A Jew In ’America’ Today

Take a deep breath and look around you. How has the world changed so radically while we weren’t looking? Maybe I was asleep at the switch, but things today seem so different from the way I imagined they were, how I assumed they were. I am living in Canada, but I am taking America to mean North America, and looking at the world seen through my ‘American’ eyes.

I was born in 1934. I knew a Canada of the Depression. I grew up before there was an Israel, with the growing knowledge of what had befallen our brothers and sisters in Europe. The discrimination we took for granted on our streets, in education, real estate, and with our fist fights in the mud in our streets and in the school yards where we played. This was something we absorbed into our consciousness. It was always there, lurking forever at the back of our minds during our life experiences. It united us into a community where we recognized each other for sharing a common destiny.

Now, ninety years later, still living in Canada, I yet feel that sense of common destiny. Some things are different and some things are the same. Jews in Israel are fighting a war to destroy those who attacked Jews on October 7^th, a year ago, because they were Jews.

We are fighting all those who joined the cause of the murderers of that day. Our enemies complain of the losses they are suffering, without remembering who and what brought this onslaught into being, or condemning the murderous actions that brought about this response. Indeed, they call for more of the same from the river to the sea. All the civilian suffering our enemies complain about would stop immediately if the murderers surrendered, and released our hostages. If they cared about the civilians they are putting in harm’s way, instead of using them as human shields.

This week Jews were attacked on the streets of Amsterdam. Israel sent a plane to evacuate those who want to escape that place. That could happen because Jews now have a state and we all have a sense of common destiny. But attacks like these are happening all around the world.

America just had an election for president. American Jews around the world voted for a man many people consider a fascist who wants to destroy American democracy. Almost 50 per cent of American Jews abandoned old loyalties and voted for this man. Why? Because this man has been supporting the state of Israel in its struggle for survival when Israel’s supposed “friends” spoke of support for Israel with forked tongue that favored its enemies. These American Jews were conscious of their common destiny with Jews in Israel that most of us have never seen.

We do not know what the future will bring. It may be that this “fascist” will ultimately show his true colors and American Jews will regret the choice they made in acting to enable his victory. The Prime Minister of Israel has also made that kind of choice. He had little room for manoeuver. The proof of that pudding will be in the eating.

One thing we “American” Jews know is that the Jewish soldiers in the Middle East are fighting for us as well. What we learn every day about the lives of Jews in the ‘free’ world, from what we see in the streets of our cities around the world, including those in Canada and America. We know we have soldiers fighting for us today, some of whom are giving up their lives in that cause, their lives for our lives.

So, many things are different for Jews in America today, and we express joyful thanks for that, but some things are the same for Jews as they were when I came into this world in 1934.