“A society cannot be judged on the basis of its criminal, psychotic or evil members, but rather, on how it responds to them. The same goes for its anti-Semites. America—yes, Trump’s America—passes this test with flying colors. ”
In an interview with HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” ahead of Tuesday’s midterm congressional elections, New York Times op-ed staff editor Bari Weiss blamed U.S. President Donald Trump for the Oct. 27 massacre of Jews at the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Weiss was not singing an original aria in the anti-Trump opera.
Indeed, since his inauguration in January 2017, the president has been accused by his detractors of directly inciting racism among his supporters and of indirectly creating a xenophobic atmosphere conducive to violence. The mass shooting at the synagogue provided these detractors with the perfect opportunity to reiterate what they had been saying for a few days when makeshift mail bombs were sent to various well-known Democratic figures: that although Trump himself did not plant the bombs or shoot the Jews in shul, he was actually the culprit.
Weiss, then, was in good company among liberals, which is why her statements to Maher were received with wild applause from the studio audience and from anti-Trump columnists everywhere. But what gave her interview particular weight was the fact that the 11 Jews murdered while praying on Shabbat belonged to the synagogue where she had become a bat mitzvah. Two heartfelt columns she wrote about the tragedy and her personal connection to it served as the impetus for the interview in the first place.
Yet she did not squander her stage time merely on mourning the dead and bemoaning anti-Semitism. On the contrary, she used the platform to make a political plea to Jewish voters “to elect people to Congress and everywhere else that are going to protect” the “way we live in this country,” which is “an aberration in history … a miracle.” In other words, elect Democrats.
