What are the settlers' plans during their incursion to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in their claimed holidays from Sep 26 to Oct 17, 2022? pic.twitter.com/HeUzusP6Dt
— AlQastal News (@QastalNewsEn) September 18, 2022
BY PROTECTING JEWS, AMERICA’S
DEMOCRACY THRIVED
Dr. Harold Goldmeier, the writer manages an investment
company and writes for financial companies about business, social, and
political issues. He is a free public speaker for community groups and consults
on matters of commerce and industry.
Dr. Harold Goldmeier harold.goldmeier@gmail.com 22/3 Nachal Dolev, Bet Shemesh, 9962127.
phone: 050 2619116
Waking
Just in Time
There was a time in America when Jews hit back at anti-Semites. Jews hit
them with bats and boards, shovels, and fists. The media today shows Jews
taking it, a rabbi on a New York street or subway is a punching bag for a
tough. Synagogue members cower under their seats. College students whimper
about anti-Semitism on campus; the boys wear baseball caps to avoid
identification. We pride ourselves on being civilized, not taking revenge. The
most we do is cooperate with the police and sue somebody.
Where has all this gotten us? Anti-Jewish hate speech is on the rise, as are physical attacks and murders. Across the political
spectrum, American democracy feels threatened. Academics and pundits forewarn
of another civil war. Official pleas to Diaspora Jews employ visuals and
headlines of attacks on Jews in America, France, Belgium, and Britain to
encourage their aliya.
Similar but more vociferous conditions predominated politics in the 1930s.
It is a little-known side-story of the Holocaust. A camarilla of
German-Americans, supported by White Christian cohorts, wanted to kill off
democracy, oust Roosevelt, keep America from joining the Allies and install a
fascist regime in Washington, D.C. A few Jewish leaders recognized the
duo-threat to the Jewish People and to America’s principles. The Jews tried
everything to raise public awareness and concerns in the capital and media with
minimal success.
Several Jewish leaders took matters into their own hands setting aside
political correctness. They didn’t hesitate to stifle the free speech of
Hitler’s American acolytes and propagandists while Europe’s Jews were being
readied for slaughter. They turned to Jewish American tough guys.
It does not happen today because Jewish guilt for everything that happens to
us is the presiding emotion. If only we were better, harrumph. But in the 30s,
there were Jewish gangsters the community could rely on. Now, mobsters are
vicious and scary. Gangsters are swashbuckling and cool. Jewish gangsters, like
the infamous Meyer Lansky, nourish a quizzical smile to the corners of one’s lips,
even today. In truth, Jewish gangsters were no less vicious and scary than
mobsters of any ethnic group. They all resort to violence and prey on the weak.
Everybody around them is a victim.
Wellsprings of Identity
But there was one time, hidden in a pocket of Holocaust history when Jewish
gangsters contributed outstandingly to ensuring the safety of the Jewish People
and American democracy. Author Michael Benson tells the rest of the story in
his rollicking, new, and highly recommended book, Gangsters vs Nazis: How
Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America (Citadel Press, 2022). Here is
the rest of the story.
Hitler stirred the American stewpot looking for admirers. The
German-American immigrants constituted the most significant White ethnic minority.
In concert with Christian anti-Semites, Hitler’s secret agents knit the America
First Committee, the German American Bund, and the Silver Legion into Hitler's
American army.
By 1939, the America First Committee sported 800,000 members in 450
chapters. Charles Lindbergh and other spokespeople
tagged the British, the President, and the Jews as anti-American warmongers.
Many German Americans reveled in awe of Germany’s rise from the ashes of the
First World War and the West’s devastating sanctions against the German people.
German influence on American culture and politics
has been enormous. Today, they are the largest ethnic group in the U. S. German immigrants
settled in American colonies. More than 1.2 million
were born in Germany, 5 million had two native-German parents, and 6 million
had one native-German parent by Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. 12
million lived in a “German belt” across the U.S. The
Dank House served as the gathering place for Chicago’s German Christians, not
German Jews when I was young.
