Philip Weiss on Jewish Power
The fear [of persecution] blinds Jews to our power, in Israel and the United States. It is hard for Jews to think of ourselves as powerful because of a historical and collective memory of persecution. Yet the world regards us as powerful. It sees the Jewish state as a nuclear armed country with a huge army, and it sees Jews as an elite in the United States with a ton of clout. “Why is the American Jewish community so determined to convince itself that we are living in 1938?” the late Tony Judt asked nine years ago. “Why does the most successful, the most well integrated, the most culturally and politically influential, the most socially and economically well situated Jewish community since the late years of the Roman republic, why is it so worried about the demon of anti-Semitism?”
We are as I like to remind readers the wealthiest American group by religion and we took over many establishment perches in the last generation. We are three of the four Democratic appointees to the Supreme Court, and whenever I turn on the news, I see influential Jews. Andrea Mitchell the wife of Alan Greenspan interviews Kenneth Pollack, Matt Lauer interviews Lorne Michaels. Last night I watched a panel on CSPAN about the Charlie Hebdo murders at the French-American Foundation and it appeared that all four speakers were Jewish.