In a time of crisis, Jewish American leadership is failing American Jews

There is no conventional written counterpart to the 𝄻 , which is the whole rest note in music notation, but there is one in real life. And if there’s anywhere to witness it, look at what so-called leaders of Jewish communities in America have been doing, especially at this time. Rolling over for tyrannical state governors in the face of the Coronavirus, issuing public statements grovelling like court jesters who lost their mojo in front of Black Lives Matter. That is the state of Jewish American “leaders,” and I’m not limiting it to the bald corpulent old dudes at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. As a side note, I’d like to know if it’s awkward for them daily to have to talk about how they represent an organization called CoP. I find that unapologetically funny.

But no, this isn’t just about the corporate prostitutes like current CoP CEO William Daroff who is a former aide to Pres. George HW Bush and other GOP politicians, nor his Anti-Defamation League counterpart Jonathan Greenblatt who is a former senior aide to Pres. Barack Obama is currently trying to wag fingers at Ice Cube for hurting his feelings with blatantly anti-Jewish tweets and statements. In every boardroom, meeting hall, synagogue, temple, household and another gathering place, we are seeing a phenomenon characterized by sitting on hands, spouting platitudes, and hoping nothing wrong happens. Every CEO, middle manager, rabbi, father, mother, teacher etc. might want to go to the bathroom and gargle some mouthwash. And then when they’re done with that, they should ask themselves: “Does my position of authority mean anything?”

If they can’t answer that question, it’s probably because they are so used to avoiding confrontation and offence of anyone else that even alone, the truth is impossible to address. And the truth is this: There is no obligation of anyone, Jews included, to support the shameless liars of BlackLivesMatter. Many would pause here and say that while they support the message of BLM about the need for police reform and safeguarding the legal rights of black people from abuse by the law, they abhor BLM’s positions on Israel. Others I know have said that they are either kneeling in solidarity or searching their own personal lives to see where they have come up short. Some people post quotes from some historical figures to shift the responsibility of their response to a person beyond the reach of the mob. And worst of all are those that say that they defer to others like their spouse, rabbi, or a trusted relative.

These are all weasel stances. Someone who says upfront that they are too afraid to speak or don’t care enough to do so deserves more respect. No one needs to invoke Dr. Martin Luther King or Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to deal with hard facts. BLM is a corrupt, dishonest, and dogmatic movement of scammers who are manipulating incidents of police-citizen violence to plow over the last four hundred years or more of history while collecting large donations. They are committed to eliminating “whiteness” in all American institutions, meaning the position of white managers or personnel in decision-making capacities and positions of symbolic honour. Last weekend I published an exposé exposing in detail how many dollars pledged by big philanthropy to go to “Black-Led Movements” end up going to transgender activist groups. The Minnesota Freedom Fund, which raised over $30 million in donations to bail out BLM and other anarchist criminals who torched Minneapolis, has only spent $200 thousand on that effort. BLM’s managing director went on Reddit for an AMA (ask-me-anything Q&A forum) last week and wholly ignored questions directed at her about the use of funding and transparency. Shaun King, one of the fakest people to be associated with the movement, continues to raise cash for his projects using the clout he gained from BLM, despite a long history of basically freezing out the families of Tamir Rice and others from the fundraising.

These organizations and activists are not “partners” in fixing historical injustices. They aren’t seeking to build a better neighbourhood through “community policing.” They are not doing what they do as part of a long-overdue “honest conversation” on race in American society. If it were an “honest conversation,” disagreeing with them would be part of the process. We are seeing vapid celebrities like an actress from Glee (which hasn’t aired for five years), getting free advertising for supporting BLM with an interpretive dance routine, while those that disagree like a Vermont principal are placed on leave or fired. Drew Brees, a Super Bowl-winning quarterback who had done more to help New Orleans fight the coronavirus and years ago recover from Katrina than any other celebrity, was browbeaten into recanting and apologizing when he said he could not support kneeling for the national anthem. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour is being demolished for her past of condescending behaviour towards staff, including black and gay writers and editors. Most confusingly, Jewish ABC News executive Barbara Fedida has been placed on leave for things she allegedly said behind closed doors about hiring roles for people from all sorts of backgrounds. The only thing honest about this “honest conversation” is the sweat building upon the foreheads of the people getting yelled at for “historical injustices” and “systemic racism.” Does anyone think that in this climate of fear and envy that actual wrongdoing, as might be the case with Fedida and Wintour, can be fairly judged?

The response of the Jewish community institutions to events including rioting, looting, and blatant attacks against Jews has been characteristically weak and . . . institutional. The Jewish Federation of Greater LA issued a “message of solidarity,” ignoring the acts of wanton destruction committed at The Grove against Jewish owned storefronts only days earlier. The Jerusalem Post published an op-ed by a rabbi from Long Island limply paying tribute to BLM, including in the title, while condemning the anti-Israel stuff a few paragraphs deep. The Cleveland Jewish Community Federation issued a “Statement on System Races.”. Finally, on June 10, a Jerusalem Post op-ed said the obvious, comparing the riots to 1938’s Kristallnacht looting of German Jewish businesses by brownshirts. Usually, this is a metaphor I think goes too far, but the circumstances are simply too similar to object.

Someone needs to grow a pair of balls. Jewish “leaders” who do nothing as these lowlifes topple statues of Thomas Jefferson and fight to ban Paw Patrol will probably crumble once the mob comes for iconic Jewish figures that don’t reach the minimum measure of #Woke units. Will they demand the renaming of Baruch College, because Bernard Baruch was the son of a Confederate Army surgeon and friend of the now supposedly contemptible racist Winston Churchill? Maimonides, the namesake of the Boro Park medical center, was a 12th-century rabbi in Egypt who, in one of his writings, claimed that if the colour of citron was “black – i.e., like a negro – they are unacceptable everywhere.” The BlackLivesMatter movement never gets satiated after claiming a scalp. Everyone who has ever lived has said or done something they would like to forget or be able to go back and undo, and in a better social climate, we could use those as learning tools. Not today and not here. Americans, Jewish Americans included, should ignore the rage and address BLM as the frauds they are. Not because of the “need for intercommunal dialogue.” Not because of whatever BLM is saying about Israel as if that’s even the point. Not because of what some rabbi or Superman illustrator said in his time. It has to be a conscious admission that BLM as a movement is made of pretentious careerists that are full of crap and simply want to have positions of power occupied by their buddies.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, for example, the first Jew to sit on the court and allegedly an avoider of racial topics and a flawed man like all of us, wrote an opinion in Whitney v. California (1927) saying: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” Thanks to the “leadership” in place today, his message will be lost because he was “white-passing” and didn’t raise his voice to support the views of people eighty years in the future.