New Jews, New Destruction

We see in recent developments what is, essentially, a New Diaspora composed of Jews, whether in contemporary Israel or not, who share a ghetto mentality, afraid of what others might take as a sign of weakness and perhaps thinking of their Jewishness itself simply as vulnerability instead of a source of insuperable strength. Within Israel, they sometimes call themselves the "New Jews," but their attitudes betray them. Such a mind-set has been inherited from an older generation of Jews who, in their formative years, had no strong Israel to make all thoughts of Judaism as weakness seem absurd. The New Diaspora is largely composed of those to whom defensiveness seems synonymous with being Jewish. Others are simply their biological or psychological offspring unable to resist the fear that such defensiveness reflects.