Bund members declared it the duty of every German American to rid the
country of Jews, scupper American democracy, and replace the government to at least
keep America out of the war. Novelist Philip Roth called the chilling mission,
A Plot Against America (Vintage, 2005). The only way to stop American Nazis in
wartime was to launch a war against them.
Tales from the Street
The hero in these times is former congressperson, Judge Nathan D. Perlman.
Perlman approaches the notorious gangster Meyer Lansky. He tells about the
rising threats to Jews and the nation. “Powerful men are openly making
anti-Semitic remarks. Some of the newspapers and magazines are backing them up.
Nazism is flourishing in the United States… You got some boys who might want to
punch a Nazi?”
Lansky confirms offering to do more than throw a punch. “No killing” warns
Perlman. The dead become martyrs. “But broken bones, I would think, are to be
encouraged. They should know that being a Nazi is dangerous,” Perlman tells
Lansky.
Tales of Jews in organized crime intrigue me like enigmatic mirages. Some of
the best swirl around the notorious Lansky, who another author, Robert Lacey, calls, “The Thinking
Man’s Gangster.” Lansky and “Lucky” Luciano built the Five Family crime
syndicate that lasted some say through today.
The Jewish gangsters more prominent in the anti-Nazi fights were Eddie,
“Monk” Osterman with fists of lightening, Hymie “The Weasel” Kugel, “Ice Pick
Willie” Alderman, Mendy Weiss, Abe “Kid Twist” Reles, Marty “Buggsy” Goldstein,
Harry Strauss, Al “Tic Toc” Tannenbaum, Charlie “Bug” Workman, Jake Drucker,
and Lansky’s more exotic and lethal childhood buddy, Lepke “Little Louis”
Buchalter. Not one Jewish leader in the 21st century has a nickname.
All About Principles
The gangsters were fearless. They disrupted Nazi gatherings and punished the
Jew-haters, sometimes with 2x4s. They never took a penny or killed an American
Nazi. It was all about principles “beating up krautheads for a cause.” The
cause took on personal importance, as Jewish escapees and travelers reported
about Hitler’s destruction of Europe’s Jews, accounts that were usually suppressed by the media.
Benson describes a birthday party for Hitler in a ballroom. The stage “was
decorated with pictures of Hitler (and) large swastikas hung…” The gall enraged
Lansky. His minions burst through all the doors. They blocked fire escape
exits. Jewish gangsters worked over the Nazis real good. Buggsy hit one Nazi so
hard in the jaw he sagged and fell. Buggsy kicked him in the ear. Benson quotes
Mickey Cohen proudly proclaiming in 1938, “Nobody could pay me for this work.
It was my patriotic duty.”
No Shame in Jew-Hating
The Nazis found brotherly love among White Christian anti-Semites. Pro-Nazi,
anti-Semitic Radio Priest, Father Charles Coughlin, of the Church of the Little
Flower, spewed anti-Jewish vitriol across America’s radio waves for over a
decade on a station licensed by the Federal government. The station never lost
its license nor was Coughlin censured by the Church.
Countering Coughlin and never holding back was broadcaster Walter Winchell. Winchell was the most
recognized and feared influencer at the time. He used the radio and his
syndicated newspaper column to ruthlessly excoriate Hitler, American Nazis, and
anti-Semites. Winchell excoriated Charles Lindbergh and other celebrity
sympathizers. He had the power to ruin careers and Winchell hammered it home.
Other pro-fascist Jew-hating influencers of the time included O Henry
Award-winning writer, William D. Pelley, and Ellis Jones. Jones went on to edit
Life Magazine and Ladies Home Journal. Robert Noble was so vociferous against
America fighting Hitler, that the federal government indicted and jailed Noble
for his plot to “incite mutiny in the armed forces, unseat the government, and
set up a Nazi regime.”
Politics, Race, Bravery, and Self-Defense
I got four takeaways from Benson’s exciting book and the
subsequent research it inspired.
