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August 22nd, 2017 
Awake Goy If I would have to pick a year (from which to discuss Jewish fears in America) I would pick 1968, not because of the RFK MLK assassinations and the Nixon election, though those were the headlines, but because of the birth of the JDL by Meir Kahane. I moved to New York that year from Chicago, location of the famous Democratic convention and whereas in far north, almost suburban West Rogers Park, Chicago, the support for Democratic candidates, reflecting the politics at home, might have been called split between the adventurists who supported McCarthy or RFK, most kids supported LBJ, like their parents, or when he dropped out, HHH, Humphrey. One kid supported Wallace in theory and we thought he was nuts. He didn’t live in the far north, he lived in a mixed, changing neighborhood, Maxwell street and his views reflected Norm Podhoretz and His Negro Problem, a writing I discovered many years later.
There were two fears I heard in 1968, a fear of George Wallace, (whose hatred of Jews was assumed to be something akin to George Lincoln rockwell) and a fear of blacks. 1968 was the riots in chicago in the aftermath of the MLK assassination, there were the riots that burnt down the old Jewish stores in the West Side, the old Jewish neighborhood and now the black neighborhood.) In the fall when I moved to Queens, almost half my class supported Nixon in Queens compared to the almost uniform democrats in Chicago. I would say that the Chicagoans in my class had been in America a generation longer than many of the kids in my class in Queens. The older the immigration the stronger the tendency to be liberal and to vote democratic. those whose parents came after the war were far more likely to vote for Nixon.
Of course 68 was the year of the teachers strike and the time magazine cover posing blacks against Jews. I was interested in politics and read more than most 13 year olds, but when Rabbi Mandel, a young American born teacher said that the Jews might have to leave america soon, I scoffed. Maybe in 50 years, picking a number out of my hat. No, 5 or 10 years he said. Rabbi Mandel was influenced by the times and had lived all his life in New York. I had lived in Winnipeg and Chicago and the Kahane attitude was pretty new to me.
I think Gordis imbibed the Kahane attitude of “it can happen here”. I think any move away from the security of America to the insecurity and change and unfamiliarity of Israel will involve some myth making and limited common sense in order to justify a move that is against the human tendency of seeking comfort and instead putting ideology first, it’s unusual and requires all sorts of self justifications. sour grapes sort of thing.
Also: America has been very open to assimilationists from the git go, although Groucho’s daughter could not wade up to her knees and who was more assimlationist than groucho, despite his urban tone and occasional yiddish.
but the assimilationist who’s eager to blend in, will have a different frame of mind than the Jew who is interested in what it means to be a Jew.
oren and gordis became conscious of their Jewishness in the aftermath of Kahane, when the Shoah was very recent, and they didn’t flee to the world of christmas trees, but instead embraced Jewishness. unfortunately their Jewishness involved a dose of paranoia. I’d argue that the madeline albright lites, who have tossed judaism onto the ash heap have internalized the paranoia, ethnically self cleansed. and though the 1968 kahane paranoia was not real, i would not depend on the assimilated for my understanding of american jewry nor my understanding of david duke, nor for my understanding of donald trump and certainly not for my understanding of groucho marx or zionism.
Source Article from http://mondoweiss.net/2017/08/safer-israel-because/
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