09 Jun THE FUTURE OF JEWS IN AMERICA

Looking around the
country today, the
America we Jews
have come to know,
appreciate, and love is
becoming increasingly
unrecognizable. While
this may have been true the last several years
on a cultural level with the move towards
more progressive values and blurring of
definitions, lines, and institutions in ways
that are totally incompatible with our sacred
tradition, now it is true in a more personal
and specific way, a way that makes us feel
increasingly uncomfortable and unsafe.
In his Halachic responsa, Rav Moshe
Feinstein, himself an immigrant from Europe
in 1937 fleeing from increased anti-Jewish
sentiment and Soviet religious persecution,
described America as a malchus shel chesed,
a kingdom of kindness for the Jewish
people. Similarly, Rabbi Menashe Klein (the
Ungvarer Rav) and Rav Moshe Stern (the
Debreciner Rav), who moved to America
after surviving the Holocaust, describe this
country in their teshuvos as a medinah shel
chesed, a benevolent nation.
What might they write today about the
same country that features, as a major party
candidate for U.S. Senate, a man who for
years unabashedly sported a tattoo of the Nazi
SS “Totenkopf?” At a rally this week for this
candidate in Portland, when asked, “Would
an Israeli flag tattoo be a deal breaker?”
one attendee said, “Honestly yeah, because
I don’t support genocide.” While that only
represents one voter’s view, this candidate
continues to be endorsed by mainstream
leaders of the Democratic Party despite the
reporting about his vile Jew hate, among
other disturbing problems.
Dan Bilzerian, who has 30 million Instagram
followers, is on the ballot as a Republican in
Florida’s 6th Congressional District. While he
has little chance of winning, as an extremist,
vulgar antisemite, his mere presence on the
ballot combined with whatever percentage of
the votes he will get, is jarring.
Literally as I was sitting down to write this,
members of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe
marched through Athens, Georgia carrying
a swastika banner, and a sitting member of
Congress delivered a rant against Israel filled
with long-debunked falsehoods. It truly seems
not a day goes by in this country without one
or more terrible stories involving antisemitic
rhetoric or, worse, actual violence, and it is
coming from all parties and all sides.
So what is the future for Jews in America?
Is it the Malchus and Medinah shel chesed,
a country of unprecedented religious
freedom, a democracy that awards rights and
protection to our people? Or is it, as other
ancestors warned, a “treifene medinah,” a

place that Jews don’t belong, a country that
will compromise and corrupt us morally and
physically?
As we approach the celebration of America’s
250th anniversary, for Jews living here, this
is an essential question. Certainly, American
Jews—like those throughout the Diaspora—
should be asking ourselves not if, but when
we will move to Israel. That is the destiny
and must be the destination for us all.
But in the meantime, is our time in America
just a holding pattern, a passive, meaningless
stopover? Rav Aharon Kotler certainly didn’t
think so. In a time when it was tremendously
unpopular to move here, Rav Aharon saw his
immigration to America in religious terms,
as a mission connected with the fulfillment
of a prophecy of Rav Chaim Volozhener. In
a tradition relayed by not only Rav Aharon
Kotler, but Rav Chaim Ozer, Rav Yaakov
Ruderman, Rav Dovid Lifschitz, Rav Aharon
Soloveitchik and others, in 1803, at the laying
of the cornerstone of his yeshiva in Volozhin,
Rav Chaim Volozhener tearfully told his
talmidim, “This will not be the final station
of Torah before Moshiach. Torah has yet to
flourish in the American before he can come.
America will be the final stop of galus.”
Rav Aharon Kotler took this as a charge to
build Torah in the New World. He planted
the seeds for what would become the largest
yeshiva in the world and a network of
kollelim in communities around America.
Speaking about the purpose of being spread
throughout the galus more generally, Rav
Gedalya Schorr (Ohr Gedalyahu, Shemini
Atzeres) writes that Hashem sends us to
different countries and cities to collect the
righteous converts and to redeem the sparks
in each location. We aren’t there passively
or accidentally; we are there with a mission
and a purpose.
By that standard, have the Jewish people
succeeded in impacting America? Have
we brought Torah values and ideals to this
country? The answer is a resounding yes.
In midst of the September 2000 presidential
campaign, amid the national conversation
about the religious observance of Joe

