Posted on 08/30/2016 5:08:01 AM PDT by SJackson
As a Jewish immigrant from the Former Soviet Union whose family came to the United States in 1980, I’ve been dismayed to see so many liberals looking down their noses at Russian Jews who support Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Writing in the Forward, Margarita Gokun Silver recently asked, “How Can Russian Jews Be So Naively in Love With Donald Trump?” She suggests that we’re naïve, but her own view is ill-informed. Worse, it’s condescending.
In her essay, Gokun Silver asks this question about Russian Jewish supporters of Trump: “How can people who left their homeland to escape anti-Semitism — and whose families include victims of both the Holocaust and the Gulag — not see the signs?”
Maybe I can provide some answers.
It was because my family stuck to our Jewish roots and followed our traditions while we lived in the FSU that, in 1949, my maternal grandfather was sentenced to 10 years of Gulag camps. Later, in the mid-1950s, he was released with “full rehabilitation.” But in the ’60’s and ’70s, my father received repeated rebukes for hiring Jewish professionals, my uncle received continuous pressure from the KGB (he was a computer scientist and they wanted him to become an informer), my sister received a rejection letter from university (despite stellar grades), and my cousins and I received several physical assaults over our ethnicity. All this prompted my family to seek a better life in the U.S.
And what happened when Jews from the Soviet Union arrived in the U.S.? They received an immense amount of invaluable help from the members of the American Jewish community — and faced a major cultural misunderstanding. The majority of immigrants from the FSU were not, as many American Jews expected, the simpleton Tevyes and backward Goldes who needed to be shown how to turn on the lights or how to use toilet paper. The people who immigrated were mostly professionals, with college degrees and good (although skewed) knowledge of history, arts, geography and politics. We were, and are, educated Jews.
Most important, we had — and have — enough reason and good sense to evaluate political options and make informed choices out of our own preferences. Expecting us to follow a liberal agenda that’s been highlighted for us is as absurd as expecting us to follow Lenin’s raised hand toward the glorious Communist future.
And another thing: Jewish immigrants from the FSU had to undergo self-reestablishment in the middle of their lives. All are grateful for the assistance given to them by the American Jewish community, but many are also keenly aware of the amount of personal effort they had to invest and the sacrifices they had to make to reach the American middle class.
This life-rebuilding narrative is, for many, more like the self-establishment preached by the Republicans than the guided growth offered by Democrats.
Many Russian Jews are also keenly aware of the KGB involvement in American liberal movements like the American Communist and Socialist parties, and treat more liberal-leaning parties with suspicion.
Donald Trump.
How Can Russian Jews Be So Naively in Love With Donald Trump?
Margarita Gokun SilverAugust 15, 2016
There is one other item that should be mentioned. This item may be impossible to comprehend for American Jews, especially those with heavy liberal leanings. With close family in Israel, Jews from the FSU are fiercely and unconditionally pro-Israel. As the Russian saying goes, to the point of “blood from the nose.”
Republican media outlets such as Fox News, and the Russian-language TV that Gokun Silver denigrates, boast balanced reporting on Israel; they offer a view from both sides. During the latest Gaza war, for example, while CNN was showing destruction of Gaza and listing the count of the dead Palestinian Arab civilians, Fox and Russian TV would show the destruction of Gaza and also broadcast from Sderot and Ashdod, showing Israeli civilians hiding in the bomb shelters and Arab-made rockets raining on Israel. As such, these outlets have earned credibility with immigrants from the FSU, who have untold numbers of relatives in Israel.
From what I understand now, such humane and balanced reporting on the Israel-Palestinian conflict does not serve the interests of the most “progressive” far-left American Jews, who are turning staunchly anti-Israel. But it does serve the interests of Russian Jews, whose families found refuge in Israel and who were welcomed there for the very Jewishness that had made them persona non grata in the FSU.
If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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The article Dmitry Gringauz refers to is worth a read, How Can Russian Jews Be So Naively in Love With Donald Trump? . Interesting Dmitry lives in the US, Margarita in Spain.
Jews are the history of the earth.
Russian (White) Jews aren’t the Hebrew Jews from the Middle East.
Has there been a historical example of this happening...ever? :)
Just for the record, there were poor Russian Jews who emigrated to the USA in the late 70s & early 80s. Many drove cabs in NYC and we saw many welfare/Medicaid patients at NY Hospital when I worked there.
Trump was an extremely successful businessman in New York City.
One of the most ethnically diverse cities on the planet. Home to more Jews than practically anyplace else outside of Israel.
He could not have gotten where he is if he were a racist who hated Jews.
I have known people who had lived in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and they want no part of that ideology.
