Are American Jews Traumatized?

By Karin McQuillan, AMERICAN THINKER

The American Jewish community, united to Israelis by bonds of the heart, has, through this tie, been facing terrorist onslaughts for years. Israel suffered the per capita equivalent of 250,000 Americans dead and wounded during the “peace process” when arch-terrorist Yassir Arafat was installed in power. Yet the rise of Palestinian and Arab-style Nazism has been ignored and tolerated by the majority of Jews, who at times appear deficient in basic human capacities for self-defense and reality testing. I will propose the thesis that American Jews display the faulty reactions typical of trauma victims.

American Jews do not see themselves as victims, but as winners, and they are right. Most victimized groups are dysfunctional. Societies who have suffered two thousand years of oppression and assault could be expected to disintegrate into social pathology — murder, violence, alcoholism, family breakdown, neglect and abuse of their children — but the Jewish community, in every country, is to the contrary marked by the lowest levels in all these social symptoms.

Jews rightfully take pride in their history: for millennia, Judaism has exerted a sustaining and civilizing power to create humane people in humane families and a humane community. In Israel, we see a society under threat of annihilation, repeatedly invaded by her neighbors, isolated by international defamation, which has not lowered its standards and commitment to peace, human rights and democracy.

Despite sustained terrorism, Israel has maintained equal rights for all her citizens, Jew and non-Jew, full protection of civil rights and free speech, and such a humane occupation that under Israeli administration, before the Oslo accords, the life expectancy of Palestinians rose by 20 years.

Here is a society that has had to enlist every citizen in the military but has not become a militaristic culture, that has never given up hope or been unwilling to compromise for peace. This is not to say that Jews are models of psychological or cultural health. Far from it. Jewish pathologies lie elsewhere. To understand, we must turn from politics and sociology to psychology.

My interest in the traumatic aspects of Jewish-American identity was set off by a book talk at Brandeis University by ex-priest James Carroll. In his magnum opus, Constantine’s Sword, he recounts the 2000 years of murderous abuse of Jews. After Carroll spoke, there was a discussion panel. I looked forward to hearing from the Brandeis professors about the impact of persecution on the Jewish psyche and culture.

Dr. Arthur Green, a professor of Judaism, replied (I paraphrase): Thank you James Carroll for acknowledging the expulsions, the cruel invention of ghettoes, the mass tortures of the Inquisition, the murderous Crusades, and complicity in the Shoah. I’d like to be just as honest: we, too, are abusers. In the Middle East, “many words have been said and deeds done that diminish the good name of Israel, which is also the name of the entire Jewish people.”

He went on to say that an abusive relationship has two players, and that it was the Jews who were primarily guilty for the Church’s cruelty. Yes, it was Judaism which taught the Catholics to practice religious oppression, through the concept of the chosen people. Moreover, Jews exploit the victim role and enjoy feeling “moral righteousness.” He then falsely declared that rabbinic Judaism limits ‘noble ethical proclamations to one’s fellow-Jews rather than extending them to all humanity.’

I was astounded: Dr. Green was adopting the infamous antisemitic charge leveled against Jews in medieval disputations, that Jews feel no ethical restraints on lying, stealing and murdering non-Jews. He had unearthed this medieval canard and hurled at his Brandeis audience.

It was quite a spectacular performance of what psychologists call “blaming the victim” — Jews are the culprits, especially bad Israel, who has besmirched Dr. Green’s name.

Carroll’s depiction of horrific and inescapable abuse and the Jewish discussant’s self-accusing response was a familiar pattern to my ears, trained by years of work as a psychotherapist. The reaction of Dr. Green was a textbook example from psych 101 of identification with the aggressor — the self-blame, the guilt, the false accusations of being worse than the abuser, the pretense you were the one who caused the problem.

He was using Israel as an introject on whom to act out a demand for perfection in order to cope with his fears of punishment. Like so many liberal Jews, Dr. Green was confusing self-betrayal with proof of moral goodness. 2000 years of sadistic attack, coupled with the present day defamation and existential threats to Israel, had triggered a classic victim response.

