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1. America shares important values with Judaism
Many of the ideals that Americans hold dear are rooted in the tenets of Judaism. When the founders built a new kind of nation, they reached for the Hebrew Bible as their model – a people bound by law and covenant, not ruled by a British king. It is the same source that gave the world the Ten Commandments.
2. African Africans found freedom in the Exodus story
Abducted from their homes and held in bondage, enslaved Africans found their own hope in Israel’s escape from Egypt. They sang of Moses in the fields. The freed families who fled the violence of the South called themselves Exodusters. A century later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached that his flock – like the Israelites – would reach the Promised Land.
3. Jews are important contributors to American life
Generations of Jewish immigrants arrived with next to nothing and worked hard to build a life in America – contributing to its hospitals and universities, its unions and businesses, its science and law, its music and comedy. They did not stand apart from the country – they helped weave its fabric.
4. An attack on Jews is an attack on America
Contempt for Jews today is the common hatred that animates extremes on both sides of the political aisle. On the far left, activists who brand Jews as oppressors also condemn America itself as a racist project that should be torn down. On the far right, the figures who spread Jewish conspiracy theories also rewrite the nation’s history – recasting even the war against Hitler as the wrong fight. Neither is defending America. When a society turns on its Jews for the very values the country was built to protect, history proves that the whole of society suffers.
5. A response to rising threats is Jewish pride
For thousands of years, antisemites have tried to drive Jews out of one nation after another – and every one of those empires crumbled. As America turns 250, the answer is not to hide, but to stand tall in a country that Jews helped to build and defend.
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