I don’t know if I have an answer to that question.
Oftentimes, we do not appreciate until later—much later—how good we had it. If someone like Ed McMahon had come to my house in 1975 to inform me that I was living in the greatest childhood in history, I would have slammed the door in his face. Surely, the future would be even better! Look at our kitchen phone cord winding upon itself like a huge strand of DNA. In the 1970s, we still had to stop for refueling on very long flights. We didn’t have cellphones or laptop computers. And still, we didn’t know how good we had it.
My parents did like millions and millions of immigrant parents like them: they did their all to have their kids become real Americans. There would be no burden of the ancient language or customs or clothes or religious obligations if they interfered with that primary goal. And American we were! We ate Chef Boyardee ravioli from a can and TV dinners. My father would only buy Chevys and we drove everywhere in the U.S., as our summer vacations were tied to wherever Dad had some chemistry meeting to attend. Been to Wall Drug and the Mitchell Corn Palace. Got rained in at Deadwood Gulch and watched buffalo run in front of our car in the Badlands. Went to Busch Gardens in Tampa and Six Flags Over Texas. While we were always grateful for all that our parents did for us, we didn’t appreciate how good the times themselves were. Decades after the Holocaust, we felt no antisemitism, not in public schools and not in college or grad school. I don’t remember ever losing a friend because I was Jewish or having someone make some type of derogatory comment about being different. My non-Jewish friends came to my bar mitzvah (Chicken Kiev) and I had as many Christian friends as Jewish. I even remember being by a non-Jewish friend and calling my mother to ask if I could eat an omelet on Passover.
At the same time, I looked to Israel and felt sorry for the kids there. There always seemed to be a war going on or terrorist attacks between wars. At 18 a kid would go to the army, while in the U.S. at the same milestone, we would go to the post office to register for the draft—in the event that one day our services might be needed. While I had never been to Israel, it seemed like a hard land, surrounded by enemies, and with a weak economy and lower standard of living.
I have now been in Israel for over 30 years. The country has gone from a backwards socialist nothing to a high-tech military powerhouse. Many things have changed in this country but the attacks against Jews have not. I have been watching our oldest grandson when there are air raid sirens or when we move quickly over to the shelter. There are times he seems scared or worried. Obviously, his parents do their best to explain to him what’s going on at a level that he can understand. When we went over to the shelter three times during a festive meal on Wednesday, an enterprising uncle grabbed his jeep and brought it with us. Now the boy had the entire parking lot to drive around on his battery-powered tractor. He was thrilled. At one point, he asked to go back there without the sirens. That apparently is turning lemons into lemonade.
And while the challenges facing Israel remain, my question at the top of this article has to do with Jewish life in the West. While there was nothing particularly Jewish in my family’s appearance or activities beyond going to synagogue and observing the major holidays, there are Jews of similar lifestyle who are being badgered and threatened simply because they are Jews. It’s always hard to gauge reality from the press. One can watch endless protests against Israel, attacks on Jewish-owned businesses, and threats from U.S.-based imams against Jews and Christians and still have no feeling how prevalent the problems are. My guess is that most Jews in the U.S. live like we did, without threats and not feeling any prejudice or disdain from non-Jews. Still, the events of the past few years did not exist in America of the 1970s and 1980s. Israel’s response to the horrific attacks that emanated from Gaza has given a license for open season on Western Jews. Most of those being harassed on campus or threatened on the streets have not expressed any particular opinion about Israel or the war in Gaza—the supposed casus belli for the hatred expressed as never before against Jews in Western countries, including the U.S. Orthodox Jews are a prime target due to their being easily identified as being Jewish, though many ultraorthodox Jews are not particular fervent Zionists. No matter. Jew equals Israel Guilt.
So what is normal for bringing up a Jewish child today? To live in Israel with the threat of Iranian missiles and local Arab terror or live in the U.S. and be pushed around and called a dirty Jew? The acceptance of too many Jew and Christian hating Muslims combined with Qatari and Saudi money pushing the Muslim Brotherhood effort to conquer Western countries have led to a toxic condition for Jews who have lived in these countries for hundreds of years. Top U.S. universities have been compromised by Qatari cash to the point that it has been claimed that Qatar has a word in curriculum and faculty hiring at Georgetown, where they have plunked down a billion smackers. So the professors and students are aligned against the Jews, who serve as the unofficial ambassadors for the state of Israel. I believe the reason why Harvard and Columbia did not eject any students during the “let’s kill the Jews but we’ll call it ‘globalize the intifada’ to fool the administration” protests is that they can’t throw out Palestinian and other Arab students fully paid for by Qatar. The universities had it within their power to throw out the organizers and keep townies off campus, but they let the orgies grow and become more extreme. They are under the thumb of their donors and would rather have Israeli students lock themselves in their dorm rooms than offend the Emir and CAIR.
All of our boys have U.S. citizenship, and I hold only U.S. citizenship. I look forward to our grandchildren getting their own U.S. citizenship, which can only be accomplished in the U.S. With that said, either the U.S. will have to address Islamic/leftist antisemitism or there will be no Jewish future there. I remember when Ben Shapiro left LA for Nashville. He said that he had grown up in LA but did not want his kids climbing over homeless druggies on their way to school. The issue there was not antisemitism but the destruction of Democrat-run cities, where most large concentrations of Jews exist.
The grandkids came dressed as astronauts on Purim. The older boy asked to see astronauts in space. I showed him parts of the Apollo 11 movie made from NASA archives. He was fascinated by the extreme heat generated outside the capsule window duing reentry. I explained to him about the friction of the high velocity capsule hitting air molecules in the upper atmosphere. I learned it all back in physics in the outstanding schools we had—real schools and not indoctrination centers. I am grateful for everything I received from the U.S. and pray for the well-being and success of the country every day. God bless America and may the current war against Iran be an enormous success, one that brings a greater peace to the world.