-The Talmud of Babylonia, Sura and Nehardea.
-Alexandria of Egypt, where so many thousands attended prayers that they had to congregate in a stadium where the prayer leader would have to wave kerchiefs to signal when it was time for the congregation to recite “Amen.”
-The Golden Age of Spain.
-The Grand Chassidic Shtetls of Eastern Europe.
-The Greatest of East European Yeshivos: Mir, Slabodka, Radin, Telz, Chakhmei Lublin, Volozhin.
Jewish history has been so rich in the Exile that so many of us forget that . . . but it is Exile. And the greatest of all Exiles: New York City. Jews insisted that New York always would be different: a Goldeneh Medina, a Jewish Mecca.
A speck of time in Jewish history passed, less than 150 years from the great Jewish migration that exploded in 1881 when Tsar Alexander II was assassinated that March 13. Only twelve dozen years. And now New York City is indeed a Mecca and a Medina.
Certain songs have spoken to me at different times in my life. Of course, everything by Shlomo Carlebach z"l. A great amount by contemporary Israeli singers like Ishai Ribo, Omer Adam, and Amir Benayoun. And at certain times in the past, in several ways, the country music singer, Garth Brooks, repeatedly has touched me deeply (though, after something about him changed, his newer songs stopped resonating for me). When I married my wife, Ellen z"l, the love of my life, after having gone through the tragedy of divorce, I walked down the aisle to Garth’s “Sometimes I Thank G-d for Unanswered Prayers.” When she passed away, I would shed tears whenever I heard Brooks’s “The Dance.” And I came to deem “The River” as my own life’s call to action.
But, more and more, I find myself listening these days to Neil Diamond’s “I Am . . . I Said”:
L.A.’s fine, the sun shines most the time,
And the feeling is “lay back.”
Palm trees grow and rents are low [???],
But you know I keep thinkin’ about
Making my way back.
Well, I’m New York City born-and-raised,
But nowadays
I’m lost between two shores.
L.A.’s fine, but it ain’t home;
New York’s home,
But it ain’t mine no more.
. . . And I am lost, and I can’t
Even say why,
Leavin’ me lonely still.
I grew up in the Jewishly dynamic vortex of Brooklyn, New York, circa 1960’s and 1970’s. It was a time to walk proudly in the streets as a Jew. We young Brooklyn Centrist Orthodox Jews were disproportionately enamored of the Jewish Defense League, even those of us who did not join. Others were engaged in Glenn Richter’s and Yaakov Birnbaum’s “Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry” (SSSJ). Jews were not afraid in the streets, even though there were incidents of Jewish storeowners shot to death by Blacks or Puerto Ricans. Jewish street patrols started.
Jews were very Jewish, even the assimilated ones. Yiddishisms filled the air, even in “mixed company,” and there was very limited intermarriage. The CBS idea of a comedy TV show about an intermarriage, “Bridget Loves Bernie,” set off an outcry. Yes, some famous Hollywood types married out, but we knew they were in their own world, not a Jewish one, and we even reflected a quiet schadenfreude when we heard later that the Rich and Famous intermarried, like Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, had divorced. Magi’a lahem (they had it coming.)
Jews in Brooklyn and all the boroughs universally loved Israel. No apologies, no explanations, no “But . . .” It was a given that, every four years, all the national candidates for president would fly into New York before the state’s presidential primary and contend with each other over who loved Israel more. First, they went into Iowa and practically drank ethanol, while wolfing down corndogs at the state fair. Then to New Hampshire and clam chowder. In Louisiana, catfish. By the time they got to the Empire State, they all went to Brooklyn to visit a matzo factory (if Passover season) or eat a square potato knish (if not).
And, wow, would they ever sing praises of Israel! At the time, I was national executive director of the Likud Zionists of America (then called Herut Zionists of America) and was permitted to ask a public question of Sen. Gary Hart, then a leading Democrat presidential candidate, as he addressed the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “Senator, will you move America’s Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if you are elected President?”
Hart reacted as a deer caught in the headlights. (Good practice for later with Donna Rice.) He clearly had not been briefed on the issue. Now, everyone in the room leaned forward. No one even had expected anyone to have the chutzpah to ask that one. It was supposed to be softballs, but I don’t do softballs. With the first signs of sweat showing on his manly nose, he realized he had to say something, so he did: “Yes, I will!”
The place broke out in a standing ovation. He clearly was thinking to himself: “What did I just get myself into?” The next day, his public relations team issued a statement to the media for damage control: his words had been taken out of context. Nu, so who took them out of context? He took his own words out of context!
As for vying for New York’s huge delegation of primary votes: if you wanted to carry New York, you had to get the Jews. And if you wanted the Jews, you had to spread it on thick about Israel like a shmear on a bagel. And then eat the bagel. But not with the square knish at the same time because that would expose you as a goyyishe kup.
New York ain’t mine no more.
The city that was so Jewish that anti-Semites would call it “Jew York” just gave its Democrat primary choice to an outright Jew hater, overt, in your face,
Globalize the Intifada. I don’t care that he is Muslim. I care that his heart is with the Islamists.
