Our Jewish faith scripture tells us to “Welcome the Stranger” with love and compassion. However the singular focus on aggressive enforcement of outdated immigration laws creates a sense of fear and animosity between communities and the law enforcement that serves them. The policy of relying on raids and enforcement tactics as the sole means of controlling immigration has clearly failed.
Raids create trauma and hardship for undocumented immigrants and their families, by separating families and threatening the basic rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
The suffering caused by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in homes and workplaces underscores the problems with current U.S. immigration policies and the urgent need for reform. Please work to ensure our country sees progress in the direction of humanitarian immigration reform in time for Passover, in April 2009.
Sincerely
* * *
A correspondent learned about Progress by Pesach from the website Jewlicious, which had a column by David Kelsey attacking the project. So at least one Jewish organization in the U.S. criticizes organized Jewry’s anti-American, open-borders project. (Here is the about page of Jewlicious with profiles of their contributors.)
Kelsey writes:
The ICE must stop raids because the Jews were strangers in Egypt. That’s why. Okay? Therefore, the U.S. must stop raids at rogue employers and offer “a path to citizenship” to those who have broken U.S. law. They have until Pesach to do so. Read it here, here, and here. Or here, here, and here. Or for a similar effect, turn on a beeping alarm clock, and listen to that for eight hours.
- end of initial entry -
Rick Darby writes:
In principle it’s perhaps like the Catholic Church’s calls for open borders and offering sanctuary to illegals—which is deplorable too. But it is very disturbing when Jewish organizations do this in the name of Judaism. (At least Catholics have a church hierarchy and can claim they are ultimately obeying the Vatican.) What gives any of these Jewish organizations the right to pronounce on a political issue? Can they say they speak for every Jew? Of course not. Is there something in the Torah urging population replacement? I don’t think so.
Anyone involved even peripherally, such as by blogging, with conservative causes inevitably encounters people who blame liberalism on a Jewish plan. When I do, my response is as clear as I can make it: criticize the political stance of particular Jews or even a majority of Jews all you like; if you want to bash the Israel Lobby (as though many countries don’t have lobbyists in Washington to represent their interests), be my guest; but don’t start with the conspiracy theories.
Yet these organizations are sending a very different signal, namely, we are opposed to immigration restrictions because we are Jewish. What more could an anti-Semite ask for?
Mark Jaws writes:
I wonder if this national coalition of Jews will apply the same Biblical standards to Israel, and demand that Israel open its doors to a few million pre-1948 displaced Palestinians and their descendants. No way. Once again, liberal Jews are overplaying their hand, and earning for themselves the scorn and derision of millions of conservative traditionalists.
LA replies:
Though I myself made this argument in passing earlier in the entry, the problem with the argument is that in recent years liberal U.S. Jews have been on the side of the suicidal peace process in Israel. So, while the paleocons keep obsessively criticizing Jews for their supposed pro-Israel double standard, the double-standard argument is less and less relevant. The problem with the Jews is not that they push a suicidal policy for the U.S. and a national survival policy for Israel. The problem with the Jews is that they advance a suicidal policy both for the U.S. and for Israel. Paleocons refuse to see this, because they need to see Jews as manipulative conspirators. If they see the Jews not as manipulative conspirators but as super-liberals, i.e., as being just like everyone else, only more so, the paleocons would lose the justification for their anti-Jewishness, and, in more than a few cases, would be left without a reason to go on living.
Where there is a greater ground for criticizing the Jews for bad faith is not in relation to a supposed pro-Israel double standard but in relation to the U.S. immigration problem. The fact that Jews will not support any immigration restrictions, even against their mortal enemies the Muslims, because they think that white Christian Americans are more dangerous to them than Muslims, is highly objectionable and immoral, and grounds for severe criticism of Jews and a demand by the Christian majority that the Jews change their attitudes.
Mark Jaws writes:
Please convince me that pushing for the peace process is the same as advocating Israel open up its borders and allow Palestinians to overwhelm the Jewish state, thereby making Jews a minority in Israel. I don’t think that is what liberal American Jews are demanding from Israel.
LA replies:
Yes, Mark has a point. Being for the peace process is not the same as advocating open borders for Israel, and obviously Jews have not done that.
The problem with the analogy, of course, is that open borders for Israel means open borders for those actively seeking to mass murder Jews and destroy Israel. Open borders for the U.S. does not mean that (though it ultimately could lead to that).
