American Jews have greeted the election of Donald Trump with mixed feelings. While some say they feel comforted by Trump’s pro-Israel and anti-Iran stances—and by the presence of his Orthodox Jewish daughter and son-in-law—many more say they see echoes of Germany, 1938. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, has received reports of more than 700 incidents in the past two weeks, including 60 instances of swastika vandalism. Last weekend, at the annual convention for the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist organization, the group’s president, Richard B. Spencer, greeted the audience with, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” Many of the 200 attendees responded with Nazi salutes.
Most of the speakers, and probably most of the audience as well, was in the same position as Rabbi Megan GoldMarche of Metro Chicago Hillel, who said she could afford to be optimistic because she has never experienced any sort of discrimination or hate crime herself.
But, he said, the community would to do more than try to sway the opposition through conversation. “We need to double-down in our work on police accountability,” he said.
