The Algemeiner, via Mosaic, Jewish Survivors and Their Progeny Against Israel

The phenomenon of Jews speaking out against other Jews and the State of Israel is not new.  1,600 years ago the sages who composed the parts of the "shemoneh esrei," the 18 benedictions said three times a day by Jews at prayer, added a prayer inveighing God to act against, in my prayer book, "traducers."

That word blew my little mind as a 12-year old because I didn't have enough sense to look it up in the dictionary or the context in which the prayer was added to seek protection from them.  Loosely translated, a traducer is a heretic.  But, when added to the prayer book it was designed to protect the Jews from those would inform the Roman authorities of the Jews' secret prayer services.  In essence, they were rats who wished for the destruction of the then-existing Jewish community.

Edward Alexander's column in the Algemeiner reissued by Mosaic points out

The Jewish enemies of Israel, if they are sufficiently profligate in the expenditure of claptrap, often come to the aid of her defenders.

In this case, the enemies of those Jews claiming to be

“Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors” and also “friends of survivors,” “friend of many survivors,” “cousins of survivors,” “cousins of victims of Nazis in Ukraine,” “the great niece of an uncle who shot himself,” “spouse of hidden child,” and “relative of victims”  

have taken out full page newspaper ads to protest Israel's war against Hamas and to equate Israel with the Nazis.  Lovely.

Jews?  Maybe, maybe not.  As quoted by Alexander, the question has been answered by

the Hebrew novelist Yosef Haim Brenner when he said that “A Jew is someone with Jewish grandchildren.”

Read the full article in Mosaic here.

What do you think?

Stephen M. Flatow