However, it could be said that the difference between the two situations is just a difference of degree. When Jews advocate open borders for the U.S., they don’t add any caveats, such as, “This applies, of course, only to immigrants who are assimilable and non-hostile.” No. The demand they make on the U.S. to welcome the stranger is absolute. Why then should the Jews be allowed to escape the principle of absolute openness when it comes to Israel?
And this could be very effective in the debate. If the Jews were hit with the Mark Jaws argument, and they answered by qualifying the biblical command for openness with such rational criteria as, “Of course, God is not telling us to welcome dangerous people,” then they will no longer be able to insist on an unqualified interpretation of the biblical command when it comes to the U.S. Once they have to make rational arguments for open immigration and can’t get away with sweeping emotional absolutes, then the initiative in the immigration debate will shift to our side.
David Friedman writes:
You are making the same mistake again. Please. When leftist Jews say they are acting as Jews—this is obviously pure fluff and they are acting 100 percent as liberals. You can decipher this since they never act in a political context as Jews—if they did they would be conservatives. Must I remind LA that liberal Jews come to the political process insisting that they act they way they do “as Jews”—for the most ludicrous positions that cannot in any way be justified by our Torah—for example higher CAFE standards for automobiles. When liberal Jews speak—please do not accept that they speak for Judaism since they are distinguished by the great lengths they have gone to distance themselves from everything Judaism represents. To do so insults Jews, Judaism and the debt Christians owe to the Bible.
I also happily refer you to David Klinghoffer’s recent book: “How Would God Vote?”—chapter 17 on Immigration which by and large exposes the flaws of the open border crowd and serves as a much more authentic take on the Jewish approach to the topic.
LA replies:
People’s identity is what they represent themselves to be, and what the world takes them to be. Muslim terrorists represent themselves as devout Muslims following Islam, and indeed they are devout Muslims following Islam. But then apologists for Islam come along and say, “Oh, no, these terrorists are not real Muslims, they’re fake Muslims, who pretend to speak in the name of Islam!” But the apologists are not believable, since the terrorists are indeed devout Muslims who act as Muslims and are seen by the whole world as Muslims.
You’re doing the same thing as those Islam apologists. Here is an entire raft of Jewish organizations—not obscure organizations, but nationally prominent groups like the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith, and the Union for Reform Judaism—saying that AS Jews they believe that their Jewish tradition requires the welcoming of the stranger and the opening of our borders to all comers. I respond logically to this statement, saying, “Here are prominent national Jewish organizations saying that as Jews they believe that we must welcome all strangers and have open borders.” But then you come along and say, “Oh, no, these people aren’t real Jews, they’re fake Jews, who pretend to speak in the name of the Jewish people! You shouldn’t make real Jews responsible for what these fake Jews are doing!”
Your argument is no more credible than that of the Islam apologists.
This is not to say that there are not other interpretations of Judaism that conflict with that of these organizations and that may be better interpretations; I said myself that these liberal Jews do not believe in the God of the Bible but in their own notion of Jewishness,.by which they mean Jewish liberalism. Nevertheless, such secularized Jewishness cannot be called fake Jewishness, when it is a well established part of Jewishness and the actual way that a large proportion of self-identified Jews act in the world. When you have a coalition of organizations representing a large swath of American Jewry, and recognized by the world as representing American Jewry, you do not have the right to say that these people are fakes who do not represent American Jewry. Yes, you can say that they’re wrong, you can say that they are secularized Jews who are distorting Judaism. But you do not have the right to say that they are not Jews and that other people should not see them as Jews.
Also (to use the Robert Spencer test for the existence of moderate Islam), has there ever been a nationally recognized Jewish group or widely respected Jewish authority who has declared that all the groups endorsing the “Progress by Pesach” movement are not Jewish organizations, but fake Jewish organizations? And if there was such a statement, was it heeded? Have the “fake” Jewish organizations been expelled from the “real” Jewish community? In the absence of such expulsion, you have no basis for denying the Jewishness of those organizations.
The simple fact is, there are different kinds of Jews who believe different things. But they all call themselves Jews and they are all taken by the world as being Jews. You do not have the right to declare that the most prominent Jewish organizations are not really Jewish.
David G. writes:
Your post on the Jewish groups favoring more immigration and less enforcement is incredible on a number of levels—for its content as well as for your commentary. Where others merely would reel in the face of these groups, you limn out a rational and persuasive argument as to why their position should be rejected. Incredible.
