Sixty percent. That’s how many Michigan Jews early exit polling reveals voted for a candidate who not only couldn’t passively condemn Jew-hate from peers, but actively campaigned on sinister rhetoric himself. That’s how many Jews willingly, even enthusiastically, participated in sending the first explicitly anti-zionist Senate candidate to Washington.
In a word: oy.
This is not without precedent, as we all witnessed with the one in three Jews who chose New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as their mensch one year ago. And, sadly, this will not be the last of such unkosher decision-making, given that two-thirds of Jews still continue to vote blue in national elections as a whole. For those not blinded by membership in any particular party, it was extremely easy not only to imagine this outcome but also to literally see it coming to fruition. So the horror and confusion at this ironic yet inevitable outcome warrant a deeper examination, as this entire debacle may just sum up the politically handicapped state of American Jews today.
It’s true that American Jews have historically trended left due to previously shared values, and it’s true that many continue to cling to the withering shell of what it once may have been, still assuming the fiction that the left is the only side fighting for “humanity”… despite an overwhelming mountain of evidence screaming otherwise. If there is any dark humor to be found, it is the very opposite of “enlightened liberalism” that it took the completely unavoidable to bring people to the already-existing, longest-standing reality. And it is a far greater admission of one’s own hand in promoting regressive politics over the years than yet another pathetic politician openly showing his.
This is exactly what the future of the left looks like, at least until enough of its own can start prioritizing concrete necessities over synthetic labels. Many Jews have now seen it playing out for the past few years, and those of us involved in fighting other parallel ideologies have seen it happening for much longer. The problem is simply that what is recognizably untenable for some continues to be extremely attractive to more.
For better or worse, the left generally seems to be on a suicidal trajectory, and we can and should admit that too many in our diaspora Jewish community are complicit in supporting this harm, creating a blue-tinted Jewicidal path of their own.
There is, of course, the eternal issue of “self-hating Jews,” as seen from Michigan’s own circus of schmucks who willingly supported Abdul el Sayed’s anti-Zionist platform to their own future detriment. This is obviously not difficult in the least to imagine there or anywhere, considering that everyone has their own local contingent who continues to happily support destructive ideas and the bad actors who sell them…not even including the laughingstock of the “Jewish” Voice for Peace front, which has produced an entire cult off of such meshugaas.
But the bigger problem seems to be the issue of self-harming Jews, those who cling to outdated titles and movements out of nostalgically misguided pride or deep longing for identity, helping to enable these very outcomes by enabling overlapping, detrimental ideology… somehow either obtusely overlooking or deliberately defending that the Venn diagram of such issues is always nearing a full eclipse. Yet past and present demonstrate that it will always come back to bite one in the tuchus, and if one still thinks such ideological issues aren’t interwoven after a three-year crash course, one has either chosen pathetic hypocrisy or complete oblivion.
However, perhaps the greatest problem of all is pure complacency and removal from reality. The reality that too many don’t have an accurate reading of political temperature and truly assume that such failures can’t happen. The reality is that too many still consider this a negligible fringe nuisance of their wing, not a core infection of the mainstream.
None of this is to blame Jews for depressing political outcomes, as we’ll always be grossly outnumbered compared to the rest of the populace. However, I still tend to have higher standards for us (despite quite a few desperately intent on proving that such standards are woefully misplaced), and actions or lack of action over time cannot be denied.
This Senate race did not take place in a vacuum. It is a result of years of allowing objective reality to lapse and of feeding subjective fantasy, a refusal to leave the safe comfort of partisanship for the uncomfortable necessity of critical thought. And now these decisions have begun to hit home heavily for this community.
Jews as a whole must, in real life, start actively treating and handling threats with the respect and gravity that we easily give them in their equivalent online. Jews as a whole must do diligent homework on every candidate, protest, organization, and kumbaya-handholding in the false name of “tikkun olam” to see what else they are truly supporting beneath the slick slogans and pretty packaging. Jews as a whole must stop prioritizing personal aspirations and suicidal saviorism over deeper needs so that we are not hurt as a whole.
Jews have long fought for many others due to past shared values and goals, and it is a sad reality that through historically necessary assimilation, Jews also learned a bad habit of tempering our specific suffering to that of all others, to prove our humanity against the antisemitism that insists we have none. That is no longer a working survival method, and our reality is more than enough on its own. Our intangible fears and our tangible targeting are enough to put first. To be very frank, so many others don’t take us seriously precisely because so many of us don’t take ourselves seriously.
ELEVENTH-HOUR ELECTION INTERVENTIONS
Until Jews everywhere start realizing that luxury beliefs have real-world implications, nothing will change. Until Jews everywhere start marching and protesting for themselves before doing so for others, things will stay the same. Until Jews everywhere start putting their own interests equal to and above others’, and show more interest in demanding that we stand up for ourselves over asking when others will stand up for us… well, you know.
All of our enemies, from loud and proud, to pathetically apathetic, to true wolves in sheep’s clothing, won’t be changing anytime soon, so it’s all the more reason for us to do so. Give them all some real chutzpah to take seriously. We simply can no longer afford to not only accept crumbs from others, but crumbs from ourselves.
Sarah Kendis is an oboist and writer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A proud Jew and radical feminist, she writes and speaks about antisemitism and women’s issues in the world today. Her work has been published in sp!ked, Skeptic, the American Spectator, and the Federalist.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
