Our future in America

There is no Jewish future anywhere outside of the Land of Israel.

By DAVID MARGOLESE
ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTERS display Palestinian flags at the Place de la Bastille in Paris. (photo credit: DAVID YAEL)
ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTERS display Palestinian flags at the Place de la Bastille in Paris.
(photo credit: DAVID YAEL)
Once upon a time, when I was a young man growing up in America, it occurred to me that there was no Jewish future there, or in any other Gentile land, for non-religious Jews. That such seed will assimilate and disappear within a few generations. That remaining Jewish inter-generational in a Gentile society requires the historic practice of Jewish religion. That the majority Jewish behavior of living non-religious lives was an historical aberration, and an illusion of Jewish normalcy. That the clock turned slowly, so one required vision to realize that this was an abnormal time that could not last.
Today, as I visit America, the land of my youth, during Israel's war with Hamas, it occurs to me that assimilation has a twin horseman. Anti-Semitism. The Western world I grew up in was a post-Holocaust world. A world traumatized by the recent shock of the Holocaust. A world where it was not politically or socially correct to be anti-Semitic. My world contained no evidence of any such thing, and allowed me to believe that pogroms, persecutions, expulsions, and the Holocaust, were things of the past. That they were not relevant in my civil rights minded, liberal, scientific, environmentalist, moral, Western world. That something fundamental had changed since these sickening things occurred. The only problem with this is that it is not true.
The truth is that nothing in the Jewish-Gentile paradigm has really changed. That anti-Semitism is the natural order of the world. That nothing we do or say will change that until we achieve a Messianic world (a world governed by justice, rather than self interest). That we are not meant to live in Gentile lands. That over time, either the horseman of assimilation, or of anti-Semitism, will overtake us in response to our love for our adopted country. That there is no difference between loving a Gentile woman we are attracted to, and loving a land we are attracted to. We are not supposed to make a life with either. We understand one of these prohibitions because the consequence of such a union is immediate or not far off. The consequence of creating a life in a foreign land however, can take numerous generations to reach its inevitable consequence. But the consequence is always the same for both unions. There is no Jewish future either when creating a life with a Gentile partner, or in a Gentile land.
The reaction of the world to the Jewish people, with variations here and there, is consistent throughout history. Whether it is to our war with Hamas in Gaza today, or whatever it will be tomorrow. It is predictable ad nausea. So also, is the Jewish response of attempts to explain over and over the errors in their views. But there is no point to any of it on our side.
Anti-Semitism never muted in the Muslim world, as that world both aligned itself with the Nazis, and was never as affected by the Holocaust as the West. And so the Muslim world we are so familiar with, as well as the anti-Semitic, pre-Holocaust Western world that we have forgotten, are the real worlds when it comes to anti-Semitism.
This time period is an illusion in terms of Jewish normalcy. The pre-Holocaust world was, and remains, reality. The pogroms and persecutions of history were not historical aberrations. This post-Holocaust Western world is the historical aberration.
There is no Jewish future anywhere outside of the Land of Israel. There never has been. There never will be. Non-religious Jews living in Gentile lands will ultimately assimilate. And religious Jews in these lands will ultimately be murdered or expelled. However long it takes does not matter. What matters is that there is no future there.
The writer is the co-founder and former CEO of Sirius XM Radio, America's largest radio broadcaster. Nominated by Harvard Business School as Entrepreneur of the Year, and inducted into NASA's Space Technology Hall of Fame, he now lives in Israel with his wife and family.