March 13
David Friedman replies to LA:
Wrong. You can’t be right since it would mean that “Jews as Jews” support abortions, global warming theology, gay marriage and all the rest. Your enthusiasm to blame Jews for immigration does not transfer to all those other issues. You will not blame Jews as Jews for abortion even if those same groups you cite make the claim. You won’t blame Jews as Jews for support of gay marriage since it is plain that Judaism disallows such a stand. These are not “fake Jews”—they are Jews acting as liberals and adopting liberalism as their religion—you understand that. [LA replies: I’m obviously not saying that all Jews support these liberal policies. I’m saying that a major part of the Jewish community, probably the dominant part, supports these liberal policies.]
Islam by its creed and by its exemplars and its history is violent. Its best known clerics issue fatwas. A moderate Muslim might be embarrassed by Islam’s deed and creed—but it is there and it is fair to assess Islam as violent.
Liberal Jews shame Judaism by their example but please respect the fact that Jews who live as Jews are almost never liberals.
Lastly, across denominations and in contradiction of other cultural issues which are supported, Christian support for liberal immigration can be easily documented so it CAN be fairly said that Christians as Christians support liberal immigration. [LA replies: I’ve said over and over that much of organized Christianity as it now exists is an enemy of Western man and Western civilization. So you can’t say that I’m picking on the Jews while letting Christians off the hook.] This is why conservatives like Huckabee and Cardinal Mahoney join liberal Christians in a united front. Following the Civil war, Protestants made a moral crusade against liquor consumption and opposition to foreigners. It was secularists like Henry Cabot Lodge that changed the tone in America to your style of ethnic, national standard of opposition to immigration.
I know a heck of a lot of Rabbis and none of them would support what is happening to America right now because they are all Orthodox, kosher Rabbis. The Rabbis who support open borders on that list do not have knowledge of Jewish law—therefore calling them “fake” is OK. It is not OK to call the liberals who follow these men “fake”—it is more accurate to simply call them MISLEAD.
I readily agree that it is disgusting that these groups of Jews support illegal immigration but I do not find this any more disgusting than all the other things they support in the sick liberal pantheon of ideas. Your complaint is misplaced since even if these Jews are misguided and wrong-headed on immigration—they are not to blame. If not for the moral cover given by a wide variety of Christians and Christian leaders, immigration would be a top priority. Even among Republicans—we can hardly get to traction for the issue. We can unite for Terry Schiavo—but not at all for the immigration problem and blame the Christians for this reality.
Therefore, you are off-base and not logical in your pronouncement. Attack these Jews as liberals. I will attack them for saying that they support liberalism “as Jews”—since almost everyone with a weak argument seeks to misrepresent their tie to a higher authority for some kind of justification. Join me in that effort instead of agreeing with them that their lie represents truth when it does not.
LA replies:
I repeat: it is entirely valid for you to argue that these liberal Jews are wrong and that they are distorting true Judaism. But it is NOT valid for you to argue that these liberal Jews do not represent a large part (even the dominant part) of the Jewish community as it actually exists.
Ed writes:
Extremist Moslems are “real Moslems” because they are acting out what the Koran says. Liberal Jewish organizations are not representative of Judaism or of the Jewish people because their ideology is not biblical but is in reality a substitute religion. The Old Testament is very conservative and not “liberal.” Liberal Jews are liberal because they have abandoned their religion and are searching for a new ideology to give their life meaning and purpose. These people are liberals for the same reason that Catholics and Protestants are liberals, because they are “dreamers.” These fantasies come from secular sources and education both here in America and in Europe.
LA replies:
I agree with Ed’s main point: clearly Muslim extremists represent true Islam, while Jewish secular liberals do not represent true Judaism. But Jewish secular liberals do represent the beliefs of a large part of the organized Jewish people as they actually exist. We are not just dealing with an ideal Jewish people. We are dealing with the actual Jewish people.
Laura G. writes:
THE source of the Jewish successes in living in diaspora (which is the status of us, the Jews currently living in the U.S.) has always been that in our public lives we scrupulously observe, respect, abide by, and adhere to the laws and customs of the nation in which we are living. We Jews also scrupulously avoid demanding that the host nation accommodate in public ways to our private observances. Accordingly, Passover is not a national holiday, Shabbat is not a day businesses are closed, and we do not expect businesses to provide Shabbat elevator systems, etc.