Those who study rape and incest victims, Vietnam soldiers, and Holocaust survivors report that being unable to escape life-threatening violence destroys the mind’s normal abilities to assess reality. Evil renders the world hopeless, despairing, and meaningless. The victim uses psychological defenses to block out the unbearable situation, by creating an alternate reality. In the alternate reality, it is the victim who is actually the one at fault. This reversal of reality creates hope and empowerment. If your behavior is the problem, the solution is also in your hands.

Unfortunately, since this a falsification of reality, this psychological defense can be fatal. It can result in being beaten to death because you keep trying to please a battering husband. It can result in bringing the world’s most famous terrorist, Yassir Arafat, to be set up as a petty dictator over his people, and allow him to rearm, to teach hate, to prepare for war. It can result in giving a Nobel Peace Prize to this same terrorist leader, who has already announced in Arabic that he has no intention of fulfilling the peace accords he recently signed, but plans to use the opportunity to build up his strength and wipe out the Jewish enemy. In the alternate reality, there is no danger, because you are the bad one.

I was witnessing the answer to my question of what happens to a people after 2000 years of victimization.

I wanted more than Psychology 101. Is it true that American Jews are traumatized? There was something big at stake here — nothing less than the key to future Jewish survival, in both Israel and America.

Academic specialists on American Jews claim that the Holocaust did not impact American Jews — we are told they immediately put the dark past aside, moved to the suburbs and became happily assimilated Americans. Prominent historians Oscar and Mary Handlin are quoted by Jeffrey Goldberg in his 1996 book, Jewish Power, with this statement extraordinary for its pathological denial: “At mid-twentieth century, American Jews could look back with satisfaction at their recent past.”

These successfully assimilated Jews now mostly marry non-Jews — 72% among the secular — and by a 3:1 margin they are choosing to raise their children as Christians or as nothing. The result is that one hundred secular American Jews alive today will only produce 5 Jewish grandchildren, and thus disappear from the face of the earth as a cultural group by the end of this century. (Orthodox Jews are flourishing, but there are only about half a million of them, 13% of American Jews.)

The reason, we are told by the experts, has nothing at all to do with Jewish pain or fear — on the contrary, it is a sign of Jews’ complete sense of safety and sameness in America, of the inability of Judaism to compete with secularism, and of Jewishness to compete with individualism.

Yet, in an unwittingly hilarious 1985 survey of San Francisco Jews, 30% said Jewish candidates could not be elected to Congress in their area due to anti-Semitism. At the very time, 3 of 4 congressional representatives, 2 state senators, and the mayor of San Francisco were Jews. This study is often quoted to show that American Jews cling to delusions of anti-Semitism, supposedly because they lack any positive reason to remain Jewish.

Such comments ignore a deeper truth: American Jews do not feel as accepted as their successful assimilation would warrant. Perhaps they know something the experts don’t: their own fear. They know how they avoid distinctive Jewish identity as the only way to win superficial American acceptance.

And so we come to the 1990 population survey sponsored by the Council of Jewish Federations. This survey confronted Jewish leadership with the bad news that non-observant Jews are disappearing in America. Most Jewish children are now born into mixed marriages. When they ask, “What am I? Am I Jewish?” They’re told, literally (yes, these are quotes): “No. You’re nothing.” “You’re half and half.” “You’re free to make up your own identity later, when you’re older.”

Yes, a decrease in American bigotry has allowed Jews to intermarry — but it doesn’t explain what they tell their children. One may intermarry and still make the commitment to raise Jewish children together. But the vast majority of intermarried Jews choose to not even try, even when their spouse says they’d be happy to raise the kids Jewish.

Most Jewish parents of non-Jewish children see this choice as evidence of being tolerant and American. They rarely let themselves know they’re choosing to disappear: it’s just an unfortunate side-effect from falling in love with this terrific person who happens not to be Jewish. Using love as an explanation, the exit is easy. American Jews no longer have to admit they are fleeing, no longer have to convert.

The question remains: why are Jews using this exit in such vast numbers?

