Yesterday, Robert Reich’s Sunday Thoughts landed in my inbox. He describes the most recent evidence of the “Trump regime’s abject cruelty, viciousness, heartlessness, brutality,” and asks, “How does a moral person live with this? How do we not become complicit?”

We have been asking ourselves these very questions during this year’s Passover, a Jewish holiday focussed on the experience of abject cruelty, viciousness, heartlessness, brutality, (against ALL, by the way) and on teaching our children and grandchildren how you should forestall a repetition of oppression or how you can overcome it. Except that in this very year 2025 the “Never again!” rings hollow.

I had absconded to the Northern California Redwoods to get away from the news, and get together with family. The beauty of those woods is unique, but even there you are reminded of human interference for profit, the harvesting and subsequent charring of century old trees. (The big stumps are the ones logged about 100 years ago, the surrounding forest is secondary growth.)

The secondary growth is still awe inspiring, as is the light that pushes its way through the dense tree crowns, forming intensely contrasting scenery.

The meadows adjacent to the forests are filled with wildflowers at this time of year, and the emerging elk look as if a fairy tale world existed that they freely move in and out of, safe from predators.

Safe from predators: no longer a given in a nation that decides it can disappear people without due process, with no redress once removed from American soil, and put into gulags extracting slave labor until the day you die. It can happen to anyone, Jews no exception, particularly with this administration’s anti-Semitism in plain sight. “What?” you ask? Are they not devoted to fight anti-Semitism?

Is leaving copies of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in the military libraries the Naval Academy, while removing books teaching the history of the Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism? When the superintendent of a school district in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas agrees within minutes to a conservative group’s demands to remove seminal texts about the Holocaust and antisemitism, including Maus and Anne Frank’s Diary? Florida’s state Education Department rejected two new Holocaust-focused textbooks for high school classroom use. “Modern Genocides,” and a course titled “History of the Holocaust.” Is that fighting anti-Semitism? Is using the Hitler salute by an administration “advisor” fighting anti-Semitism?

Is Trump’s election campaign use of featuring ads of Hillary Clinton against a background of hundred-dollar bills and a Star of David, and another promising protection against global special interests and featuring the portraits of three Jewish financiers, Janet Yellen, George Soros, and Lloyd Blankfein fighting anti-Semitism? Both ads are typical renditions of the classic antisemitic smear of Jewish money and Jewish financiers as the sources of power behind an opponent.

Is calling demonstrators marching with swastika and Confederate flags in a Nazi-style torchlit parade, chanting the Nazi slogans “Blood and Soil” and “Jews will not replace us” at a rally in 2017, ““fine people” on “both sides” fighting anti-Semitism?

Trump declared the protesters wearing sweatshirts that said “CAMP AUSCHWITZ,” or those seen elsewhere wearing what seems to be the Proud Boy version, “6MWE” (6 Million Weren’t Enough) during the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, “political hostages” and “patriots.” He regularly dines with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers like Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. And in the run-up to the 2024 election, he proclaimed that if he lost, it would be because too many American Jews had failed to vote for him—once again a classic antisemitic tactic: if things go wrong, blame the Jews. Is this fighting anti-Semitism?

Is not calling out the arson of a Jewish governor’s home with his family sleeping inside on the first night of Passover fighting anti-Semitism? There was, of course, no official response whatsoever from our President.

In the spirit of Passover, let me recite what I see in the context of our history. So far, the concept of anti-Semitism has been used to stifle dissent, targeting pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel sentiments. It has been abused to stifle freedom of expression at our Institutions of Higher Learning in general. (For detailed and smart discussions of this listen to Timothy Snyder here, or read Elad Nehorai here.)

Polls already taken in 2021 reported that more than a quarter of all American Jews believe that Israel is an apartheid state, while 45% assert the Palestinians suffer from systematic racisms. These numbers are likely to be much higher now. Definitionally, according to the Antidefamation League, these American Jews are anti-Semitic. If the current administration would deport them for their beliefs, and Israel ensures not to allow them to live there (see the new conditions touted by BEHAR), the two countries will render fellow Jews stateless. Again.

Can’t be deported for your beliefs? May I introduce you to Mahmoud Khalil. Can’t be deported (and tortured or left to rot) as a U.S citizen? May I encourage you to listen to your President’s suggestion that he can and will do so? Here is the game plan. Can’t be deported as a declared enemy of the state for criticism of the President? Here is a legal analysis that suggests former Trump cyber security officer, Christopher Krebs, now investigated for treason for asserting that Trump lost the 2020 election, might get ready to leave the country before he ends up unretrievable in El Salvador.

Can’t be retrieved, after admittedly erroneous deportation, even if the Supreme Court demands it (or pretends to do so…)? Indeed, says the administration, oops. When the single proposed safety mechanism against wrongful deportation, Habeas Corpus, is made moot by trickery and lawlessness, we are all endangered. From purported criminals they HAVE rights to due process) to dissidents to personal retribution targets to religious classes – none will be spared.

As we recount the history around the seder table – all of this is not new. But apparently more than 60 million voters in this country were willing to install exactly that kind of ideology. It was not hidden. 6 million dead Jews made no difference. Nor does the attempted erasure of an entire other people, the Palestinians, apparently.

How do we not become complicit? Educate yourself on the issues and speak out! Understand that the core freedoms of our constitution are under attack, regardless of who you are or what you believe. Protect those who are less privileged than we still are. Defy apathy or wishful thinking that it will all work out. This is not just chaos, or economic turmoil, or a multi-pronged attack against science and humanities. This is about sending people to their death in prison camps, ordered by those with immoral inclinations and through lawless means.

To brighten the day after some dark musings (Yes, I’m back, true to form… ) here is a remarkable collaboration between a French and a British musician.

and this from my inbox: Reversible Barnes & Noble display in Georgetown this weekend. (Courtesy of Chris Geidner.)