In every way, the demand by these Jewish groups that immigration enforcement be ended offends against this time-tested and successful principle of Jewish political behavior. It also severely risks alienating the portion of the U.S. population which believes that U.S. laws should be observed, that evading our entry laws is criminal, that there is increased incidence of other forms of criminality among those who are here illegally, that it is wrong to burden our own poor citizens with the toleration of illegal cheap labor, and that it threatens our schools, safety, and culture. I personally happen to be among that proportion of the U.S. population, and by the way, those are also persons who are very likely to be the backbone of support for Israel. Most of all, tho, I feel that it is a horrible mistake for Jews to advocate for actions that are against the laws of the host country. This is an action that is very likely to bite us back.
For some reason, I am remembering the anti-Semitic fury of several of my friends who came from Eastern Europe and Russia. An issue they sometimes raise with loathing is the role of Jews in the overthrow of governments and the imposition of Communism in many countries, and the horrific effects that had on the lower classes of the native populations. Indeed, Jews did often have a hand there. The encouragement of radical population shifts by these Jewish groups may also be remembered in the future with similar emotions, to the detriment of the well-being of U.S. Jews. Do we really want to be known as advocating for the welfare of persons here illegally and against our own society and its legal and political system?
Karen writes from England:
It is clear that these Jewish organizations have an agenda against the WASP founding culture and peoples of America and an intent to subvert that culture by encouraging lawlessness. If these organisations continue to undermine immigration law, they should be banned and their leading members deported to Israel (unlike China, Israel cannot refuse to take them). They can then enjoy their open borders one world ideology there and share it with the Palestinians and other Arabs.
LA replies:
When an organized group expresses a persistent, unmitigated hostility to the basic institutions and culture of a country, at the very least the agenda of that group needs to be identified and exposed. This is not now the case. As things are now, these liberal Jewish organizations feel free to say whatever they like. If they were brought under public censure (which, again, has never been done), the entire dynamic would shift, and they would alter their behavior. This can only happen through people standing up for America’s majority culture and saying that attacks on our basic institutions will not be tolerated.
Some people think that when I say, “these things will not be tolerated,” that’s a threat of violence. I don’t mean it in that way at all. I mean strong disapproval and indignant condemnation of these Jewish organizations for their anti-American agenda. The Jews (and other minorities) are like adolsscents running amuck, without a parent—the majority culture—to control them. If the parent reappeared on the scene and acted like a parent, the whole situation would change.
We all know King Lear. When Lear gave up his power, and put his daughters in charge, evil and wickedness were released.
Ken Hechtman, a Canadian leftist, writes:
You wrote:
“So if Jews want to welcome all foreigners and to love all foreigners as themselves, regardless of how numerous, unassimilable, and hostile the foreigners may be, let the Jews do it in Israel, in their own country.”
Well said, sir.
When may we expect to see the American Jewish Committee and Bnai Brith join the campaign against enforcing the Israeli Law of Return, Absentee Property Law, Nationality and Population Registration Laws and all the rest?
LA replies:
Such a compliment.
So I gather your point is that you do want the Jews to be called on their bluff and have to open completely to their enemies?
Ken Hechtman replies:
Take the compliment for what it’s worth. You caught them on their hypocrisy and you called them out. Somebody had to.
I get a lot more exercised by hypocrisy than I do by mere opposition. The length of time I’ve been in this business, I probably shouldn’t anymore but I still do.
These groups spend two percent of their time opposing discrimination in America and 98 percent of their time defending it in Israel. In a perfect world, they’d oppose both. They’d campaign for open borders here and one-state-solution over there. In your perfect world, they’d probably do something else. That’s OK. But I think we agree they deserve to be called out on the double standard.
Look, I attended a Zionist madrassa for 12 years when I was a kid. I know more than I care to about how these people think. To them, Israel is their home. Israel is their only home. The U.S. or Canada is just where they keep their stuff and that only so long as the goyim allow it. They want influence here. They want to tilt North American politics in favor of Israel and the local Jewish community (in that order). But they’re not invested here. They keep a packed suitcase next to the door and an open-ended one-way plane ticket in their wallets.
David Friedman replies:
Thanks so much.