First, the German American Bund, pro-fascist and anti-Semitic collaborators
were building a fifth column in America. Hitler’s stated plan was, “We will
undermine the morale of the people of America. This will be the German-American
group, and we will help them assume power.”
Second, though
millions of Americans embraced the nefarious scum, we can relish how the vast majority of Americans rejected them. There is
hope for our future. They chose patriotism over nationalism, commitment
to principles, ideals, and values over love and devotion to national existence.
Maybe it is in the nation’s DNA?
Third, language communicates the message, and the constant din of social
media exacerbates political divisiveness. Studies claim there is a neural basis
to partisan biases. Gangsters are dashing and mobsters scary. National
socialists are patriots but really fascists. Warmongers are capitalists while
isolationists are human rights activists. Today, woke progressives are
privileged pansies facing-off conservatives who are big business
protectionists. Anti-Zionists are all anti-Semites.
Fourth, and the most unsettling lesson, is the extent of my own admiration
for the gangsters who took matters into their own hands. By protecting Jews,
America’s democracy thrived. It is not politically correct. They didn’t wait on
the police, FBI, and other authorities like they would be cautioned today. They
launched what Benson calls a “gangster campaign of pain.” Per linguistics,
targeted assassinations are a perfectly acceptable means of revenge for
national governments.
I heard Jackie Mason tell a joke in the Catskills. No one fears a
briefcase-carrying, Jewish, accountant walking down a dark street in a suit and
tie at eleven o’clock at night. Put him in an IDF uniform and Jew haters run for
cover. Today, we all are accountants. But Jews need a hero. That’s why Gal
Gadot as Wonder Woman is ridiculously popular and Friends of the IDF are wildly
popular.
On a final note, we need to remember the remarkable and brave Judge Perlman.
Perlman launched a mission to stop the raging anti-Semites and anti-democracy
villains as they grew bolder. They might have prevailed, especially if America
had not entered the war. Perlman gets short shrift in American Jewish history
and Holocaust studies. His story is notable for splashing light on the effect
of the power of one.
---END---
.buy Gangsters vs Nazis on Amazon.com
Rav Benzion Mutzafi was asked about the custom of eating apple dipped in honey on Rosh Hashana. Specifically for Sefardim. He was asked if Sefardim have the custom of eating the apple dipped in honey on Rosh Hashana, as the questioners grandfather had told him that they do not?
RavMutzafi responded not to eat apple dipped in honey on Rosh Hashana. Honey, he said, is symbolic of the midat hadin, the attribute of judgment, which we do not wish to trigger on Rosh Hashana. Rav Mutzafi said - your grandfather is right, Sefardim do not eat apple in honey on Rosh Hashana but we cook different fruits and vegetables with sugar and eat them like that.
As an aside, I have had several Rosh Hashana meals in Sefardi homes and they did not have apple and honey that I can remember, but did dip the challa in sugar.
Rav Mutzafi added another reason that I did not understand as it involved gematria and combining letters, and comparing honey to the shofar that sweetens the judgement...
source: Kikar
UTJ always runs some sort of a "gevalt" campaign before the elections, saying how Judaism is being threatened and/or already destroyed and for one reason or another the party itself is under threat of shrinking and not being strong enough to protect the Jewishness of the country or even our own Jewish lives of the frum community. It usually seems to work in some capacity and while the party electorally only grows very slowly and in small bits form election to election, they at least have been pretty stable and held their power.
In this election cycle the campaigning has not yet even begun for most parties (Shas has been running perhaps the most focused campaign so far and seem to already be in high gear), or only in a very small way, but the UTJ gevalt campaign seems to already be starting early. They have to rile up their base and get them motivated to vote, and to vote specifically for UTJ.
According to Kikar, senior UTJ people are concerned about the party possibly shrinking due to recent friction between the factions. Even though that was concluded amicably, they are supposedly worried the process itself has turned off a lot of people (and especially Belzers might not feel like voting), along with some of the younger crowd being attracted to Itamar Ben Gvir... all this adds up to a possible drop to 6 seats.
True or not I have no way of knowing, but this looks like what is the start of a gevalt campaign.