Lieberman a”h, Michael Novak, a non-
Jewish writer and philosopher who often

wrote on theology, wrote in the New York
Times:
I am pulling for Bush and Cheney, not Gore
and Lieberman, and I am not Jewish but
Roman Catholic. Still, I love what Senator
Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, is doing to
wake this nation up to its deepest identity,
rooted in Jewishness.
John Adams wrote, “I will insist that the
Hebrews have done more to civilize men than
any other nation.” He wrote as a Christian,
but added that even if he were an atheist and

believed in chance, “I should believe that
chance had ordered the Jews to preserve
and propagate to all mankind the doctrine
of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty
sovereign of the universe, which I believe to
be the great essential principle of all morality,
and consequently of all civilization.”…
The best kept secret of American history is
that the favorite language of that founding
generation came from the Torah. The
founders referred to their own experiment
as the Second Israel. They commissioned
a design for the Great Seal with a symbol
recalling the first Israel, for they thought of
themselves as crossing the deserts of Egypt
en route to building a “city on the hill.”
Ben Franklin proposed as a motto of the
Republic “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience
to G-d.” It fit the American circumstance.
The signers of the Declaration, after all, were
committing treason. They needed some sort
of moral warrant. They also needed hope
that they could avoid the hangman’s noose;
they faced the most powerful army and navy
in the world. It helped that they believed
that Providence would assist them and that
Providence had created the world so that
liberty would in the end prevail. For without
liberty, how could the Creator, who desired
the friendship of free women and men rather
than the worship of slaves, fulfill his eternal
purposes?
Most historians lazily say that the founders
were Deists, because they did not use
Christian names for G-d, like Trinity and
Savior and Redeemer. They miss the crucial
point. Three names for G-d in the Declaration
— Creator, Judge and Providence, are
unmistakably Jewish names for G-d. This
language did not come from the Greeks or
Romans…
If for whatever reason our time in America
is not yet over, we must be here with a sense
of purpose and mission. Certainly, it is to
defend and advocate for our values, morals
and principles.
But in this moment, I think it is something
even more.
As America celebrates 250 years, particularly
for those who subscribe to “America First,”
we must speak of how America first came
to be. This country was born from an
extraordinary faith, deeply informed by
the language and ideas of the Jewish Bible.
When our Founders wrote in the Declaration
of Independence that all men are “endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights,” they were echoing the first chapter
of Genesis, that every human being is created
b’tzelem Elokim, in the image of G-d. When
they appealed to “the Laws of Nature and
of Nature’s G-d,” they were affirming that
there is a moral law higher than any king,
any parliament, or polling data. When they

concluded, “with a firm reliance on the
protection of Divine Providence,” they spoke
in the language of our prophets, a people
placing its destiny in the hands of Heaven.
America must stand true to the principles,
values, and ideals that made her exceptional
in the first place.
The right for even someone with a Nazi tattoo
to run for office is an American value. For
anyone to endorse or vote for him is a grossly
un-American value. The right to protest
Israel, or even speak of Israel and Jews in
vile terms, is American. The failure to stand
with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle
East, the land from which America’s own
values drew, is un-American.
The right to platform purveyors of hate is
American. To amplify their message, spread
evil lies against Israel or the Jewish people
on college campuses, outside of Synagogues

and even in the halls of Congress, is un-
American.

As we approach this significant milestone, it
is a critical time for us to stand tall and proud
and tell our fellow citizens that antisemitism
and anti-Zionism are not about hatred of
the Jew alone. These beliefs are not only
un-American, they are rooted in hatred of
America.
We must align with allies, religious leaders,
elected leaders and influencers to return
and restore this great country to its roots. If
America is to remain a medinah shel chesed,
we cannot outsource that work to others.
Each of us must ask: What am I doing to
make my home more Jewish, my community
more courageous, my elected officials more
accountable, my non-Jewish neighbors more
informed, and my children more proud? We
must live with gratitude for this country,
loyalty to our people, longing for Eretz
Yisrael, and a renewed sense of responsibility
for the sacred mission of Torah in America.
We must work to ensure it remains a medina
and malchus of chesed and not a treifene
medinah.