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- by Samuel J. Aronson -
Throughout 1789 and 1790 George Washington was traveling across the nascent United States “to acquire knowledge of the face of the Country, the growth and Agriculture thereof, and the temper and disposition of the Inhabitants towards the new government.” In 1789 he skipped Rhode Island because they had yet to ratify the new Constitution, but by August of 1790 they had done so, and President Washington came to pay them a special visit. Among the prominent citizens he met with in Newport was Moses Seixas, one of the officials of Yeshuat Israel, the first Jewish congregation in Newport. This meeting was no accident. Seixas and his fellow coreligionists across the new country had one question on their minds: what was to be the status of Jews in America? This question may seem bizarre by modern standards, but in the 18th century it was vital.
Throughout 1789 and 1790 George Washington was traveling across the nascent United States “to acquire knowledge of the face of the Country, the growth and Agriculture thereof, and the temper and disposition of the Inhabitants towards the new government.” In 1789 he skipped Rhode Island because they had yet to ratify the new Constitution, but by August of 1790 they had done so, and President Washington came to pay them a special visit. Among the prominent citizens he met with in Newport was Moses Seixas, one of the officials of Yeshuat Israel, the first Jewish congregation in Newport. This meeting was no accident. Seixas and his fellow coreligionists across the new country had one question on their minds: what was to be the status of Jews in America? This question may seem bizarre by modern standards, but in the 18th century it was vital.
Throughout
the known world, restrictions of one kind or another were placed on
Jewish existence; no country with Jews was without some type of formal
or informal prohibition on full Jewish participation in society. From
the middle ages onward, Jews were subjected to restrictions which
included everything from having to conform to certain dress codes,
prohibitions on owning land or immovable property, joining most
professions, serving in the military or professional civil service,
obtaining an education, and enjoying the franchise. These restrictions
were part of the continent-wide antisemitic system which resulted in the
massive expropriation of Jewish property and a litany of pogroms
culminating in the murders of countless millions of Jews throughout the
millennia.
In response to their query, President Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, where he stated “the
Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to
persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its
protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all
occasions their effectual support.”
With
those sweeping words the United States of America became the first
country in the history of the modern world to fully emancipate its Jews.
Obviously the words of our first President, who was also a slave-owner,
came with an asterisk with respect to people of color, women, and other
minorities, but for the first time Jews in the western world could
point to one government, one country, and know they were able to be full
citizens, not merely subjects of the state.
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The
antisemitic laws endemic throughout Europe which prohibited Jews from
enjoying the rights of full citizenship were based on ancient religious
hatreds and bigoted irrational prejudices. Many of these prejudices were
grounded in one trope: disloyalty. In many countries, Jews were
prohibited from serving in the military or the professional civil
service because they were viewed as disloyal. If any proof of that
disloyalty was required, you could point to their non-existent ranks in
the military or other forms of national service. The Catch-22 of
bigotry. Medieval princes, hoping to skirt the biblical prohibition
against usury, forced Jews into the profession of money lenders and
precluded christians from entering banking. When times were tight and
the state couldn’t pay its debts to the Jewish moneylenders, these
bankers were branded as disloyal for fleecing the people, and pogroms
usually followed.
When
President Trump on Tuesday said Jews who did not vote for him or his
political party were “disloyal,” he was invoking this same ancient
hatred. President Trump’s language could not be further from the
magnanimous, if not fully inclusive, language of Washington, his
Presidential progenitor. Were it to exist in isolation it would be
appalling, but as part of the liturgy of bigotry preached by the White
House and its acolytes it is nothing short of dangerous incitement.
The
shooter who murdered 22 people in El Paso, Texas earlier this month
filled his online manifesto with the exact language of the President. He
warned against a foreign invasion from Mexico, the nation President
Trump said in his opening announcement as a candidate, was sending
rapists, murders, and drug dealers to the United States. The antisemitic
terrorist who murdered 11 Jews in the Tree of Life Synagogue in
Pittsburgh last year said the Synagogue, which supported a Jewish
organization that aided refugees, “likes to bring invaders in that kill
our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw
your optics, I’m going in.” The shooter in Parkland, Florida said he
wished “all the Jews were dead.”
Jews
are a small minority of people across the globe, including in the
United States of America. It could be argued those who support
antiracist work should instead focus on the other bigotries spewing
forth from the White House on a regular basis such as the kidnapping of
children from asylum seekers at our southern border and the deaths of
some of those very asylees, or the transphobic policies being enacted at
the Department of Defense. However, antisemitism is essential to
understand and combat if we are to dismantle the oppressive power
structures which are underpinning the white nationalism fueling the
current administration. As Eric Ward argued in his essay Skin in the Game,
“Antisemitism forms the theoretical core of White nationalism.” In
other words, antisemitism isn’t only the canary in the bigotry coal
mine, alerting us to the presence of poison in the air, antisemitism is
that poison.
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To
stem this rash of violence, all voices from all quarters must roundly
condemn, and not propagate, not only these actions, but also these
statements. For the President of the United States to openly spout
classically antisemitic messages moves from the dog whistle to the
starters pistol. As the US Holocaust Memorial Museum reminded us in 2016
“the Holocaust did not begin with killing; the Holocaust began with words.” In Hitler’s Germany those words came from the political elite. In Rwanda those words came from the political elite. In Pol Pot’s Cambodia those words came from the political elite. In Stalin’s Soviet Union those words came from the political elite. In Pinochet’s Chile those words came from the political elite.
It
might seem milquetoast, but it is incumbent upon all of us to denounce
hatred whenever, and wherever we hear it… on Twitter, on TV, and around
our own dinner tables. We must, in the words of President Washington,
“give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
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Thinking
his own Christianity and whiteness would save him from the Third Reich,
the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller famously wrote of his
willingness to ignore Nazi brutality:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Will our own generation write:
First
they came for the Mexicans, and then they came for the Muslims, and
then they came for the trans soldiers, and then they came for the Jews,
and then they came for…
Samuel
J. Aronson is an Assistant Dean in the Georgetown University Edmund A.
Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC. He studies the role
of science and technology in the Holocaust. This article was originally written for medium.com and was republished with the author's permission.
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