Part of the mythology of American Liberal Judaism is the contrast between the conservative and reactionary Puritans of Massachusetts against the liberal Roger Williams founded Rhode Island in their treatment of Jews. Prominent are mentions of the Newport Synagogue and cemetery as representations of the supposed equality for all that liberals were generously willing to bestow.
The reality is rather different. While Rhode Island did permit Jews to practice their religion, Jews had no civic equality and could not become citizens of Rhode Island. In 1762 when Aaron Lopez who played a great role in building Newport's shipping industry to prosperity sought citizenship, he had to go to Puritan Massachusetts to get it. Jews in 'liberal' Rhode Island were not welcome as citizens and did not receive political equality until 1842.
Much is made of the Newport Synagogue as representing a Jewish presence in liberal Rhode Island. In point of fact there never was a strong Jewish presence in Rhode Island. A number of Jews first arrived in Rhode Island hoping that it would grant them equality only to discover that they had no rights as citizens and they left. When Rhode Island received a Royal charter which again promised equality for all, 15 families came to be disappointed as well.
The famous Newport synagogue was built on donations from New York and soon fell into disuse. It was maintained by donations from the Touro family and the city council seeing that it attracted donations from wealthy Jews (which were placed into trust funds administered by that same council) turned it into a tourist attraction devoid of worshipers in the early 19th century. Only late in the 19th century, did Rhode Island finally gain an actual Jewish community.
Liberals and particularly liberal Jews like to cultivate the myth that it was liberals who embraced and protected Jews in the US. As a result they've filled Jewish-American history with lies, myths and outright propaganda. Like the benevolence of FDR, who had no trouble sending Jews back to the gas chambers on the St. Louis. The affinity of Harry Truman for Jews (he considered Jews pushy people and refused to allow one in his house, including even his biographer). The friendship of Thomas Jefferson (who despised Jews but was committed to equality) Bill Clinton as Israel's best friend in the White House (in actuality brought Israel to the brink of annihilation) and so on and so forth.
And so goes another lie that liberals like to tell about American-Jewish history.
The reality is rather different. While Rhode Island did permit Jews to practice their religion, Jews had no civic equality and could not become citizens of Rhode Island. In 1762 when Aaron Lopez who played a great role in building Newport's shipping industry to prosperity sought citizenship, he had to go to Puritan Massachusetts to get it. Jews in 'liberal' Rhode Island were not welcome as citizens and did not receive political equality until 1842.
Much is made of the Newport Synagogue as representing a Jewish presence in liberal Rhode Island. In point of fact there never was a strong Jewish presence in Rhode Island. A number of Jews first arrived in Rhode Island hoping that it would grant them equality only to discover that they had no rights as citizens and they left. When Rhode Island received a Royal charter which again promised equality for all, 15 families came to be disappointed as well.
The famous Newport synagogue was built on donations from New York and soon fell into disuse. It was maintained by donations from the Touro family and the city council seeing that it attracted donations from wealthy Jews (which were placed into trust funds administered by that same council) turned it into a tourist attraction devoid of worshipers in the early 19th century. Only late in the 19th century, did Rhode Island finally gain an actual Jewish community.
Liberals and particularly liberal Jews like to cultivate the myth that it was liberals who embraced and protected Jews in the US. As a result they've filled Jewish-American history with lies, myths and outright propaganda. Like the benevolence of FDR, who had no trouble sending Jews back to the gas chambers on the St. Louis. The affinity of Harry Truman for Jews (he considered Jews pushy people and refused to allow one in his house, including even his biographer). The friendship of Thomas Jefferson (who despised Jews but was committed to equality) Bill Clinton as Israel's best friend in the White House (in actuality brought Israel to the brink of annihilation) and so on and so forth.
And so goes another lie that liberals like to tell about American-Jewish history.
Comments
I must say it certainly takes a lot of courage to defend neocon criminals during a week when the neocons themselves are distancing themselves from their leadership.