It is a different New York now. “The center of Jewish life”? Hubris. For that, as through three millennia, eyes must look to Zion. So many Orthodox Jews, in particular, have fled the five boroughs. To Long Island. To Florida. To Texas. And, yes, to Israel. It is believed that the only reason Lee Zeldin only barely lost his New York State gubernatorial race to Kathy Hochul is that so many Jewish New York voters have made for the exits. It is not the New York of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League and Dov Hikind’s stomping grounds and Ed Koch asking subway riders “How’m I doing?” with Bess Myerson, the Jewish Miss America, at his arm for whispered reasons.
New York ain’t mine no more.
On a certain level, I mourn the inevitable closing of a chapter in the History of Exile. I mourn because it closes on a bad note, the way that all our Exiles have, rather than with Jewish Pilgrims to Zion singing as dreamers while the Nations observe and say “G-d has done greatly for them.” Babylonia had the Judaic richness to compile the Talmud Bavli. Now it ain’t mine no more. The Spain of Rav Yehudah HaLevi, Ibn Gabirol, the Ramban, and the Rambam? It ain’t mine no more. The Russia and Ukraine and Poland and Hungary of the Chofetz Chaim and Chokhmei Lublin and Yossele the Miser and too many names and yeshivos to list? It ain’t mine no more. And, in its own sweet time, the new havens of Florida and Texas and Los Angeles also ain’t gonna be mine no more.
Readers know my story and my health. My heart is in the East, I am at the utmost end of the West, and my left lung is buried somewhere in between. Most readers and all who actually know me have the kindness to recognize how sincerely lost I am between two shores that no longer speak to me. L.A’s not so fine, nor is Irvine, and it assuredly ain’t home, and New York surely once was home, from Bernstein's-on-Essex to BTA to Irving's Knishery in Canarsie, but it ain’t mine no more.
Ellen z”l lies buried in Eretz HaChaim, just outside Bet Shemesh. Because of my illness, I have not been able to visit her even once these past five years, not even at her l’vayah (funeral). A beautiful student of mine who made Aliyah as a Chayal Boded (Lone Soldier), delivered the hesped (eulogy) I wrote for her. Two of my dearest rabbinic colleagues visit her several times each year and send me the photos. My place awaits alongside her.
The Jews of New York are not the ones I left behind four decades ago, nor is the New York of my grandparents. Democrat statewide primaries no longer focus on Israel but on providing sanctuary for people there illegally, people who absolutely should be thrown out for breaking the laws that my Bubbies and Zaydies honored when they arrived. The more antisemitic the Democrat, the more probable he or she — or “they” — will garner support from virtue-signaling woke Jews.
I do not recognize these “Jews,” whether in New York or outside: Bernie Sanders. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s. Sarah Silverman. Sarah Sherman. Doug Emhoff. Charles Schumer. Gerald Nadler. George Soros. Alex Soros. These are Jews? Some were. But now? They take their cues not from their ancestry, forebears, or consciences but from the pollsters and Squads around them. I once asked a rabbinic authority why we don’t excommunicate these apostates, put them in cherem. He responded “There are too many.” When he saw my despondency, he added: “Don’t worry, Reb Dov. They already have excommunicated themselves.”
Nadler attended yeshiva elementary school and used to be an incredibly big Israel backer whose Zionism carried weight in Congress. No more. Now he is just incredibly big, carrying weight. He is terrified he will be primaried out if he stands with Israel. So he assuages what pseudo-conscience he has left by saying “It’s not that I am against Israel, just against Netanyahu and everything he stands for.” Right. “I’m not against the Continental and Union armies, just against Washington and Lincoln.” Nadler could not praise President Trump for relocating America’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem, saying the timing worried him.
Sanders is an outright communist, an apostate closely allied with Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Schumer tells himself that he is so powerful, the most powerful Jew in American history, even more than Superman (created by two Jews). But he dares not praise Trump for bombing Fordow. Scared of his own shadow. Same with Emhoff. All of them.
They ain’t mine no more. Nor ours.
So New York City, the Goldeneh Medinah whose Statue of Liberty bears a Jewish woman’s poetic inscription of welcome at its base, the center of pulsating Jewish life in America, is down to only one remaining Democrat Congressman, Nadler, in the five boroughs. The home of Yeshiva University, and also the flagship of heterodox seminaries, and the locus of all major Jewish organizations’ headquarters, now faces the very real prospect of having a Jew-hating mayor who would globalize the Intifada. L.A.’s fine, but it ain’t home; New York was home, but it ain’t mine no more.
In a strange way, I am satisfied. Presently, my circumstances are what they are, but I know my Tanakh (Bible) and Talmud, their prophecies and G-d’s Holy Word: There is one and only one home for the Jewish People. It is not and never was America, though she is the greatest alien friend we Jews ever have known — certainly flawed, but still the best. But the Babylonia of the Talmud fell, as did the Spain of our Golden Age there, as did the Poland of the Council of the Four Lands (Va’ad Arba Ha-Aratzot), as with all the others. Berlin never was going to be our Jerusalem, and Lakewood, New Jersey — which is so wonderful — ultimately will not be either.
There is only one true home. And for that, I guess I owe a word of thanks to the Jew-hater who just won New York’s Democrat mayoral primary and all the Jewish snakes and scorpions who back him. They have played their role, before our very eyes, in advancing Biblical prophecy and restoring Zion speedily in our days.
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