Yes, they are. The Jews of Russia came there by way of Poland. During the Roman times Jews settled in Rome and across the Roman empire. It was during that time that they started communities in what is now Germany. About 600 years ago Jewish communities moved to Poland. At that time Poland was further eastwards (it was displaced westwards after WW2) Russia took about half of Poland in the mid 1700s. Which is how millions of Jews found themselves living in Russia.
Could you elaborate? I know little about this, and I would like to know more. I always thought they were the same.
I think they’re referring to Khazars (Turks) of the 10th century. Many believe descendants of Japheth (one of Noah’s sons) essentially hijacked Judaism and the real Semitic Jews, which are descendants of Shem (another son of Noah).
But this stupid bitch doesn't "see the signs" in Hillary yelling "F**king Jew bastard" in front of 3 witnesses, around the time Donald Trump fought to get Jews and Blacks admission into Palm Beach clubs.
Vitacore, you are so off base that one has to wonder about whether you are one of those idiot anti-Semites who believe that modern Jews “stole” their identity from the “real” Jews (whomever they may be).
I am of partly Russian Jewish heritage - the rest being Polish Jewish - and I’ve researched not just my own family, but Jewish history in great depth. Eastern European and Russian Jews are as Jewish as a family that stayed in Israel throughout the time since the destruction of the Second Temple. Their genetics and their practices/traditions PROVE it beyond any doubt.
Lest you forget, it was no great honor to be a Jew in Medieval Europe - quite to the contrary, in fact. Those who claimed to be Jewish as of the early 1800s were, without any doubt, Jewish going back many thousands of years. Now, that does not mean that their was no intermarriage, that there wasn’t some genetic mixing between a people of Middle Eastern origin and those of European origin - OF COURSE there was. To which I say, SO WHAT! What does that change? Back hundreds or more years ago, if there was such an intermarriage, then the non-Jewish spouse went through a real conversion (not the fake Reform conversions of today, because Reform Judaism didn’t even exist until the mid-1800s), lived among the Jews whom they adopted as their own people and raised their children as Jews. Thus, one of my great uncles was blond and blue-eyed...and as Jewish as Moses.
I will assume that you are just ignorant, and hope that you have learned something. If you’re pushing an agenda, then that is something that will be between you and G-d.
Excellent article.
I’m of half Russian-Jewish extraction (the rest being Polish-Jewish), and I’ve been conservative all of my life. My paternal grandfather came to this country in 1923, immediately after the Communist Revolution. He despised the Communists for what they did to his birth nation, and to his family (most of which never got out). For one thing, they seized about 15 houses from my great grandfather, houses that he and his sons literally built with their own hands, at their own expense, and rented out to others for some income. All in the name of “the People.” I learned to hate the Communists with my mother’s milk, and as I matured I did my own research and found out the factual and intellectual basis for despising them and all of their works - AND ALL OF THEIR ALLIES, INCLUDING MANY FELLOW JEWS.
I have contempt for THEM, for their naivity, for their willful stupidity and collaboration with EVIL. I have FAR more in common with the more recent immigrants from Russia - Jewish or not - than I do with the idiot Socialists and America-haters among my own people (and, in fact, in my own blood family). Screw them - they SHOULD know better, but choose to live in a fantasy world where their idiotic political fantasies can be true - despite the unwavering voice of History, which says that Communism and Socialism not only can’t and don’t work, but they are the greatest sources of misery invented by Man.
Is that the current Birch Society/New American party line?
Thanks for that information. I did not know any of that, but it does sort of explain something I have been wondering about for years.
Turkey is an Islamic country, yet modern Turkey was set up by Attaturk and I have been told he was Jewish. I never quite understood how this could be, because I thought the Turks would be anti-Jewish because of Islam.
It always struck me as odd that a man who is considered the Greatest Modern Turk was also Jewish, but what you have told me makes this circumstance sound more understandable.
My mother tells me that my Grandmother on my Father's side was Jewish and from Western Russia. I don't know. I never had any contact with my grandparents on my Father's side.
It would be interesting to find out, though I understand that in Jewish heritage, descent is matrilineal, so my father would be, but I wouldn't.
At least that's how I understand it.
“It would be interesting to find out, though I understand that in Jewish heritage, descent is matrilineal, so my father would be, but I wouldn’t.”
Don't beclown yourself with the communist-spread Khazar theory. As I said, history and genetics.
Mustafa Kemal (attaturk) was not Jewish at all. Neither were the Young Turks. Antisemites of all stripes like to claim that Young Turks were the grandchildren of Jewish followers of a false Messiah who converted to Islam. But they can only cite a handful of example in a party with tens of thousands of supporters. (For some reason, many Armenian nationalists are emotionally wed to the this lie and no amount of facts matter to them.)
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