Smotrich parade row exposes deep divide among American Jews - opinion

Really? Is this the level to which America has sunk? Suggesting that people with whom American Jews disagree should have no place in America’s synagogues and events?

Ben-Ami goes on to say: “Smotrich and others who are actively engaged in expanding settlements and fueling chaos in the West Bank should be sanctioned, isolated, and shunned, not celebrated in our streets.” Wow!

There are people there who, in order to prove their point, have drawn parallels to other foreign nationals who have been kept out of the country.

Of course, any country has the right to deny entry to any person who, in its estimation, poses a potential security threat. Historically, the US has denied entry to Russians, Palestinians, South American drug lords, and others who are suspected of wanting to cause havoc on the streets of America. Israel has done the same with people seeking entry who, in the estimation of the local security services, pose a potential threat to the Israeli population.

However, entry is normally not denied to people just because they think differently from the government in power, or about any issue of importance.

For sure, J Street supporters’ vision of what Israel should be doing differs from that of, say, members of the Zionist Organization of America. However, there is no reason in the world that, in the US, with its tradition of free speech, there should be any negative tags attached to either group or those whose views may be somewhere between both extremes.

Perhaps, part of the discomfort and shame is because American Jewry is fearful of its future. Given the exponential rise in antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents since October 7, it is understandable and logical that there is reason to be afraid.

We, who live here in Israel, are also fearful of the future, perhaps for different reasons. However, it is not 1933 all over again, neither here nor there. Here we have a prosperous economy with a military capable of protecting us. It does not mean we are invincible. But it does mean that if we go down, we will go down fighting and not as lambs to the slaughter.

In America the Jewish community is economically prosperous, politically influential, with a lot more friends and supporters than enemies, even if the enemies are noisier.

Having said that, all of us, both here and abroad, need to keep our balance in a world where the ground is constantly shifting under our feet.

Our biggest asset is the unity of the Jewish people, and we all need to do whatever we can to protect that unity and not be ashamed of that fact.

With that in mind, we can find ways to constructively and respectfully disagree with each other, remembering, as history has demonstrated time and time again, that our enemies think of us as one people, so we have to think of ourselves in the same way, else we become weakened and ripe for conquest.

For those of us who are significantly closer to the end of our lives than the beginning, we had the good fortune, from 1945 to 2015, to experience life in the best 70 years for the Jewish people since the fall of the Second Temple. Nevertheless, it was, sad to say, an aberration in history rather than the norm, so we have to hang tough and do so together in the face of the current adversity.

Rabbi lord Jonathan Sacks commented: “Jewish history is not merely a story of Jews enduring catastrophes that might have spelled the end to less tenacious groups. It is that after every disaster, Jews renewed themselves. They discovered some hitherto hidden reservoir of spirit that fueled new forms of collective self-expression as the carriers of God’s message to the world.”

That is our legacy and what has propelled us from generation to generation, from experience to experience, even from slavery to freedom.