For the diaspora, America has long been seen as the last safe place outside Israel. This is one reason why the recent shooting in Washington, DC and the campus unrest have been so disturbing. The Jewish community in America feels menaced by the growing anti-Jewish mentality inculcated in the universities and now rife in the graduate-employment hubs of the media and the culture industries.
This cuts against America’s historical grain. The US has long been unique in its attitudes towards Jews. Our first president, George Washington, welcomed Jews in a way that was unthinkable in the Europe of his time. Writing to the Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island in 1790, Washington went beyond upholding tolerance to promote Jews’ full citizenship as part of ‘their inherent natural rights’. There were outbreaks of anti-Semitism in America in the late 19th century and particularly in the 1930s. But these never reached the horrendous levels seen in Europe or the Middle East.
Today things look far more ominous. Increasingly Jews are being assaulted and demonised even in once congenial places, like Brooklyn, New York City, where both of my parents grew up. It looks like American Jews now face two alternatives: like many Israelis, they can turn inward, and embrace traditional and even chauvinistic Jewish values – or they can seek new, safer places that welcome them.
It seems inevitable that American Jews, as well as the remnants of their European compatriots, will become more orthodox in their orientation. By some estimates, orthodox Jews are set to rise from 12 per cent of all Jews today to close to 30 per cent in the next four decades, while the reform ranks decline by almost half. Two-thirds of Jewish children in the New York area are already orthodox.
Unlike the liberal Jewish rabbinate, orthodox Jews are less concerned with Tikkun Olam (‘healing the world’), than with self-preservation. They look to circle their wagons, as diaspora Jews have done for millennia. They focus on conserving tradition and a sense of community, epitomised by the Chabad movement, which is arguably the most dynamic force in American Jewry.
Chabad welcomes people with little religious training, serves campuses and also operates in far-flung suburban communities. It claims its centres have grown from 168 in 2013 to 257 today. It is planning on investing some $200million in new buildings and, most importantly, has become the place where young people engage with all things Jewish, whether in Florence, Montreal or even the UAE.
Orthodox Jews focus on defending their community. In Los Angeles’ heavily Jewish Pico-Robertson neighbourhood – a community laced with temples, kosher markets and stores selling modest clothes worn by the religiously frum – the orthodox-backed organisation, Hatzolah, provides free security and emergency services. Some of its volunteers come from the ranks of the US military as well as the Israel Defence Forces. They can be seen regularly patrolling this two-square-mile area of LA.
Asked why they do this, a Hatzolah organiser explained that LA Jews are increasingly concerned about their safety. Recent pro-Hamas demonstrations have forced at least one LA synagogue to relocate its services, while others have been vandalised. In November 2023, demonstrators caused significant disruption in the traditionally Jewish Fairfax district.
The LA home owned by Steve Tuchin, president of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, has been attacked with smoke bombs and red paint. And in a particularly bizarre incident, Brian Williams, the city’s deputy mayor for public safety, admitted threatening to plant a bomb in City Hall in protest to the municipality’s refusal to cut ties to Israel.
This strategy of Jewish self-preservation is understandable. But the alignment with the Trumpian right also has its flaws. Many conservative Christians may adore Jewish tradition and embrace Israel, but many other Trumpian figures on the right also flirt with anti-Semitic tropes, with some expressing outright hatred.
The other response to the growing hostility to Jewry in the US is to flee. Many of the cities in which Jews once thrived have issued one-sided denunciations of Israel since Hamas’s pogrom. These include ‘progressive’ cities like Oakland, Chicago, Seattle, Long Beach and Madison, home to the main campus of the University of Wisconsin.
Just as in the past, American Jews are moving away from urban cores – where violence and now anti-Semitism are more obvious. Historian Arthur Hertzberg estimated that between the end of the Second World War and 1956, one-third of all Jews left the urban centers for the suburbs. When you think of Jewish communities, particularly outside orthodoxy, you think not of the Lower East Side but Long Island and Westchester. In LA, Boyle Heights has been supplanted first by the San Fernando Valley and increasingly the Conejo Valley even further from Downtown. In Greater Baltimore today, three-fourths of all Jews live in the suburbs.
The same forces – crime and rising anti-Semitism – have also prompted many Jews to move to the South. Long seen as too conservative and Christian fundamentalist, the South is now the ‘it’ place for Jews, both in terms of basic safety and economic opportunity. Demographer Ira Sheskin notes that while the north-east’s share of US Jews has dropped from 68 per cent in 1955 to 41 per cent today, the South’s share of the US Jewish population has soared from a mere eight per cent in 1955 to 24 per cent. The ‘hot’ cities for Jewish growth include Dallas, Houston and Atlanta, as well as Miami.
More and more Jewish young people are choosing colleges on similar grounds. For generations, the dream of Jewish parents was to send their offspring to the Ivy League, or the great public universities like Berkeley or UCLA. But today, the leading destination for Jewish students is the University of Florida, with the University of Central Florida ranking third.
The reason for this shift is simple. Jewish young people are safer in the South. According to one study ranking universities’ level of hostility toward Jewish students, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and three University of California campuses were among the most hostile. The least hostile environments included Tulane in New Orleans, Washington University in St Louis and five colleges in Florida.
Jews may be in the depths of despair, as their havens throughout the West sometimes seem to be turning into an anti-Zionist, Jew-hating hellscape. But they have hope, too. After all, Jews have survived outside Israel for two millennia by adapting, shifting their locales and their political loyalties to fit changing realities. We may be horrified by recent events. But in the face of those who yearn for our destruction, we will persevere.
Joel Kotkin is a spiked columnist, a presidential fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California, and a senior research fellow at the University of Texas’ Civitas Institute.
