America At 250: Can We Save The Last, Best Hope?

The 250th anniversary of American independence is an opportunity to restore pride in America’s past and confidence in its future. Restoring that pride and confidence is critical to our future.

For many years, I spoke in my shul on the Shabbat closest to July 4. My theme was how America provided more opportunity and freedom for us to live and prosper as proud Jews and loyal Americans than any country in the history of the Diaspora.

Those words were true when I said them. But whether they are still true today or will continue to be true in the future is highly questionable.

For the first time in history, more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than with Israel. The mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population in the world was cheered as he proclaimed that the largest source of our problems is the dark money from the “monsters” at AIPAC. The three candidates he supported won clear victories over respected opponents. Jews, who represent 10% of the city’s population, are victims of 60% of the hate crimes. Antisemitism is rampant in the media and the press. The president, who was proclaimed the best friend Israel ever had, has thrown Israel under the bus, providing Iran with billions of dollars as part of a deal that is far worse than the one Barack Obama signed in 2015. Until recently, support for Israel was the only issue on which Democrats and Republicans agreed. Now, calls for ending U.S. support of Israel are gaining bipartisan support.

It has been consistently shown that there is a clear correlation between people’s perception of American history and their opinions about Jews and Israel. People who believe that the United States has provided more freedom and opportunity for more people than any country in the history of the world are likely to admire Israel as a country that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust to build a free, prosperous, and powerful society based on the timeless values of Jewish heritage. Those who believe that America was built by racist, white, colonialist settlers who stole the land of the Native Americans and enslaved the Africans are likely to view Israel as a country of racist, white, colonialist settlers who stole the land and are committing “genocide” against the Palestinians.

The view of America as a racist country has always been out there. Many of the people who promoted it were Jews. But the view of America as a beacon of liberty held greater sway. Slavery was seen not as the essence of America’s story but as a violation of our ideals. History told of how America moved toward more freedom and more opportunity for more people. This was expressed by Martin Luther King when he said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

In this historiography, the Jew who fled from the pogroms, lived in the tenements, worked in the sweatshops, and succeeded in building a better life for himself and his family was a heroic figure.

In the wake of the protest movements of the 1960s, the view of America as a racist, imperialist power became more prevalent, especially in academia, to the point where anyone who disagreed with that view became labeled as a “racist,” an accusation that could easily end a career.

According to this historiography, America was founded on the basis of the white oppressor class enriching itself by oppressing “people of color.” The achievements of the Founding Fathers were negated because many of them owned slaves. The Jewish immigrant who succeeded in building a better life for himself and his family came to be seen as a scion of “white privilege.” Success was achieved by being part of the white oppressor class. Others were victims whose path to success was blocked by racism and bigotry. The only way to achieve justice was by bringing down the power structure.

The story of Israel runs counter to this narrative. It shows how Holocaust survivors and refugees from Arab countries, through hard work, resilience, perseverance, values, and faith, overcame a legacy of persecution to build a successful modern state.

Twenty years ago, I had a private conversation with the head of a Washington think tank who warned that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were donating huge sums to create Middle East studies departments at elite institutions to promote a narrative that Israel stole the land from the Palestinians.

The professors promoting this narrative educated the next generation of leaders in government, education, media, business, and finance. They married the narrative of America as a nation of white, colonialist settlers who stole the land from Native Americans and enslaved the Africans to the Palestinian narrative.

Zionism, proclaimed a form of racism by the UN, was portrayed as a movement of white, colonialist settlers who stole land from the Palestinians. We were aided by Europeans and Americans who were guilt-ridden by the Holocaust but did not want Jews living among them. The solution was to steal the land from the Palestinians and dump the Jews there, while Palestinians were forced to live in squalor in refugee camps. Zionists and Jews became the ultimate white oppressors and Palestinians the ultimate righteous victims. Their violent struggle against “apartheid” is a legitimate pursuit of justice. Israel fighting back is “genocide.”

This narrative dominates academia and the media. Today’s high school and elementary school teachers have been trained in this narrative. Together with the media, they are passing it on to a new generation of American youth.

