Good rally? Not really

Elisha Wiesel is a well-meaning Jew who was trying to do something good for the Jewish people in pushing for the recent DC rally against antisemitism. However, he fails to make a good case for a failed rally. (“Washington rally vs. antisemitism wasn’t perfect, but necessary,” July 20).

No rally is better than a failed rally! From the beginning this rally was doomed to fail for many reasons. First, the Gaza war was long over. The Gaza war had only one IDF casualty (one is too many). The soldier killed was not killed in combat. And the anti-Israeli/Jewish rhetoric had passed. In any event there was no strong emotional element to a rally from that perspective.

The uptick in antisemitism in the US is alarming, but thank God we do not live in an overtly antisemitic environment. Even a recent local Five Towns rally, which was considered a success, was missing the haredi community and many from the less affiliated community. I suspect that the rally was called a rally against antisemitism and not a rally to support Israel in its recent Gaza war in order to attract haredim. In that sense it also failed. The haredim did not come. They would have come had they really felt threatened.

A DC rally in the summer excludes Jewish schools that always bring thousands of students to such a rally. DC is a big trip for most people. Working adults must give up a full day to attend. This rally lacked an immediate pressing emotional context to draw those people

The last successful rally was the 2002 or 2003 DC rally during the second intifada. At that time there were regular terrorist attacks with horrible images seen by everyone in the media. It took place during the school year and there was a lot of preparation by the organized Jewish community, including outstanding PR. The Soviet Jewry demonstrations during the oppressive years were also well-organized and well-publicized and had all the ingredients necessary to bring our schools and working men and women.

You always need an umbrella Jewish group that includes the polychromatic elements of the Jewish community to actively advocate for such an event. I do not mean to belittle Elisha Wiesel’s efforts. He deserves a lot of credit for putting himself up front to support the rally.

By invoking his late father he does him an injustice. (“When Nazi tanks surrounded Warsaw, my father related in a rare moment of frustration, the Jews were in shul arguing over who should get ‘shishi,’ the honor of being called up third to the Torah”). None of us know whether Elie Wiesel would have endorsed a rally that was doomed to failure. And by calling those who opposed the rally “cynics,” he does an injustice to them and besmirches himself.

HESHIE BILLET Rabbi Emeritus YIW (Woodmere)

Famed American Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick astutely noted that “Universalism is the Jews’ particularism.” That observation has been repeatedly validated, perhaps no more so than recently.

The Statement of Inclusion for the July 11 “No Fear” Washington DC rally against antisemitism noted that the sponsoring “coalition will not tolerate expressions of racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, or any other hate.” Noble comprehensive virtue signaling, though it’s highly unlikely that many proponents of such hatreds would have shown up at the rally. Unfortunately, in the event, not many other people did, either.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s definition of antisemitism was even more expansive: “anyone who hates so much that they want to kill and eliminate” the objects of their hatred. That, at once, greatly expanded the potential antisemitic cohort, while simultaneously shrinking the criterion for inclusion, to genocidal intent.

Paraphrasing Hillel, if Jews cannot bring themselves to narrowly focus on a wave of antisemitism that is growing ever more brazen and pervasive, who will join them in condemning that? If Jews don’t care enough to push back hard against antisemitic expression in the Congress, the universities, NGOs, print, broadcast and social media, etc., what possible prospect is there for it to stop?

The planners of the “No Fear” rally surely meant well, but in trying to please all possible partners, while eschewing other, far more willing, participants, they could not help but fail. A lesson to be learned: a too “big tent,” without solid supporting poles, is bound to collapse.

RICHARD D. WILKINS

Syracuse, New York