https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/the_jewish_question_has_come_to_america_.html
There has never been in America a Jewish Question, at least, not until now.
America was built on the idea of a universal identity and a tolerance of differences. From the evolution of a liberal Protestant theology to George Washington’s embrace of the Jewish community, America — unlike Europe — did not see the Jews as strangers in its midst, as a people apart, or as a group whose identity stood at variance with others.
In America, there was no compelling desire for society to define the Jew. In Europe, Karl Marx, himself born a Jew and later a convert to Christianity, wrote an anti-Semitic screed, On the Jewish Question. Later Thomas Mann, who might be called a Philo-Semite, authored a lengthy essay with a similar title because the subject haunted Germany and Jews needed a defender.
Europe was consumed, if not obsessed, with the Jew in its midst.
While America had no shortage of anti-Semitic customs and displays of bigotry, Jews were well integrated into American society from the founding of the Republic until the great waves of Eastern European immigration began crashing on America’s shores and brought a different kind of Jew to its attention.
Nonetheless, Jews defined themselves. There was bigotry, hatred, and gentlemen’s agreements, but American intellectuals did not feel compelled to define the place of the Jew in society. To do so would have been contrary to America’s primary values.
America might not have uniformly adhered to its primary values, but its aspiration to embrace those values led to Jewish acceptance that never occurred in Europe even to this day.
But that has now changed and is the biggest threat to Jewish existence since the Klan almost took over the Democratic Party in the early 1920s.
