Jew vs. Jew
On the real lessons of the Hanukkah story.
On Friday July 16, I moved across the country and into a Moishe House, one of a network of communal Jewish houses in cities including Boston, New York, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh. On Thursday, July 22, my two roommates asked me to move out. What could possibly have gone that wrong in less than a week?
On my sixth day, I attended my first Moishe House event. Toward the end of the evening, a couple of people, including my roommate Michelle (because of the unpleasant story I am about to tell, I am changing the names of all who are involved) and her boyfriend, invited me to a bar. Michelle’s boyfriend drove me to the bar, while Michelle and her friend drove separately. As we were driving, he asked what I did for work. I replied that I work in digital technology for a defense contractor.
He replied that my employer “killed lots of people”, and that I only thought highly of the company “because they paid your bills.” Shocked, I replied that my view of the company was motivated by reasons other than my paycheck, namely my belief in the need for American leadership on the global stage.
As a Jew and a political conservative who grew in Massachusetts, I am very used to being in the minority. But my family’s Shabbat dinner table taught me the value of voicing my opinions respectfully and engaging others in good faith. No one ever made me feel that I didn’t belong because I had a different view.
What I encountered in the Moishe House was not the Jewish vibe I grew up with. At the bar that night, the group spent hours interrogating me. There was no conversation. No discussion. No back and forth. When I explained that I am politically conservative, someone responded, “On purpose?”
The next evening, my roommates sat me down in our living room and demanded that I move out. They explained that when they agreed to accept me as a roommate, they did not know I was politically conservative. Michelle said that she felt “unsafe” around me, and that she would not be able to take her birth control or bring her queer friends around me. My other roommate, Sarah, said that she did not think to ask about my political views because I was the first young conservative she had ever met. They both repeatedly said that my political views made them “uncomfortable.”
In an email later that week, Sarah wrote me: “If you cannot unequivocally say that you are anti-racist and support gay rights and women’s reproductive health and prison reform and defunding the police, among other important platforms, then we have an irreconcilable differences that would not lead to a harmonious living environment.” She continued: “I implore you to look inside yourself [and] consider why your viewpoints make us so uncomfortable.”
The Jewish community is not immune from the growing censoriousness of American political culture. While Jewish tradition treasures discussion and debate, my ordeal suggests that the Moishe House does not tolerate any deviation from left-wing orthodoxy, or at the very least is not willing to support someone who does. The Jewish community these days purports to prize “inclusion” above all else. But if my experience is any indication, inclusion does not include people who are judged to have the wrong political views.
I have never lived in a Moishe House, but I have experienced similar in Synagogues before.
Then there is this comment:
I am a conservative Jew and I worry once this idiocy called wokeness comes crumbling down (and it will) the Jews are going to be blamed for stoking some of the zealotry and be blamed for dividing the country. It will be easy for the Right and the Left to find a common scapegoat to blame once the dust settles and people demand a reckoning.
Cynical and prominent Jews like Soros, Schumer, Nadler, Jeff Zucker and Adam Schiff (who are equally despised by the Right and the radical left) are playing with fire and potentially creating a very precarious situation for the rest of us Jews. There are of course as many conservative Jewish voices, but they’re rarely aired by the mass media. And there is a perception among most Americans that all Jews are leftists. This is a bad situation and conservative Jews need to find a way to speak out more forcefully. Judaism should not be conflated with Progressivism like many American Jews seems to do.
I felt that one deep in my soul.
I have stated many, many times before just how much I hate Leftist Jews.
I am grossed out every time I see some radical, purple-haired, Leftist, with a Socialist rose emoji, and weird pronouns in their bio also identify as Jewish.
I have begun to wonder just how many straight, normal, healthy, functional Jews are left in American society.
I have come to believe that American Jewery is the victim of its own success.
Academic and financial achievement that is a hallmark of Ashkenazi Jewish culture was the product of discrimination. When Jews were forbidden from owning land, a movement intended to keep us poor in agrarian societies, we developed skills as artisans, craftsmen, traders, bankers, etc. We got a jump start on the knowledge economy.
In America, that tradition has made us successful.
Unfortunately, it has resulted in two generations of Jews who have become the indulgent, pampered, sophists that become radical Leftists.
They reject everything Jewish about themselves to become Progressives, confusing the Talmud for the Communist Manifesto.
And I agree with the comment so much it hurts.
I am terrified of the position that puts Jews in. The Left always turns on the Jews. There is no safety in assimilating with them. On the other hand, Progressives are the most public face of American Jewery, feeding the antisemitism of the (Alt) Right.
And just to make matters worse, this has caused a breakdown in Jewish unity. Leftist Jews are more than happy to feed us Conservative Jews to the Leftist crocodile, not realizing that won’t satiate its hunger.
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