ReplyDeleteDo you truly have such hatred for women, gays, blacks, and settlers that you can point out liberal incongruities with a straight face and not have that bias serve as the basis for such a rant, or have you simply lost all interest in ever writing a thought-out, intelligent point of discussion ever again?
Do you not think you need to reevaluate your moral failures and curb your dispensation to allow filth from forked tongue?
Have you no sense of decency anymore, Sultan? The neocons are finished.
who mentioned neo-cons?
ReplyDeletewho mentioned women and gays and blacks?
what does your rant have to do with my post in the least?
Hashfanatic I just read the article, then I read your remark.
ReplyDeleteAre you living in the same universe as the rest of us because your remark had absolutely nothing to do with the post!
Unless you are just using it as an excuse for a soap box and an agenda?
Yes, must be it.
You're missing it. The hatreds I described earlier are a hallmark of Jewish identification with the RIGHT wing. But from the 1900's to perhaps the early 70's, until they got their allegiances mixed up, Orthodoxy was largely aligned with the liberal movement, but for financial expediency, not altruism as non-Orthodox Jews, for whom common decency and love for his fellow man were guiding principles. The Orthodox Jews took advantage of the solidarity that a united Jewish front afforded them, and then turned their backs when they realize that their financial interests were better served by the emerging corporatist conservative movement.
ReplyDeleteAbortion, gay rights, and all such nonsense never actually had anything to do with the star turn; they were simply convenient smokescreens to throw up to the rest of the world, to mask their treachery to their own.
With all respect, you must learn more history. I'd have never had to explain all this, if only you had.
once again hash, this rant is utterly irrelevant
ReplyDeleteorthodox jews were never aligned with the liberal movement and hadn't been involved in national politics until recently, only local ones
reform jews and liberal jews operate on altruism in the same way that vultures do
No, you're just failing to pick up on the reality of the situation.
ReplyDeleteOrthodox Jewry was not artificially segregated from the progressive Jewish movement and mores EVER, until about 1972.
What you are spouting is revisionism, but I was THERE, remember?
The Orthodox Jew's god is the god of money, expecially when it comes to politics. Jack Abramoff is just one example.
But don't throw your transgressions and disloyalty in the liberal court. You shall see in short order that using Miers as a smokescreen to distance themselves from Bush's failures will score no more points with Middle America than any other power play ever did for the Orthodox.
orthodox jews were always segregated, not counting modern orthodox
ReplyDeleteas liberals became more left wing and more determined to uproot moral values; orthodox jews accordingly became even more distanced from them
"The Orthodox Jew's god is the god of money"
I believe Hitler said that, minus the orthodox part, or was it Karl Marx?
good going hash
This hashfanatic is a nazi.
ReplyDeleteA Jew hater
Uh, I think that might actually be somewhat impossible....
ReplyDeleteremind me of how you support and defend neo-nazi pat buchanan again... hash?
ReplyDelete" Bill Clinton as Israel's best friend in the White House (in actuality brought Israel to the brink of anhiliation) "
ReplyDeleteReally? I missed that in history - do tell , please. I'd love to learn about this fabricated nonsensical assetion.
it's called the oslo accords
ReplyDeletethrough them israel is facing a hostile palestinian state to be built on its territory and the terrorism has killed more than the six day war
There is nothing "neo-nazi" about Pat Buchanan. If you think he's something, you should only have had to face down the real "neo-nazi" skinhead types I've had to deal with.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, I have no problem with Pat Buchanan pointing out fraudulence and silliness in our religious communities. If we'd have been willing to clean up our own backyards, perhaps it would not have reached the point where a Christian had to.
Well, hopefully, that's been addressed so it never needs to be again, and it leads me to drive yet another point home. You people on the far-right LIE, and lie and lie over again, and distort people's statements and realities. It's very simple. When you show you are capable of the truth and with serious responsibility, you'll have your say once again. Until that point, please step aside and let the adults get to work cleaning up the right-wing mess.
You know, when the left leaning Jews fell from favor politically not so many years ago, they left with nowhere near the cloud of shame the religious variant is being forced out under now.
I always thought you were a fan of Pat Buchanan, when he spoke against gays, except that, for you, nothing else but liquidation would satisfy.
