The End of the Golden Age

Anti-Semitism on the right and the left threatens to end an unprecedented period of safety and prosperity for Jewish Americans—and demolish the liberal order they helped establish, Franklin Foer wrote in the April 2024 issue.

Franklin Foer’s article on the end of the Golden Age for American Jews makes an excellent and painful connection between the rise of anti-Semitism and the decline of democratic institutions throughout history. I was a child in Communist Romania in 1973 at the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. Some of my teachers made my life miserable in school simply because I was Jewish. My parents had to bribe them with American cigarettes to stop them from tormenting me. Three years later, my family and I defected to the United States. The U.S. was known around the world for its democratic institutions, and we wanted to get away from a country where anti-Semitism ran rampant.

No one born here can imagine what it was like to be free, to be Jewish and dare to admit it. But that was America in the 1970s and ’80s. Today’s America frightens me: I’ve lived in an authoritarian state before; I understand viscerally what’s at stake in this year’s election. For the first time in 48 years, I think twice before telling people I’m Jewish.

Monica Friedlander
Cambria, Calif.

I am a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor. I was born in Berlin in 1928 and observed the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany. There is a world of difference between those days and the United States today. In Germany, anti-Semitism was sanctioned, even encouraged, by the authorities. Police officers stood by laughing when boys beat us on our way to school. The government passed laws forbidding us from owning radios, newspapers, telephones, even pets. The world knows how that ended: I was liberated from Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. I think Franklin Foer’s article is a bit over the top.

Walter L. Lachman
Laguna Niguel, Calif.

Although an interesting review of 20th-century Jewish entertainers and intellectuals, Franklin Foer’s assessment ignores the street reality.

I was born and raised during the Franklin D. Roosevelt years. Growing up, I was given a bloody nose by other kids more than once on my way home from school. They shouted anti-Semitic slurs and attacked me for “killing their God.” When I served in the military, my roommate asked whether I had horns, and if it “had hurt when they took them off.” When I applied for a job at a prestigious law firm, I was told, “We do not hire your kind.”

I went on to enjoy a successful career. But the underlying prejudice has always been present. The fact that we Jews have been entertaining and creative does nothing to eliminate the basic prejudice against us as “the other.”

Benjamin Levine
Roseland, N.J.

The night before I read Franklin Foer’s article, a stranger tore my mezuzah off my doorframe. I was upset—but so was my non-Jewish roommate. In that, he was part of a broader American tradition: At the founding of our country, George Washington promised the Jews of Rhode Island, “To bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

The Jewish American Golden Age predates the 20th century, and has outlasted it. Not only has America been the best place in the diaspora to be a Jew, but the scale of Jewish participation and inclusion is larger than many realize. The highest-ranking American armor officer to die in combat was the legendary Maurice Rose—a Jewish major general who died fighting the Nazis in Germany. Foer quotes Thomas Friedman saying that the Six-Day War made American Jews realize they could be tank commanders—but Jews have been tank commanders as long as America has had tanks.

In Columbus, Georgia, where I live, shortly after the October 7 attacks, the mayor and city-council members attended my synagogue. People from all over the country reached out to express their sympathy and support. A friend stationed in Syria checked in after Iran launched missiles toward Israel, concerned about my Israeli family and how I was dealing with American anti-Semitism. America’s continuing warm welcome isn’t just anecdotal: The Pew Research Center recently found that Jews are viewed more positively than any other U.S. religious group.

Anti-Semitism may be on the rise, but it is and remains un-American. My great-great-grandfather, a Jewish refugee, arrived in New York on the Fourth of July. According to family lore, he saw the fireworks and thought they were for him. In a way, they were. This July, I look forward to celebrating the Golden Age’s 248th anniversary.

Jacob Foster
Columbus, Ga.

I was disappointed reading “The End of the Golden Age.” I think the Golden Age is now, as so many American Jews rise up to say “Not in our name.” We are recognizing the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. It’s time for everyone to recognize it too. Criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza is not anti-Semitism. American Jews and Israeli Jews will be safe when we can recognize the resilience and survival of both Palestinians and Jews and see how our struggles are interconnected.

R. Toran Ailisheva
Oakland, Calif.

Franklin Foer interprets a survey—“nearly one in five non-Jewish students said they ‘wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who supports the existence of Israel as a Jewish state’ ”—to mean that they were saying they wouldn’t be friends with most Jews. I would challenge this interpretation.

