Letter to the Editor: Rabbi Dr. Scott B. Saulson

Letter to the editor,

Dual loyalty.

“All new news is old news happening to new people.”
– Malcolm Muggeridge

Alas, antisemitism, in all its guises, is not new news, and antisemites don’t tire of scapegoating an “old” people, namely, us. Moreover, they seem to have dropped their masks.

On the eve of Purim, they parade their poison in town squares, over the world wide web, on university campuses, and on the political stump. Indeed, we take serious note of the upsurge in the double standards applied to our people hither and yon. The deliberate blurring of lines by which victims are labeled perpetrators while perpetrators are labeled victims. A fragile political climate made more fragile by scurrilous and baseless accusations totally devoid of nuance, rife with vileness and venom.

To wit: “Former President Donald J. Trump accused Jews who vote for Democrats of hating their religion and Israel, reviving and escalating a claim he made as president that Jewish Democrats were disloyal.” —NYT 3/18/24

Donald Trump may be no Haman, but his vitriol is hamanesque in the ears of his courtiers, some of whom take his garbage as gospel and have no clue what makes America great. “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces . . . whose laws are different from those of any other people . . ..” [Esther 3.8]

The old-new accusation: We don’t march in lock step to someone’s drumbeat; we won’t grease someone’s ego. God, forbid we have sechel and chutzpah to determine for ourselves what is in our best interest and in the best interest of Zion, even if it does not accord with the party line promulgated at Mar-a-Lago. As far as I can make out, we Jews, Republicans, Democrats or Independents, vote our values. I would hope that one of those values is a modicum of tolerance.

If so, that tolerance is being imperiled both in Israel and in America. In either case, Jews and Zion are endangered.

Oh, yes. The Book of Esther never suggests that Haman has an antisemitic bone in his body. His scheme to foster a blood bath stemmed from Mordecai’s refusal to feed his egomania.

Rabbi Dr. Scott B. Saulson, Atlanta