During the 1930s and ’40s, the America First movement, led by Charles Lindbergh, opposed American assistance to the Allies as World War II approached. Many of its supporters were people who thought what was happening in Europe was terrible but that it wasn’t our fight. Many others claimed that the Jews instigated the war and were working to get America entangled in a war on behalf of world Jewry. This narrative was largely discredited by World War II and the Holocaust but still persisted. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, the noted conservative commentator Pat Buchanan claimed that Israel’s “amen corner” in the United States was leading the drumbeat for war.

When Zohran Mamdani proved that antisemitism could be a winning political platform, right-wing antisemitism came out from under the wraps. The Iran War has given perfect fodder for Tucker Carlson and others to cast Jews as warmongers.

Not long ago, the only thing Democrats and Republicans agreed on was support for Israel. Left-wingers now believe that Israel is a racist, apartheid state and that successful Jews in America are scions of white privilege. Right-wingers blame Israel and its supporters for a war that risks American lives and is devastating the global economy.

A people that views its past with contempt will come to view its future with despair. Polls show that 70% of Americans no longer believe in the American Dream. It was once possible for people without college degrees to get well-paying jobs in manufacturing. Computers and the global economy have destroyed many of those jobs. Forty-three percent of college graduates are underemployed. This means that PhDs from Harvard are pouring coffee at Starbucks while saddled with student loans they cannot afford to pay. Many families cannot afford such basics as housing and health care. With the growth of AI, even more jobs will fall by the wayside.

There have been times much worse than these. What our parents’ and grandparents’ generation had was a sense of pride in America’s past and a belief in the future. When FDR summoned them to a “rendezvous with destiny,” they responded. They overcame the Great Depression and defeated the Nazis in World War II.

Hand in hand with contempt for America’s past comes a loss of faith in the institutions that are the bedrock of a free society: representative government and the rule of law.

People who are unsuccessful, who feel that they are not getting what they expected and are entitled to, love to hear that it is someone else’s fault. As establishment politicians failed to address the real needs of the population, the public became receptive to the appeal of demagogues, whether it is Donald Trump blaming illegal aliens, Bernie Sanders blaming the “billionaire class,” or Mamdani blaming the Jews.

As has happened so many times in our history, Jews have become a convenient scapegoat. The reason you don’t have health care is because of all the money the U.S. sends to racist, apartheid Israel. You can’t afford to pay the rent because of the greedy Jewish landlords. The cost of living is skyrocketing because the Jews launched a war that led to the closing of the Straits of Hormuz.

For Jews to be safe in America, we need to rekindle a sense of pride in America’s past. We need to reject the narrative that America was founded on the basis of white supremacism. Many will point out that it is true that we stole land from the Native Americans and enslaved the Africans, and we can’t run away from the truth. They are right. The way we treated Native and African Americans is a shameful part of our legacy. It does not define our legacy.

Our Jewish heritage has a message for how America can recover pride in its past. The Tanach does not hide the failings of its heroes. Their greatness lies in that people with many of the same faults and desires that we have were able to overcome them and achieve spiritual and temporal achievements beyond anything we can imagine.

Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah railed against the idolatry, promiscuity, and injustice of their times because they were a betrayal of our ideals and values. They also spoke of a glorious future that awaits us if we are true to those ideals and values.

The civil rights movement in America succeeded, in large part, because it was led by clergy who understood that Biblical message. They denounced slavery and segregation because they were an affront to the values that made America great. They waved American flags as they marched for jobs and justice. Martin Luther King did not reject the Declaration of Independence because it was written by a slaveholder. He embraced it as he spoke of his dream of an America that would “rise up and live out the full meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is an opportunity to restore the Declaration of Independence as our lodestar as a nation. It is a document written by a slaveholder that laid the ideological foundation for a nation based on the principles of liberty and justice for all. We have remorse for failing to fully live up to those ideals because we as a people are so much better than that. At our best, we have provided and will continue to provide more freedom and more opportunity to more people than any country in the history of the world.

There is no future for Jews in an America that views its past with contempt and its future with despair.

It is up to us to use this 250th anniversary to work with our fellow Americans to restore an America that looks to its past with pride and its future with confidence. An America that will support Israel and be a safe haven for Jews for generations to come. An America that Lincoln described as “the last, best hope of earth.”