The problem is what can be done when a group of activists misrepresent a religious tradition? I encounter this often with liberals who need so much to believe that abortion on demand, for example, is consonant with Torah. It is not—as I prove to them—and yet, they insist on spreading the lie. Ruth the Moabite was a model convert—she embraced Judaism and quickly said “your laws are my laws”—she dumped her past loyalties and took on new ones. This is the correct analogy for the present case. Jews who came to America quickly and enthusiastically assumed loyalty to America and they are such a part of the American tradition because they mastered the English language and culture and contributed to it. Liberal Jews time and again want for others what they do not have for themselves—such as government welfare for other people—but for themselves they want individual responsibility and (Jewish) communal self-help. There is rampant denial of Torah law and hypocrisy concerning how to live up to those ideas and ideals.
Thankfully, you have admitted that there is a similar problem in the Christian community.
Therefore, please let’s deal with the issues. It is a real problem when the majority of Jews so strongly identify with liberal ideals that the Jewish message is blunted. It is a matter which must be resolved in the Jewish community and I try my best to communicate that Judaism is not a socialist experiment, rather something which emphasizes both justice and compassion. The left, which speaks so loudly, takes issues where justice applies and insists on compassion and this violates the wisdom of our sages, to paraphrase, “One who is kind when they must be cruel will end up being cruel when they should be kind.”
Ruth, the famous convert, embraced Jewish traditions. By contrast, Mexicans and other illegals commonly hold their old allegiances high, they do not embrace our language and our culture, they work to establish discord in our polity, they are often criminal and tax our social services, they fill our jails and hold the flag of other nations. This is not the Jewish way and the Jew who joins the open borders crowd pointedly denies both our history in this great nation and the words of our Torah. “As Jews” must reflect what Jews have actually stood for in our history—and not what the left wants us to stand for today. These Jews are lying and are misled by their leaders.
Your points are fine—the problem is that some of your conclusions are not fairminded. We basically agree—so let’s stick to the issue and join together in common cause. I’m done.
March 14
John D. writes:
You wrote:
“[T]hese Jews using the Torah as their authority on U.S. immigration policy are not even religious Jews, but secular, liberal Jews (Reform Jews and Reconstructionist Jews don’t believe in the God of the Bible), who have transformed selected elements of the Jewish religion into a leftist political ideology to be imposed on non-Jews.”
I’m confused. The answer to these questions might get to the heart of the matter in the thread. What is it that allows a man to call himself a “Jew” if he does not live in Israel nor does he believe in the God of the Bible (the latter I’d think should be paramount)? Is it his Jewish heritage alone through which he is allowed to identify? Or the fact that he quotes the Torah when it suits his purposes, even though he does not believe its essence?
If this is so, can we then say that a man is Christian even if he does not believe in Christ as God, but nevertheless is born of Christian parentage? Or that he is Christian simply because he uses Holy Scripture to advance his purposes? That just seems silly.
It would seem to me that this is what gives Jews their historical resilience; the fact that they can ally with other Jews as Jews even though they do not share in the characteristics of what actually makes one a Jew with the single exception of their lineage. It would seem that Jewish identity can be claimed without solid foundation. Is a secular liberal Jew really a Jew at all?
David Friedman seems to touch on this without asking the specific questions that I’ve asked here.
Also you wrote:
“Perhaps, just as Islam is not a religion but a political ideology aimed at the destruction of our country, secular liberal Judaism ought to be seen in the same light.”
I don’t think this is entirely right. I don’t think that Islam can be considered only a political ideology, as such. Islam’s religious element is self-evident and unchanging. They have built their political ideology upon their religion whose laws come from Allah being relayed through Mohammed. But there is no truly religious element in secular liberal Judaism aside from the fact that they use the Torah where it suits their unspoken political ideology. They subscribe to no higher being, only a liberal ideology built on secular humanism, which is anti-God. They do not state that their explicit purpose is to destroy our country, whereas at least we know that this is the purpose of the Muslims who follow Islam as commanded by Allah in the Koran. Therefore it seems to me that secular liberal Jews are much more dangerous than those who follow Islam—because they are stealth.
LA replies:
You have made three points.
