Is it 1939 Again

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When we say history is doomed to repeat itself, it's not because of

some ancient magical law of the universe.

It's because the majority of humanity is too self absorbed, too engrossed in

their own present to examine the past.

So we never learn from our mistakes.

It's not history that repeats itself.

It's us.

Since about the 1970s, America and other parts of the Western world have

seen a golden age for diaspora Jewry.

Of course, as a minority, you're always going to get some bigotry here and there.

But overall, Jews in this country were empowered to build an amazing

life in this amazing place.

For anyone born since that time, all they've ever known is a

world in which Jews are safe.

And as has been the case in most societies where Jews have been safe, we have

built strong communities, contributed greatly to society, and thrived.

And today, while all of this is still true, the once dormant and

virulent virus of anti Jew hate is again rearing its ugly head.

Things were just so good before.

How do we get back to normal?

Well, in her book, People Love Dead Jews, which we talk about a lot on

the show, author Dara Horn makes a chilling assertion, one so obvious

and simple, yet one I'm certain most of you have not considered.

In her view, and I think it's the right one, those halcyon days of

Jewish safety weren't actually normal.

They were the aberration.

It is now, a time darkened by widespread and normalized Jew

hatred, that is the real normal.

The circumstances through which Jews have lived again and again for centuries.

It was well before the rise of Hitler's Third Reich that the world began

contemplating the Jewish problem.

Contrary to contemporary Western belief, which knows only the recent

past and not a minute earlier, Jews were long regarded as the lowest of

the low, a pestilence to be removed.

I mean, name one other minority in history whose very existence was

openly and ubiquitously discussed as an international problem to be solved.

It didn't matter how deeply the Jews were assimilated, how deferential they were

to their majority masters, how wealthy or poor, how significantly they contributed

to art, music, science, literature.

They were the other.

And really the only major other in otherwise homogenous societies,

and nobody liked them for it.

Many forget, or never learn, that Hitler's final solution, that is the systematic

extinction of Jews from the face of the earth, was never the original goal.

From the outset, the plan had always been the forced emigration of Jews.

Not to kill them all, just to get rid of them all.

To make Germany Judenrein, cleansed of Jews.

And so, steps were taken.

The Nuremberg Laws were passed.

Dehumanizing and isolating Jews through legal means.

Making life so miserable they'd be fools to stay.

They kicked Jews out of their businesses, their homes, confiscated them, and

used the wealth of the rich to pay for the immigration of the poor.

They used intense propaganda to sow hatred amongst the German population.

And when the most radical of them took to beating or killing their

Jewish neighbors in the streets, the police stood by, or helped.

They even turned to Zionism, happy to ship off Jews to Palestine, so

long as they weren't in Germany.

But a funny thing happened.

No one wanted them.

Some Jews got stuck in a loop, pushed out of Germany into Hungary

or Austria or Poland, and booted right back to start the cycle again.

Some made it into neighboring countries, only to be subsequently

conquered by Germany and find themselves under Nazi control again.

The British, afraid of continuing Arab unrest at the growing Jewish population,

shut down immigration to Palestine.

And America?

Well, with the economic hardships of the Great Depression, no

one wanted more mouths to feed, more competitions for jobs.

The Senate couldn't even get a bill passed to accept 20, 000

Jewish children into the country.

FDR did bring together 32 countries to discuss the Jewish problem at the Evian

Conference, where they all sat around and talked about how bad the situation

was, made excuses for how no one could do anything about it, and went home.

But the worst offenders, or perhaps the most painful, were the assimilated Jews of

the West, who, desperate to protect their hard won status, encouraged the refusal

of their own Jewish brothers and sisters.

They have no desire to help solve the Jewish problem.

They didn't want more Jews being all Jew y all over the place and

messing with their comfortable and secure place in civilized society.

Which, of course, helped not at all when the Nazis rounded them

up for the camps all the same.

In his masterwork, Nazi Germany and the Jews, author Saul Friedlander

notes, The flames that Hitler set alight and fanned, burned as widely and

intensely as they did, Only because, throughout Europe and beyond, a dense

underbrush of ideological and cultural elements was ready to catch fire.

Without the arsonist, the fire would not have started.

Without the underbrush, it would not have spread as far as it did,

and destroyed an entire world.

History is doomed to repeat itself.

In the 30s, it was Hitler.

Today, it's Hamas, who lit the match on October 7th in hopes of burning

the Jewish people to the ground.

Which, in many cases, they literally did.

But without the underbrush of the West's useful idiots, many of whom are those

same assimilated Jews who will only dare be as Jewish as society will permit.

These are history's ever present, uncritically thinking masses whose

excitement to hate Jews, or at least turn their backs on them, was apparently

laying latent just beneath the surface.

Without their willing help, this fire might have been contained long ago.

Now look, I don't believe we're headed for another holocaust.

There are enough adults who do know history, who do support Jews,

who do possess at least that much moral clarity, that a systematic

genocide feels safely off the table.

But the parallels between today and the 1930s should give us pause.

This is where the road to hell starts, and we have got to get off it.

What's bad for Jews anywhere, is bad for Jews everywhere.

Whether you're a rabbi, or you've never even met one.

Bigotry doesn't care about class or career or reputation.

It does not see individuals.

It does not discern.

When the mob comes, they do not stop to ask how observant you are,

or if you follow JVP on Instagram.

And what is bad for Jews, is bad for everyone.

Because blind prejudicial hate only thrives when morality and critical

thinking and humanity are absent.

And that's a problem everyone should want to solve.