Writing these words from my home just hundreds of yards from Bethlehem – home to thousands of Arabs who would love to murder me and my family -something strange occurred to me. Here in Israel, surrounded by genuine danger, I feel safer and more at home than I ever could in the country I once proudly called the land of the free.
Though I made Aliyah four years ago, America has always held a special place in my heart. For generations, it represented liberty and opportunity and, most importantly, a haven where Jews could thrive without fear. America was different. America was supposed to be good to the Jews. But what I see happening today makes me wonder if America was always an illusion.
In recent weeks, we have witnessed a horrifying escalation of targeted antisemitic terrorism. In April, Cody Balmer firebombed Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence while the Governor and his family slept inside, motivated by “what [Shapiro] wants to do to the Palestinian people.” In May, Elias Rodriguez gunned down two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., shouting “Free Palestine” as he was arrested. And just days ago in Boulder, Colorado, Mohamed Sabry Soliman used a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to attack peaceful demonstrators, injuring at least 12 people, including elderly victims and a Holocaust survivor. Soliman told investigators he “wanted to kill all Zionist people” and had planned the attack for a year.
Where is America’s fury? Where is the moral outrage?
When the criminal George Floyd died during his arrest, America exploded in anger. Cities burned. Politicians took knees. The entire nation engaged in soul-searching about the value of Black lives.
But when innocent Jews are murdered for the crime of being Jews, where are the mass rallies? Where are the corporate statements? Instead, we get tepid promises of “increased security measures” and perfunctory condemnations that disappear from news cycles within hours.
Michael Rapaport now understands what has always been true: “Jewish people, the cavalry ain’t coming. The cavalry is not coming for us. They don’t give a f***.”
The disparity is impossible to ignore. As Glenn Beck observed: “If this had been the other way around—if a white man had firebombed a mosque while screaming ethnic slurs—this country would be on fire right now.” But “a Jewish woman in her 80s, who survived the Holocaust, gets burned alive by a radicalized immigrant? The media yawns.”
Megyn Kelly captured the indifference perfectly: “This keeps happening, and yet it doesn’t shift the national conversation. It doesn’t dominate news coverage the way a mass shooting would. Instead, it’s met with a collective shrug.”
To be fair, the Trump administration has shown moral clarity. The family of the Boulder attacker has been taken into ICE custody, federal hate crime charges have been filed, and officials have called these attacks what they are: terrorism. I am grateful for this response from the Trump administration. It isn’t hard to imagine how much worse things would be had Kamala Harris won the election.
But I’m not writing about the government. I’m writing about the American people, about the soul of the nation. And that soul seems to have gone cold when it comes to the Jews.
But it’s not just American gentiles who need to shift their perspective. Watching American Jews today, I am reminded of the socially awkward child on the playground who desperately wants to belong but cannot see what everyone else understands. He follows the popular group around, laughing at their jokes, trying to insert himself into their conversations. He offers them his lunch money and defends them when others criticize them. But the group tolerates him at best and makes it clear through a thousand small cruelties that he will never truly belong. The saddest part is not their rejection—it’s his inability to see it.
This is American Jewry today. They donate to every fashionable cause, champion every movement, and bend over backward to prove their loyalty to America’s values. They seek approval from those who remain silent when Jews bleed.
Rabbi Mayer Twersky teaches that “when a Jew debases himself publicly, he commits a chilul Hashem—a desecration of God’s name.” This principle extends beyond individual actions. When American Jews remain in a country that clearly doesn’t care about our well-being, that shrugs when we are attacked and murdered, we are collectively engaging in chilul Hashem. We are declaring to the world that God’s chosen people are willing to accept second-class treatment.
Writing about Jewish students who continue seeking admission to universities that celebrated the October 7 Hamas massacres, Rabbi Mayer Twersky writes that applying “for the ‘privilege’ of attending such schools is the height of obsequiousness.” In debasing himself this way, the Jew commits a chilul Hashem—a desecration of God’s name. Because God identifies Himself with the Jewish people, when Jews display a lack of pride and self respect, they dishonor God.
But this principle extends beyond universities. When American Jews continue to remain in a country that clearly doesn’t care about their well-being, that shrugs when they are attacked and murdered, they risk engaging in collective chilul Hashem. By staying and seeking acceptance from those who view their blood as cheap, they risk declaring to the world that God’s chosen people are willing to accept second-class treatment.
But we are not socially awkward children desperate for friends. We are the people of Israel, chosen by God, with a divine mission and an eternal homeland. We can and must demand better for ourselves.
Yes, Israel is dangerous. But here is the crucial difference: this is my country. When Jews are under attack in Israel, the entire nation mobilizes. When Jews are murdered here, the nation mourns as one.
In Israel, Jewish lives matter. Not because we’ve convinced anyone of our worthiness, but because this is the Jewish homeland. Here, we don’t need to beg for protection or plead for sympathy.
It is time for Jewish pride. It is time to stop chasing after the approval of those who will never truly accept us. If America doesn’t treat us as God’s chosen people, then America is not worthy of us.
The choice is before us: remain as vulnerable minorities in a land growing increasingly hostile, or return to the land where we can stand with dignity as a sovereign people.
After these latest attacks, it’s time to ask: How long will we wait for cavalry that is never coming?
