The destruction of European Jewry still reverberates for Jews today.

Joe Rogan was asked the other day how many Jews there are in the world. He said a billion. Then he hedged his bet and went down to half a billion. I wish he were right; it would be easier to get a quorum together for afternoon prayers. The reality is that there is no really accurate number for Jews in the world for a couple of reasons. Not everyone who identifies as Jewish is Jewish according to traditional Jewish law; on the other side of the ledger, there are many people who don't know that they are Jews. The present estimate is around 15.8 million, with nearly half in Israel. The one thing that is clear is that there are fewer Jews today than there were on September 1, 1939. There were 18 million Jews in those days, and according to every count and estimate, we are nowhere near back to that number. The U.S. has nearly tripled its population during the same time.

The Holocaust technically ended with the Allies' entry into the camps. Thousands of Jews died in the hands of the Allies, as their condition was not salvageable. So, sometime in the summer of 1945, Jews stopped dying from the actions of the Germans and their partners in murder. There were plenty of people in conquered countries who gladly helped the Germans by either identifying local Jews and/or participating in killings sanctioned by the invading army. As long as there have been Jews, there have been Jew haters, and when permission is given, murder is at the top of the menu. The common phrase after October 7, 2023, was "the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust." And while the 1,200 killed in one day certainly fulfill that description, the thousands of Hamas terrorists in the homes and towns in southern Israel found themselves exactly like SS, Gestapo, and Wehrmacht soldiers 80 years earlier: they could do whatever they wanted. And they did.........

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