As a Columbia graduate, and as someone who can actually read the Yiddish on The Atlantic’s cover, I do not question the Zionist dream of a haven for Jews. But I question the need for a predominantly religious state, which I fear will inevitably lead to a theocracy, intolerant even of Jews deemed insufficiently Orthodox. Israel is headed in that direction.

Elliott B. Urdang
Providence, R.I.

We were surprised and dismayed that The Atlantic would publish Franklin Foer’s article about the rise of anti-Semitism without any accompanying articles discussing the concurrent rise in anti-Palestinian racism. Students who protest the brutal war crimes committed in Gaza or advocate for the freedom and dignity of the Palestinian people are being silenced and persecuted. We hope The Atlantic will publish stories that highlight efforts seeking peace and justice for all. Right now, we need solutions. We need voices supportive of our shared humanity, not inflammatory rhetoric that will lead to further polarization and alienation.

Samar Salman
Ann Arbor, Mich.

Christina Kappaz
Evanston, Ill.

Franklin Foer replies:

A writer’s deeply ingrained instinct is to want their stories to prove prophetic. In this instance, I desperately hope that I will be proved wrong. Sadly, in the aftermath of publishing this article, I have heard too many stories like Jacob Foster’s, of mezuzahs ripped from doors in the night. One of the most ubiquitous critiques of my story, echoed in R. Toran Ailisheva’s letter, is that my argument equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Many mainstream Jewish groups take that stance, but it is not my contention. I explicitly stated that there are strains of anti-Zionism that paint a vision of life in a binational state, where Palestinians and Jews peacefully coexist. That vision strikes me as hopelessly quixotic, but it isn’t anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, criticisms of Zionism are rarely so idealistic. They are usually cast in ugly terms, depicting a dangerous Jewish cabal guilty of dual loyalties, betraying the hallmarks of classical anti-Semitism.

Behind the Cover

In this month’s cover story, “Democracy Is Losing the Propaganda War,” Anne Applebaum examines how autocrats in China, Russia, and other places have sought to discredit liberal democracy—and how they’ve found unlikely allies on the American far right. Our cover draws inspiration from constructivist propaganda artists such as Alexander Rodchenko and Gustav Klutsis. The angled imagery and ascending lines evoke the style of a Soviet propaganda poster, updated with liberalism’s new rivals.

— Paul Spella, Senior Art Director

This article appears in the June 2024 print edition with the headline “The Commons.”

Updated at 9:05 a.m. ET on May 3, 2024

President Joe Biden will make a speech on anti-Semitism on Tuesday, May 7, by way of observing the Holocaust remembrance in the Jewish religious calendar. If the speech is not to fail, or even backfire, the president needs to be very clear in his mind about what he has to say, and why.

The questions Biden needs to answer on Tuesday are not questions about beliefs or values. They are not questions about himself or his personal commitments. They are questions about American liberalism in general, about its ability to defend its stated commitments against challengers who plead victimhood as their justification. Biden hit a lot of the right themes in informal remarks at the White House yesterday. But there’s more to say, and it should be said clearly and without any Trumpian caveats about “good people on both sides.”

Anti-Semitism appears chiefly in two different forms in the United States. There is a right-wing variant based on religious dogmas or delusions of racial supremacy, which was the one on display in the “Jews will not replace us!” chants in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. There is also a left-wing variant, the one on display at American college campuses this spring, in which Jews are presented as the supreme oppressors of all the world’s oppressed. The first version is echoed by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s worry that she might be prevented from accusing Jews of killing Christ. The second is exemplified by Representative Ilhan Omar’s sneer about “pro-genocide” Jews.

Most American Jews accept that mainstream U.S. liberals like Biden reject both variants of anti-Semitism. But very observably, mainstream American liberalism is a lot more comfortable standing up to the Greene version than the Omar one.

This disparity explains why the campus anti-Israel protests have so alarmed many American Jews. The schools are reverberating with slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” which to many ears means “Destroy the state of Israel and kill, expel, or subjugate its Jewish inhabitants.” We hear chants of “Globalize the Intifada,” which translates as “Bring mass murder to Jews everywhere on Earth.” We hear Jews blamed by association for every problem from police brutality to climate change—even both of those things at once. We see checkpoints on campus where Jews are quizzed on their beliefs before they are allowed to approach the university library.

[Tyler Austin Harper: America’s colleges are reaping what they sowed]

I would assume that virtually every university president in the country (and surely the great majority of university professors and administrators) disapproves of these behaviors. But these officials have over many years demonstrated that they flinch from acting against such misconduct: Jews are subjected to harassment and intimidation in ways that, if carried out against any other similarly identifiable group of students, would instantly invite the full weight of institutional punishment. Yet those responsible for the harassment and intimidation of Jews enjoy near-total impunity.

