Jews and the ACLU: Is there a revolt underway?

The battle over things Christian in public life in America has finally been joined by all of the relevant parties.  Until just recently, this battle has been a one-sided slaughter. Formerly, the armies were the enemies of religion and religious practice versus the practitioners of Western religion – Christianity and Judaism.  In public terms, however, the battle lines formed around the American Civil Liberties Union (the ACLU) against the Religious Right, consisting until recently of mostly evangelical Christians.  One need only look at the state of constitutional law today to know which side has suffered the greatest casualties.

But a historic change is in the works. While the ACLU has been led by (and has been the ideological home for) secular American Jews, clear enough since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the American Jewish community at a grass roots level is beginning to form a serious opposition to the anti-Christian crusade led by the atheistic and anti-religious Jews.  This change is working its way into new grass roots Jewish protests against the attack on Christianity – an almost unheard of alliance just ten years ago.

But the question is Why have religious Jews been silent for so long, as secular Jews attacked religion in general and Christianity in particular? Why now do we find observant and non-observant Jews finally standing up to the assault against America’s Christian roots? To understand this change, it helps to understand how ordinary Jews see things.

Jews who immigrated to America did so in the main before World War I.  Eastern European and Russian Jews retained their religion in the first and second generation.  By the second-half of the 20th century assimilation was the rule.  But what went unnoticed by many Jewish leaders –and the term, “Jewish leaders” is a contradiction in terms --was that Jews did not move to embrace Christianity, they moved toward liberalism; and worse.  Indeed, the Lubavitch Chassidic movement headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, and led by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (the Lubavitcher Rebbe), understood this. He began a successful revival movement reaching out to non-religious Jews by establishing “Chabad Houses” in wealthy secular neighborhoods where non-religious Jews congregated, bringing a taste of the Old World mostly forgotten by these affluent and assimilated Jews –and relentlessly leftist. 

The “Jewish Return Movement” expanded the Chabad group, and other orthodox Jewish groups that understood that Judaism was succumbing to secularism in America and not to Christianity. It was clear the chief opponent of the Chabad movement to bring religion and religious life back to the secular public was the secular Jew, represented by the “American Jewish Leadership.” While this body is also “relentlessly leftist,” outsiders are not clear what is going on. There is the “pro-Jewish” Front –it’s called the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); and there is a Jewish-Communist Front –it’s called the ACLU. Both Fronts have the same goal: de-Judaization of Jewish religion/de-capitalism and de-nationalism of the U. S./”peace” in Israel if there must be a Jewish state at all.

It is not an accident that secular American Jews are major contributors to the ACLU, and it is no accident that the most public faces of the American Left over the past forty years have been and continue to be Jews – Barbara Streisand and George Soros, to name just two of the more prominent public voices in the Left Anti-War, Anti-Religion Movement today.  It is no secret that American Jews have been at the forefront of the elite’s multi-cultural, dumbing-down of America and the vanguard of such human rights and civil rights movements as fighting for abortion-on-demand, public embrace of homosexuality,  and the entire agenda. And they want Absolute Immigration, the more non-Judeo-Christian the better, but non-White will do almost as well. For a non-Jew to say so openly, however, would lead to a politically correct public flogging. As for other Jews saying such things, heresy in effect, it's really never been done until now. 

But the change in the battle lines over the heart and soul of America has occurred as of late because a growing number of Orthodox Jews, and notably non-Orthodox Jews are coming to the realization that the greatest enemies to the Jew in America are America’s greatest enemies.  Today, these enemies occupy two ends of a continuum: one end views America’s Christian founding as evil, in need of rescission; the other end of the continuum has the same view but seeks destruction. The first of these two is the Elite secularists, Jews and non-Jews. This group or movement seeks to rescind and reconstruct the national identity of America, which is properly understood as a Christian nation that embraced the Christian principles of mercy and kindness, and also courage to sing Christmas carols in public!  It is in no small part the Christian notion of “catholicity” that has mixed with the anti-Christian and anti-American viruses now consuming the host organism from within.

On the other side is Islam. Here there’s no ambiguity. But everyone knows Islam is bent on the destruction of the West. Of course this includes the Jews, as well as Christianity.  One would need to be suffering from the worst case of denial to miss the connection between Terrorism and Islam and even more, the connection between Islam and the war against the Jew and Christianity.  Look to any, really any Moslem country and you will find the ancient pattern: murder for Jews and Christians, and persecution for the live ones. Compare, for example, the greatest manifest evil to a Moslem – a Jewish Zionist State – with any of these moderate Moslem nation-states (or their immigrant populations in Detroit, Washington or anywhere else in the world), and the idea of Muslim “moderate” dawns clearly. 

Still, readers cannot now be surprised to hear the  Israeli Elites are very much in tune with the anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Israel ACLU in this country, just as American Muslims are in tune with the Israeli elites and with the ACLU. The Israeli Elites have called for Israel to reject its Jewish roots and to embrace a universal, multi-cultural, inclusive “citizenship” in its stead.  In contrast, find ten Jews or Christians in any Arab country and you will find a tiny minority living in fear of death and destruction.  The one historical exception, Lebanon, was destroyed. Do you recall by whom? By an indifferent West, but above all Lebanon was betrayed by Israel under the “Jewish leader” Barak who betrayed Jews as well. (In fairness, this is what identifies a Jewish-Leader, for current example, consider Mr. Sharon himself. Never miss a chance for peace if all that's required is the "sacrifice" for it in the form of Jews.)

The American Jewish community at large is slowly coming to grips with its own indifference to the secular attack against Christianity in America and recognizes in some small way that the Elite’s war on everything American, including its Christian roots, is the first step toward an America that will have no will to fight the existential threat of Islam for it is already crumpling under the threat of the ACLU and the ADL.

The fact that the ACLU was founded by a non-Jewish (Boston) communist, and positioned as a “pacifist” anti-War organization in opposition to America’s involvement in World War I is now manifest as it does battle against every effort by Americans to confront Islamic terror within and without.  American Jews who have not committed themselves to the destruction of Christian America have come to recognize,  in as yet unarticulated way, that the siren call of Civil Rights and Human Rights is laden with a deeply invidious purpose.  This purpose, until now not obvious to the vast majority of Jews, has been set off and contrasted by the dye of the spilt blood of innocent Americans and brave American patriots fighting for freedom in far off lands at the hands of Mohammad’s warriors.

David Yerushalmi

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