Since Abraham, forefather of Judaism smashed all the idols in his father’s lucrative idol showcase business which consisted of wooden deities, fertility gods, big and small idols promising provisions, as well as idols that assured health and wealth, this was the precise time when Abraham decided that there is no man-made visible god, but one who dwells up above, in the Celestial Heavens, the God that promised to protect and demanded of his Chosen People loyalty, humanity, wisdom and above all knowledge of their past history.
As time was overlapping one another, his people obeyed and disobeyed, were loyal and betrayed Him, stuck by Him through thick and thin not to mention those who abandoned him altogether.
Throughout the ages His chosen people suffered outrageous fortune persecutions, executions, inquisitions, expulsions, exile, pogroms, blood libels, used as scapegoats, and finally hell on earth, the very first beastly brutality in the history of mankind – the gas-chambers, obliterating a nation’s six million innocent souls.
Assimilation prevailed and many Jews decided to abandon not only their god but their history, their culture, their tradition, customs and rituals, their system of values, ideologies, their Jewish languages, their music and art, their capacity to retain and sustain their cultural Jewish heritage.
Now, living among Jews in New York for many years, I enjoyed their capacity for Jewish culture in the form of Yiddish schools, Yiddish theater, Yiddish radio WEVD, YIDDISH newspapers, educational facilities where every subject was thought in Yiddish, including Jewish history, biblical history, world literature, psychology, music and art leading up to the graduate studies at the Jewish Teachers Seminary of New York in the forties, fifties and sixties. The Jewish Teachers Seminary closed its doors in the seventies, not only because of lack of funding, but the disinterest among the American Jews in their own Jewish roots, abandoning the future of their Yiddish scholars, historians, teachers, librarians in institutions like the Yivo (Jewish Scientific Institute), Yiddish radio, Yiddish Theater, Yiddish press, Yiddish publishing houses, Yiddish concerts and lectures, all of the above in time it all disappeared.
There came a time at the end of the 20th century, when all this legacy came to a standstill, American Jews assimilated, getting rid of their Jewish names, Yiddish/Hebrew books as well as emptying their shelves of this vast Jewish literary legacy.
South Florida, where millions of the elderly Jewish folks from the big cities settled, turned Florida into a vast, empty and dry Jewish desert, the Jewish population in Florida reminds me of a Jewish disease consisting of long term Jewish memory loss. Their future generations are deprived of this vast Jewish legacy. Lately It has become stylish in America to search for their ancestry, dig into their DNA to find out who they really are.
Try to ask one of them:
“Do you have a self identity?” They say:
“I’m an American.”
And then, we lucked out, the State of Israel came onto the scene:
“We’re very proud having a Jewish State, so we ask the Israelis:
What does an Israeli mean? You know there are Israeli Arabs, Israeli Christians, Israeli Beduins, which one are you?”
It’s an Israeli Jew who forgot who he is, he is actually an Israeli Jew, I am emphasizing Jew, living in a Jewish State. I don’t know what prompted the Prime Minister of Israel Natanyahu suddenly to wake up and decide to call Israel a Jewish State. Nu! Nu! You should have heard the “Vayitsaku!” the tumult around that decision, Israel’s neighbors and most of the “Jew-Loving” world let their voices rise:
“What do you mean a Jewish State, there are many other nations, religions and races who share the Holy Land…”
The Ashkenazi Jews and especially their offspring, abandoned their two thousand year old history, the language and culture of their elders and began emulating American Judaism.
On the other hand the Sephardic Jews are more accessible:
“They spoke, Aramaic, Arabic, Yuhorish and Mugrabi.”
(Northern African Arabic spoken by Moroccan Jews).
America is the quintessential melting-pot, the entire American population speaks primarily English, whereas the Europeans spoke and still do communicate in several languages which enriches their lives, as well as acquaints them with neighboring cultures, traditions, music and art…
America is still a young country, American education abandoned in their curriculum the American Indians, slavery, racism and antisemitism, the Holocaust which should lead up to ethics and morals and primarily – human behavior.
It seems that you cannot teach human behavior without experiencing deprivation of necessities of life, devastation. America is overfed, over-indulged while isolated from family, human and societal interaction, suffering from loneliness, lack of interest, as well as spiritual and cultural fulfillment. God help us.
- Judaism’s Meltdown or The End Result of the American Melting Pot – by Miriam Hoffman - September 17, 2024