STAND UP

My grandparents and, perhaps, yours left, even fled, their homes in Eastern Europe for the welcoming arms of America so that they might provide my/our parents and the generations to come with all of the opportunities offered by "the land of the free and the home of the brave." America has been a place where we could worship freely and live in a place of tolerance, a place that promised tolerance and a society that rejected the institutional anti-semitism that characterized the places that they had left. My parents and, perhaps, yours suffered an anti-Jewish discrimination both blatant and latent, but they fought it side-by-side with non-Jews so that our generations would experience none of it -- we are the beneficiaries of the fights our parents and grandparent made on our behalf.

Then there was Charlottesville, where neo-Nazis, KKK, white supremacists and others marched in the dark of night, torches aflame, screaming in their rage anti-semitic screed -- "Jews shall not succeed us" -- before one of them killed an innocent counter-protestor and injured score of others. Charlottesville wasn't the act of an individual anti-semite defacing a synagogue in the dark of night, this was anti-semitism, anti-Americanism right in our faces, right in the face of America -- this was hatred and violence. It was no different than a Nazi rally in Berlin in the 1930"s. And, then, there was the President of the United States not alone finding some insane moral equivalency between those who espoused violence, anti-semitic and anti-American attacks and those who were the victims. Because of what the President in so doing endorsed, America will now reap the wild wind.

Where are the voices of those Jews so vocal in support of Donald Trump -- where are Sheldon Adelson, Gary Cohn, Jared Kushner and others? Where are the voices demanding that Trump withdraw his strident moral equivalency or at least understand that if he does not he has forfeited the moral authority that we believe is part and parcel of the Presidency -- where are their voices? To its credit, the Republican Jewish Coalition issued a statement after the tragedy of Charlottesville but before the President's raging insanity on Tuesday: "We mourn the loss of life at Charlottesville this weekend, and will continue to pray for all those impacted. Anti-Semitism and all forms of hate are anti-American, anti-Jewish, and antithetical to any sense of decency. We regret that we continue to be faced with these issues, but the RJC will never shy away from our role of standing up to racists, fascists, and Nazis." Where is the RJC now, after Tuesday? (N.B., the RJC issued a strong challenge toTrump in a subsequent statement on Wednesday.)

Ohio Governor John Kasich made it clear when he said that  there is “no moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and the KKK and “anybody else” and says “the president needs to condemn this.” Clearly outraged as he spoke from Ohio, he added, “There is no place for politics here.” And the CEO of Wal-Mart spoke for me as he resigned from a presidential advisory council:

"As wewatched the events and the response from President Trump...we too felt that he missed a critical opportunity to help bring our country together by unequivocally rejecting the appalling actions of white supremacists..."

I have chosen to try to avoid the political on these pages and when I have "strayed," some of you have pointed it out, often stridently. But what the President said yesterday was not politics for me, for us, this was about our America, about our civil society. No organization that purports to represent me/us can now stand silent in the face of the green light that the President of the United States has given to hatred -- Jew hatred, immigrant hatred...hatred -- in America. Silence in the face of this hatred cannot be tolerated. If we stand silent, we are complicit.

As the brilliant historian Jon Meecham said yesterday:

"I think that you have these moments where the extremes — the hate, the people who are giving Nazi salutes after we have spent so much blood and treasure trying to liberate the world from the form of tyranny — ... it's an extreme manifestation of an underlying reality."

This is the moment in which our generations of American Jews will be tested against the "reality" that Meecham described. History will judge us by what we say and what we do...or by our silence.

Rwexler