I am a Jew. I believe the Torah when it says that all people, Jews and Gentiles alike are created in the image of the divine. That all humanity is endowed with an eternal and perfect soul. I believe our Oral Torah when it says that gentiles are welcomed in the world to come and that a non-Jew who fulfills his obligations in the world will be rewarded just as much as the Jewish high priest.
It is precisely because I believe in the holy nature of humanity, that you are indeed righteous noble souls, that I feel compelled to write to you.
I write this letter to the mainstream American gentiles. Not to all of you, mind. Not to those so blinded by hatred and prejudice that you attack Jews on the streets, in protests, and on college campuses. Nor to those who vocally support them, or who proudly endorse Hamas in its genocide. I don’t speak to the government of America, who has proven time and again to have no love for its own Jewish people.
Instead, I speak to the hordes of good, honest non-Jews which I still believe make up the majority of the population. You who count Jews as your neighbors, as some of your best friends, possibly even as your family. I come to you with a simple question. In the Torah, it’s the first question ever asked. And it’s as timely now as when G-d first asked it to Adam. Where are you?
More recently, a version of this question was asked during the first part of the 20th century. In March 1915, England’s Parliamentary Recruiting Committee published a recruitment poster by Savile Lumley. As the First World War raged, the poster targeted British men who had yet to enlist. The poster had a deceptively simple composition.
It featured a man sitting on an armchair looking out at the viewer with a distant expression. As a boy plays with toy soldiers on the floor near the chair, a girl sits on his lap with a book looking up at her father, and asks the only words that appear on the poster. “Daddy, What Did You Do in the Great War?”
It's a question that all American gentiles should be asking yourselves. October 7th represented the most depraved act of violence since the Holocaust and one of the worst attacks in modern history. It was an event so horrific that it should have shocked the world not because it directly affected them, but because it was fundamentally an attack on our collective humanity.
To call the American leadership’s reaction shameful would be a gross understatement. The policy of the US government by and large has been to blame the victims and empathize with the aggressors. Countless acts by the United States’ leadership seem intended to force Israel into a position not only of being forced to surrender but to accept the blame as the guilty party.
If the government is bad, segments of the citizenry have proven to be even worse. Antisemitism has reached an all-time high in America. College campuses are no longer safe for students. Instead, they have becoming breeding grounds for hate and extremism. Attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions are carried out with appalling regularity, with police and politicians frequently turning a blind eye.
Again, my message is not to the antisemites who carry out these acts of violence. Nor to those who cheer them on. They might be beyond reasoning. Instead, I ask you again, the decent, law-abiding non-Jews of the nation, where are you? Your friends and neighbors under attack and you stay silent.
Your Jews (and I say your Jews because they are your countrymen and your community) are living in fear. I hear reports from my own hometown of Portland Oregon that Jews there are afraid to gather in groups or to attend Jewish events. They are scared to appear outside visibly Jewish. Some are too terrified to leave their houses.
It’s like this all over the country. Today, antisemitic attacks have surged to staggering levels. Statistically, they make up the overwhelming majority of religious hate crimes in the United States.
While you go about your lives, those living beside you are afraid for their very survival. Jews no longer feel safe in America, your nation.
We ask ourselves where you are and why you’re not rising up to help us. Is your blindness ignorance or willful?
After all, we were always there for you. For good or for bad, Jews have been at the forefront of every progressive moment for over the last century. Jews were leaders in the civil rights movement and other struggles for equality. Even today, we make up a disproportionately large number of advocates and activists for social causes.
If there was a movement for inclusivity, diversity, or acceptance, your Jewish friends were there. We rushed to defend every possible oppressed group. But when we were the ones who needed help, suddenly you were nowhere to be found.
For decades you were happy to accept our support. But when it came time to defend us suddenly those ideals that we helped you fight for were the very ideals that so many Americans invoke to claim Jews as their enemy. American Jews must ask, were we ever really your allies, or were we simply warm bodies for your cause?
If you really care about the values you claim to fight for, there will never be a better chance to show it. If you ever wondered what you would do if you were in pre-war Nazi Germany, Jews are facing the worst antisemitism since World War 2. If you wished that you were alive during the civil rights movement, the hatred, harassment, and danger they face make American Jews the minority issue of our times.
This time right now will tell you what you would have done in the past. If you ever felt like, had you lived then, you would have done something, then now is the time to do something. In short dear friend, if you ever read about a historic injustice and asked yourself why nobody did anything, look around you and then look at yourself.
As you stand here inactive, the American people have stuck its Jews three blows. They’re blows made all the harder coming as they do from those Jews would once have sworn were their closest friends.
The first is the violence and hatred Jews believed could never happen in the land of the free. The second is to see so many cheering on this violence, as well as cheering on the horrors committed against their family in Israel.
But the last of these blows is perhaps the harshest to bear. That of knowing that so many of our countrymen respond to these acts, acts which should make all good people shudder with revulsion, not with rage but with yawning apathy.
The fact that there are not tens of thousands of non-Jews taking to the streets to support their friends and fellow citizens when they need it most shows the Jewish community just how little we mean to you after all. Hatred is being allowed to spread in America and other Western countries unchecked because you, the majority choose to enable it.
Yet it’s not even the lack of public outcry that hurts your Jewish friends the most, not the public silence. It’s the personal silence between you and them. When your so-called friends need you the most, why are you not reaching out to them?
For American Jews, your silence is a roar. Hearing nothing from the people we loved, and who they thought loved us. People we respected and for whom we would, and oftentimes have, spoken up for. In our hour of need, you have ignored us. As much as the hatred and malice from antisemitism stings, it’s the lack of love from those who we thought cared that really hurts. It’s deeper because it’s personal.
Martin Luther King, incidentally an open Zionist himself, perhaps said it best. He famously remarked that "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
As such I ask you honestly when was the last time you checked in with your Jewish friends to see if they were okay? Better still, when was the last time you reached out with words of encouragement and support? You might not be able to fix the problem, or even to actively help anything, but knowing that they’re not alone will go an unimaginably long way toward making Jews feel safer. And as the old adage goes, a burden shared is a burden halved.
In case you never thought to ask, I will tell you that your Jewish friends and neighbors are not okay. They are scared. They need not feel alone as well.
Still, it’s not too late. You still have an opportunity to be on the right side of history. You still have a chance to look back proudly and know that when the time came, you rose to the occasion. Your friends still need you. If you ever want to be able to say that when the time came you stood up for what was right, now is your chance.
Bear in mind, we will survive, there’s a reason that we’re known as the eternal people. And when this crisis has passed, we will remember. As Doctor King warned, we will not only recall the actions of those who hated us, but the willing inaction of those who claimed to love us. That perhaps will be the hardest wound to forgive.
There might come a day when this is all nothing but history. On that day your children might once again ask you what you personally did during that time. Before that happens, the question to ask yourself now is, will you be too embarrassed to answer?
Ilan Goodman is a museum collections professional and exhibition curator. He also serves as a rabbi and educator. He made Aliyah to Israel in 2011 and lives with his wife and children in Beit Shemesh.
