For American Jews, the last three years may someday be named “The Great Disillusionment.” That is, many myths of very long standing have been shattered, as American Jews have watched the United States slouch toward antisemitism with extraordinary speed.
By “disillusionment,” I don’t mean that American Jews have come to reject the United States itself. They still maintain their faith in the American experiment. I mean only that they have been forcibly dispossessed of illusions to which they have held fast for two and a half centuries.
The most potent of these illusions was “it can’t happen here.” That is, American Jews long held to a deep and abiding faith that America is different—different from the other lands and nations where the Jews have wandered, all of which eventually betrayed their Jewish communities and hurled them back into exile. The United States, American Jews believed, was immune to antisemitism. We now know that this is and always was untrue. It can happen here because it can happen anywhere.
That is not the sole illusion that has been shattered. For example, American Jews have always believed that the political left, and especially the Democratic Party, would protect them. Instead, the left has turned to outright genocidal “river to the sea” Jew-hatred and engaged in the most egregious acts of antisemitic violence, including outright murder.
In response, the Democratic Party simply rolled over as the antisemites chose the “political path.” Indeed, the party barely put up a fight against its conquest and colonization by those determined to annihilate Israel and ghettoize, at best, the Jewish community.
Equally sacred to American Jews was the belief in “allyship.” They believed that, due to the inherent sympathy of minority for minority, forging alliances with the black, LGBTQ and other “marginalized” communities would guarantee Jewish rights and Jewish life in the United States. Instead, when the moment came, the “allies” abandoned them or worse, especially the Muslim community, in which such hopes were once invested.
As for right-wing Jews, the belief was that, having been betrayed by the left, the right would prove a bulwark of protection for American Jews. Yet with the emergence of a new, isolationist and often openly antisemitic wing on the far-right, this too is proving to be an illusion. Right-wing Jews are now forced to contemplate the implications of the emergence of the most vulgar and retrograde forms of antisemitism, couched in the crudest and most offensive terms, on the part of the likes of podcasters and conservative political commentators Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
Worst of all, these Jews know that if Owens and Carlson prove to be the future of the Republican Party, American Jews will have nowhere to go, caught in a pincer movement from which there may be no escape. The only consolation—and it is meager—is that most American Jews never made the right into a religion, as they did with the left, and thus the betrayal is, at least, slightly less egregious.
Last, but certainly not least, there was the abiding Jewish faith in the Constitution itself. They believed that, if all else failed, there were the sacred rights granted to every American. They are now realizing, however, as black Americans did before them, that these rights are not absolute. If the majority of the population chooses not to honor them, those rights disappear.
We are seeing the results: If you cannot go to synagogue without a genocidal mob screaming outside, endorsed by the mayor of New York City, then you have neither freedom of religion nor assembly. If you cannot verbally defend yourself on campus or in cultural and social spaces without being ostracized or assaulted, you do not have freedom of speech. The de facto abrogation of American Jews’ constitutional rights has begun, and if antisemitism seizes the commanding heights of American politics, including, perhaps, the presidency, there will be no recourse.
All of this has led to the Great Disillusionment, though it is, for now, a silent disillusionment.
Most Jews who have chosen not to collaborate with the antisemites know it is happening, but they remain in shock, often in denial or paralyzed by the immensity and suddenness of the change. Sooner or later, however, they will be forced to contend with their disillusionment, or they will be faced with a terrible denouement: the religious and the most strongly identified secular Jews will make aliyah, and the rest will capitulate and assimilate out of existence. A disaster as horrendous as the expulsion from Spain will take place, as another great Diaspora community comes to a sudden and tragic end.
Once denial is abandoned, the question becomes what American Jews will do with that disillusionment. In my view, they must obey a simple imperative. If it can happen here, there is only one viable response: Don’t let it happen. That is, American Jews must rise up and fight back.
Given the Jews’ propensity for argument, the debates over how to fight back will be ferocious. What is required is a new civil-rights movement, willing to use the legal system, boycotts, civil disobedience and other forms of non-violent direct action to secure Jewish rights. This should be matched with a network of local self-defense organizations that can protect Jewish life and limb as the battle intensifies.
Many will no doubt disagree, but the reality will remain: America is still a fine place, and worth fighting for. But if they wish to remain both Jews and Americans, American Jews will have to fight for it.
Fortunately, the situation is hardly hopeless. American Jews have met with enormous success over the past 250 years, and with it come equally enormous resources. Moreover, despite the betrayal of many, they retain powerful allies on both the left and the right, as well as in the culture industry and American society at large. Mass flight and mass assimilation remain a long way off, and, if the stand is taken, they need not happen at all. The weapons are there. But the Jews must take them up and wield them on behalf of themselves, not, as is too often the case, on behalf of others.
To ensure victory, however, American Jews must embrace disillusionment and act accordingly. If they do not—and if America betrays both them and itself—they will have no choice but to look West from the shores of the Mediterranean and weep over what they once loved so well.
