Many American Jews, particularly Reform and Conservative Jews, are struggling with their adherence to Progressive ideas in the wake of the October 7th slaughter and rape of Israeli civilians. Orthodox Jews, seem to be having less difficulty. Why would that be?

As others have noted, this may be because, for many Reform Jews, liberal social policies and situational ethics have become their religion, a truly false God.   There is an old joke that goes like this: Question: What is reform Judaism?  Answer: It is the platform of the Democrat Party with holidays.  Sadly, the joke is not as funny as it once was.

As the American campus has shown, this institution is now dominated by those sympathetic to Hamas and inflicted further with rank hypocrisy.  Behavior and speech codes that have been enforced with glee on white males and anyone challenging the Transgendered movement, for example,  can’t seem to find its voice when it concerns the killing of Jews. 

Basic notions of right and wrong can’t seem to be found in most universities.  Jews are finding many of their ideological friends have betrayed them.

On the one hand, liberal Jews seem to want to cling to major elements of Progressivism while on the other hand, they are coming around to acknowledge that its fruits; the movement of diversity, equity, and inclusion, are now quite toxic for the Jewish people.

Some like Bari Weiss and Alan Dershowitz, are now certain the DEI must be entirely expunged from our institutions.  It is rotten to the core and is not salvageable. For a small talented minority, the end of merit-based selection, and the substitution of race-based selection, is poison both for Jews and the republic at large.

Others, seem to seek Jewish membership in the privileged groups of “marginalized” people, thinking that they can be saved from collectivist thinking that hates meritocracy by achieving a higher ranking in the victimhood Olympics.  You would think that if using the wrong pronoun constitutes “an aggression” worthy of dismissal, wouldn’t genocide rank just a tad higher?  Apparently not, if you are the wrong color.  Instead of trying to get included in protected groups, Jews should realize that all groups should be “protected” equally under the law and more importantly, we should not break individuals into groups under the law.  The law itself should be color-blind, not color-directed, and treat people as individuals who have moral agency.

Besides, given the historical injustice done to Jews over millennia in countries all over the world, why don’t they rank higher in a system based on historical grievances? Because they are white, even though many are not.  It would seem that he who controls the arbitrary racial boxes in which people are placed will wield the political power in society.

These crude intellectual boxes Progressives use, such as treating all White people as privileged and all Asians as the same group, despite innumerable differences, are beginning to reveal how truly racist this kind of thinking is.  Progressives judge by skin color.  Isn’t that the very essence of racism?

We have been told since the end of Jim Crow that this was bad to do, as indeed it is.  And we were also told not to be “judgemental.”  Progressives categorize by race and judge by race and then condemn others for judging based on individual actions and behavior.

These contradictions aside, the additional evil stems from accepting the idea of equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity and that these “equal outcomes” have to be enforced at the point of a gun by government power.  But such notions come organically from within Progressiveism because it sees people as groups rather than judging people as individuals. Ironically,  the idea of judging anybody or anything seems anathema to Progressives except when judging “White people”.

The following speech illustrates this tension.  The rabbi scores many reasonable points but fails to see that anti-Semitism flows quite naturally from the Progressive collectivist principles he has previously held.  But you can hear him struggling with his own heartfelt Progressivism while admitting how dangerous the movement has become.

The real breakthrough will come when they understand that not all disparities in life come from racial prejudice.  We would suggest the good rabbi spend some time reading Thomas Sowell. What elements of racism that remain in America cannot be cured by Progressive reverse racism against everybody else.

Nevertheless, we welcome his struggle and his willingness to speak eloquently about it. We hope it is the beginning of a Great Awakening among not only Jews but many old-fashioned liberals as well.  These old-fashioned liberals allowed the rise of the Left, but they are not of the Left themselves.

It has been observed that Western Civilization was founded on the confluence of Jerusalem and Athens.  We can think of nothing more healthy for Jews and for America in general, than for the people who brought the world ethical monotheism, the Ten Commandments, and later Christianity; will join others in the fight for liberty and full opposition to DEI and all its attendant maladies.

Image Credit: Wikimedia commons