By Elizabeth Pipko
I was not raised a Republican or a Democrat, I was raised a Jew. I was not raised with
conservative or liberal values, but with Jewish values. And I was not raised with right leaning or left leaning principles, only with Jewish principles.
I am guided in many ways by what George Washington said in his Farewell Address in
1796, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion, and morality are indispensable support…”
My religion affects most aspects of my life. In one way or another, how I think, pray,
work, and so many other things are all affected by my faith. In addition to that, my religion
certainly affects my politics, however it never works the other way around. I am guided by my faith when it comes to the decisions that I make and the causes that I stand for. This is something that was taught to me as a student in my Orthodox Jewish elementary school, and by the Rabbis in my synagogue, and it is something that I hope will stay with me throughout my life.
This isalso something I witnessed in others as I was growing up.
Politics was always secondary. Certainly, there were people who cared about politics
more than others, but it was never the guiding factor in their lives. Instead it took a backseat to the values that they let guide them through everyday decisions both big and small. Unfortunately, that is no longer what I see around me.
Now it is our principles that have taken a back seat. Now it is the core values system that
I was brought up on that I see being pushed aside by those more focused on different political agendas that are sure to change with the times. I see anti-Semitism being deliberately ignored by those who just yesterday were advocating against hatred of any kind. I see a mostly silent media when it comes to the blatant anti-Semitism on the rise around the world. And I see a country that
has been through so much in recent months, and yet cannot find itself able to come together for
something as simple and ingrained in American Tradition as to condemn an anti-Semitic social
media post praising the words of Hitler by a famous American athlete.
We all saw the social media posts by NFL player DeSean Jackson last week. He posted
two images to his Instagram story with fabricated quotes (attributed to Adolph Hitler) on the plan
by the white Jews to “blackmail America.” The posts, with highlighted text, also stated: “[They]
will extort America, their plan for world domination won't work if the Negroes know who they
are. The white citizens of America will be terrified to know that all this time they've been
mistreating and discriminating and lynching the Children of Israel."
And despite the outcry I was expecting to follow these posts, the world was mostly silent.
Especially disappointing at a time when it really seemed like the entire world was genuinely
focused on fighting hatred.
I know that anti-Semitism exists, and I will never shy away from pointing it out. And
specifically, because of the attacks that I get when I do point to anti-Semitism around the world,
I will always stand against other forms of hatred as well. But as I sat around last week and waited
for the uproar that I thought would begin because of these posts, and the subsequent posts by
others actually defending DeSean Jackson’s actions, I looked around and nobody was there.
I sat and watched as the few remaining Holocaust survivors on this earth came out to
explain why these posts were in fact not just stupid, but incredibly dangerous. And I watched as
they stood, much like they once did, alone, in a world now too afraid to condemn certain kinds of
hatred because of the political ramifications, just 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
I think we have officially gone too far.
We are living in a time where people view their own opinions about politics as their
personal religion. A time where people will sacrifice any standards they may have once had in
order to promote a political belief, no matter who gets hurt in the process.
And it is a lack of appropriate response by our establishment and our media to the vile
posts of DeSean Jackson, the despicable comparisons of different American politicians to
Adolph Hitler, the countless celebrity interactions with known anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, and
numerous other examples that people were too afraid to speak against that directly lead to a rise
in anti-Semitism and other hate crimes in our country, as well as distortion of our history.
I have watched for years as people tossed around the term “Nazi” at me and at others, not
only cheapening everything that millions of people were put through during World War II, but
totally erasing the entire history of the Holocaust and of the Jewish people. In another despicable
example, this weekend I came across a social media post comparing Doctor Fauci to Josef
Mengele, one of the most vile and disgusting people to ever walk this earth.
It is not even that we have turned politics into our religion. In fact, it is much worse than
that. What some have done is abandoned religion completely, despite it being a founding
principle of this country, for our (sometimes vile) politics. We, as a society, have lost our
religion and destroyed our values; and possibly even more significant, completely given up our
moral compass; in turn leading us to where we are now, as George Washington would probably
tell us, in desperate need of political prosperity.
