For decades, the American Jewish community has avoided dealing with the growing antisemitism of the left. When Tiki-torch-carrying white nationalists marched through the Charlottesville night shouting, "The Jews will not replace us," Jewish organizations saw confirmation of their traditional fears. When in October 2018, the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg was shot up during Saturday services, the focus on right-wing antisemitism grew sharper.
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Such high-profile cases further blurred what Jewish defense organizations already refused to acknowledge. For years, in the media, the colleges and universities, and the corridors of power, left-based antisemitism was not only becoming institutionalized, but it was also becoming so commonplace as to develop a strong bond of legitimacy.
Now, however, the dramatic upsurge in violent anti-Semitic attacks carried out by progressives and supporters of Hamas in the wake of Israel's recent conflict with the terrorists has forced the American Jewish community to confront that there is insidious and vicious antisemitism on the left.
This has prompted the American Jewish community asking: Is the golden age of American Jewry at an end?
The question is inappropriate, for the golden age of American Jewry has never existed.
Relative to the Jewish experience in other countries, the scourge of antisemitism has not been as virulent in America. But only Jews who are ignorant of their history would think that they have existed in some golden age.
In June 2021, the attorney general of the State of New York entered a lawsuit against the town of Chester, which had prevented the construction of housing that would be occupied by Chasidic Jews. Would the town have prevented a project designed for Methodists?
When prominent New York Banker Joseph Seligman was turned away from the Saratoga Spring's Grand Union Hotel in 1877, it became a watershed for antisemitism.
The antisemitism that justified the refusal of lodging to Seligman was widely embraced as Eastern European Jews began descending on America's shores. Hotels displayed signs announcing, "No Jews or Dogs Allowed."
Within one generation Eastern European Jews disproportionately filled the colleges and universities on the east coast. And then, the Protestant establishment struck back using quotas to keep out Jewish applicants. The quota was usually around 6% and when the quota was inadvertently exceeded, admissions officers devised new methods to discover who the Jews were. These quotas persisted into the 1960s.
The 1920s saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in America. In its rebirth, the Klan was not only anti-black, but it had also spread its hatred to Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. It was so powerful in Colorado and Indiana that it effectively took over the state governments there. It boasted hundreds of thousands of members in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana.
The golden age of Jews certainly did not exist before and during World War II as the Roosevelt administration's state department slammed the door on Jewish immigration.
Although Jews were disproportionately involved in the civil rights movement, its success led to a demand for proportionate representation in colleges, universities, and professions. The notion of equity is as direct a challenge to Jewish social mobility as was the Protestant reaction of another century. If some are underrepresented, then who is overrepresented? The Jews, of course.
This is why liberal arts departments in American universities are so absorbed with the Palestinian issue and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions. It is not that they are remotely concerned with boycotting Israeli universities, but they have found a mechanism to attack American Jewish overrepresentation in fields suffocating from lack of public support.
So, when was this Jewish Golden Age that might be over? It only exists in the reconstructed histories whose myopic view focused on those who overcame the anti-Semitic barriers to success while ignoring that university quotas and insidious antisemitism prevented hundreds of thousands of Jewish children from achieving intellectual and economic goals that were easily within their capabilities.
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