"Worst case...in four years time we'll replace him"

It is without anger or condescension but with absolute perplexity that I throw my arms up and ask of those 21 percent of Jews who supported Trump, “What were you thinking?"

Provided to MeidasTouch by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

The following article was provided to MeidasTouch by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman. Please consider subscribing to his Substack, “In This Moment: A Rabbi's Notebook,” below:

Somehow this video clip, a sketch from the popular Israeli comedy series, “Yehudim Ba’im,” “The Jews are Coming,” fits this moment, though it was produced eight years ago. It depicts a conversation at a cafe among assimilated German Jews just before Hitler came to power. They are discussing who they will be voting for. Spoiler alert: It’s Hitler, and they add at the end, “Worst case...in four years time we'll replace him.”

Save this clip and play it at your Thanksgiving table. Great ice breaker!

Incredibly, there were groups of Jews who voted for Hitler. According to Wikipedia:

The Association of German National Jews (German: Verband nationaldeutscher Juden) was a German Jewish organization during the Weimar Republic and the early years of Nazi Germany that eventually came out in support of Adolf Hitler.

It primarily attracted members from the anticommunist middle class, small business owners, self-employed professionals such as physicians and lawyers, national conservatives, and nationalist World War I veterans, many of whom believed that Nazi antisemitism was only a rhetorical tool used to "stir up the masses."^[1][2][3]

In 1935, the organization was outlawed, and its founder and leader Max Naumann was imprisoned by the Gestapo.^[4] Most other members and their families were murdered in the Holocaust.

The Israeli skit is both hilarious and terrifying. It shows how people will go to great lengths to justify choices that seem to be radically unwise, despite mountains of evidence pointing to dangerous consequences. Hitler actually ran on a plan to expropriate land from Jewish real estate owners. His writings were filled with antisemitic rants. But Hitler never gained a majority of German voters, and many of those he did gain were repelled by his antisemitism. Still, as the US Holocaust Museum website explains, “Although antisemitism may not have gained the Nazi Party huge mass support, it also didn’t scare off large numbers of voters.”

Turns out historians have discovered Hitler’s supporters were “low propensity” voters. The Anne Frank House website explains, “The Nazis focused on voters from all walks of life, rather than on just one group, such as the workers or Catholics. They also attracted many people who had never voted before.”

What caused large swaths of voters to be radicalized, including some well-to-do Jewish professionals? It’s confounding and counterintuitive, because European Jews could look back on a long history of bad things happening to Jews when charismatic strongmen take power. All we know is that the joke going around was that this Association of German National Jews would end their meetings by giving the Nazi salute and shouting, "Down with us!"

For so many, the past two weeks have been filled with questions about how pro-democracy Americans could have missed the signals from the other half of the country. I think we need to turn that question on its head. It is without anger or condescension but with absolute perplexity that I throw my arms up and ask of those 21 percent of Jews who supported Trump, “What were you thinking?”

I really get it with regard to antisemitism on campuses and the ambivalence over American policy (and Israeli too) in Gaza. I understand the attraction to Orthodox Jews of the right wing pro-settler agenda, though I think annexation would be catastrophic for Israel.

But what about here? Here. Far right pro-Nazi hate groups are about to celebrate their own Thanksgiving feasts, with dreams of prior Harvest Festivals dancing in their heads. Will any pro-Trump Jews in this country be saying, “Who knew?” when the next Charlottesville happens or, God forbid, the next mass shooting of Jews in the name of The Great Replacement Theory - and once again President Trump does not strongly and unequivocally condemn it?

People have focused on his words post Charlottesville, “very fine people on both sides” and the moral equivalence implied. Whatever the context, parsing his language begs the point. Forget the words. Where were the actions? After that incident, Trump, of all people, needed to come down hard on those neo-Nazi groups. This was his chance to show that he wanted to be president for everyone and protect his people. He failed miserably, then and later on. And no one expects things to be different this time around.

But I guess that’s fine and dandy for the Verband nationaldeutscher Juden.

I ask my fellow Jews who voted for Trump: Do you believe he will respond to the next Charlottesville as harshly as he has promised to respond to leftist unrest? And where does the greatest danger to Jewish lives reside? In Israel, it’s from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. In Europe, it’s Islamists and the left. But here it’s the far right. We can’t pick our poison. The poison picks us. Here, it’s the far right. True, I’m not comfortable wearing a kippah near Columbia because of far-left protesters. But there’s an armed guard outside every large synagogue because of the far-right zealots with the manifestos and automatic rifles. Which one is worse?

If Trump’s Jewish supporters believe there will not be any more Charlottesvilles, I pray they are right. I only hope these next four years go by quickly and without a single hate crime. But if they really believe we will have someone in the White House who will truly stand up to all forms of antisemitism, including from Hitler’s self proclaimed disciples, simply because he has some Jewish advisors and grandchildren, they might as well pull up a chair at that Berlin cafe.

Joshua Hammerman's Substack is entitled, "In This Moment: A Rabbi's Notebook." He's a celebrated rabbi, award-winning journalist, blogger and author of Embracing Auschwitz: Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism that Takes the Holocaust Seriously, and Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi - Wisdom for Untethered Times. Credits include the NY Times Magazine, Washington Post and a host of Jewish and general publications, including the N.Y. Jewish Week, where he was a regular columnist for 25 years.

Subscribe to Rabbi Joshua Hammerman’s Substack, “In This Moment: A Rabbi's Notebook,” here.