Here’s a posting by popular novelist Michael Chabon (author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a fictionalized version of the early days of the superhero comic book industry that is likely his best book; I’ve read his Yiddish Policeman’s Union set in an alternate history in which Ashkenazi Jews rescued from Europe live on an Alaskan island; it wasn’t bad) and his wife Ayelet Waldman:
AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR FELLOW JEWS
To our fellow Jews, in the United States, in Israel, and around the world:
We know that, up to now, some of you have made an effort to reserve judgment on the question of whether or not President Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, and to give him the benefit of the doubt. …
Yesterday, in a long and ragged off-the-cuff address to the press corps, President Trump told us. During a moment that white supremacist godfather Steve Bannon has apparently described as a “defining” one for this Administration, the President expressed admiration and sympathy for a group of white supremacist demonstrators who marched through the streets of Charlottesville, flaunting Swastikas and openly chanting, along with vile racist slogans, “Jews will not replace us!” Among those demonstrators, according to Trump, were “a lot” of “innocent” and “very fine people.”
So, now you know. …
Now he’s coming after you. The question is: what are you going to do about it? If you don’t feel, or can’t show, any concern, pain or understanding for the persecution and demonization of others, at least show a little self-interest. At least show a little sechel. At the very least, show a little self-respect.
To Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, and our other fellow Jews currently serving under this odious regime: We call upon you to resign; and to the President’s lawyer, Michael D. Cohen: Fire your client.
To Sheldon Adelson and our other fellow Jews still engaged in making the repugnant calculation that a hater of Arabs must be a lover of Jews, or that money trumps hate, or that a million dollars’ worth of access can protect you from one boot heel at the door: Wise up.
To the government of Israel, and our fellow Jews living there: Wise up.
To Jared Kushner: You have one minute to do whatever it takes to keep the history of your people from looking back on you as among its greatest traitors, and greatest fools; that minute is nearly past. To Ivanka Trump: Allow us to teach you an ancient and venerable phrase, long employed by Jewish parents and children to one another at such moments of family crisis: I’ll sit shiva for you. Try it out on your father; see how it goes.
Among all the bleak and violent truths that found confirmation or came slouching into view amid the torchlight of Charlottesville is this: Any Jew, anywhere, who does not act to oppose President Donald Trump and his administration acts in favor of anti-Semitism; any Jew who does not condemn the President, directly and by name, for his racism, white supremacism, intolerance and Jew hatred, condones all of those things.
To our fellow Jews, in North America, in Israel, and around the world: What side are you on?
Sincerely,
Michael Chabon
Ayelet Waldman
Berkeley, California, 8/16/17
I wrote about Chabon at some length in 2010 in VDARE, in response to Chabon’s lengthy diatribe about the “stereotype” that Jews tend to have higher IQs on average. My conclusion:
Allow me to suggest a completely different moral. The clear evidence of higher average Ashkenazi IQ implies that American Jews should take to heart an admirable bit of 20th Century Jewish wisdom, one with which an expert on comic books like Chabon ought to be familiar—Stan Lee's line in Spider-Man: "With great power comes great responsibility."If, say, as reported by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, Jews make up over 1/3rd of the 2009 Forbes 400, and if Jews make up half of the 2009 Atlantic 50 of most influential political pundits, then that implies that Jews, owing in part to their higher average cognitive functioning, should embrace greater responsibility.
Instead of viewing themselves as beleaguered victims, they should admit that they now comprise an elite within America—and that they should apply to themselves an updated version of the old cavalier concept of noblesse oblige.
