Nadene Goldfoot
We already know that Nazis thought that Jews were an inferior race that needed to be removed from society. Quite a few Christian churches have been involved with this attitude ever since Jews were accused of killing Christ. I had a personal experience once in a small eastern Oregon town when I visited a church with a "friend," and the Preacher spoke, looking directly at me, of all the reasons Jews were bad, going on and on the whole time until I was able to get out of there, something I haven't ever forgotten. It was a traumatic experience. My "friend" saw nothing wrong, smiling through the whole experience, as I remember.
Because of Hitler's frenzy against Jews, I grew up hearing that we were not a race but a religion. We were the same color as other white people. Most of us had dark hair while a few others had lighter hair, even blonde on occasion. Some even stood out with red hair, and a lot had curly hair.
The Soviet Union's politics demanded that the people give up their religion so have done everything to wipe out any religion. It's a country of atheists. In the 1970s Jews were put in prison for learning Hebrew. My Hebrew teacher, Sarah in Haifa, Israel, told us about communicating with a man who would later make aliyah to Israel, and that she was teaching Hebrew to in her personal letters, hoping he wouldn't be caught.
Gessen was listed as Jewish on her birth certificate, because she was born in the Soviet Union to parents who themselves were listed as Jewish on their birth certificates. They felt they weren't religiously observant. It was looked upon as a race. They were already becoming assimilated Jews as it was.
That's what has happened to American Jews. It's natural that Jews have wanted to be wanted, like, by their neighbors and peers. Alan M. Dershowitz wrote his book, THE VANISHING AMERICAN JEW-in search of Jewish identity for the next century in 1997.
"During Einstein's era of 1879 to 1955, anti-Semitism was common in the USA and had its own cohesive force among Jews. Jews were excluded from universities, clubs, gyms, and professions." Though we are now 2% of the population, far more were meeting the criteria of attending medical school but couldn't get in because of the quota system.
The difference between Jews and Blacks was great but they were both treated just as badly in the USA. Jews came from an ancient Middle East where writing and reading were invented along with trading, and most Blacks came from undeveloped Africa who remained connected to their different religion, some of which had been converted to Islam. Here we thought there were 3 lines of Jews, the Ashkenazi who after 70 CE's burning of Jerusalem wound up in Germany speaking Yiddish; the Sephardi of Spain who spoke Ladino and the Mizrachi of the Middle East. Now we have found the 4th group of African Jews as well, both North Africa and Central Africa.
Sometimes this anti-Semitism was the official policy of the US government, as typified by the refusal to accept larger numbers of European Jewish immigrants at the Evian conference on Jewish immigration from Nazi-occupied countries in 1938. The first concerted effort to find homes for those displaced by Nazi aggression came in July of 1938, when 32 nations sent representatives to Evian, France, on the urging of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Germany had just recently annexed Austria, and it was obvious to all involved that many thousands of people—primarily Jews—would soon need new homes, if they did not already have one. As TIME noted that month, the conference got off to a bad start: though the opening speeches were lofty, it took a full two days to elect a president of the conference, as each attendee feared that his name would be thus linked with what would likely be failed attempt to solve the problem.
Or anti-Semitism showed up by the refusal to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz in 1945 to prevent Jews from being transported to the death camp. Sometimes this anti-Semitism was part of everyday social contact, such as that described in the popular novel and subsequent move, GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT.
Here, Gentile Philip and his son took on the role of Jews and suffered from anti-Semitic remarks with the little boy being called a "dirty Jew" by his schoolmates. They were of the same race as their peers, but seen as a religion, to them an unacceptable religion, not only different from theirs but had harmed their Son of a G-d himself. This is how anti-Islamists see the difference between Jews and Muslims and how churches support Muslims but are against Jews.
Just as the Greek Jews started assimilating in biblical days, so have American and other Jews of the world. I'm so pleased to find pockets of orthodox Jews keeping our religion. Israel is doing just that, knowing who they are. Religion is taught in their public schools. They are living in the very places that are described and talked about in the "Old Testament", our Tanakh. This is why they must keep their 80% Jewish population to 20% others.
For a long time, Jews were told they were a religion, for it is a religion in contrast with Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. We were told emphatically by our parents that we were not a race, like Hitler was saying. Now I'm finding everyone accepting that we are indeed a race. I'll accept that we are a people with the unique religion of Judaism and who is related to each other more often than not to some degree. Our religion also has standards of who we are. We are Jewish if our mothers were Jewish. If our mothers weren't born Jewish, they would have been converted to Judaism. I certainly have an abundance of 4th and 5th cousins.
Resource:
Book: Legacy-A Genetic History of the Jewish People by Harry Ostrer
https://time.com/4030159/evian-conference/