Some Jews rationalize that higher values teach they shouldn’t limit their identification to one group. Isn’t it morally superior to identity first and foremost as “human beings,” as most of the students in a Reform temple education class (whose goal is promoting Jewish continuity) did recently, with the beaming approval of their teacher? It is common to hear, even from rabbis, that it is chauvinistic to tell your children that being Jewish is significantly different. Jewish pride is now something to be ashamed of.

Most liberal Jews teach their children to feel shame about Israel, as seen in the words of Prof. Green. This leaves Jewish kids defenseless against the assault of Israel-bashing they encounter in college, because they don’t recognize that hyper-criticism of Israel is a form of anti-Semitism. So it is morally inferior to teach Jewish pride, morally superior to teach shame.

Jewish parents don’t act as if it is in their children’s best interest for a happy, good, meaningful life, to be Jewish. If you buy the idea that Jews feel completely secure and accepted in America, this is truly odd. Wouldn’t everyone want their children to have the benefit of the subculture that produces the most stable families in America, the least social pathology, financial success, the highest achievements in the arts and sciences and social sciences, in social activism, charitableness, in every helping profession working to make life better, happier, longer for others?

In the crassest of terms, it pays to be Jewish: Jews are less than 2% of the population, yet 1/3 of the billionaires, 25% of the multimillionaires; 30-50% of elite highly paid and high status professionals in many fields are Jews.

Or if you care about higher values, what better way to counter American materialism and selfishness and alienation, than giving your children membership in the people-oriented embrace of the Jewish community and the high moral teachings of Judaism?

You value the arts, the sciences, the social sciences — fields where Jews are even more spectacularly over-represented than they are among the wealthy — the numbers seems to indicate you will increase your child’s chance of having creative and academic values and capacities by giving them a Jewish identity.

Care about making the world more just? It was Jewish lawyers (notable among them Morris Abram) and Jewish money that won the defining Civil Rights court rulings, One Man One Vote, Brown v the Board of Education, and fair-employment laws. On the level of personal courage, half of the white volunteers who went south to help Martin Luther King win the Civil Rights Acts were Jewish. Later spurned by militant blacks, Jews turned their reforming energies to Amnesty International, the ACLU, peace missions.

Of course there are brilliant, creative and good people of all religions, and activists from all ethnic groups — but you can’t explain away that in reality, Jews are represented in huge numbers, the leaders and the foot soldiers, and the philanthropists, the key players — wherever independent thinking and creativity and hard intellectual work and compassion and a drive for justice is called for in American life.

Being Jewish should be seen as an amazing prize. Yet the majority of American Jews are not willing to enlist their spouse and tell their child “you’re a Jew.” There has to be an explanation beyond feeling so comfortable in America: “I’m so secure and comfortable, I’ll tell my child he’s nothing rather than drag in being Jewish.”

Here comes my point about the identity of trauma. The experts tell us Jews are being assimilated because of the end of anti-Semitism. Yet according to a CJP survey the vast majority of American Jews report their subjective experience is that anti-Semitism is still a very strong factor in America. This is dismissed rather disrespectfully by the pundits, as unrealistic, a cartoonish clinging to distrust of goyim. They don’t focus on what it shows about us: American Jews are scared.

Could it be that it is modern anti-Semitism that has driven Jews away from being Jewish? The blessings of being Jewish come with a high emotional price tag. Who wants to pass on memory of the Shoah, responsibility for Israel, and the present reality of Arab defamation, violence and hate? Could it be that American Jews chose to not teach their children Jews are a distinct group, partly out of unconscious shame and fear, but also out of love. Being Jewish entails a high price — the price of taking on the traumatic burden of being a Jew.

Since the Jewish experts are pretending there is no problem with the pain and fear of being Jewish, I turned to the more complex picture that surfaces in biographies, memoirs, and novels, and work in other academic fields. They indicate that despite material security and success, no Jew in America lives free from the terror and pain of the Shoah, gut wrenching fears that Israel might not make it, and an undercurrent of discomfort among fellow Americans.

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