The universities provide the most conspicuous current instances of this phenomenon in American society, but they are not unique cases. In every domain where American liberalism holds sway—public education, local politics in deep-blue cities, labor unions, literature and the arts—Jews who share the almost-universal Jewish connection to the land of Israel face insult, threat, ostracism, even outright violence.

All of this presents a tremendous political problem for Biden. Of course, he’s not in charge of the art world or the literary milieu or the unions. He does not have much influence over public education, and even less over local politics. But he personifies American liberalism, and his political hopes in November are deeply intertwined with American liberalism’s image and standing.

Think of a national election as a job interview. The Republican candidate needs an answer to the question “Do you have the heart to care about me?” The Democrat must have an answer for the question “Do you have the guts to protect me?”

When Democrats look too weak to stand up to anti-Israel protests on campuses and in other liberal domains, their problem is not only one of how they handle anti-Semitism. It is a problem that goes to the central risk to their political brand: the perception of weakness.

[Daniel Block: Will Biden have a Gaza problem in November’s poll?]

The anti-Israel protesters get this: There’s a method to their mayhem. They want to punish Biden in November. They don’t have the votes to elect anyone they like better, nowhere near. But if they cannot hope to replace Biden, they can help to defeat him. By creating images of chaos, they support the Republican message that liberals like Biden are to blame for disorder.

Republicans audaciously tried that message during the riots that devolved from protests against the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, when Donald Trump was actually president. They’re eager to repeat the message in 2024.

Biden’s instinct on May 7 will be to speak sympathetically about Jewish fears while stressing his respect for the right to protest. His instinct will be to express compassion for all civilians at risk from the violence in the Middle East, both Palestinians and Israelis. If he does that and stops there, he will be delivering the right answer to the wrong question—the one for a Republican, about caring enough.

The speech he needs to give is not a speech from the heart. It’s a speech about his guts. The message wanted is more than “I care.” The message wanted is “I dare.”  

So after saying the things that are instinctive for him to say, he must keep going. He needs to say that no cause justifies violence on the streets and quads of America. He needs to affirm that universities cannot accept intimidation and unlawful disruption of educational activities. He needs to make clear that he supports those leaders who have protected their universities’ academic function, including their decision to call in the police where required. He should share his firm conviction that protest is not peaceful if it forcibly interferes with the rights of others.

He needs to do all of these things—not as a special favor to Jews on campus or off, but as a basic rule of good government. As president and as a presidential candidate, Trump has played favorites among lawbreakers. With one kind of culprit, he urged the police to crack their heads on the doors of their squad cars. Another kind of culprit he hailed as “hostages” and promised to pardon. If Biden is to campaign against Trump by calling him an inciter of riots, he himself needs to be an unwavering voice against riots, whatever the ideology of the rioter.

[David A. Graham: Biden’s patience with campus protests runs out]

The campus protesters may fantasize about a rerun of the disturbances of 1968. Mercifully, I do not see history repeating itself. But one lesson from that year bears applying to this year: Disorder hurts Democrats. When Biden speaks about anti-Semitism on Tuesday, he will be speaking not only for and about Jews; he will be speaking for and about his party and his belief system. Can Democrats enforce rules? Do they uphold equal justice, or do they indulge privileged categories of rule-breakers? Is his party strong enough to lead? Is he strong enough to lead?

In 1843, Karl Marx wrote an essay titled “On the Jewish Question” that argued for “the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.” Marx was calling not for murder, exactly, but for the forced dissolution of Jewishness as a form of self-identification. In the century-plus since that essay, Marxist thinking has mutated in many ways, yet Marxist revolutionary movements have consistently resented Jewish particularity and identified it as a problem to be overcome, one way or another.

Today, Marxism has yielded to Palestinianism as the latest iteration of revolutionary idealism. But if the goal has changed, the obstacle has not. As Marx wrote, “We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time.” Swap out Judaism for Zionism, which has become protesters’ dog-whistling euphemism, and you could repeat Marx’s vituperation almost word for word at any campus encampment and get applause from your audience.  

Those are the people who also seek, in effect, to swap out Biden for Trump in November. When Biden speaks against them, he is speaking not only for and in defense of American Jews. He is speaking for and in defense of himself and the ideals to which he has devoted his public career.

This article originally stated that President Biden’s speech would be on Sunday, May 5. In fact, it is scheduled for Tuesday, May 7.