Yesterday, November 9th, marked the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a date when Germany and Jews around the world commemorate the November progrom(s) against Jews carried out by SA paramilitary forces and civilians throughout Nazi Germany in 1938. Synagogues, shops, apartments were set on fire, destroyed, looted, their Jewish inhabitants beaten, abducted or killed.

Germany’s President Steinmeier and Chancellor Merkel offered the usual speeches yesterday, a perennial calling for rigorous action against anti-Semitism. Steinmeier said he was ashamed in light of the recent multiple attacks on Jews, ashamed that they did not feel free to wear Kipot in public, and grateful that “German administrative offices took their responsibility seriously by adding police protection to synagogues and pursuing antisemitic crimes to the fullest extent of the law.” Hmmmm.

This on the same day, when a public commemoration of Kristallnacht in Dresden, usually an annual event, was prohibited with reference to Covid-19, but a demonstration by neo-Nazi forces, many of them Holocaust deniers, with an invited extremist speaker, was permitted. The local Jewish community was outraged. Here is a report (with google translator, hopefully somewhat true to the original.)

Anti-semitism does, of course, not stick to borders. Only a week ago Jewish graves were once again defaced in this country, this time in Grand Rapids, Michigan, smeared with Trump and MAGA slogans. It was one of many openly hateful acts that have increased in frequency and intensity through the years of the Trump administration.

Here is the strange thing, though: a lot of Jews were voting for Trump according to polls, and many more this year compared to 2016. This according to data coming from the AP poll published in the NYT and a poll commissioned by the Republican Jewish Commission and the Jewish Electoral Institute. In Florida alone, Trump got around 150.000 Jewish votes. Nationally, Jewish Orthodox voters went for Trump by a 70 to 19 margin!

If you look at all Jewish voters combined, Biden scored a 69 to 30 margin over Trump, but received the lowest total vote by Jewish voters in almost 4o years, while Trump’s numbers are the best for a Republican for the same time span. Clearly the American Jewish community has split into factions that can no longer be seen as having more in common than what divides them. Liberal Jews do believe Trump presented a clear and present danger with his openings toward autocratic if not fascistic tendencies, while the remaining third believed no such thing and celebrated him as Israel’s best friend.

As they say, divide and conquer. Some people quietly rubbing their hands and longing for future Kristallnächte. In the meantime, they’ll go and vandalize cemeteries.

Let’s end on an optimistic note, though. Many, many righteous people headed the calls of the organization that has by now placed over 70.000 stumbling stones across Europe, commemorating the names, locations, death or survival dates of persecuted Jews and other Nazi victims,

calls to polish them before they fade into oblivion. Across countries, regions, cities, towns and village, people went out to scrub the markers.

Photographs today are from my various visits to European memorials. A bit of difficult music by a Jewish composer, appropriate to the topic, though. If you need a smile, read the comments under the video. Someone will have expressed some of your very own sentiment.