(Jewish Group) Jewish Americans feel less secure amidst the era of President Trump

Jews around the world will usher in a new year this week as they gather in synagogues like they have through history, sometimes amidst expulsions, inquisitions, invasions, pogroms, and a Holocaust. Their experience in the United States, however, has been different for many decades.

It was captured succinctly and elegantly by George Washington in a letter that he wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport. Our first president claimed, “For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” But for this new year, his assurances seem fragile. Here are numerous reasons why.

President Trump said there were “very fine people” on both sides of the neonazi rally in Charlottesville. He suggested to a room full of Jews that they have bribed politicians in this country. He tweeted out an image of Hillary Clinton across this pile of cash next to the Star of David and the phrase “most corrupt candidate ever!” with their heated race.

He released a campaign ad featuring the faces of powerful Jews with a voiceover claiming they are part of a “global power structure” that has “robbed our working class” and “stripped our country of its wealth.” He praised followers of QAnon, the viral conspiracy theory that generates rabid antisemitic views. He tweeted out comparisons between himself and the “king of Israel” and even the “second coming of God.”

He has accused American Jews of showing disloyalty to Israel by voting for Democrats. He started to ramble in remarks at a manufacturing plant in Michigan and talked about Henry Ford, whose antisemitism had been virulent, and said he had “good bloodlines.” Simply saying that Ford had revolutionized the automobile industry would have been fine.

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