To the people trying to push Jews out of the American story: you are centuries late.

American Jews are not new arrivals. We are not guests in this country. Nor are we a tolerated population whose belonging rises and falls with the latest campus chant, city council resolution, primary result, or passing fashion in moral outrage.

We. Are. Jewish. Americans.

And on America’s 250th birthday, it is worth saying plainly: we love it here!

Not naively. Not blindly. Not because the last few hundred years have been easy, or because Jew hatred is imaginary, or because Jewish life in America is suddenly simple. We love it here with the clear eyes of a people that has learned, at great cost, the difference between tolerance and freedom. 

For most of our history, Jews lived at the mercy of others. We were useful until we were resented, welcome until we were blamed, protected until protection grew inconvenient. The empires that hosted us in golden ages, expelled us in bloody ones, and a Jew could do little but read an ending someone else had already prepared.

America was always different for us.

Not perfect. Never perfect.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)