1. On the question of who is a Jew, while the definition of a Jew is a topic of endless debate, the simplest answer is that anyone of Jewish ancestry (meaning that his mother was Jewish) who calls himself Jewish and who is not a Christian, is a Jew. Therefore these secular Jewish organizations are Jewish, period. (There are wider definitions, such as that having a Jewish grandparent makes one a Jew, but for our purposes this narrower definition is sufficient.) The fact that lots of religious Jews consider secular and Reform Jews not to be Jews, is irrelevant. For one thing, the religious Jews don’t mean it. As soon as Jews as Jews are attacked (and most Jews are secular after all), the religious Jews call this anti-Semitism. I’ve never heard a religious Jew say, “Most Israelis are secular, therefore the campaign to destroy Israel is not anti-Semitic.” No, they call the campaign to destroy Israel anti-Semitic.
Therefore Jewish organizations calling themselves Jewish and acting in the name of Jewishness can and must be considered Jewish. Any other approach leads to an absurd doublethink in which the Jews take objectionable positions in the name of Jewishness, but no one else can criticize them as Jews for their positions. Again I point to the analogy with moderate Muslims who say that the radical Muslims are not really Muslims, a statement that has the effect of delivering the entire Islamic community from criticism and giving the radical Muslims free rein.
2. Re my comment: “Perhaps, just as Islam is not a religion but a political ideology aimed at the destruction of our country, secular liberal Judaism ought to be seen in the same light,” you are correct that this statement is incorrect. Normally I say—and have said a hundred times—that Islam not only a religion, but a political ideology in addition to being a religion. In this case, purely for the sake of style and to make the analogy with secular Judaism work, I said Islam not a religion but an ideology. Sometimes making a sentence work is more important than absolute accuracy in each iteration of a frequently reiterated idea.
To make the sentence accurate, I should have said something like this:
“Perhaps, just as Islam is not only a religion but a political ideology aimed at the destruction of our country, we could say that secular liberal Judaism is not a religion but a political ideology aimed at the destruction of our country.”
3. You say:
“They [secular liberal Jews] do not state that their explicit purpose is to destroy our country, whereas at least we know that this is the purpose of the Muslims who follow Islam as commanded by Allah in the Koran. Therefore it seems to me that secular liberal Jews are much more dangerous than those who follow Islam—because they are stealth.”
I don’t agree with this, and for the reason just discussed: Islam is both a religion AND a political program aimed at world domination. Therefore someone born a Muslim ultimately has no choice but to follow that program or to go along with those who do. Muslims are commanded by their god to subjugate and destroy non-Muslims.
The same is obviously not true of secular liberal Jews. They are not commanded by any god or religion to destroy non-Jews. Their guiding light is a political belief system, which we might call “Modern Liberalism with a Jewish, Anti-White Gentile Flavor,” that more and more Jews have adopted. If the majority culture told the secular Jews that this belief system shows total ingratitude and hostility to America (the most philo-Semitic country in the history of the world), and that it is wicked and totally unacceptable (something that has never been said to them before, because the majority culture became passive circa the Sixties), many of these Jews would be startled, would be drawn up short, and would modify their behavior and beliefs accordingly. In post-Sixties America the Jewish adversarial culture has had free rein. Liberal Jews have had no reason to believe their increasingly open and aggressive anti-majority agenda is objectionable to anyone, because no one in the mainstream has objected to it—or the objections have been few, far between, and weak. If mainstream white gentiles began saying publicly and clearly that the Jews’ anti-national, anti-majority agenda is wrong and unacceptable and that they must stop it, that would make an radical difference. As a commenter suggested in this thread, prominent Jews who maintain their anti-majority, anti-national agenda should be invited to emigrate to Israel and to practice their open borders philosophy there. Again, such statements would have the effect of radically altering Jewish behavior. Yes, there will always be radical leftist Jews, but they can be marginalized.
Bottom line: Jews are rational and are assimilable within Western civilization, though the existence of a confident majority culture is needed to keep them from getting out of line. Muslims are inherently unassimilable in Western culture.
LA continues:
It is often said that Jews are the canary in the coal mine, meaning that when a society’s basic morality begins to break down, Jews are the first group that is targeted.
But there is another and opposite sense in which Jews serve as society’s early warning system. When Jews begin openly and audaciously to attack the majority culture of a white gentile majority society, that is a sign that the majority culture is tottering and that it must restore itself or die.
John D. writes:
Your points are all well taken. The last point you made, that Jews serve as a society’s early warning system, is a good one.
Thanks for addressing my concerns point by point. You’ve shed some light on what constitutes a claim on Jewishness. I also acknowledge that my comment describing secular liberal Jews as being more dangerous than Muslims may have been a bit harsh.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 12, 2009 03:24 PM | Send