ReplyDeletelet's see
ReplyDeleteyou support and defend a man who praised Hitler, defended Nazi war criminals and boasted that he'd show people what a real right wing dictator was like if he was elected...
and you rant that we're 'far right'
you're so far gone that you lack even the ability to grasp your own hypocrisy
Well, first off, it was Bush that made the dictator remark, not Buchanan, and even if he would have, like Bennett, I'm sure it was all "out-of-context", a joke.
ReplyDeletePat Buchanan is as far away from anything that you represent him is, and I will not have it. This country deserves far better leadership than what it has, and so does Israel.
Buchanan, shortly before he announced he was running for president in 1995: "You just wait until 1996, then you'll see a real right-wing tyrant." (The Nation, 6/26/95)
ReplyDeleteno pat buchanan made the statement before bush was even in national politics and here's some more treats...from a liberal site too.
And this is the kind of filth you support while calling yourself progressive and calling others 'far right'
"In a column sympathetic to ex-Klansman David Duke, Buchanan chided the Republican Party for overreacting to Duke and his Nazi "costume": "Take a hard look at Duke's portfolio of winning issues and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles, [such as] reverse discrimination against white folks." (syndicated column, 2/25/89)
Trying to justify apartheid in South Africa, he denounced the notion that "white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this." (syndicated column, 2/7/90) He referred admiringly to the apartheid regime as the "Boer Republic": "Why are Americans collaborating in a U.N. conspiracy to ruin her with sanctions?" (syndicated column, 9/17/89)
and of course how pat feels about you despite your unrequited love for him
ReplyDeleteIn a 1972 memo to Richard Nixon, Buchanan referred to one of George McGovern's leading financial contributors as a "screaming fairy." (Newsday, 2/8/89) Buchanan has repeatedly used the term "sodomites," and has referred to gays as "the pederast proletariat." (Washington Post, 2/9/92)
In a 1977 column urging a "thrashing" of gay groups, Buchanan wrote: "Homosexuality is not a civil right. Its rise almost always is accompanied, as in the Weimar Republic, with a decay of society and a collapse of its basic cinder block, the family." (New Republic, 3/30/92)
On AIDS, Buchanan wrote in 1983: "The poor homosexuals -- they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution (AIDS)." (Los Angeles Times, 11/28/86) Later that year, he demanded that New York City Ed Koch and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo cancel the Gay Pride Parade or else "be held personally responsible for the spread of the AIDS plague." "With 80,000 dead of AIDS, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide," Buchanan wrote in 1990 (syndicated column, 10/17/90). In the 1992 campaign, he declared: "AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature." (Seattle Times, 7/31/93)
If someone took everything you said twenty years ago and threw it in your face, would you be able to stand behind everything you said back then?
ReplyDeleteand what exactly is your basis for believing that pat buchanan no longer stands behind what he said in far distant 1993?
ReplyDeleteLet's put it this way.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I can't visualize HIM handing over strategically important chunks of Israel, like the cokehead goofball we wound up with as President.
No I can visualize him nuking israel, consider he's a fella who claims israel is behind everything and destroying america
ReplyDeleteBuchanan is an Opus Dei Catholic.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't it then stand to reason that he cannot take up arms against Israel, lest he burn in hell for it?
Your rhetoric is really becoming reminiscent of the "white devil" ridiculousness I heard on the streets as a child (I'm equally impatient with the Arab death rants but at least your attitude is someone understandable, if not overly reactive, given the way our culture feels about ours...but Christians, now?)
Buchanan is a reactionary Catholic who's attacked Cardinals and the pope for being too soft on Jews
ReplyDeletein either case I've proven conclusively what Buchanan is and what he stands for, Fascism
and he is what you support because he caters towards your racism towards hispanics
the idea of you then calling anyone far right and claiming to be a progressive is laughable
end of story
You're a Nazi AND a Jew. That's the end of the story.
ReplyDeleteYou're an antisemite and a German, but do I point that one out to you Hash?
ReplyDeletePost a Comment